“Speaking of healing touches . . .” I leaned across the table and lowered my voice. There was a dull roar in the restaurant and the tables were spaced generously, but still. “I figured you’d have other plans for us to spend our two hours together. Plans that didn’t include dinner.” I wetted my lips then whispered, “Or clothes.”
His neck stiffened, looking like he was in physical pain from what I was suggesting. “Yeah, I just wanted to prove to you—to show you—that that’s not all I want from you. That I value more than just that kind of intimacy with you.”
The menu lowered from my hands. “That’s pretty much the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Thank god.” A loud breath blew from his mouth. “Because you have no idea how hard it was to say. Or do. Or, you know.”
I took a sip of my water, trying to cool the heat swelling inside me. I wanted Soren’s body so badly I felt nauseous from it. I wanted him, all of him, even more. Maybe he was right—maybe it was a good idea for us not to spend those few coveted hours we got together only one way. Our bodies worked like a damn dream together—we’d already figured that out. We needed to get the rest of the relationship components to fuse just as cohesively.
“So . . .” I leaned farther across the table. “No sex?”
He winced. “You make that sound so bad.” The lines of his face creased deeper. “But yeah, no sex. Not tonight. Let’s just . . . be together. Like this.” His hand turned mine over so he could caress the underside of my wrist.
I’d never known how erotic a thumb touching my wrist could be until right then. Especially when it was matched with the glint in his eyes appraising me.
“I’m sorry about Ellis back there. I know he’s not your favorite person, and he can come off as an arrogant ass. What he said to you, that was rude.”
Soren shrugged it off, though his eyes didn’t come across so dismissively. “People are always going to try to put you in your place. I know exactly where I stand.”
My feet slid against his, every part of my body feeling drawn to him. The only thing keeping the rest of my body separated from his was the table between us. “And where do you stand?
“In the very spot every guy on the planet wants to be.” He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “Right beside the most stunning creature in creation.”
Paris again. Another microscopic hotel room with thin walls and unique smells. For as glamorous of a life most people seemed to think models had, the opposite was true. The early morning shoots, the hours spent being pulled on, prodded, brushed, and styled in a chair, the long days where a bathroom break was considered generous. It wasn’t a glamorous lifestyle, not even as a model who was supposedly “rising to the top.” That was okay. I’d known that going in. I wasn’t a diva and was familiar with hard work.
The hard part was being away from him. Another couple of weeks had passed, and the time we had spent together had been through the filter of a phone. His season was at its peak, so he was traveling a ton too. Combine that with the time difference, and it made squeezing in a few minutes to catch up a scheduling nightmare.
He always told me just to call him whenever and not to worry about what time it was where he was. He’d happily wake up to hear my voice. But I knew how little sleep he was getting, and I didn’t want a selfish whim to be the reason he approached the next morning like a zombie.
The silver lining to all of this was that he and his team were having a great season and everything was going great with my new client. In fact, my career was going so great, Ellis was having to turn down offers from other fashion designers and companies thanks to my schedule being too full.
Both of our dreams seemed to be on the cusp of fruition, but sometimes it felt like the cost of being apart was too great. Especially at night. When I was alone, stuffed inside some small, foreign hotel room, trying to tune out the voices and shouts spoken in a language I didn’t know.
I’d be flying back to New York in a couple of days, and Soren and I’d have one whole day together before he was back on the road for a game. Two days. I could make it.
I could . . .
My hand grabbed my phone and punched in his number before I’d made a voluntary decision. It was almost one at night here, which meant it was dinnertime’ish there. I thought.
“I was just thinking about you,” Soren answered.
“You always say that.” My mouth turned up as I rolled onto my side in bed.
“That’s because I’m always thinking about you. So it’s always true.”
Hearing his voice made everything better. Everything. Two days suddenly didn’t feel so far away. Two weeks didn’t feel like it had been forever.
“Are you at the apartment?” I asked.
“I’m at school still, actually. Had to come in early to make up a lab I missed last week from being on the road.”
“What time is it there?”
“A little after seven. Which means it’s . . . one o’clock there? Hayden, you should be asleep. You need to take care of yourself.” In the background, I heard voices, noises.
“I can’t sleep.” I twisted onto my other side, unable to find a comfortable position on the bed. I was used to sleeping on some unpleasant surfaces, but this bed was bad. I probably would have been better off on the floor.
“Want me to sing you a lullaby or something?” Soren whispered something to someone before it sounded like he was moving away from the noise.
“I’m beyond the reach of a lullaby. Or a glass of warm milk. Or even one of those sleep pills all of the girls keep telling me to get a prescription for.” I groaned, turning back over again. The less sleep I got, the less willing to fall asleep my body seemed. It was a vicious cycle.
“I can think of something else that always seems to put you right to sleep.” Soren’s tone had changed, his voice quieter.
“What’s that?” When he stayed quiet, I realized what he was talking about. “How’s that supposed to help me when you’re thousands of miles away?”
“Physically, yeah, but I’m talking to you right this very moment. You’ve got a good imagination, right?”
His voice and what he was suggesting had me sitting up in bed. “Are you implying . . .?”
“Don’t play coy with me. I know what you’re capable of, and reserved isn’t part of it.”
Crap. I could already feel my body responding to him. Half a world away. “You’re in a lab filled with other people. Not the ideal time to pop our phone sex cherry.”
“Was,” he replied, the sound of a door whining open following. “I was in a lab full of students.”
“Where are you going now?” My heart was hammering—so much for sleep. Although he did have a point—there was nothing like an orgasm to knock me out.
“The teacher’s lounge.”
“The teacher’s lounge?”
“Nobody’s in here this late anyway.”
My head shook. “You’re going to have phone sex in the teacher’s lounge?”
“Hey, another boyhood fantasy about to get checked off the list.”