“You should be mingling with his friends.”
“I don’t give a fuck about his friends. I want to mingle with you.” He leans forward, whispers, “Inside you.”
I suppress my groan. “They’re the ones who keep you fighting, you know.”
“Exactly,” he growls. “If you don’t come with me right now, I’m going to pick you up and carry you out. Not like a newlywed bride, but over my shoulder.”
“You can’t!” I hiss. “Everybody will see and then everybody will know.”
He smirks. “Then let’s go.”
We walk together, shoulder to shoulder, through the crowd. I want to reach out and take his hand, and it’s a battle not to do so. I realize, with a kind of distant horror, how easy it would be to slip up, to hold onto his arm, or run my arm around his waist before dipping lower to grab his tight ass.
I do these things all the time, but in public, with people watching, with Dad watching, I have to constantly remember not to.
What if, one time, I forget? Or he does? How quickly everything would break apart!
People murmur things at us as we wade through the sea of bodies, and we reply politely, but we’re bee-lining straight for the door.
I’m considering this entire hotel, booked out, empty, and Duncan says to me, as if reading my mind, “Time to go exploring.”
Once we’re out of the doors of the main function room, which doubles as a ballroom or banquet hall, we grin at each other.
He takes my hand then, leads me quickly through the winding, empty hallways until I’m sure we’re totally lost, and then he backs me up against a wall, pins my arms above my head, and he just looks at me.
His gaze runs down the back of my arms, and his lips part as he sweeps his eyes over my armpit, along the line of my shoulders, inward toward my chest.
He brings his lips close to my ear, whispers, “I want you right fucking now.”
I grip onto his fingers tight, and his hot breath on my earlobe stirs up something inside of me. I can smell him now that he’s so close to me, really him, beneath the cologne, and I love it.
His body is tense, hard, and I can feel the electricity in his every breath. He takes my earlobe into his mouth, bites it gently with his teeth, and then he smells my neck before laying a smoldering trail of kisses all the way to my shoulder, leaving me quivering.
“God, you look sexy with your hair like this. What do you call it?”
“It’s just a braided bun,” I tell him. “Don’t you know anything?”
“I know how to make you feel good.”
“That’s just biology.”
“I love it when I can see your neck, Dee.” He traces a finger from my ear to my collar bone, then runs along it to the middle. “And here,” he says. “I love it when I can see you here.”
He meets my eyes, and I see that familiar demon in his. He takes my hand, holds it against his thigh, and I gasp when I feel him, hard as a steel bar, straining against his suit pants.
“Just like that,” he tells me. “Just one smell, just one touch.”
I hold onto him, rub him slowly, draw a tortured look of lust from him. “Just one man with a one-track mind,” I whisper.
“No,” he tells me. He takes my face in his huge hand, and I feel the heat in his palms, press my cheek into it. “Only you do this to me.”
After a moment I ask him, “You going to kiss me or what?”
He smirks. “Do I really have to?”
“You assho—”
He kisses me, crushes his lips against mine, brings me up to the tips of my toes. I wrap my arms around him, heart thumping wildly in my chest as I feel his desire for me in the fervor of his kisses.
I run my hands through his hair, hold onto him, press myself against his body, as if suddenly a crack in the dam has burst. I’m as desperate for him as he is for me.
He gropes me hungrily, and I pull at his hair, and our bodies are touching all the way up and down, and I’m melting in his arms, falling into him…
“Not here,” I whisper, breaking the kiss. “We’re still too close.”
We look around, then start walking down the hallway again. As if on cue a staff member of the hotel walks past us the other way, his eyes lingering on Duncan’s crotch for a moment, a look of embarrassment stretching out his face.
I lean forward, and when I see Duncan’s tented pants I cover my mouth and laugh.
“You look ridiculous.”
“It’s your fault.”
“We are we going, anyway?”
He points up at some signage as we walk. I read it: Indoor swimming pool.
“Swimming?” I ask. “In what?”
“Use your imagination.”