Page 19 of A Lady's Heart
Mandy slid her palms up his chest, over the wall of muscle until she could drape her hands over his shoulders, staring into his face. “That was nice. The kissing.”
One brow shot upward. “Nope.”
She hesitated. “Itwasn’tnice?”
“Hell, no,” he said with a determined shake of his head. “If that’s how you’re going to go around describing my kissing skills, my reputation with the wolves will end up in shreds.”
“I understand.” She trickled a finger over his lips as she pretended to consider their options. “Perhaps we’d better try again while I consider better adjectives.”
“Only for that reason.”
A cold wind swept past, but Mandy was surrounded by a bubble of heat. Justin’s body under her a flaming furnace. He kept himself in control, though, the power and strength of his passion tightly leashed. His restraint allowed her to concentrate on everything else as she got lost in their kiss.
She was trying to think of a description that would impress the wolves, really she was, but words were blurry, fuzzy things that seemed to bubble and fizz in her brain in an unknown foreign language.
The next time they pulled apart she was seeing stars. His hands firmly grasped her hips, her fingers were buried in the short hair at the back of his neck.
She sucked for air before managing to speak. “Wow.”
Justin grinned. “Much better.”
It was tempting to go farther. To ask him up to her apartment, and maybe move on to another item on the list, but something inside told her she wasn’t quite ready.
She might be willing now, but if things went too far, too fast and she had to call for a stop, that would be worse than sticking to her original plan of going slowly.
She crawled off his lap and straightened her clothing, glancing up to discover he was grinning.
“What?”
He just shook his head, holding out a hand. Their fingers linked as he escorted her to the security door.
“Do you know your plans for tomorrow? Because…” He cleared his throat. “I’ll just make a fool of myself once and for all. I want to be with you, Mandy. I want you to let me know what you need a hand with, but I can’t help myself. If you don’t call me, I’ll come looking. And it’s not because I want to control you, it’s because I want to be with you.”
His confession sent a shiver skipping over her skin. It wasn’t a shiver of fear like Ainsworth had put in her, but Justin’s admission was borderline bossy, and she wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready to be even remotely thrilled at how much he seemed to care.
The line between obsession and caring was too raw in her memory.
“I’ll call you,” she promised, stepping inside the building.
He waited until the door closed, the lock clicking firmly shut between them. The six or seven paces it took to get to the elevator, she could sense he was watching, his gaze fixed on her until the doors closed and blocked them from each other’s view.
She leaned her forehead against the wall and let out a long, slow breath, willing her heart to slow its frantic pace.
“Oh, Mandy. He’s a fine one, but you don’t need to rush,” she chastised herself as the elevator doors opened with a softping. She slipped down the hallway to her suite and used the access card. The door swung open.
Mandy stood in the doorway, frozen, nerve endings tingling a warning.
Once again, something seemed off, but she couldn’t tell exactly what. The sensation of someone having been where they shouldn’t have been struck like it had at the pool, but even stronger, and the edge of uncertainty was enough to have her stepping back and pulling the door closed silently.
She headed down the hallway rapidly, her heart racing. The urge to message Justin hit, immediate and strong. And it wasn’t a bad idea, but was it thebestidea?
Justin would willingly protect her—there was no doubt about that—but if she was overreacting, she didn’t want him to think she was going to constantly jump at shadows. Maybe the wolves had sent someone to the apartment for some reason. It was a plausible explanation. It was…
But she wasn’t going to be stupid and assume everything was okay.
Don’t think—act.
Mandy took out her phone and sent a text to another she knew she could trust implicitly.
