There’s a strange tightness in my chest. What was I looking for in the purse? I can’t remember. Do I really want to find this out about Ace?
Will it make me love him any less?
There’s a loud knock at the door—the hand on the other side comes down three times—and I almost jump out of my skin. I’m three feet from the door. My cheeks go red and hot, like I’ve been caught doing something illicit, illegal.
Trying to get my pounding heart under control, I go to the door and peer out the peephole. When I see Ace standing in the hall, my heart sinks.
Shit.
What if he heard me?
My first instinct is to retreat from the door, pad silently into my bedroom, and pretend I’m not here.
But that would make me a pathetic coward. Instead, I pull open the door and do my best to look excited.
“Ace! I thought you were busy this weekend. Did you get done early?”
In spite of myself, I am happy to see him. The warmth of the happiness conflicts with the burning guilt churning in my gut.
There’s something strange flashing in his eyes, but Ace just runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I did.” He searches my face—Jesus, did he overhear what I was saying just now? And how much?—and it nearly undoes me.
The urge to tell him—to come totally clean, to not have any more secrets from him—is so overpowering that I actually open my mouth to do it, to release myself from the pressure of this secret career, to set him free of what he just heard, if it was anything at all. But before I can get the words out, he steps forward, takes me into his arms, and kisses me so hard it bruises my lips. He’s in the entryway and kicks the door shut behind him pressing me up against the wall.
“I couldn’t wait to see you,” he growls into my mouth between kisses. “I couldn’t wait another second. Not another goddamn second.”
Chapter Thirty
Ace
I want to confront her about what I just heard through the door, but the moment I see her face, the fight goes out of me.
I just want my hands, my lips, on her.
In the back of my mind, all my common sense is screaming at me to stay away, stay far away, until I can sort all of this out, until I can figure out who she was telling about me, but my heart dismisses it. Maybe she was just talking to a friend. Maybe it’s none of my damn business. Maybe I just want to bend her over her bed, and when the truth comes out, then I’ll know, and there’s no point in rushing it….
I have her pressed up against the wall, kissing her hard and deep like I’ve wanted to all weekend. What the hell was I thinking, staying away? If I’d been with her all weekend, she wouldn’t even think about her phone.
That’s a crazy idea, an absurd idea, that spending the weekend with me would make Carolyn want to cut off contact with everyone in her life, and I don’t want that. No. I’m just on fire for her in a way that makes me try to find a justification for everything that I want. Before her, I didn’t need justification. Now I do, but the taste of her skin is driving me wild.
“I couldn’t wait to see you.” The words come out as a low growl, into her mouth, in the space between kisses. “I couldn’t wait another second. Not another goddamn second.”
It’s hardly the accusation I want to level at her. It’s just the plain, unvarnished truth. Her eyes make me want to tell her everything. Everything.
And rumors are starting to break. I’ve been able to ignore it, I’ve been able to look past it, but the woman at the Swan was still in the calm before the storm. Once those people find out….
If they find out from Carolyn….
I don’t care. In this moment, with my hands beneath her tank top, running over her smooth skin, forming a complete thought is impossible. My heart beats with nothing but need for her, overriding my instinct for self-preservation.
I hook my fingers into the waistband of her yoga pants and pull them down, dropping to my knees to bury my face in the front of her panties before yanking them down over her hips to join the pants on the floor. She gasps when I follow suit with the tank top and then her bra, pressing her now naked back up against the cool surface of the wall one more time before I scoop her into my arms and stride across the apartment to her bedroom.
She’s already panting when I lay her down on the bed, and she immediately goes to her hands and knees. My clothes are off in seconds and I climb on the bed behind her, the mattress caving from my weight, running my hands down the backs of her thighs, my cock ready to burst.
I’m dying to be buried deeply inside her, dying to be close to her, and Carolyn encourages me, sticking her ass out toward me and swaying her hips from side to side, inviting me in.