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He smiles wider. “One of my clubs isn’t far. You know The Fifth?”
I nod.
“I’ll follow you there,” he tells me.
I nod again.
“Yeah?” he checks, like he doesn’t quite believe I’m agreeing.
“One drink. No promises of anything beyond that.”
He jerks his head toward the exit, so I move in that direction.
He gets to the door first and holds it open, gesturing for me to go ahead.
Heart pounding hard in my chest, I walk ahead of him. After I hit the button to get my car unlocked, he gets ahead of me to open the driver’s door. I climb inside. He looks dead into my eyes and something… that something he spoke of that’s between us, it pulses. Throbs. My heart is racing.
Derek skims his bottom lip with his front teeth and shuts my door.
I pull into a spot outside The Fifth; I’ve been here before. Twice, I think. I remember it as fairly dim, with plenty of high-backed booths. Should be a safer bet for discretion, though that’s never a guarantee in public.
Derek pulls up beside my six-year-old Jeep Cherokee with his swanky new-looking Mercedes SUV. He crooks his finger and then drives past me, so I follow him around to the opposite side of the parking lot. He stops in a reserved spot outside an entrance to the office building part of this location. This is another office building with a nightclub on the ground floor like last Friday’s spot.
I pull into the reserved spot beside him. By the time I turn my car off, he’s outside my door, opening it for me.
I’m not dressed for a club like The Fifth, being make-up free, damp-haired, and in jeans and a basic T-shirt with slip-on sneakers.
Despite this, it’s obvious by the carnal look on Derek’s face that he’s attracted to me anyway.
He’d look attractive if he, too, looked like he just came from the gym. But he doesn’t. While his dark hair is damp, he still looks amazing. He’s clean-shaven, in nice jeans, the same leather jacket he had on last night, and a snug wine-colored Henley hoodie that I’m sure will show off his defined upper body under that jacket. He takes my hand and pulls it to his mouth, touching his lips to my knuckles. “The club’s that way.” He points across the parking lot, still holding my hand. “My place is this way.” He points to the door in front of us. “Which way are we going, Chloe?”
I’m taken aback by the kiss on my hand, by the way my hand feels in his. By his eyes on my face. By all of it.
While holding my breath, my feet move us toward the closest door. The door to his place.
His free hand moves to the small of my back the way it did in his nightclub a week ago, and then he lets go to reach ahead to touch a door sensor with his thumb. I hear it unlock, and then he opens and holds it for me. When I’m over the threshold, his hand lands on my lower back again. And I can’t stop my mind from focusing on the feel of his hand on the back of my jacket, wondering what it would feel like to have his hand on my bare skin again.
He grabs my hand again as we move down the long, swanky cream-colored marble-walled shiny-floored hallway toward an elevator. This entrance is obviously private. There were no other cars in any of the reserved spots that bordered the entrance, so I take it this is the building his father is re-purposing, and that Derek’s siblings are currently absent. The elevator is waiting, so Derek walks us in and presses the PH button on the panel. We take an express ride up with our hands still clasped together. And my heart is pounding hard.
Am I really about to do this? Am I really about to use the hall pass? It feels illicit. It feels like I’m a cheater. But Adam has been encouraging this.
Should I tell this insanely hot man why I’m doing this despite the diamond on my finger?
He’s a rich, insanely attractive man. But I don’t know the protocol for this sort of situation. Do I bring it up? Do I assume it’s understood?
My eyes are fixed on the elevator lights showing our ascent above the door, but I’m pretty sure his are on me.
Shit. Does he have condoms? Of course he’d have condoms. He’s a rich, attractive man.
Does he have a girlfriend? A fiancée? A wife?
Why didn’t I do a quick internet search on him?
I know why I didn’t. Because despite the fact that he’s crossed my mind plenty in the past week, I never expected this to happen so there was no point looking him up. I also didn’t want to become fixated on the idea of hooking up with him so of course I pushed him out of my mind every time I thought of him, which was more often than I’d care to admit. Except that time when I was in the shower and indulged a fantasy while I took care of my… ahem…needs.
The elevator halts and when the door opens, something ignites in my veins. His too, I think, because now he’s powerwalking and I’m jogging to keep up until we get to the second-to-last door on the left side of the elevator in a hallway that looks the same as the one on the ground floor. He puts his thumb to another sensor on this door and when I hear the click of the door it feels as ominous to me as the sound of a gun being cocked. Not that I’ve ever heard one of those in real life.
And another thought surfaces, too. The fact that it doesn’t matter if I go home tonight or not. Adam is spending the weekend at his brother’s place. I know he’s done it on purpose. He did kiss me before he left at four o’clock this afternoon, kissed me the same way he kissed me in front of everyone last Sunday, which probably wasn’t supposed to feel like being stabbed in the heart, but it did because he did it in front of his brother. I didn’t even fake a smile as Paul wheeled him out the front door toward his van.
