Page 33 of Act Like You Don't Care
Me. That was me. I was already overwhelmed.
It was stupid, but right now I wanted to hug my cat. “I should have put Badness in a boarding place. Or brought her with me.”
“You think your housekeeper can’t look after her?”
I shook my head. “No, she’s done it lots of times before. I just…” My voice trailed off. I didn’t really know how to explain what I was feeling.
“You want me to have someone check up on her?”
Yes…“I’m sure she’s fine,” I said quickly, before I could change my mind. I would not be weak.
Up in our room, the first thing I did was make a beeline for the windows so I could close the curtains, but I didn’t even get my hands on them before Miles had enveloped me in a massive hug from behind. He buried his face in the side of my neck, his breath raising goosebumps over my skin. For a moment, I forgot about everything—the letters, the pig, the way my past seemed to be trying to reach out and swallow me whole. I let my eyes fall closed and leaned into his embrace, lightly covering his hands with mine where they crossed my waist.
Then he opened his mouth and ruined the fantasy. “Perimeter says there’s someone out there with a camera. We’re not too high up—you up to a few pictures?”
I stiffened and opened my eyes. “Is it necessary?”
“No. Just insurance.” He let go and leaned around me to reach for the curtains.
I stopped him, then turned in his arms. “You said you wanted to push him to react while we were out of state. Would this help?”
He shrugged and watched me carefully. “Maybe. Maybe not. Given the content of his letters, it’ll push him to something, though it might only be another letter.”
I nodded, doing my best to think over the clamor of my body. Part of me was afraid to poke the bear—from the calm way Miles watched me he was aware of that and understood why I might say no. Part of me wanted to push this as hard as I could, force the issue. Bring the fight to my stalker, because the waiting and not knowing was killing me. I thought he understood that too.
Plus, a not insignificant part of me wanted to push what was between us, because I was frightened and I wanted to forget that. He was so, so safe and when I let myself just take him at face value, it was easy to forget that this was a business transaction for him.
As usual, the devil on my shoulder easily out-shouted the angel on the other. “Let’s give him something to be mad about,” I whispered and kissed him.
Yep, the man knew how to kiss.
He pushed me up against the window, the glass cold through my shirt. I reached for the hem of his sweater and pulled it impatiently up his torso. He let go of me for only as long as it took him to strip it the rest of the way off, then pressed himself against me and took up the kiss again as if it had never been broken.
Damn, but he had muscles for days, no matter that he claimed he was a desk jockey. My particular weakness, a well-nurtured set of biceps, swelled beneath my palms and I twisted in his grip just so I could feel them bulge and stretch as he adjusted his hold on me.
I was getting hard and that devil was chattering in my ear again, telling me that we wanted the staff here to gossip about us doing more than just sleeping in the bed, that we should wreck the sheets and leave no uncertainty about whether we were lovers. It was method acting, taken to the extreme, but this was an extreme situation, right?
He smelled so good.
Miles slid a hand behind me, underneath the hem of my shirt, then swiftly moved it down to my thigh, tugging until it was looped around his waist.
Great idea. I wrapped the other one around him and as if we were one mind, he picked me up and carried me, our mouths still locked together, until he could lay me down on the bed. My hands slid down his arms as he stood up, then he strode back to the window to twitch the curtains shut and I clenched my hands in the bedspread beneath me, because he was just as gorgeous from the back as he was from the front.
“That should do it,” he said, and it wasn’t until he’d already pulled his sweater back on that I realized that this was it. It was over. I was lying here on the bed panting and willing, and he was getting dressed and pulling out his laptop to check in with the security team, and I’d been a stupid, fucking, hormonal omega.
Damn it all to hell, anyway.
I pushed myself up on my elbows and glared at him, but he was too busy on the computer to notice.
No, this wasn’t his fault. I needed to keep a wall between us because when the man stalking me was caught, Miles would be gone and I’d probably never see him again. I should hope not to see him again, since his job involved someone stalking me.
Fuck.
“I’m going to bed,” I announced.
“You want me to take this out to the hallway?” he asked without looking up from the screen.
“No,” I snapped back. “I’m a professional. I can sleep through anything.” To prove the point, I stripped down to my underwear and dove under the covers, pulling them right up over my head.
