mia
“Challenge accepted,Miss Thorne. Let’s get our keys and those thank-yous rolling off your tongue.” He tugs me toward the front desk, gets our key card, and we practically sprint to the elevator.
While we wait for it to arrive, Preston never lets go of my hand. He draws slow circles inside my palm with his thumb, casual for him, devastating for me. The doors open, and we slip inside, barely composed. He stabs the button for the top floor like the thing insulted him. It’s ridiculous, charming, and so, so him.
But just as the doors begin to close—merciful, beautiful doors, seconds from giving us privacy—a hand slices through.
And the damn thing opens again.
In walks Judgment and Judgment’s Wife. Both around Preston’s age, dressed for court and already mid-verdict. The woman’s head jerks back while the rest of her stays put. A silent flinch of disapproval.
I glance up and catch both of them lookingus up and down, matching sneers plastered across their faces, no doubt assessing our age difference. I hate that these strangers make me resent looking younger than I am. They have the subtlety of a Victorian aunt at a strip club.
My imagination takes flight. Do they think I’m his sugar baby? His affair? How scandalous does this look, an older man and a much younger woman, sneaking into a five-star hotel at 11 a.m. in the middle of the week?
I look to Preston for backup, but he’s blissfully unaware of the nineteenth-century judgment party unfolding around us, still stroking my hand, ever so tender, and gazing at me with a jar of glitter in each eye.
Oh, man. I’m met with something even better than support. I find comfort.
So I give the narrow-minded couple, and my own stupid worries, a properfuck youby nuzzling in closer and kissing him stupid against the mirrored wall.
I don’t stop when they huff. I don’t stop when they storm out stomping their heels. I kiss him until there’s no room left in the elevator for anything but us.
“Do you have ‘exhibitionism’ written down on your list? Or is it straight ‘fucking in elevators’?” he purrs in my ear, then drags his mouth south along my jaw.
“If you were paying attention to your surroundings,Doctor”—I smirk his title out—“you’d have seen the judgy way they were staring at us.”
“Why would I be looking at anyone but you, Mia?”
My heart skips a beat.
His fingers rake the back of my neck, then weave into my hair, holding me steady. He presses his forehead againstmine and lands a series of emotional sucker punches, as if I wasn’t already down from the first.
“But sure,” he growls, “maul me anytime. Give jealous people something to look at.”
“They weren’t jeal—” He shuts me up with a kiss. I’m not one to run from an argument, but I’m not about to choose a squabble over this man’s mouth.
“I don’t know what they were, Mia. I don’t care.” He kisses me again, softer this time. “I was paying attention to what matters.”
Fuck me sideways. He went straight for the jugular with that one, didn’t he?
It’s my turn to silence him. I curl my fingers into the ends of his hair, holding him in place, and stare. What I find staring back at me isn’t a player. There’s no smug grin. No rehearsed line queued up. There’s only yearning. Bare and wild and burning for me.
It unleashes a braver, wilder Mia. One I’m not so familiar with, but want to become. Not just in front of him, but in front of the whole world. One with fewer intrusive thoughts, not consumed by worries about what comes next.
His hands roam my back and slide to my waist. His fingers bunch the hem of my top, digging into my skin. But that’s as far as he goes.
He’s holding back. Truth is, I’m struggling just as hard, but watching him squirm? That does something to me. So, braver Mia steps in.
I trace his upper lip with my tongue, slow, taunting, and he parts for me. “I should get a silk tie for this mouth,” Ibreathe into him, trying the words on for size. To my surprise, they fit perfectly.
I lick his bottom lip next, even slower now, and feel him twitch against me, right where we’re still joined.
“Or maybe a gag.”
The words taste obscene on my tongue. I like it far too much.
His groan is low, velvet-wrapped in wickedness.
