“Oh, sonowyou follow the rules?!” I laugh, half-amused, half-exasperated.
He lifts his weight off me, one hand next to my head pressed into the bedding, and hangs his head as if he’s just lost his winning lottery ticket, his messy hair flopping onto his face and his mouth pressing against my shoulder.
For a few moments, we stay paused, neither wanting to untangle our legs from each other but both knowing what will happen if we don’t. I feel the overwhelmingurge to brush his wavy hair back onto the top of his head when I remember the sex bag in the bathroom.
“Oh my God!”
He looks down at our meshed bodies in a panic. My hands on his bare chest, I push him off me and sprint to the bathroom.
“A-are you OK?” he shouts from the bedroom, but I can barely hear him over the sound of me rustling through the two bathroom robe pockets until—
“Aha!” I stick my head around the door and hold out a Heimach Hotel–branded vegan condom as though I’m showing him my most prized possession. “Thank you, Christoph.”
I have to stop myself from sprinting back over to him, instead attempting a tantalizing pace, pulling my rumpled T-shirt up over my head and throwing it to the other side of the room as I stride back to him. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed and reaches for the condom. I have to stop myself from ogling his taut sun-kissed frame. He sighs, turning the plastic square in his fingers between his thighs.
A line forms between his brows and he lets out a breath that settles on my exposed stomach. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
My heart sinks at his hesitation. The realization of just howmuchI want this dawns on me like a punch to the gut. Like flipping a coin but not knowing which side you truly want until it lands. I brush the loose hairfrom his face and ask in the most seductive voice I can muster, “Aren’t we already doing this?”
He takes my hips in his hands, lightly tugging me closer until I am standing in between his legs.
“No,” he replies with a faint smile, the small glimmers of light in the room bouncing off his cheekbones. My stomach turns molten as he kisses the skin above my underwear and looks up at me under hooded eyes. “We haven’t even started.”
26
We move as one, breathing almost completely in sync while the hot rain pounds against the window like a chorus of ratifying applause. I don’t think it’s ever been as good as this. Especially not the first time with someone new. It doesn’t feel like the first time, it feels like I’ve been away for years and have finally come home to someone who knows me inside and out.
“Fuck, you’re so beautiful.”
He pushes the sweat-lined hair from my forehead and slides his tongue against mine, forcing my whole body to shiver on top of him. He must feel what his words do to me, because he whispers into my ear about how much he wanted to bend me over the conference table in my pink suit, about how sad it made him that I didn’t want that too—
“I’ve never not wanted you to do that,” I cry breathlessly. My eyes fly open in panic, and I take a deep breath, as though trying to suck the words back inside to wherever they came from.
His teeth drag at the nape of my neck, leaving a trail of simmering heat all over my throat. All of a sudden,I’m so close, on the edge of a cliff I can only survive if I leap off it again. In between the words “fuck,” “don’t stop” and “right there” on repeat in my head I make a mental tally, and no, never in my life has a man made me orgasm twice in one night, but after what he did to me in the kitchen I don’t question his skill set.
He wraps his arms around my waist, lifting me up with him. He kisses me hard and with a low groan leads me toward the smoky-mirrored wardrobe. I let out an involuntary ragged moan as he spins me around so I can see both of our reflections.
My sweaty hands make prints against the glass and his dark, focused eyes move their attention to mine.
“Say my name,” he growls as he takes my ear in between his teeth, his low voice vibrating down my neck.
“Bancroft,” I pant out as his forearm tightens around my waist.
His palm snakes around me gently, pulling me up into a firm embrace. “No,Grace. For once, I want to hear you saymyname,” he rasps.
I throw my head back so we’re cheek to cheek, and the stubble of his jaw scrapes against my skin. I lift a hand and run it through the back of his hair, tugging the strands into a fist. Holding on to brace for whatever will happen when I say the word I have avoided since we first met.
“Say it.” He grips the flesh of my inner thigh. “Please.”
His voice softens as if he’s begging for confirmationthat I’m even on the same planet as him. Handing me the keys to his undoing just as much as mine.
I’m starting to understand how power corrupts because as the word “Eric” flitters across my lips I feel almost evil. He lets out a rough laugh onto my shoulder before pounding into me again. The pulsing thrusts create waves of pleasure that burst through me up into my throat. We jump over the edge of the cliff together without thinking about where we’ll land.
Our heads share a pillow in the moonlight, limbs intertwined like an atom refusing to split. The early hours of the morning feel like another world. A parallel universe where we aren’t Hastings and Bancroft: industry rivals. We’re just Grace and Eric: two people finally overlapping. The opportunity to be anything and everything. Whatever we want, together.
A small voice reminds me this isn’t real; we are both just playing pretend for a few hours and tomorrow we will be back to being uneasy allies until this project is over and we go our separate ways. But the sound of my name on his lips, our heavy ragged breath and moans of pleasure replaying in my mind drown out that voice—drown it out so completely that I’m no longer listening.
His arms wrap around me as my face sinks into his chest, the hairs tickling my cheeks as I take in a deep breath.
