“I thought you left. I ordered some room service. When I heard a noise at the door, I just assumed it was them.” She sounded a bit breathless, but she was no longer slurring her words, and her gaze was sharp and clear. “Why are you still here?”
She shifted a little in my hold as I pressed her back against the wall and braced myself over her with a forearm over her head. I was trying really hard to keep my eyes on hers and not on the gap in the robe that was exposing more of her collarbone and chest than I bet she was aware of.
I swallowed hard and told myself I really needed to let her go and not pull her closer so that our bodies were pressed tightly together.
“You were crying in your sleep. I couldn’t leave with you like that.” It was hard to walk away from her under normal circumstances as it was.
Her pretty mouth rounded in surprise, and she exhaled a long, slow breath. My eyes fell automatically to the rise and fall of her chest. I wanted the soft material of the robe to melt away. I really wanted to see her smooth skin and find out if the color of her nipples was a pretty pink or more of a dusky rose that was more in line with her darker coloring. I wanted to put my hands on her waist and shove my knee between her bare legs. Pretty much, I wanted to touch her all over and put my mouth on any part of her she would allow.
Sure, I had a pretty uncontrollable crush on this woman, and it’d been a very, very long time since I’d been intimate with anyone. It’d been even longer since I’d hooked up with anyone while I was sober enough to remember any of it. So, of course, being this close to her and inhaling her clean, flowery scent made my body react predictably. If I leaned even half an inch closer to her, she was going to feel just how hard she made me.
Her palms hit my chest, and I could see the indecision in her eyes. She wasn’t sure if she was going to push me back or pull me closer. The tension that started to spark between the two of us lifted hairs on my arms and something inside my chest tightened.
“Oh, well, thank you for staying with me.” She cleared her throat. “Usually only Arrow and Lennon do that, and I’ve been known to scare both of them off on a bad day. I’m sorry you had to see me like that.” She looked embarrassed, and it was totally adorable.
“I think it’s fair to say you’ve seen me in a worse state, and you can’t come close to the level of wrecked I was when I really let things get away from me. You just had a bit of a bad day, no biggie. I’m glad you asked me to stay. It makes me feel like you’re one step closer to forgiving me.”
One of her hands tightened into a fist, gripping the material of my shirt as the other lifted and rested on the side of my neck. I was sure she could feel my pulse pound at the light touch but I didn’t care.
“I think I have forgiven you, for the most part. I made a lot of mistakes along the way as well. It’s time to let go of the past and look toward the possibilities the future holds.”
I grunted a bit and gave in to the burning urge to tug her to me. She made a startled sound as I told her very seriously, “That’s good to hear because I’m pretty sure I’m about to make you mad all over again.”
They said it was easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission anyway.
I kissed her in the same way that she kissed me, hurried, like we were doing something that we weren’t supposed to do. She didn’t seem as surprised as I’d been, and this time she immediately parted her lips and let me dip my tongue into the damp heat of her mouth. She still tasted a bit like a cocktail, and since it’d been so long since I’d touched anything even slightly inebriating, the flavor went to my head in a rush. Or maybe it was the fact that she was fully kissing me back with zero hesitation that had everything outside