“I envisioned us carrying out some kind of clandestine operation to evade discovery. You know, you slipping me your key card under the table, telling me when to meet you in your room.”
He’s watching my lips. “If you want to role-play, I’m down.”
“You say that now. Wait till the ball gag and zapper come out.”
He smiles tenderly. “I can’t wait to learn all about your kinks. Tell me over dinner?”
My stomach drops. Not at the implication that he’ll do anything I want in bed, although I’m pretty sure he knows I won’t ask to electro-stimulate him. But because he’s…asking me out? Like…on a date?
A prickle crawls from my chest up my neck, bristling the hair at the base of my scalp.
Much as I want to deny Maral’s assertion that Ryan may have more-than-casual feelings, the evidence is mounting against me. His tenderness during sex, that expression on his face at the studio this morning, asking me out-out rather than just back to his room. I can’t deny something that’s staring me right in the eye.
I should be touched. The tingly sensation unfurling in my chest suggests Iamtouched. That this man, whose interest any woman would be lucky to have, wants more from me than just sex.
But I also know wheremoreleads.Moremay start with benign warmth in your chest, but it morphs, overheats, becomes amalignant fire that burns all your carefully erected defenses to the ground. Leaves you grappling in the ashes.
It’s safer to keep things strictly about sex. No, not just safer. Necessary. There are practicalities to consider, after all—how exactly is more even possible when he works for my publisher? Has he forgotten that teeny tiny complication? I certainly haven’t—it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. A lifeline.
I square my shoulders. I can right this train, keep it on the correct track. The only track. I just have to stay focused, and keep him focused. Should be easy enough—he’s already drinking in my every move like I’m an oasis in the desert.
“The only thing I want in my mouth is you,” I say. My pinky brushes the evidence of his arousal. “And it seems like you want that too.”
“I’d have to be dead not to want that,” he breathes.
Good. Yes.“I believe you also promised to make me scream from it.” I affect a pout. “Are you the kind of person who reneges on promises, Ryan? Because I don’t think I can abide such a lack of honor.”
His voice drops dangerously low. “I’m a man of my word. And I’ll deliver, believe me.”
Hot. Damn.“Then what are we waiting for?”
The arousal emanating off him is so fiery that the air practically refracts from it. But there is something else going on behind his eyes. Some kind of war he’s fighting in the privacy of his mind. Even though there’s no point to it. Not within the reality of this situation. He has to know that.
Finally, resignation seems to eclipse the fight.
He removes a key card from his wallet and slides it across the table to me. “Room 704,” he says gruffly. “Five minutes.”
Relief and satisfaction pour through me like warm honey. He rises from the table, heading to the elevator. I almost regretstarting this little ruse because the sight of his strong back makes me want to climb him right this minute. I’ve never been one for delayed gratification. I comfort myself with the image of him opening his door to me in a few minutes, his pants tented. Or better yet, nonexistent.
I tuck the key card away and chew on a couple of mints from the hostess station during my struggle to wait five minutes, springing into action the second the time is up.
When the elevator dings open on Ryan’s floor, I startle at the sight of him loitering in the hall outside his room.
“Lost?” I ask.
Ryan leans against his doorjamb. “I forgot I only have one key card. Didn’t expect to need another.”
I purse my lips. This could also be fun. “Well, entrance shall be granted to thee, if thy key you can find on me.” I twirl slowly to display the many potential spots his key could be hiding on my body.
Ryan glances behind him and over my shoulder, making sure we’re alone. Then he stands back, assessing me. From my heels up my legs and belly to my mid-cut neckline.
“I’d like to search every inch of you,” he says. “But the way I want to do it, we should definitely not be in public.”
“Then you better find your key quick.”
I sidle up to him, turning slightly so that my ass brushes against the hard front of his pants. His hands fly to my hips, gripping me just shy of too hard. My high-waisted pants don’t have pockets, but that doesn’t stop his fingers from roaming from back to front all the same, moving dangerously close to where I’m wet already and wanting. He lingers for a moment and presses an open-mouthed kiss to the side of my neck.
“I know one of your kinks,” he says. “Torture.”
