Follow Me Darkly (Follow Me #1) - Helen Hardt Page 0,31
lobby. Except the temperature in the lobby is fine—it’s Braden who’s supplying the heat.
“Fine. Go ahead.”
“You kicked me out, Braden. It was…”
“It was what?”
“Humiliating, all right? It was fucking humiliating. I felt…disposable.”
“I don’t regulate how you feel, Skye. You do.”
I shake my head, anger rising in my gut. That’s the whole problem. I don’t have any power with Braden.
And I don’t like it at all.
Except that I do. And I really hate that I do.
I glare at him.
“I don’t consider you disposable, so why do you?”
I curl my hands into fists. Seriously, fists. I really want to punch his superior nose. Another way I’m not in control. So much for releasing the tension.
“I don’t consider myself disposable, which is why, Braden, if you want me in your bed so badly, you can’t treat me as if I am. You can’t just kick me out when you’re done.”
“We were both done.”
“Maybe you were,” I say. “Personally, I had several more orgasms left in me.”
What a fucking lie. The only two orgasms I’ve ever had took place that night, but he doesn’t know that, and I’m not about to clue him in.
He seems to struggle with what to say next before finally running a hand through his hair, mussing it up and looking extremely sexy. “I don’t normally let anyone spend the night at my place.”
Why? What made you this way? Will I ever be able to get close to you other than sexually?
The words hover on my tongue, but I can’t ask the questions. Instead, “Then don’t. I won’t go back to bed with you if you’re going to make me leave afterward. Simple as that.”
He sighs, rubbing his forehead as if in resignation. “Fine. If that’s what it takes to get you back in my bed, you can stay until morning. Does that suffice?”
No. It doesn’t suffice. I don’t even know what would suffice. “I don’t have to stay. I just would like the option.”
He cocks his head, pausing a few seconds before responding. “I’m beginning to see what you really want,” he says. “It’s not so much that you want to stay, it’s that you want to be the one to decide, isn’t it?”
How do he and Tessa seem to know me better than I know myself?
As much as I want him—even standing here in a hotel lobby with guests bustling around late in the evening—I can’t agree to what he’s asking, even if he lets me spend the night. I don’t want to be his fuck buddy.
I want more than that.
“I can’t go back to your bed, Braden.”
“You can.”
“No, I can’t. It just doesn’t feel…”
Braden moves his warm body into my space. “You want to say it doesn’t feel right, Skye. But you’re not that good an actress. It’s a lie, and you know it.”
He’s right. Even though I want more than he’s willing to give me, everything about being with him feels right.
My knees turn to jelly as heat surges through my body like fiery pinballs ricocheting everywhere at once and then landing right between my thighs. He’s close to me, so close I could lean into him and easily regain my balance.
“Come home with me,” he whispers, “and you can leave whenever you want.”
Chapter Twenty
“I… I have to tell Tessa.”
He takes my hand and leads me back to the ballroom. Tessa is sitting at our table when we get there.
“What have you two been up to?” she asks. “We just—”
“We’re leaving,” Braden says. “Can I give you a lift home?”
“I think I’ll stay, actually. Garrett and I are hitting it off. Peter’s a mess, though.”
“What’s wrong?”
“He’s terrified of you,” she says to Braden, smiling. “Though you don’t seem all that scary to me.”
There she goes flirting again. Braden is pretty scary, though not in the way Tessa means.
“He just wants a contract with my company,” he says, “and he thinks I won’t give it to him because he was dancing with Skye.”
“Oh. Is that true?”
“No. I’m not giving it to him anyway. The decision has already been made.”
“Does he know?” she asks.
“He will.” Braden turns to me. “Ready?”
“Yeah, sure. See you, Tess.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says.
Within a few minutes, I’m sitting in the back of Braden’s car again with Christopher at the wheel. I inhale. Braden’s ridiculously masculine scent is now my favorite cologne in the world. I yawn inadvertently.
“Tired?” he asks.
“No, I’m okay.” Though I am a little tired, probably from the Wild Turkey. Not drunk but sleepy.