Page 67 of Scandalous Lover

“Fuck. You should have been long gone by now.”

I follow her gaze around the room, knowing damn well there’s nowhere to hide a fully grown man in here.I doubt I’m going to be able to shimmy under that bed.

“Coming!” Naomi shouts, tossing me a conspiratorial grin that I return with a shake of my head.

Two more bangs make us both jump a foot.

Then there’s a beep, followed by the sound of the lock clicking open. Naomi and I both rush over to the door as it starts to open. Thankfully, I put on the chain lock when I came in, so it catches after opening only a few inches.

I stand with my back to the wall, a foot to the left of the door, as Naomi comes face to face with an angry Dom through the gap.

“Why do you have the chain on?” he demands, rattling the door against the restraint hard enough to be intimidating, but not hard enough to risk breaking it. He is one of the owners of this building after all.

“For safety, Dom. You never know when some guy is going to try to break into your room.”

“I don’t have time for this, Naomi. I need to get back to work.”

“I’m almost ready, just give me a second. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

Dom huffs but backs off when he realizes she’s not going to open the door. I watch with pride as she confidently stands her ground.

Not like she has a choice right now. It would be awfully hard to explain why I’m in her room with the chain lock on.

“I’m leaving the luggage cart here,” Dom says, and I cringe at the condescending tone of voice. “I’ll go pull the golf cart around. You better be down there in five minutes.”

And then he storms back down the hallway, leaving the door ajar.

Naomi takes a full moment to calm down her breathing with her eyes closed before looking over at me and nodding. “Okay…” she starts but trails off when she sees my face. “What?”

“I can't believe he talks to you like that.”

She rolls her eyes and turns back to start rolling her suitcases toward the door. “Oh, yeah. That’s Dom. I used to call him dinosaur Dom in my head when I was a kid. Still do sometimes.”

“He’s fairly short with most people, myself included, but I’ve always considered it to be just his way of being efficient.” I shake my head, pushing away from the wall. “But that was just him being a dick.”

She shrugs. “He’s a dick, for sure. And not the good kind.”

I watch her fumble with the retractable suitcase handle for a long moment before I catch myself and hurry over to help. Our hands touch on the plastic handle, and I should just pull away. I should drag the heavy luggage to the door and make my escape while I still can.

Instead I pull her to me and do the thing I’ve been thinking about almost constantly since our night together in Austin.

Our lips meet and I can tell she’s a bit surprised by the sudden kiss, but she relaxes into it, parting for me to taste her. I close my eyes and savor her mouth, allowing my hands to drift down her body once more.

We stand in the center of the hotel room, in the eye of the storm that is our problematic secret tryst, and disappear into each other. Or, at least, I allow myself to disappear into her. Gone is the weight of my lies. Gone is the stupidity of wasting the incredible luck I was offered in the form of escaping from here undetected.

The only thing that exists is this woman’s body. Her soft skin and the taste of her and the little noises she makes as I touch her everywhere all at once.

And even though I am the responsible, studious, GM of a multi-million dollar resort, it’s Naomi who pulls away first.

“You have to go.”

I close my eyes and rest my forehead against hers, not loosening my grip on her one bit. “I know.”

“Go. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Okay,” I respond, even though it’s not okay at all. I came up here to get things settled, but they feel more unsettled than ever.

I came up here to tell Naomi this couldn’t happen and this thing between us had to end.

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