She lifted her shoulders. “Because of the thing with Clay.”
Seth touched a knuckle softly to her cheek. “Thought you were over that.”
“I am,” she said automatically. “It’s just important to me that you don’t see me as that woman. The one that got ditched at the altar.”
“All right,” he said slowly. “Is it all right that I think of you as a woman though? Maybe my woman. For tonight.”
She leaned forward slightly and brushed his lips with hers. “Yeah.”
The car slowed to a stop, and Dex came around to open the door for them. Brooke accepted the chauffeur’s hand, forcing herself to smile as though she wasn’t horribly embarrassed, hoping that the dark night sky would hide her blush.
Seth muttered something to Dex along the lines of don’t wait up, and a moment later the car pulled away, leaving them in the quiet of her neighborhood.
His hand rested on her back as he glanced up at the mid-rise where she lived on the fourth floor. “It’s lovely.”
She snorted. “It’s not.”
“It is,” he insisted. “It’s homey.”
“I suppose,” she said, trying to see the building through his eyes. Mostly she’d just been so darn glad to be out of California when she’d arrived that she hadn’t paid much attention to the building that would be home.
She liked it well enough. The doormen were nice. The building was clean. Sure, the elevator was a little slow, and her door squeaked, and maybe the neighborhood was just a touch more secluded than she’d like. But she was determined to like it, therefore she did like it.
Seth linked his fingers in hers. “Take me home, Baldwin.”
She laughed. “You know, for such a rich, savvy guy, you can be a total dork.”
“I like to think it reveals my vulnerable side.”
She glanced up at him suspiciously. “Do you have a vulnerable side?”
“I do. Her name is Brooke.”
Her lips parted slightly as happiness washed over her. “You know I’m already going to sleep with you, right? You don’t have to woo me with romance.”
“No? In that case . . .” He lowered his mouth to her ear. “Take me upstairs so I can fuck you. Hard.”
Brooke’s thighs clenched in want, but she didn’t have to be told twice.
On autopilot she made it through the front door, said hello to Christian, the nighttime doorman, and managed to get Seth into the elevator before dragging him against her.
He shoved her against the wall of the elevator, gripping her chin with one hand as the other slid down her hip, kneading the soft flesh as he nipped at her mouth.
Seth let out a low growl when the elevator jerked to a stop a second later. “Seriously?”
Brooke giggled, the sound happy and girlish. “This isn’t a Tyler high-rise. There are only six floors, and I’m the fourth.”
“Just as well,” he said, against her neck. “Now I won’t have to get you naked in the elevator.”
His hand shot out, opening the elevator door before it could shut again, and he tugged her forward and out into the hallway with such sexy authority, that for a moment Brooke thought she might want to be stripped down and seduced in the elevator, spectators be damned.
“Which way?”
Brooke’s apartment was the first door on the right, and though she expected him to pull her close the second they stepped inside, he surprised her by stopping to look around first, keeping a tight grip on her hand.
Not that there was much to see. Her condo in LA had been nearly three times the size of her apartment here, and the furniture she’d had shipped from California looked horribly out of place, the light wood and white linens of her West Coast lifestyle clashing with the old walls and dark flooring of her New York place.
“It’s nice,” he said.
Brooke shrugged, seeing it through his eyes and realizing how horribly temporary it looked. She wanted to settle in. She’d tried. But everything looked sort of mismatched, and not in the quirky, eclectic way. It was more the disorganized mess of someone with an identity crisis.
“You okay?” he asked.
She glanced up, surprised to find him looking at her instead of the apartment. The question was so simple, so no-bullshit that she felt herself nearly crumbling in the face of his basic, direct question.
She didn’t even know that she wanted to crumble.
But being here in a home that wasn’t yet fully home, with a man who liked her, she felt a strange sense of pain and happiness at