My fingers curl around the towel, bunching it in my fist. I hold still as she inspects me minutely from head to foot.
I deserve this. For her hotel room in DC, for her house in New York, for everything I saw without permission, I deserve this. So I hold still and allow it, watching her face as she looks with cool composure at my naked body. I feel equal parts unsteady, uncomfortable, and fantastically alive.
After a moment she inquires, “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?”
A dozen responses come to mind before I finally settle on “I suspect you’re about to tell me.”
Those glittering eyes flash to mine. Her hair falls loose around her shoulders, but no other sign of softness remains. She’s changed back into the black leather armor she wore yesterday in the car. I wonder if she’s hiding a cache of weapons beneath it.
“One night, you said.” She pauses, staring at me with something like rage. “I’ll take it.”
I feel the single, painful beat of my heart.
I say quietly, “No.”
Her brows shoot up. “No?” she repeats, drawing it out.
“Not like this. Not with this…” I struggle to find the word. “Resentment.”
The fierce look in her eyes softens. She drops her gaze again to my cock, standing at full attention. Her lips curve. “I’m not sure your opinion is the one that really matters.”
A gust of pent-up breath leaves my chest. “Tabby—”
“Come here,” she says, and holds out her hand.
My mouth goes dry. I feel like a teenager again, trembling with nerves on a first date.
“Connor,” she says, softer, still beckoning me with those eyes, that outstretched hand. When I don’t move, she adds, “Please.”
I close my eyes, swallow, take a breath to try to slow my pounding heart. What she’s offering is everything I want, yet a part of me is holding back, still listening to the old man’s warning: Keep yourself grounded.
I’m not grounded. I’m fucking unmoored. I’m so full of crackling, unstable energy, I feel like I might break the bonds of gravity altogether and rocket off into space.
Ultimately, my feet move me forward. Tabby on my bed is too great a compelling force for them, for any part of me, and so I walk.
When I get to the edge of the bed, Tabby stretches her leg out and stops me with her boot planted flat on my stomach. I halt, taken aback at the change of impetus, her sudden change of mind, but as she lies there staring at me and patiently waiting, it dawns on me that this isn’t a reversal.
It’s a command.
Without looking away from her face, I take her boot in my hands, untie the laces, and slide it off. I drop it to the floor, where it lands with a flat thud that momentarily blocks out the roar of my blood in my ears.
Her knee bent, she sets her bare foot on the bed, and then lifts her other foot to my stomach.
I moisten my lips. She watches the motion of my tongue with a flush creeping over her cheeks, but no other sign of emotion.
I drop her other boot to the floor and then stand motionless, holding myself in check with sheer force of will.
She says, “Well, if you don’t want to fuck me, maybe you could just kiss me. Since I went to the trouble to break into your room.”
Hearing her say the words “fuck me” makes my cock twitch. Slowly, she smiles. It’s ruthless, satisfied, and now I recognize the game.
Payback. For everything I’ve done, and made her feel, so far.
But I’m not having it. I’m not playing. With anyone else, at any other time, this would be fun. A lark. But not with this woman. Not tonight.
Tonight, she’s mine.
For real, or not at all.
I slowly lower myself to my knees on the bed, between her spread legs. Unmoving, she watches me. Her breathing is coming faster and her pupils have dilated, but she makes no effort to do anything other than lie still as I crawl up her body until I’m hovering over her, our noses inches apart.
Looking into her eyes I say, “All right. I’ll kiss you. I’ll give you the kiss I should’ve given you the first time. And depending on how well you kiss me back, we’ll see what happens next.”
I watch her face change, feel the tension invade her body, watch as she struggles to keep control of her breathing, and am so satisfied with all of that, I almost smile. Instead, I lower my head and gently, ever so softly, press my mouth to hers.
Her lips yield, opening.
Outside, a distant rumble of thunder echoes over the mountains.
I’m careful, oh so careful not to rush. I want to remember this moment, every second of it, every slight restless shift in her body, every telling flush on her skin. She takes my tongue into her mouth with a hesitancy that’s so sweet it’s heady, because I know that beneath her veneer of calm, she’s exactly as affected as I am by what it feels like when we touch.