“You weren’t kidding about the no kissing thing, either, and yet here we are.”
He took me into his arms, settling my arms around his neck while he pulled me close, slipping his hands onto my waist. I loved being pressed up against him, and so I didn’t resist.
Which he’d probably expected.
“We just have to move slowly, together.” He murmured the words against my ear and sent little heated shivers down my neck. “Do it for thirty seconds. If you hate it, I’ll stop.”
He was slowly running his hands up and down my back, making sure I wouldn’t hate it. As the song progressed, he moved his hands back to my waist and shifted his fingers under the hem of my T-shirt. I loved the feeling of his fingertips against my skin, the way he left mini-fires burning everywhere he touched me. I sighed against him, easing into that mindless pleasure he was good at invoking.
“Was this your plan for the rest of tonight?” I asked when he kissed my cheek, wondering if things were about to turn into the kissing portion of our night.
“It wouldn’t be the worst way to spend the evening.” He wasn’t wrong.
“It is late,” I reminded him. “And we’ve all got work tomorrow. Some more than others.”
He stopped swaying but didn’t let me go. His fingers pressed against my back, slightly digging into the skin there. “Don’t go back to your room. Stay with me.”
That made my pulse skip and my legs feel a little weak. Was he asking what it sounded like he was asking? “What?”
“I hate when you go. It’s the worst part of my day.”
I pushed against his shoulders and backed up so that he wouldn’t keep wooing me with his masculine wiles. I crossed my arms. “That doesn’t sound very friendish.”
“You sleep in the same place as Shelby and she’s your friend.”
“Not in the same bed.”
“We don’t have to sleep in the same bed. I’ll sleep on the floor,” he said as he approached me cautiously, reaching out for my hands and kissing the backs of them gently. “There’s another bedroom. And several couches,” I said as I willed myself not to respond to his soft, firm mouth on my heated skin.
“That would miss the point. I want to be with you. I don’t want tonight to end.”
I still hesitated. We’d been doing some pretty serious making out over the last few weeks, and my anxiety attacks had practically become a thing of the past. In this moment, though, it felt like one might return. I didn’t think I was ready for things to move to the next level.
“There are no expectations here. Nothing’s going to happen unless you want it to happen,” he promised. “But then I’ll have to think about whether or not I’m up for it.”
That made me laugh and broke some of the tension I was feeling. Thing was, I didn’t want to go, either. Leaving him every night was easily the worst part of my day, too.
“Plus,” he added, “we can eat cake for breakfast.”
“You had me at cake,” I said, smiling shyly at him, my mind made up.
He grinned and stepped back, pulling me toward him as he walked backward to his room. When we walked in, he let go of my hands to walk around and turn off the lights, leaving on a single lamp on the nightstand. He grabbed a blanket and a couple of pillows from the bed and made himself a makeshift bed on the floor.
I’d thought he was kidding about the sleeping on the floor thing, but apparently he wasn’t. “That can’t be comfortable.”
“Ever sleep in a cot? This is about the same,” he said.
He came over and pulled me in close. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
“I know,” I said and let him make all the rest of my anxiety disappear.
When things started to get heated, he stopped the kiss, shaking his head ruefully. He stepped back and lay down on the floor.
I climbed into the very soft and very comfortable bed and immediately felt guilty. He was paying so much money for me and my best friend and her new husband to sleep in these amazing rooms, and he was going to sleep on the floor. He was willing to forsake his own comfort just to be close to me.
It says something about how he feels about you, an inner voice whispered, and I didn’t know whether to trust it. I’d spent so