Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 89238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
After she studies the picture of the faded card, she declares, “You were hot.”
I arch a brow, then ask in a stern tone, “Were?”
She leans closer and lowers her voice. But again, she doesn’t answer directly. “I have a secret.”
And I’m hanging on her every word. “Tell me,” I say and it’s a demand.
“I thought of you when I ordered The Command Performance.”
I’d wanted to believe the timing of the order meant something. But hearing her say it, sends the temperature in me soaring. I get up, move around the table, and sit next to her in the booth where I wrap an arm around her shoulder. “Want to hear a secret?”
“I do.”
“I wanted to ask for your number every time you came into the bar.”
“What stopped you?”
“Life. It’s busy. The whole kid thing. I don’t go out much,” I admit.
Her eyes sparkle with some relief, telling me she’s on the same page. “I hear you. Same here. This was my only free night in ages. Amanda happened to have a sleepover so it worked out,” she says, a little pensive, but understanding too.
“Same. Eliza’s with Zane, that is. My brother.”
She pauses, then asks, “So why now?”
“Couldn’t get you out of my head,” I tell her, because fuck the rules of dating. Fuck holding back. We both have busy lives. No time for bullshit. “That’s why I bought all those chocolates. I wanted to impress you.”
“Mission accomplished,” she says.
Pride floods my chest. Then I slide my hand down her back, resting it right above the swell of her sweet ass. “Now, I believe you said earlier you had a theory about men who put their hands on the small of women’s backs.”
“I do,” she says, as I spread my fingers over the thin fabric of her shirt.
“Tell me.”
“That they kiss in my favorite way.”
My chest is a furnace as I run my knuckles along her jawline. “And what way is that?”
She takes her time, holding the cards, holding my gaze, holding all my desire in the palm of her hand as she studies my face, my mouth, my eyes. “Hard and passionate. Just like how they fuck.”
That word.
On her lips.
I’m on fire. It’s blazing in me as I thread my fingers through her lush locks. “Want to get out of here?”
“I do. Because I have a theory about dates too.”
Her theories are my undoing. This I have to hear. “What is it?”
“The best ones end unplanned in a hotel.”
There’s no way The Escape has a room free on a Friday night. But there are other hotels if they don’t. Not quite as close, but still, I’ll find one. Dammit, I’ll fucking find one.
Ten minutes later, thanks to the serendipity of a last-minute cancellation, I’ve got a key card to a room at the most sought-after hotel in town.
7
IT’S AN ORDER
Elodie
There will be no DNFing.
I want the opposite. I want to finish him. I want him to finish me. Over and over, again and again. In all the ways.
The second the brass doors to the hotel elevator shut, I back up to the corner of the lift. He stalks over to me, prowling, eyes hard, dark with desire. He cages me in, grabs my face, and crushes his lips to mine.
It’s aggressive in the way I fantasize about. A man in control. A man who’ll hold me down, pin my wrists, fuck me hard.
He kisses like he knows precisely what he’ll do to me tonight. I’m outrageously wet in seconds. I loop my arms around his neck, trying to tug him closer when he stops abruptly.
He breaks the hard kiss and pulls back, but doesn’t quite end it. Instead, Gage downshifts with his lips still on me. His kiss turns slow, seductive, a long tease of a kiss.
That throws me off in a brand new—and not at all unwelcome—way.
Maybe he’s not only a rough, hard man in bed. Maybe he’s many things in bed. Perhaps he can play many parts. He’s kissing me now like a man who’ll take his sweet time, draw it out deliciously, fuck me slowly.
Make me beg for every inch of his hard cock.
And my god, is it hard and thick against my hip.
My head goes woozy as the reel of possibilities plays out.
Then the car slows at the fifth floor, and he breaks the kiss. I can barely think from the most thorough, mind-bending kiss of my life. I’m shocked it only lasted five floors. I feel a little lost in time and space with him as he takes my hand and leads me down the hall. We reach the room, and he slides the key over the door.
Once it’s open, he says dryly, “Want a tour of the room?”
I shake my head as the door shuts and the soft glow of a lamp lights the room.