Sweet fuck.Myers Hotel Group was one of the biggest luxury hotel franchises on the East Coast. Clarke was a freaking heiress.
At least I knew she wasn't a ball girl—a term often used to refer to women who chased after baseball players. She wasn't going to be swayed by status or checkbook. Hell her bank account probably rivaled the team's owners'.
"I broke off our engagement when I found out he cheated on me. Apparently, I wasn't . . . enough for him"
Oh, hell no.“Blondie—”
“It's fine! I'm sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking coming over here and mauling you like this.” She pulled away, brushing off my hold. “I thought that you might, um . . . That we might . . . Because I really do . . .”
I tried not to smile. She made it impossible to resist her, even when she was flustered and stuttering her words. “I hope the ends of those sentences are good.”
Her cheeks flushed. I longed to see that shade of blush color her freshly spanked ass. Right before I bent her over and fucked it. Would she let me do that?
Would she trust me to?
“I should go.”
She turned toward the door, ready to run. What would it take to show her that I wanted to be the one she ran to, not away from?
Where the fuck did that come from?
One kiss and I was spiraling down a vortex of dangerous thoughts. I needed to get my shit together.
Before she made it more than a step or two, I snaked my hand out to catch hers. “Come back when you know.”
“Huh?”
“Come back when you know what you want from me.”
I lifted away from the wall and bent down until we were eye to eye. With her hand still in mine, I lowered my lips until they were inches from hers. Close enough to feel her sharp exhalation of breath while still maintaining the space between us.
“And please, let me give it to you.”
This wasn’t a kiss; it was a promise. And while Clarke might not know it yet, I delivered on all my promises.
Sleep was impossible after that.
What was the point of sleeping, of dreaming, when the reality of kissing Clarke Myers far outweighed my fantasies?
Even now, hours after she’d left my trailer, hours after I’d watched her walk back to her own—because Rose City might be a small town, but shitty things happened to women at night in small towns, too—I was still trying to wrap my head around what had transpired.
The woman I’d been lusting after for weeks—the same woman who lived no more than a stone’s throw away—had been lusting after me, too.
She'd kissed me.Fuck.
I'd kissed her back.Double fuck.
I'd also ended our kiss.Fucking idiot.
A war was waging between my brain and body, and judging by the way my dick was throbbing against my thigh, it was safe to say my brain was losing. More concerningly, my heart didn’t know which side to join. Then again, it was a losing battle either way.
Despite what my fans, friends, and even family assumed, I hadn’t been with anybody in nearly six months. Hell, I hadn’tseena woman’s naked body (beyond my phone screen) for almost twice that. That was the only way to explain my intense, physical reaction to Clarke’s kiss.
A kiss that shouldn’t have made my dick harder than granite. I was thirty-four, for fuck’s sake.
Part of me was pissed at her for reducing me down to a grunting Neanderthal. But that paled in comparison to the angerI felt toward myself for missing the signs that beneath that sweeter-than-sweet tea persona, Clarke was hurting. Maybe we had more in common than I’d originally thought.
I'd done a little research of my own after she left. About her, her family, the piece of shit she'd been engaged to who had clearly done a number on her. I wasn't the only one who had had my fair share of scrutiny from the press.
