Page 40 of Act Like You Don't Care
The creak of the chair over by the window helped me locate him in the dimness of the room. “Why are you over there?”
“Keeping an eye out in case you need anything.”
“You’ve been up all night?” I asked stupidly and sat up.
“Not the first time. Go to sleep, I’ve got this.”
I pushed the sheets back and got out of bed, not caring that I was walking around in a pair of burgundy trunks in front of Miles. Maybe I wanted it that way—I could feel how far away sleep was. A wall of words, most of them the horrible things that my stalker planned to do to purify me if I wouldn’t come back to the garden myself, stood menacingly between me and sleep. I needed…
No fooling myself, I knew why I was getting out of that bed. The sight of the gun on the table next to the laptop, the screen so dimmed it was barely readable, shocked me, but only for a moment. Nothing could compete with the need driving me now.
I straddled Miles’s legs and cupped my hands around his jaw.
“Tam, go back to bed,” he said gently. “You’ll regret this in the morning.”
“No, I won’t.” That much I knew. The only ones I regretted were the ones I thought would come back to hurt me later. Miles had twisted himself into a pretzel to accommodate me. I didn’t have any fear of him. “I’m not stoned.”
“I didn’t say you were.” But his voice said he’d been thinking it.
“Fine.” I stood up and held my arms out. “Field sobriety test.” I knew what I looked like, standing there in nothing but my underwear. And right now, I was willing to play dirty to get what I wanted. Which was him. “What do you want me to do? Walk a straight line?” I did it, making sure I walked close enough my hip brushed against his shoulder. “Touch my nose?” I did that too, then reached out and touched his to see if he’d let me. The expression on his face was priceless and if this had been any other time than right now, I might have laughed. My goals tonight, though, were too important for humor.
“I know you’re scared and hurt right now, but this isn’t a real relationship,” Miles reminded me gently. “Don’t fool yourself, Tam.” He took my hand and squeezed it.
“I know it’s not a real relationship,” I said flatly. “I wasn’t asking you to marry me. Just fuck me. I need…” I turned my head to stare out the window, hoping the explanation would come this time. Again, I couldn’t find the words for what I was feeling.
“You’re feeling your mortality.”
My gaze jumped to meet his. “Yes. I want to do something alive.” I ran the back of my index finger along his cheekbone, then sank into his lap again and brought my face close to his. “No one needs to know,” I whispered, my breath puffing against his lips.
A strange tension began to fill the room. I ran my hand down Miles’s arm and felt it there too, almost a tremble, like he was caught between two equally impossible choices. The burning heat of his hand on my thigh suggested that he was not as unaffected by me as I’d thought he was, and when he caught my mouth with his, I knew I was right. I looped my arm around his neck and began pulling on his sweater, the same one that he’d worn to our first dinner ‘date’ that had looked so good on him. It still looked good on him, but I was going to see if it looked better on the floor of this hotel room.
Miles grunted as he leaned forward in the chair and grabbed the collar of the sweater to pull it roughly over his head. His mouth was on mine as soon as he’d tossed the sweater away, his hands roaming my chest and my back, making my breath shudder in my lungs. He made me feel things like no other alpha had ever done, which was something that should have scared the crap out of me, but it was exactly what I wanted tonight. Someone to overwhelm all those other feelings, to give me a memory I could go back to whenever I started to slide down that hole again.
I swung my leg over his and brought our groins together, grinding against him as we kissed each other hungrily. My hands were free except for the driving need to touch all that muscle, to soak in the swell of his biceps as he stroked my skin, squeezed my thighs, caught my jaw in his grip so I couldn’t escape the ravages of his mouth.
As if I’d even try.
His fingers slid down my spine, triggering a reflex thrust of my hips against his. He curved his hand over my ass, the thin fabric no insulation against the heat of his palm burning against my skin. I rocked into him again but it wasn’t enough, there was too much between us, too much keeping me from that moment when he first pushed inside me. I loved the way that felt, like that last moment on a roller coaster before you start down the first hill.
“Pants,” I muttered in the breath between one kiss and the next. “Off.” I dug down between us, hunting the button on his jeans.
“Not here,” he rumbled and pushed me off his lap and to my feet.
“Then where?” I complained as he stood up.
He ignored my question in favor of another of those scorching kisses, but when I came up for air, I was across the room with the backs of my legs pressed up against the side of the bed and no idea how I’d gotten there. “Oh.”
“Hmmm,” he said mysteriously. “Hang on.”
He turned and walked back to the table, one hand busy in front of his hips. I sucked in a breath of anticipation.
Miles came back with the gun, setting it on the table beside the bed. The button of his jeans had been undone, his cock pressing hard against the line of his zipper. I reached for him to finish undoing his jeans because that kind of pressure couldn’t be good for a man’s anatomy and I had plans for that particular piece of anatomy that required it to be in prime working condition.
He buried his fingers in my hair and kissed me again. “The gun doesn’t bother you?”
I shook my head and pushed his jeans down over his hips. “No. I know why it’s there.”
He grunted, a primal sound that made things low in my belly jerk in excitement. His jeans came down, then the bikini underwear that he’d somehow successfully hidden from me all this time. I whistled at him in appreciation and laughed at his sardonic look in return.
