Lucy’s voice is tight, “Oh, yeah. And I have planned time off for around your due date—but I’ll be treating it like a vacation, lounging in the hospital, you know…”
I pull away from the door as her sister laughs, instantly rejecting the idea of her leaving the city. It’s clear she doesn’t want to, either.
Lucy ends the call with her sister and lets out a sigh that I can hear over the water and through the door. I stand there for another long moment, even going so far as to hover my hand over the doorknob.
I could work that stress out of her. I could pick her up, have her loop her legs around my waist, and move against her until she wasn’t thinking about anything else.
And,fuck, was she tight. Likely, more from her own tenseness than from being a virgin, but to my cock, it didn’t make a difference.
I try to ignore thoughts of Lucy toweling off, rubbing lotion over her skin, drying her hair and slipping into pajamas. Is she wearing new ones, maybe a set she bought with my card?
It wouldn’t make sense, considering my reason for giving her the card is to look the part in public. But still, I hope that she did. That when she gets out of the shower, she’s going to slide a lush, silk fabric over her skin, and it will be because of me.
I want to tell her to use my card for anything. Treats, meals, more outfits. A new car, if she wants. Anything she wants. The thought of it makes my cock twitch.
Lucy lets out another sigh, and I force my hand away from the doorknob, force myself to take a step back, then another. I’ve already decided this isn’t a good idea—already told her coldly enough that it made her cry. Now, doing anything to contradict what I said would just be cruel.
I’m not looking to play games with her. And if I don’t get myself under control, all I’m going to accomplish is hurting her again.
So I turn to go, to walk into my room and stay there for the rest of the night, to avoid seeing her and finding out for myself what, exactly, her pajamas look like.
That is, I’m about to walk away when I hear another noise from her, and this time, it’s not a sigh.
It’s a startled yelp, followed by a sliding sound—the telltale squeak of a foot slipping in a tub—and a heavy, suddenthump.
Without thinking about the repercussions—without thinking, full stop—I turn and throw open the bathroom door, her name already on my lips.
Chapter 13
Lucy
Pain shoots in a tight bolt from my ass and along my spine just as the bathroom door bursts open, and Dane is standing there, breathing hard, looking down at me as I sit in a tangle, right in the center of the tub. “Lucy. Are you okay?”
I stare up at him, water flowing over my soaking hair and chest, dripping off my arms and into the tub. I managed to pull the shower curtain down with me when I fell.
Ridiculously, I’m actually somewhat covered—my hair over my nipples like a mermaid, my thighs together and knees up. It’s far—extremely far—from what a boss should ever be seeing, but it’s also not a full frontal.
Maybe I should be wondering about how in the world Dane managed to get in here so quickly after I fell, or what he’s doing back so soon. Since we got to the convention, he’s been staying out every night, not returning to the room until after I’ve gone to bed. Then, when I get up in the morning, he’s already awake, ready and dressed, with his guard up.
After seeing him in his reading glasses, I’d hoped to catch another glimpse of him like that—slightly undone, a little softer than he normally presents himself. But with the exception of complimenting my drawing and looking at me the way he didwhen I was wearing Akela’s dress, he hasn’t been anything but absolutely professional.
So it’s confusing that he’s here now, when he’s supposed to be down at the hotel bar, schmoozing. Or flirting. Or whatever he’s been doing while I’m up here in the room, alone.
But I can’t think about that, because another jolt of pain is cutting through me, ricocheting from my ass up to my shoulders, tight and radiating out. To punctuate it, I use my new favorite word on a hiss. “Fuck.”
“Come here,” Dane demands, spurred to action by the swearing, reaching over and stopping the water. The moment it’s gone, I’m suddenly freezing, but he’s already fetching the towel from the rack, staring at it in dismay, then turning to me as he promptly wraps me in it. “You didn’t turn on the towel warmer?”
I blink at him as he leans down, scooping one arm under my legs, and the other under my head. The towel is covering just the front of me, so the water from my hair and body drips down his arms and soaks the cuffs of his suit.
“Your suit,” I murmur, and then, squinting up as the bathroom lights above silhouette him like an angel, “and what warmer?”
I’ve never stayed at a hotel this nice in my life.
Actually, my few hotel stays have been limited to those for teen birthday parties—when we all thought it was fun to get reservations at the nearest Holiday Inn Express—and the aforementioned trip to the Mark Twain caves, where my family splurged for a single hotel room, all of us kids sprawled out in sleeping bags on the floor.
Dane just shakes his head at me, bringing me out to the main living room. The pain has already dissipated, the ache less pronounced than it was even a second ago. Maybe it’s the effect of Dane carrying me like this, or maybe I was just being dramatic about how bad it hurt when I fell.
He settles me down on the couch in the seating area, and the moment he straightens up, I can see him reverting back to his professional self, building up the wall between us that he’s kept in place from the moment we arrived in Amsterdam.
