Page 124 of Cherry Picking

His throat bobs as he swallows. “Anywhere?”

“I’m not moving to Charlotte, Maxwell. Check your ambition.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“It’s written all over your face.”

“What if I told you,” he says, a smirk finally winning, “that I was thinking about getting you out of that coat. And that we can work out the rest of the details tomorrow.”

He reaches up, his hand warm as he brushes a stray strand of hair back from my face, his palm lingering there. The temperature in the room shifts.

“Then I’d tell you to hurry the hell up with it.”

CHAPTER 35

EVIE

Briggs grasps the collar of my coat, punishingly slow about the process of undressing me. One button at a time, his knuckles grazing the knit of my sweater and stalling there for an eternity.

He’s breathing like he’s attempting to disarm an explosive device in a dark room.

“Maxwell.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re being weirdly tentative.”

“I’m trying to be careful with you.”

“I noticed.” I fist my hands in the front of his shirt and haul him down until our foreheads knock together. “I didn’t log two thousand miles to be handled like I’m breakable.”

He lets out a rough huff of a laugh against my lips. “I’m trying to do this the right way.”

“You’re trying to do this slowly, and I am roughly thirty seconds away from losing my mind.”

“Evie, baby—”

“I have spent a deeply embarrassing amount of time having my hands on myself while thinking about you,” I tell him, my voice dropping. “So if you could please stop behaving like I’m going to change my mind, that would be appreciated.”

His expression shifts from careful to predatory in a heartbeat, and then his mouth is crashing into mine. He shoves me back until I hit the wall beside the door, hard enough to rattle whatever frames are hanging there. But nothing’s hanging. The walls in this condo are as blank as ever.

Briggs nips my bottom lip, and the thought evaporates into static. The coat and sweater are discarded somewhere in the shuffle. There’s a clatter across the polished concrete, but neither of us spares it a glance.

“Bedroom,” he rasps against my throat.

“Too far.” I slide my hands under his shirt and drag my nails up his back, seeking the heat. The sound he makes at the contact goes straight through me. “Right here is fine.”

He gets me out of my jeans with a frantic speed that has a seam groaning. I manage to pull exactly one leg free before his hand is between my thighs, and whatever coherent sentence I had ready turns into a noise I’ve never made before.

“Christ,” he breathes. “Evie.”

“Don’t sound so pleased with yourself.”

“I’m not.” His fingers move as my head hits the wall. “I’m not pleased. I’m barely holding it together.”

“That desperate?”

“Yes,” he says without a shred of shame, mouth against my jaw. “Absolutely, yeah.”