Butterface(4)

“Really?” She didn’t bother to keep the yeah-sure look off her face even as the quiet voices urging her to believe got louder and louder.

“I know, he’s not the most, shall we say, emotive guy out there, but he’s interested in you, ya know?” Johnnie shrugged. “But if you don’t feel the same, I can pass that message along. He’d just hoped…”

The cop shrugged and let the rest of what he was going to say fade away.

None of this sounded right, but a helium balloon of hope filled her chest anyway. “No offense,” she said. “But why should I believe any of this from you?”

He smacked his hand against his chest over his heart. “Right in the ticker.” Then he held out the key. “Look, you don’t know me from Adam, but I swear I have my buddy’s best interests at heart here, and you seem like a nice lady.” He held up his free hand to stop her from interrupting. “I hate that I put you on the spot with that Kiss Cam thing. Ford feels like shit about it, even though he had no idea what I was up to. He wants to make it up to you. Wanted to at least apologize in person. No one’s forcing an independent, smart woman like you to do anything. Take the key and go talk to Ford or don’t, it’s your choice.”

Gina stared at that key card. Maybe this was a sign that life for her was about to change. That’s what her grandfather would have said.

He would have told her to take this opportunity and seize adventure whenever she could. Spending the night—because they were all grown-ups here, and even though no one was saying it, they all knew that’s what they were talking about—in an overpriced hotel room with a seriously sexy man? That wasn’t something offered to someone like her every day, not even every five years. Who knew if the opportunity would ever come again? And what kind of giant chicken would she be if she walked away from this chance—especially when she wanted him as much as he seemed to want her?

“Fine. I’ll at least let him apologize in person.” She plucked the key from his fingers, pivoted direction, and headed toward the elevators, ready to give opportunity, adventure, and a night of steamy sex with a hot cop a shot.

…

Hot beads of water pounded down on Ford’s shoulders, taking away the tension that had been building there since the disastrous kiss with Gina. Gina. He liked the sound of her name. It rolled off his tongue like a mix between a groan and a wish—especially while his eyes were closed and his hand was wrapped around his cock, giving it a slow, tight stroke.

He hadn’t been lying downstairs. She may not be what anyone would call a beauty queen, but there was something about her, something tempting and challenging, that had caught his attention and made him wonder about…everything. Just how soft was her skin at the dip in her waist? Was her laugh low and dirty or a warm soprano? Would she moan when he unzipped that green dress that had clung to her every curve? What would make her call out his name?

What could he say, he was a cop down to his core.

Finding the answers to all of life’s questions turned him on—especially if they were about Gina. She made him so fucking curious. He slid his palm up and down his length, his other hand planted, fingers spread wide against the hard wall tile, and let the fantasy take him. One stroke. Two. Then the unmistakeable sound of his hotel room door opening caught him halfway down the shaft. His eyes snapped open as reality slammed into him.

Shit.

Kapowski.

The stakeout report.

Grateful that he’d mostly shut the bathroom door, so at least the patrolman snagged for the special detail wouldn’t get an eyeful of Ford jerking off, he turned in the shower right in time to see a flash of a green dress and wavy brown hair pass by the door. Then it was gone. Kapowski was blond and stuck to all black. So who in the hell… His fast-thickening dick figured it out quicker than his brain. Gina the wedding planner was in his room.

What was happening?

How did she get in?

Why was she here?

That’s when he heard a voice shouting in his head, Who fuckin’ cares? She’s here and she wouldn’t be if she didn’t want you.

Maybe refusing his drink offer had been because she was still on the clock and not because of him?

Stop asking yourself questions while your hand’s around your cock and talk to the woman in your hotel room, the voice yelled.

“I’m in the shower,” he called out, which was fucking brilliant repartee in its obviousness.

The lights in the bedroom clicked off right as she said, “I picked up on that.”

