“Maybe.” She dragged her gaze away and sucked in a shaky breath. “I want to apologize for earlier today, on the boat. The smart-aleck remark I made about your restaurant idea,” she clarified when he gave her a baffled look. “I didn’t mean to offend you. My brain is wired for numbers. It’s very logical, which is great for my work but not so great when it comes to making friends.”
He let out a low laugh. “Takes a lot more than that to offend me.” His eyes darted around the lift lobby and he muttered a curse, then clasped her hand. “Not here. Follow me.”
She wasn’t a woman who followed, but her legs hadn’t read the memo because they automatically kept up with his long stride as he marched them down the corridor and into a...storage closet?
“What—”
He silenced her with a kiss. Brief, but Hot with a capital H, his tongue owning her with long, bold strokes, his hips pressing her against the door, his erection punching into her belly.
“Fuck. You make me forget myself.” Chest heaving, he stepped back and raked a hand through his hair. “The person I was annoyed with,” he said roughly, “was myself.”
“Why?” she breathed, pulse hammering, the space between her legs feeling hot, needy.
“Because you were right. I’ve not thought the idea through.”
“But you will. You’ll find a way to make it work.”
His expression flickered with surprise. “Thank you.”
She’d cleared the air. Now she could escape to her room. “Why are we in a storage closet?”
“I needed to kiss you.” Arousal radiated off him, sending her belly tumbling. “And I didn’t want anyone seeing us.”
Escape, she reminded herself. “The thing you asked me to think about,” she blurted. “Sex toy, dinner date, or tour guide.”
His gaze snapped to hers. “Yes?”
“I don’t know.” She stared down at her hands. “I’m not easygoing like my sisters. I’m more...” She searched for the right word.
“Prickly?”
“I was going to saystubborn, but that works.” God, what was she doing in a storage closet contemplating sex with a man ten years younger than herself?
“Hey.” Big warm hands cupped her face. “You’re coming at this from the wrong angle. You’re thinkingWhy, when you should be thinkingWhy not?”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“But it is.” He pressed a very soft kiss to her lips. “FYI, I like prickly. Especially when wrapped in skintight metallic silver.”
It was hard to think objectively when he made her hormones dance. “What I’m trying to say is that just because everyone around me thinks sleeping with you is a great idea doesn’t mean I’ll go along with it. If it happens, it will be because I’ve decided it’s right for me.”
“Of course.”
Even serious, those blue eyes were devastating. “If you don’t want to wait—”
He cut her off with another kiss, this one meltingly soft. “I want you, not a random woman to have dinner with or sleep with. Prickly, challenging, way smarter than meyou.”
Pleasure fluttered in her chest, her belly. “You forgotolder than you.”
He shook his head. “Told you, I don’t give a fuck about age.”
Her heart thumped as she met his eyes. “Then I don’t want you to stop asking me, if that’s okay.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Absolutely. Though, to be clear, in words your maths brain will understand,sex toy, dinner date,tour guideweren’t mutually exclusive.”
She laughed, relieved the awkwardness from earlier had gone.
He clasped her hand, fingers lacing with hers, the feeling warm, intimate, yet also, oddly,safe. “Shall we head back to the Gaslight?”
