“You have another option.”
Angelica grins, then teases. “What, stay with you?” She’s doing her very best to make it seem like a joke
I look into her eyes—blue and wide and tinged with hope. “At least for tonight. I’ll have clothes brought up for you. You don’t need to go back for anything until the repairs are finished if you don’t want to.” By the time I’m finished speaking, I’m already soaked in adrenaline. Having her body at my disposal for the next few weeks—that would be a goddamn treasure. I can have my fill of her and then we can go back to our lives.
She narrows her eyes, puts her fork back down. “Are you sure? I mean—we just met. I’m....” Whatever she’s going to say, she reconsiders. “We don’t know very much about each other. It’s not a problem for me to go to the Sheraton.”
The way she’s looking at me pushes me over the edge. I take my napkin from my lap and drop it onto the tablecloth, then stand up and cross to her side. Offer my hand. Pull her to her feet.
When I kiss her, she melts into me, leaning against me like I’m shelter in a storm. The kiss deepens, gets a little harder, rougher, and when she pulls back we both have to catch our breath.
“Stay with me tonight.” This time, it’s not a question.
She answers me with another kiss.
By the time we end it, the desserts are forgotten in the living room. We’ve moved down the hallway, and she’s tearing my shirt off in the bedroom, I’m bending her over the bed, and there’s no more discussion about stupid shit like going to the Sheraton. There’s only pleasure, and I think that if she stays, it might not ever end.
Chapter Thirteen
Angelica
In the early hours of Sunday morning, I wake up curled under Jett’s luxurious comforter, still a little lightheaded from the events of last night.
He bought my story, hook, line and sinker—and I don’t know how to feel about it.
He’s an arrogant womanizer, there’s no doubt in my mind. He’s the kind of man my mother warned me about. She was probably picturing the manager at the corner store—a guy with a “good job”—not a billionaire with the wealth of the world at his fingertips. But it still applies.
I thought up that story about my apartment on the ride over. Something that would make my life more frustrating, but not necessarily leave me homeless. And he’d hardly hesitated to invite me to stay with him.
For sex.
Of course, it’s just for the sex.
Right?
Why do I keep wondering about that when I’m the one who’s working so damn hard to win him over?
I turn over under the covers and let my eyes trace the automatic shades covering the windows.
To say I’m torn is the understatement of the year.
I want to erase the distance between us, climb onto his gorgeous, naked body, and rock against him until he wakes up. In another world, we could spend all day in this bed. There would be no reason to leave, and I could sit back and enjoy the ride.
But in this one, I have information to steal, a brother to protect. That’s why I’m here in the first place.
I just didn’t anticipate Jett Brandon making me feel like this. The tips of my fingers ache with the need to touch him, to somehow break down the wall he’s constructed around himself. To know him so deeply, so completely, that understanding him becomes second nature.
That’s a heavy thought, and it blindsides me—but his sleeping face is open, relaxed, and last night I saw glimpses of him, the real him, underneath the bravado and the cocky attitude...and I wanted more.
I still want more.
I just can never have it.
His breathing is so deep and slow, and my mind is so crowded with thoughts, that I only last a couple of minutes before the dissonance gets to me.
With a little sigh, I slide out from under the comforter and cross the room to where a new silk kimono in heather gray rests across the back of one of the armchairs by the fireplace. It feels like heaven against my skin, and it only makes me feel guiltier when I slip the thumb drive from my purse and tuck it into the palm of my hand. The robe is just one of the things Jett had delivered last night. A soft knock at the door interrupted us while we were lying cuddled up against one another on the bed, me waiting for my heart to stop pounding. He’d been lazy about getting up, slowly pulling on his pants. When he came back into the bedroom, his arms were full of women’s clothes.
“Athleisure,” he said, holding up a pair of stretchy capris and a racerback top that I loved instantly. “Lunch.” This time, a coral sundress that made my heart skip a beat. “Unmentionables,” he continued, grinning slyly, and lifted a tie hanger with three lacy silk bra and panty sets. The robe was last.