Floored - Karla Sorensen Page 0,7

were on. He held up his hands. "I'll be right here. Where I always am," he muttered.

I smiled.

Lia set her hand on my back, and I turned. Her head just barely cleared my shoulder as she stared up at me. "Shall we?" I asked.

She answered me with a lopsided grin, and I led her upstairs.

Chapter Three

Lia

Two options lay in front of me as I followed the hot man with the phenomenal ass up the narrow stairs that led to the space above the pub.

1- I was going to be chopped into a thousand pieces because he was a murderer.

2- I was going to get epically laid by the most beautiful man I'd ever seen.

And he wasn't even just beautiful. Considering I almost orgasmed just listening to him talk about soccer, I figured my chances of satisfaction were pretty freaking high.

"Do you live up here?"

He glanced over his shoulder, sending me a grin so boyish and delicious that I almost tripped.

Smooth, Lia.

"No, it's mainly used for storage, but there is a place to crash in a pinch." He stopped on the landing, sliding his hands above the doorframe until he found the key.

The doorknob was beautiful, as was the paneling on the deep red door. "That's beautiful," I murmured, touching one of the raised edges.

"Have a thing for doors, do you?"

I tell you what I had a thing for. British men named Jude with long legs and broad shoulders, a jaw cut like granite, and the kind of scruff lining it that made me feel downright naughty. But sure, we could talk about doors.

I smiled. "Don't you ever look at doors like that and wonder who made it?"

Jude unlocked the door and pushed it open for me. "Not particularly," he admitted wryly.

The room above the pub wasn't large, but it was clean. Plaster walls painted a soft gray had boxes stacked along one side. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined in beautiful trim looked out at the street below.

At the back of the room were two identical, white-painted doors with antique crystal doorknobs. He opened one door and stuck his head in, appearing with something large and white in his hand.

"It'll be big, but it's clean," he said, eyes holding mine steadily. Finally, I could see them clearly. They were a deep, clear green.

Honestly, I felt a little relieved I could see all of him clearly, so I took the shirt and walked through the second door, which wasn't more than a large closet. A closet it may have been, but it gave me a necessary moment to breathe. As I quietly tugged off my beer-soaked shirt, I studied a few pictures taped up on the wall. Jude had his arm slung around a guy with a similar face. Based on how Jude looked now—I'd pegged him in his early thirties—the picture was easily fifteen years old, both men wearing a team jersey in bright green. A soccer jersey, I thought with a tiny smile. No wonder. Maybe he played in high school.

Before I left the privacy of the closet, I took a moment to be completely vain. I tugged my phone out of my purse and used the camera feature to gauge just how shitty I looked after my run in the rain.

With a wince, I caught sight of my hair. Frizz-tastic. The phone went back in my purse, and I did what I could with my hands and an elastic band, trying to wind my hair into a bun and anchor it on the top of my head. With a pinch of my cheeks and a deep breath to gather myself, I had to take a beat. You know the kind. Where you recognize the ramifications of being alone in a room with a bed and a hot British man who made my thighs squeeze together when he said things like, utterly perfect.

"Would you like another drink?" he called out.

A metaphorical door opened with those five words. Sometimes, just by nature of studying what I did, I thought about situations as if they were playing out in a book. Was the character making a sympathetic choice? Could the reader understand why—based on previous history, cultural norms, established patterns in the narrative—why things were decided in the way they were?

In my silence, he spoke quietly. "We don't have to, of course. But I'd be remiss not to offer the opportunity for privacy in light of our conversation earlier."

He was giving me an out. We could go straight back downstairs, and he wouldn't hold