Sweet Sinful Nights

“Now,” he said, his voice a husk.

“Do you want to come back to my—” she began, but he cut her off.

He produced a gleaming white key card from his back pocket. “I was hopeful,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

She adored that hope in him. She adored it for so many reasons. Because he had so much of it, because he could call on it whenever he needed to, and because he’d always freely shared it with her. His brightness, his happiness, his luck.

“Your hope will be rewarded, you handsome man.”

She’d take some of his luck tonight and make it theirs.

*

The elevator doors whooshed shut.

He was a coil, tightly wound. He grasped her face and kissed her hard as he backed her into the corner, in clear view of the camera that was surely watching anyone in the lift.

He didn’t fucking care.

They were alone.

She sighed, she gasped, she moaned as the elevator chugged higher into the sky. Somewhere it slowed and stopped. He glanced briefly at the number pad. Twelve. Not their floor. He returned to her lips, red and full and eager. The doors opened while he fused his mouth to hers, dropping his hand to her ass, gripping her soft flesh, with the kind of hunger that came from knowing there’d be no stopping tonight.

“Um, we’ll catch the next one,” someone behind him said, and the doors shut again.

“When did you get the room?” she whispered, her voice all breathy and sexy.

“Earlier today,” he said, rewinding briefly to his call with Nate. And then, holy shit. Fuck me with a chainsaw. The call with Tanner. He heaved a sigh. He’d packed a bag, and tossed it in the trunk of the town car on the way to pick her up, but had promptly forgotten about his flight the second he’d laid eyes on Shannon.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to catch a flight to New York at midnight,” he said, frustration laced through every word, stringing them together.

She stepped away, her jaw falling open. “Seriously? It’s a quarter after ten right now.”

“The call I got earlier in the week when we were at lunch? About the New York club? They had to move the meeting to lunch tomorrow instead of dinner tomorrow, so I have to catch a red-eye tonight instead of a morning flight.”

She inhaled sharply. “Brent. We were on a date.”

“I thought we could fit everything in.”

Her eyes bugged out, and she stared bullets at him as the elevator landed on the twentieth floor. “You thought you could fit it all in? Fit what in? Taking me out? Fucking me? And then flying to New York at midnight? Is that before or after the fucking?”

The doors slid open. She dug her heels in, but he hadn’t come this far to have her pissed at him again. “Shan, let’s get out of the elevator,” he said firmly.

She shook her head. She was like a dog grabbing grass and refusing to walk. Tension twisted in his chest, squeezing his lungs. The last thing he wanted was to fight with her, not when she’d been melting in his arms moments ago. He pressed his finger against the open button, holding it. “C’mon. We can talk in the room.”

“We can talk here,” she countered, pointing at the floor of the elevator, then at him. “Because I’d really like to know when you were planning on telling me you were cutting our date short.”

“It’s not like we even made official plans for a sleepover,” he said, firing right back at her, his matchstick temper getting the best of him, too.

She narrowed her eyes, turned them into slits. “Oh, excuse me. I didn’t realize I had to book you to spend the night with me,” she said, puffing out her chest and practically spitting the words at him.

He held out his hands wide. “It’s not as if you’ve been giving me any signs that you wanted to.”

She gestured grandly to those red shoes that looked like sex on her. “I guess wearing the goddamn shoes you said you wanted to fuck me in wasn’t a big enough sign? Or maybe letting you finger me in front of the fountains last weekend? That wasn’t clear enough for you?”

“Those nights all ended,” he said, pointing out the flaw in her logic. He pushed hard against the silver button, fighting both with Shannon and the elevator that was starting to beep loudly.

“Looks like this night is about to go the same way then, doesn’t it?”

There was no fucking way he was letting her walk away tonight. The blaring grew louder, sounding like a siren. Shannon crossed her arms over her chest, pushing up her breasts, revealing the swell of her curves.

Curves he intended on having his hands on tonight.

His desire fueled him. Instinct led him on, a caveman drive. In a lightning blur, he grabbed her waist, lifted her onto his shoulder easily and carried her out of the elevator just as the doors whisked shut with a final ping.