We stare at each other in the renewed silence. My heart is beating so hard I’m half-convinced it’s visible through my shirt.
“Go to your room, Sadie.” He finally speaks, voice hoarse. “Before I do something really fucking stupid.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks. My mouth goes dry. Every part of me is screaming do it and don’t you dare at the same time.
“Pretty sure we passed stupid three floors ago,” I attempt to joke, but my voice comes out softer than usual. Too breathless.
He huffs a laugh that sounds like surrender and self-preservation got into a bar fight. I step around him, my body brushing his for the briefest, cruelest second. The contact is enough to send a bolt of heat straight through my core.
The hallway is cooler, quieter, but no safer. My legs feel unsteady as I move toward room 1804, fingers fumbling with the keycard envelope.
“Sadie.”
His voice, low and rough, slides down my spine. I turn, hand still on my door. He’s standing half in, half out of the elevator, one hand braced against the frame, staring at me like I’m something he shouldn’t want and can’t stop staring at.
“It’s better this way.” His tone is a sharp contrast to the look he’s giving me.
My smile is small and sharp. Armor and confession all at once. “Probably.”
The doors start to close again. He doesn’t stop them this time. For one suspended heartbeat, our eyes lock through the narrowing gap. Then the metal sliver between us seals shut with a soft hiss, cutting him off from view and leaving me alone in a hallway in a city I’ve never been in, with a room key in one hand and my heart hammering in the other.
I swipe the card, step inside, and shut the door behind me, back hitting the cool wood. I slide down slowly until I’m sitting on the carpet, knees up, breath coming too fast, head spinning with the image of him leaning over me, eyes dark, mouth inches from mine.
I came so close to kissing him.
Worse?
I wanted to. God help me, I still do.
Chapter Eleven
Dean
Three Steps Ahead
Jared Benjamin
The worst part about almost kissing someone you have no business wanting? You still wake up wishing you did.
For a full three seconds, I’m convinced I actually had her pinned to that elevator wall, my mouth on hers, my hand under her shirt, biting the word don’t right off her tongue. I can feel the impression of her body against mine, the heat of her breath, the scrape of need sliding down my spine.
Then my eyes open to a very empty, very beige hotel room, and reality punches me in the face. Right. We didn’t. I didn’t. I stopped. Gold star for me. I’d like to cash it in for a lobotomy now please.
The blackout curtains are half open, a stripe of morning light cutting across the bed, dissecting me right down the middle. One side warm. One side cold. On the nightstand, my phone face down, a bottle of water half-drunk, a room key like a wink.
My chest feels tight. Not stage-tight. Not adrenaline-tight. Something else I’m not used to feeling. Something like… wanting. I throw an arm over my face and groan into my own bicep.
“Fuck,” I mumble, because that about covers it.
My brain, the traitor, replays the look in her eyes when the elevator doors opened. Wide and surprised, pupils blown with desire. Not scared. Not offended. They were hungry.
The fact that I even let it get that close makes me want to punch a wall and then my own reflection. I know better. I live better. I’ve built a whole damn life out of not letting anyone get close again.
But Sadie Brooks stepped onto our bus and is somehow leaking into the places I welded shut. I swing my legs off the bed and sit there for a second, elbows on knees, hands clasped. The room smells like hotel soap and my own sweat. My head’s not pounding, but it’s not quiet either. Static lives behind my eyes.
There’s a knock on my door. Three short taps, one long.
Mikey.