Figuring that if he thunked his head against the tile it would be loud enough for her to hear in the other room, he clamped his eyes closed and counted to ten instead. Then, he turned the shower knob all the way to the left, letting it linger at the apex of cold for a minute to try to clear his head and deflate his hard-on so he wouldn’t walk out like a fucking loser who’d been jerking off in the hotel bathroom by himself.

Which he was.

But she didn’t need to know that.

By the time he turned the water all the way off, music was playing in the other room. It wasn’t gonna-bang-you-against-the-wall or make-love-to-you-all-night long stuff, it sounded like what his sister Fallon listened to when she did yoga. Oh God. Thinking about his sister right now was not what he wanted to do. His dick shriveled up. Fuck. Going out there as Danny Dinky Dick was not what he wanted, either. Could he catch a fucking break?

Beyond the fact that a chick you were just thinking about while your hand was around your cock is in your hotel room, chucklehead?

He snatched the towel off the stack on the shelf and dried off. “I’ll be right out.”

“Take your time,” she said, her words coming out in a breathy rush.

That made him pause. Something was off about this. However, the blood rushing back south as soon as he heard her voice was louder than that quiet thought. Still, he was a man who always followed the letter and spirit of the law. Consent wasn’t something he took lightly.

“Is everything okay?” he asked. “You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to.”

There was a short silence that lasted four hundred and eighty-two years while he stared into the dark beyond the partially closed bathroom door and felt like an idiot.

Finally, she asked in a soft voice, “Do you want me to leave?”

“Hell no.” Like he had to think about that.

She laughed. It was a smoky alto—one question answered—that went straight to his dick. “Then what’s there to talk about?”

Not a damn thing. He wrapped the towel around his hips and reached for the door.





Chapter Three

With the music from her phone filling up the dim space of the hotel room, Gina pushed past the adrenaline and anticipation pumping through her veins with enough force that she could practically hear it and reached her hands behind her back, making a desperate grab for her dress’s zipper tab. Maybe it was the pressure of the moment, maybe it was the fact that Satan had designed her dress, but she had to use all of her yoga stretching skills to reach the damn thing. Then, she had to not have an anxiety attack while in the process of inching the zipper down using only the very tips of her fingers.

She kept an eye on the bathroom to make sure Ford didn’t walk out and catch her looking like a twisted-up Cirque du Soliel reject.

Stress-induced perspiration curled the hair near her temples into frizzy ringlets. Okay, she couldn’t see they were frizzy because she’d turned off the lights, but she knew that’s what had happened.

Finally, she got the damn zipper down far enough to slide the dress over her hips right as the bathroom door started to open. Shit. She wasn’t prepared. She needed five more minutes. Didn’t he still need to condition his hair? Did guys even do that?

Shut it, Regina, this isn’t the time for stupid questions.

Right. She was right. A nervous giggle escaped. God, she was not only talking to herself, she was confirming her answers.

From her spot near the end of the bed, she could just see into the bathroom. That gave her a perfect view of Ford as he completely opened the opaque glass bathroom door. Or it would have, if total and complete panic hadn’t sent her flying onto the foot of the bed, where she scrambled on her hands and knees like a deranged gazelle on speed to the top of the bed and slid under the covers. Of course, her underwear went up her butt in the process.

She groaned out loud and squeezed her eyes shut. She’d worn her evil granny panty stomach minimizers. She hadn’t been planning on getting laid. Didn’t men know a woman had to plan for these types of things? Like, what if she hadn’t shaved in a week or was on her period? Didn’t they even consider the possibilities?

“Hey there,” Ford said, the pitch of his voice giving it a sexy gruffness.

Her belly fluttered, and her nerves melted away in the onslaught of hot desire that flooded her limbs.

“Hey yourself,” she answered as she hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties and used the kind of strength they talk about mothers having when they lift cars off their children to shove them down and then fling them over to where her dress lay in a puddle on the floor. Palms sweaty, she ripped off her bra before Ford stepped out of the bathroom, pausing in the pool of light coming out of the open door.