Page 125 of The Sweetest Return

A slow pulse. A little swell. Heat gathering in a place that remembered him too well to behave.

His eyes dropped to my lap, then lifted to mine.

The silence in the truck changed, full of everything we were not saying because saying it would make the next decision too easy.

“What you want, Mani?”

The bass in his voice went straight to my pussy.

I held his stare. “Something good to eat.”

My mind went filthy before I could stop it.

Dre feeding me that big chocolate dick with the same patience he used for everything else when it came to my body.

His thumb moved once against my thigh. Barely anything. Enough to make me inhale.

“I’ll make sure it’s good,” he said. “Trust me on that.”

That was the problem.

I did trust him.

I trusted Dre to take his time. To watch my face. To remember what made my breath catch and learn what time had changed. I trusted him to make it so good I would forget every reasonable argument I had carried into that truck.

Thursday, I had needed a whole room between us just to survive him. Now his hand was on my thigh, his eyes were on my mouth, and some part of me had already followed him upstairs.

I looked toward the hotel doors.

Then back at him.

“Let’s go upstairs to your suite.”

The presidential suite was something else.

My suite was beautiful. The Nocturne did not seem interested in doing anything halfway. But Dre’s suite made mine feel like the hotel had patted me on the head and told me I was cute for trying. His had dark wood, amber light, brass fixtures, thick rugs, furniture deep enough to disappear into, and windows that gave downtown Pittsburgh the kind of view people paid too much money to pretend belonged to them.

Dre opened the door and stepped aside for me, his hand resting briefly at my lower back as I walked in. After the way that hand had behaved in the truck, even that little touch made my body remember too much.

“This is excessive,” I said.

He took my coat from my shoulders. “You like it.”

“I did not say that.”

“You looked at the couch like you wanted to take it home with you.”

My attention betrayed me by going right back to the enormous sectional. “It is a beautiful couch.”

His laugh followed me farther into the room, low and easy, and I smiled because I had been hearing that sound more and more all day. The public version of Dre had spent Crown Weekend shaking hands, taking pictures, answering questions, and moving through crowds like being wanted was something he had learned how to survive.

This Dre dropped his phone beside a room-service tablet, loosened the watch on his wrist, and looked at me like having me in his suite at the end of the night was a problem he had every intention of enjoying.

“What you want to eat?”

I looked at him.

“For dinner,” he added, mouth tilting.