Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 37324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 187(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 187(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
I dropped my mouth to her throat and kissed the soft spot below her ear. She shivered, then a slow drag of my lips and teeth that made her arch against me and her nails bit my shoulders. I breathed her in, picturing the things I wanted to do—lifting her onto a counter, spreading her thighs with my hands, tasting her until that sweet husky voice of hers turned raw, and pressing inside her and holding her there as I filled her over and over until she’d learned the shape of me from the inside out. The images hit in rapid succession, fraying my tenuous grip on my control. Using everything I had, I reined them in like a horse that wanted to bolt.
“Not here,” I rasped. I felt her shiver at the restraint in my voice, like the promise of more inside the denial turned her on as much as the kiss.
“Coward,” she whispered, eyes dancing merrily.
I huffed out something that might have been a laugh and kissed her again, quick and firm, just to wipe that grin off her mouth.
“You’ll learn I’m a lot of things.” I pulled back an inch so I could watch her face when I added, “But I don’t run. And I don’t fucking share. Your pleasure is for my eyes only, sunshine.”
Her expression softened without losing any of the heat blazing in her brown orbs. She looked like she wanted to argue just for the sport of it but also liked where this was headed enough to let me call the pace. That mix did something good to my chest, happiness wrapping around my heart.
Though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I forced myself to release her. My hand stayed a second longer at her waist than it probably should have, my thumb sweeping one last stroke along the strip of skin that had warmed where her sweater had ridden up.
We both flinched when the elevator dinged on a floor above us as a reminder that the world still existed. My hands clenched into fists as I stepped back far enough to let air between us and watched her pull herself together, sweater tugged into place, hair smoothed, kiss-bruised lips swollen in a way that turned my head all over again.
“Go.” I tried for a gentle tone despite clenching my teeth. “Before I change my mind.”
She licked her lower lip and looked up at me from under those dark lashes. If I hadn’t already decided to wait, that would have ended the deliberation. “Night, Saxon.”
“Night, sunshine.”
The elevator doors slid open with a tired sigh, the car empty and a single fluorescent bulb humming on the ceiling. I stayed put when they closed, swallowing her up, and the light blinked to show she was moving. Only when I heard the lift hum upward and the hallway settled back into the ordinary building sounds did I finally move. I walked out into the biting cold and hunched into my coat all the way to my SUV.
I sat in the driver’s seat with my hands on the wheel and replayed the look in her eyes when I told her I wasn’t going anywhere. There are games where you win on a single deep ball, and there are games you win with method—first downs, clock control, and field position. This wasn’t a bomb down the sideline. This was territory, claimed and held. I wasn’t in a hurry because I didn’t have to be. I knew she’d felt it, and that this wasn’t a passing interest. It was a trajectory. It was a plan. And tomorrow, I’d be exactly where I needed to be to prove it.
6
SAXON
The morning meeting dragged like a weighted sled across wet turf. Film loops blinked across the wall, numbers scrolled on tablets, and the room ran on burnt coffee and stale pastries, but none of it made a dent in the knot sitting in my chest. I took the chair at the end of the table and tried to pretend the past twenty-four hours hadn’t stretched out like a week just because I hadn’t seen Ivy. It was ridiculous, the way my body kept tracking in the direction of her salon as if the chair might start rolling on its own. Missing her didn’t feel like a thought. It felt like a physical condition.
I did my best to hide it, though. The last thing I wanted to deal with was shit from my teammates for being so mushy over a woman.
I failed.
Gage noticed first because he noticed everything. He lounged two seats over with his ankle parked on a knee, spinning a pen, his attention cutting sideways to Nixon with a quick, amused tilt of his mouth.
“I see what you mean.” He didn’t bother to lower his voice. “Gotta be about a woman.”