DANGER!
Do not fall in love with this man!
A red flasher in the back of my head tried to turn on, but I stomped it out. I was wearing four-inch platforms. I could do such things.
I didn’t want to hold anything back. There would be no tomorrow. Tonight was just us being us, no matter which way the dice fell onto the table. I found his cold hand in the snow and pulled him up with me. “Time for you to warm me up, LC.”
The night sky matched his hooded eyes. He was actually looking at me as if I was a sexual creature capable of inciting desire. Me, with my braids and crazy sixties’ outfit. August’s little sister who had a little fence around her when it came to some guys.
Do not cross.
Do not mess with August’s little sister.
Luckily, Rory Ferguson of California didn’t know such things. And I was going to use that knowledge to the fullest. No holding back.
“Should I be worried about that expression?”
“Maybe.”
“Queen fairy indeed.”
I took his cold hand and dragged him behind me to the front door of the Hummingbird’s Nest. He fumbled the key out of his pocket behind me and we both tumbled into the foyer. It was empty and silent. A note on the desk said no one would be there until morning—well, a few more hours since it was well past three at this point.
Rory steered me away from the desk to the stairs. I talked to Sage now and then, but I wasn’t quite in her circle of people. Of course I talked to everyone since I worked at the diner, but Sage was always at the bed and breakfast, so she didn’t come by that often.
That and she had her hands full with her husband and child.
Again, that pang hit me. The same one that compelled me to join the baby meetings at the café. How could I not get a touch of baby fever with all the coupling going on in the town?
I pushed that thought away. This wasn’t about babies. This was about me taking something for myself that wasn’t attached to work or my brothers. Or my ice cream plans, which were taking over my whole world.
Nope, this was just for me. To feel like a woman who was wanted. Heck, so I felt like a flesh and blood woman all around.
Rory turned back to me as we headed up the spiral staircase. A look of concentration was back on his face. Like I was a puzzle he was still trying to figure out.
I rushed up to meet him, curling my arm around his middle so I could get my cold hands under his sweater.
He gave a little yelp, but pushed me against the wall as we got to the top of the stairs. I smoothed my hand around his back when he eased his knee between my legs. I love how smooth he was along his back and the rough chest hair along the front of him. What would it feel like against my skin?
Would he leave me pink and abraded? Or would it just wind me up more?
“Being thinky,” he said against my mouth.
“Haven’t done this in a while.”
The lines reappeared between his brows. “How long is awhile?”
I brought my hand back around to the front of his torso again. I found a necklace the higher up I went. I toyed with the disk before I tunneled my nails through the hair between his pecs. Thank God it was so late, because we were being improper in such a fancy place. “It’s not my first time. I just haven’t had much opportunity since college.”
“How long ago was college? A second?”
I smiled. “Is that your way of trying to ask me how old I am, Mr. Ferguson?”
His gaze narrowed. “Should I be wondering?” He tugged on one of my braids. “It’s not right for a grown man to be this lustful toward a woman with braids.”
“Lustful? I like the sound of that.”
He pressed his zipper against my belly. “You know what you’re doing to me, Ivy.”