His eyes narrowed. “You? And then who? You’re gay.”
“Bi people do exist, you know.” I wasn’t among their number, but I wanted to see where he was going with this.
His eyes ran up and down me, cataloguing until I felt like a side of beef at a butcher’s shop, being inspected by a particularly picky cook. “But you haven’t been looking for a partner. You and Nate were snogging. Are you—”
“You know that old saying about having to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince.” He frowned. “Or princess,” I added hurriedly.
“Hmmn.”And he was gone again.
If he’d been thinking what I thought he had, I would have to be careful to avoid Ella.
She’d danced with some of my family but had looked sulky the entire evening. I felt sorry for her as I watched her leave, trailing behind her parents. If my suspicions were correct that she was expected to marry one of us so she could produce a child or two, she was probably under a hell of a lot of pressure from her father—and now, perhaps, her brother. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.
My sympathy lasted as long as it took them to disappear, and then I forgot everything except searching for Nate. I found him in the entrance hall, taking deep breaths of the cold night air that swirled through the door as people left. I was intrigued to see Dan and Rose weren’t the only Teague-Fortescue couple in a hurry toleave together. Perhaps familiarity was overcoming some of the prejudices on both sides.
“Hey.” I bumped his shoulder with mine.
When he turned to face me, an unfamiliar crease between his brows smoothed out and my breath caught at the beauty of his smile. I wanted it to be directed at me for, well, forever.
His gaze flickered over my face and landed on my mouth, his eyes growing dark.
It wouldn’t have won any awards for a graceful, romantic kiss—we both lunged forward at the same time, resulting in squashed lips and clacking teeth for an instant before we got it together. I made an embarrassing sound deep in my throat as Nate’s mouth opened under mine, and I tasted him again. It had only been a day, but God, I’d missed this.
I was fighting my way under his clothes—why was he wearing so many?— before sanity prevailed. Standing in the hallway wasn’t the place to do any of the things I wanted to.
I stepped back from him, looking around for somewhere private. The only place in sight was the cloakroom. Circling my hand around his wrist, I tugged him after me. Not much tugging was required—he came willingly.
As we got there, Denise emerged through the doorway. “Oh, do you want your—” She ground to a halt, her gaze moving over us. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m just going to be somewhere else for a while.”
Nate looked mortified, but I’d never been one to turn down an opportunity. “Cheers, Denise,” I said, pulling him into the cloakroom and closing the door behind us.
In the privacy of the small cloakroom, I took a moment to drink in the sight of him in that suit. When I first met Nate, I’d seen he was sexy. The better I knew him, the hotter he became. Maybebecause I’d learned to read the expressions in his eyes, or because I knew how he tasted, how he kissed. While I was still staring at him like a stunned mullet, he took my face in his hands and kissed me. I swear to God, it was like falling into the sun. His entire focus was on me, and I melted in the heat and power of his kiss.
One of my hands was in his hair, keeping his mouth on mine. I worked the other under his waistband to cup his arse, and he shuddered against me.
He eventually drew back. “Alex.” He leaned in again and kissed my jaw, working up to my ear, every soft touch of his lips, every little lick of his tongue, every warm puff of breath against my skin turning me on.
He pulled back again. “This might sound unbelievably sleazy, but do you want to get a hotel room? We could have the entire night there.”
At my surprised gape, he dropped his gaze, and his lips twisted. “Sorry—” he started
“You’re a genius, Nate Mortimer,” I informed him, punctuating my assertion with a kiss. Such a solution to our problem would never have occurred to me. I kept it to one quick kiss. However badly I wanted in his pants, I’d prefer to wait until we had privacy and a bed and didn’t have to worry about Margaret finding suspicious stains on her coat.
NATE
Alex yet again showed his brilliance, this time by asking as we left the Assembly Rooms if I had any supplies. I had only the emergency condom and sachet of lube I kept in my wallet, so we diverted briefly to the closest open-all-hours pharmacy.
That provided time to think, and as I steered us back to the nearest tolerable hotel, I pre-empted any concerns Alex might have had. “I’m relieved Bim’s bankrolling my stay. This place has gone up-market since I was last in Bath.”
Alex bit his lip. I winced internally, worried that he realised what I was doing and thought I was patronising him. I’d assumed that—without a steady job—he didn’t have a lot of money, and I made a decent living in London, as well as having my inheritance from Uncle Thaddeus and my parents. The only reason I lived in such a cramped flat was because I preferred to spend my spare money amassing treasure. My priorities were undoubtedly incomprehensible to humans, but they pleased the dragon in me.
“If Bim’s bankrolling us, I guess we can get a room with a jacuzzi,” he said. “Though I’m not sure how you’re going to explain that on expenses.”
His humour sounded a little forced, I thought, but as he said nothing when I passed my credit card to the woman behind the front desk, I was probably imagining it. The receptionist’s expression didn’t falter even though it was eleven pm and neither of us had a scrap of luggage. She simply booked us into a king room for the night and passed us our keys. I determined to ask Taylor if she was a relative.
Any constraint that I’d imagined between us disappeared once we reached our room. In the low light, Alex looked dark, sexy, and mysterious. Dark shadow dusted his jaw, dark hair curled below his ears, and his black jacket was a smidgeon too small, emphasising the breadth of his shoulders.
The desperation I’d felt on seeing him at the Assembly Rooms was replaced by a slower-growing and all-consuming hunger. He dropped the pharmacy bag to the floor when I stepped in and kissed him, and the heat from before was back in an instant. Alexkissed like no one I’d ever known. Every time, it overwhelmed me until I lost my place in the universe, and all I knew was him.
