Page 47 of On the Edge

I pull the heavy velvet balcony curtain back and am greeted by a gorgeous view of Jackson’s curves. The taupe flapper dress she’s wearing is almost the color of her skin, covered in intricate rows of golden beads and sequins. She’s leaning forward, her arms spread wide across the balcony railing and the hem of her dress barely covering her underwear, with the gold fringe hanging down her thighs, taunting me. She has one leg crossed behind the other and she’s balanced on ridiculously high heels as she watches the mayhem below.

When I come up behind her, I’m afraid I’ll scare her and she’ll topple over the short wall in front of her. I put one hand on each hip to steady her as I lean toward her and ask, “You hiding up here?”

She looks over her shoulder, takes in the sight of me, and her lips curl into a wicked smile I instantly recognize—it’s her ‘get me out of here and to the bedroom’ look. And it could not be more unexpected. Unless me telling her today that I came back for her has somehow changed her mind about me?

She’s shifts her weight back, grinding that perfect ass right into me and I am instantly hard. I want nothing more than to push myself into her right there, but I have the good sense to take a moment and assess the situation. Her right hand loosely encompasses a glass with nothing but ice left in it.

“How much have you been drinking?”

“More than you,” she says, her eyes leaving my face and returning to the dance floor below. Given that I’ve chosen not to risk drinking with only one kidney, her answer tells me nothing.

“Dammit, how much?” I ask, then take a risk by pulling her hips back against mine so she can feel what she does to me. Her throaty groan is barely audible over the music pumping through the speakers, but I hear it just the same.She’s been drinking, I need to shut this down right now.But my body has stopped taking orders from my brain for the moment.

“Just enough to take the edge off,” she says as she glances back at me again.

“Take the edge off what?” I growl as she slowly rocks her hips against me. I’m fairly sure I’m hidden in the shadows so that from the dance floor no one looking up here would suspect that we’re connected at the hip right now, but even if I’m not, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

“The loneliness,” she mumbles, then presses her lips between her teeth like she’s trying to keep any more words from coming out.

“So you’re trying to make Marco jealous because he’s not here to keep you company?” Even my annoyance doesn’t stop me from dropping my fingertips to the back of her thigh and trailing them up her leg and under the fringed hem of her dress.

“Believe me, he’s not jealous of you,” she says with an acerbic laugh, and I try not to let the truth of it sting. Because why would the top-ranked skier in the world be jealous of me, when he’s dating my ex-girlfriend and he clenched a first place finish today while I barely finished in the top fifteen?

“Would he be jealous if he knew where my hand was right now?” I ask, rubbing my thumb along the crease where her thigh meets her butt cheek.

“Don’t tease me, Nate,” she says, her glare turning hard and her back going rigid so that I panic and say the exact opposite of what I mean.

“It doesn’t have to just be teasing.” I regret the words the second they leave my mouth. This can’t go anywhere, not with her drunk and still dating Marco. But her proximity and the blatant desire I see in her face is fucking with my moral compass, has it going haywire and spinning in circles.

“Nate, please,” she begs as she slides her foot out from behind her, parting her legs in an obvious invitation.

I lean in, my back cradling hers, and drop my lips to her ear. “Tell me what you want.”

“Touch me.”

This is cruel torture, but I did it to myself.

“Not here,” I tell her, nodding my chin toward the dance floor below us. “Let’s go.”

I find the stairwell, deciding it’s best to avoid the elevator where we’re more likely to run into people we know. She takes the first flight quickly, but slows as she approaches the next floor. When she reaches the landing by the door that will let us into the hallway, she turns and I see the hesitation in her eyes.

Good, maybe she knows this is a bad idea and I won’t have to let her down.

She doesn’t say anything, just stands there as her eyes move up and down my body, appraising me.

I lean in, bracing my arm against the wall behind her and it takes everything I have not to lean in those extra few inches and taste her lips. “You don’t want to do this,” I say, testing whether she knows herself well enough to disagree.

“I can hate you and want your body at the same time.” It’s not what I was expecting her to say. I guess I thought she’d mention Marco, use him as an excuse to put a stop to this.

“You don’t hate me.” I look her in the eyes and see nothing but hurt and defiance shining back.

“Oh, trust me,” she says. “I do.”

I bring my mouth toward her ear to make sure she understands every word of what I’m about to tell her. “I’ve been waiting for this for years. I’m not throwing my chance away on a one-night stand.”

She pulls her head back and her eyes narrow, completely focused where before they were a bit glazed. Then she looks down, her voice quiet when she asks, “Are you turning me down?”

“Turning you down? No.” I take my free hand and press my fingertips to that sensitive space where her ear and jaw meet, then trail them down to her chin and tilt her face back up toward me. I trail the bridge of my nose up her cheek until my lips graze the hair hanging in front of her ear. Quietly I remind her that we’re worth more than this. “But we both deserve better than what’s on the table tonight.”

---