“Say it.”
“Kiss me.”
I feel his chest jump on a breath. His fingers tighten in my hair. I close my eyes with anticipation.
His lips ever so gently touch the corner of mine, pressing a soft kiss there.
My heart is pounding.
I feel the tip of his tongue as it touches my lips, gently running across the seam, tasting me. My lips part, a soft moan escaping.
We’re both breathing heavily. His warm breath mixes with my own, the smooth scent of whiskey and his rich aftershave teasing my senses.
I open my eyes to find his blues burning into mine, so intense that his stare breaks me down until all that’s left is need.
Pure need.
It ripples through me. I’m now his for whatever he wants to do with me.
Everyone and everything around us disappears. All I can see is him.
All I know is how badly I want him.
I’ve never needed to be kissed by anyone as desperately as I need to be kissed by him now.
I slip my hand around the back of his neck. “I want you,” I whisper softly.
Something hot and intense flashes through his eyes. Then, his lips slam down on mine. His hand fists my hair, and his fingers grip my waist, holding me to him, as he devours my mouth in the most intense kiss I’ve ever experienced.
All of the built-up tension between us, from the moment I met him to our kiss in China and every moment since, is exploding right here, right now.
His tongue slides along mine, a groan vibrating through his chest, and I feel it between my legs.
The rough of his growing stubble is erotically scratching against my skin. His hand finds my bum, and he holds it firm as he presses his hips into mine.
Holy God.
He’s hard.
Really hard.
And I have to have him. Now.
Nothing but having Carrick inside me matters right now. The world could end, and I wouldn’t give a shit as long as I got to have sex with him first.
Honestly, it’s taking everything in me not to unzip his trousers right now and examine just exactly what I’m going to be getting.
We need to be in a room alone in the next few minutes, or I might actually die.
Carrick must be thinking the exact same thing because he breaks away from me, panting heavily, eyes blazing into mine. His gruff, sexy-as-hell voice asks, “You wanna get out of here?”
A smile teases my lips as my head tilts to the side. “Is that a trick question?”
He grins the sexiest grin I’ve ever seen, and before my knickers can excuse themselves from the party, he grabs my hand and practically drags me out of there and in the direction of his waiting car.
THE DRIVE BACK TO THE HOTEL is fraught with tension—well, on my part anyway. I’m restless and arguing with myself in my head about what a bad idea this is versus what an awesome idea it is.
With Jason Derulo’s “The Other Side” playing in the car, the bad-idea theory is starting to win out.
If Carrick was keeping me busy right now and actually had his hands or mouth on me, then I wouldn’t be thinking about anything else, except for him, but that’s not currently the case.
Surprisingly, the only part of me that Carrick is touching is my hand, which is held firmly in his, and not in a sexy-fingers-linked way. No, he’s holding my hand like my mum used to when I was a little kid.
Add to that, our hands are resting on the leather seat—in the very notable gap between us—which he put there, might I add, and I’m left feeling like I’m on one of those awkward first dates. You know, the blind-date kind where the guy’s not really into you, but he feels like he has to hold your hand out of obligation while he counts down the minutes until the date is over.
Yeah, I’m kind of there right now.
I’m actually starting to wonder if this is the Carrick Ryan—famed womanizer—sitting beside me, or some testosterone-missing clone put in his place. He’s not behaving like the same guy I was just kissing at the party.
By the time the car pulls up outside our hotel, I’m about sixty percent sure that I’ll back out of having sex with him.
But…I just keep getting flashes of him kissing me, and I can still taste him on my tongue and smell his aftershave on my skin. It keeps swaying me back to keeping my mouth shut and to just go with the flow.
We climb out of the car. Carrick places his hand on my lower back, guiding me inside the hotel. Okay, here’s something. It might be the smallest of touches, but it feels like the most intimate.
And I’m right back to the awesome.
When we reach the elevators, he guides me into a waiting one. Once safely inside, he presses the button for his floor.
I watch as the door slides shut, and my heart starts to race at the knowledge that we’re finally going to be alone.
This is it. He’s going to ravish me the second those doors slide closed, shutting the rest of the world out.