Page 22 of Baby One Last Time
I held up the whiskey bottle. “I brought a nightcap.”
He glanced at the bottle and back at me. I held his gaze, the question I’d been holding back for days transmitted through the look we shared. He nodded toward the Macallan. “I see you haven’t opened my gift yet.”
A confession that it was from him. I already had more information—or at least confirmation of what I knew—than I’d had when I’d left my room. “It’s the kind of gift that begs to be shared, don’t you think?”
He was tired and horny and interested as hell, which made his face so much easier to read. His eyes had flickered and the corner of his mouth had twitched at the word “begs.” He sighed. “Probably. Why don’t you find your crewmate and toast your new partnership?”
I shook my head slowly and advanced a step. He held his position in the doorway, which left us inches apart, so close I could smell the soap on his skin. Something woodsy and spicy and manly that made my mouth water. “I’d rather toast old partnerships. Auld lang syne and all that.”
He shook his head. “New Year’s is a couple of weeks away.”
“Close enough to celebrate.” Emboldened by his body’s slight tilt toward me, I stepped past him into his suite, running my fingernails over his bare chest as I passed.
He sucked in his breath, and I grinned. Progress.
I set the Scotch down on the coffee table. There were printed out spreadsheets, and I caught the word Bespoke, the name of the luxury athletic wear company that Derek had set up as a front but that had become wildly successful. Maybe keeping busy with two full-time jobs made it easier to maintain celibacy. If my plan tonight didn’t work, I might have to take up moonlighting.
But hope and lust spring eternal. With my back still turned to Derek, I glanced down at my chest to make sure the girls were presented under my tight, easy-to-see-through shirt in all their hard-nippled glory.
“Cynth, you can’t be here.” Derek said, but he closed the suite door, confining us together. More progress.
I turned slowly, stretched my arms over my head, and arched my back. The guttural groan in his throat sparked my blood and made me wet. Despite how cool I was playing it, I was totally revved up, ready to go. If I were being honest, which was occasionally a nice change of pace, I had been since we’d been alone in his pickup truck and I’d shimmied into something indecent in front of him and he’d leaned over to kiss me.
Then he hadn’t.
The long days of occasional close proximity with no conjugal benefits were making me crazy. I wanted him on me, under me, in me. No foreplay, no waiting, no space between us. He approached me and I waited, breathless. He bent his head and touched his forehead to mine.
“Cynth,” he whispered, “get the hell out of here.”
“Or what?” I whispered back.
“Or I’m going to fuck you until neither of us can see straight.”
I closed the half step between us and pressed my belly to his erection. I sucked in my breath, going from wet to soaked.
He held me in place by my shoulders. “And that cannot happen.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled myself up to wrap my legs around his waist. Oh yeah, I could feel through his towel that he was as desperate as I was. I levered myself against him and the friction nearly made me come. He groaned again.
“I’m pretty sure it can happen.” I nibbled the hollow at the base of his throat.
With one more grunt, he slid me down his body and stood me on my feet. “No, it can’t. And don’t even ask. You know why. Because of HEAT. Because of the job. Because of...”
I stepped back and glimpsed his expression in the split second before he reset his poker face. Ah, that other thing I needed. Answers. “Because of what else?”
He shook his head, his composure returning, damn him. “Because of reasons I can’t share with you. Not right now.”
He wanted me as much as I wanted him, but the boy scout in him was hung up on the rules. Fuck the rules, because I needed to fuck him. We’d both been near the boiling point, but he’d banked his need down to a low simmer. A slower approach was in order. Time to focus on objective number two. Yeah, given what we did for a living, extracting information never should have slipped to second position, but four months of celibacy had short-circuited some of my brain synapses.
“At least have a drink with me,” I said.
I padded off to the kitchenette and found two glasses. I carried them to the sofa and took a seat, then uncorked the bottle and poured two generous portions. My heart pounded in my throat. My damp shorts clung between my legs. My breath hitched in anticipation of being skin to skin with him again. But I slid one glass in his direction as if I really didn’t care whether he took it, and lifted my own to my lips.
With a sigh, he palmed the glass and sat at the opposite end of the sofa. He lifted the drink in salute, and we both took a long sip. I closed my eyes as the heat and smoke chased down my throat and finished with a drop of honey on my tongue. I opened my eyes to see him staring at my lips, his hunger so palpable, it hummed through my body and left me shaking.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
I collapsed against the sofa back, took a moment to catch my breath, and opened my mouth to protest, but he had already set his drink on the kitchenette island and was halfway to his bedroom. He might be retrieving a condom. Given our constant health monitoring from HEAT, diseases weren’t an issue, and I’d remind him I was on the pill. My joy faltered for a second as I wondered why he would have forgotten that. Had he really had other women while we’d been apart, despite what he’d told me? Was that why he had put me out of his mind?
