Page 82 of Head Over Wheels

‘No.’

Seb

There was something fraught in Lori’s expression as we ate dinner back at the hotel. While I was grateful she hadn’t dragged me to a table with her family, there was obviously something she wasn’t telling me.

Seeing her after two months had been potent, an unexpected mix of completely normal and desperately wonderful.Then I’d remembered the camera and with that, the ambiguous nature of our relationship.

She’d kissed me because she wanted to. Even I wasn’t stupid enough to think it had only been for show. But the Tour was still supposed to be the end of our performance. Her mum had been watching too and I didn’t know what that meant.

Paola Gallagher was still shooting glances in our direction from where she sat with Tony and Colin. Lori ignored her completely and everything she’d ever flippantly mentioned about her former triathlete mother whirled in my mind.

Lori ate quickly and I did the same, wondering, hoping we would get a chance to talk.

‘Do you want to… go somewhere?’ I ventured as she scooped up the last of her rice.

‘Do you need to rest?’

I shook my head with a faint smile. ‘There’s an easy walk to a little chapel up the hill. That’s our vibes.’

‘Our vibes are not grizzly relics and religious buildings, Seb,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

‘O-kay,’ I replied, struggling to interpret the unexpected intensity in her expression.

Following her out of the dining room, I took her hand, slowing our steps through the lobby. ‘Are you in a hurry?’

‘Yep. To get out from under all of those eyes. You aren’t?

‘I suppose, but I was enjoying… this.’ I squeezed her hand, remembering with a warm glow her drunken admissions back in Liège that she’d probably be horrified to remember in detail.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said with a chuckle, drawing me towards the lift. Whispering in my ear, she continued, ‘You won’t have to take your hands off me for a while yet.’

My mouth went dry. Standing in the mirrored lift, meeting her gaze on several different angles, my mind raced with the sudden change of direction. ‘You have a single room,’ I guessed.

Her nod was enough to send heat racing up my spine. I could still picture her in high definition, baring her throat as she arched on my small bed at home, awash with need. My cheeks heated and my knees lost strength as I remembered what she’d coaxed out of me the last time we were together like that.

I was a darker ego, a deeper self when she offered me her body and it would have scared me except that she somehow held me together while I let it all out.

But there was still something in her eyes, in the slight wobble of her jaw. I suspected she didn’t want me to see it.

Catching her eye in the mirror as the lift ascended, I let her see my thoughts in the rise of my chest, a lick of my lips as my gaze wandered over her soft skin, the curve of her throat. The slow perusal was torture for me too and I had to squeeze her hand hard so I didn’t reach for her already in the lift. But as much as I wanted to close the door of her room behind us and reacquaint myself with all my favourite places on her body, I wanted her to tell me what was going on first.

After hurrying down the corridor together, she got thedoor open and a moment later she was reaching for me, biting her lip and tugging me against her. Pressing her tight into the door and opening my mouth on her neck until she whimpered, I resisted the urge to devour and instead settled my hands firmly on her hips.

Then I whispered in her ear. ‘What’s wrong, Lore? Talk to me.’

Chapter 32

Seb

‘You’re kidding,’ she whined, her chest heaving. ‘I’m practically begging you to fuck me and you want to talk?’ She pushed past me, giving my shoulder a half-hearted shove.

‘Talk, then I’ll fuck you.’

She whirled to face me. ‘You didn’t imagine I might want tostopthinking about it?’

‘Iwant to be the only one in your head when we get there.’

It was a tiny room, so all I had to do was reach out to snag her shirt and haul her to the single bed. I settled next to her, my thigh pressing into hers, and leaned my elbows on my knees as I waited. It took only a few unsteady breaths for her to soften, leaning into me, and I had to swallow around the tenderness that rose in my throat.

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