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“It’s fine,” I volunteered before anyone had a chance to ask me. “It’ll be fine. I don’t want to drive any more than we have to.” It was true, but it was also a convenient reason to accept this room. To take the key and go upstairs now. Together. Nervous energy bubbled in my body, making me shift my weight.
“I don’t want to—” Archie looked up and as he caught my gaze, his mouth stilled.
I kept a low tone, ensuring I wouldn’t be overheard by the clerk who had moved off to attend to something else behind the desk. “You don’t?”
My meaning was clear.
And the flare I saw in his dark gaze was all the answer I needed. “If you’re sure.”
“So, yes?” the clerk asked, holding up a key card.
Archie nodded and the clerk put the card down on the desk. “Have a good night.”
“Come on,” I said, taking the key card off the desk with a smile at Archie and turning toward the elevator. I channeled a person I was not, someone confident and sure, someone who had experience seducing men. We stood in the elevator, inches apart, the smell of French fries wafting around us as every cell in my body tingled in anticipation.
The room was simple but adequate. There was a loveseat against one wall, a king-sized bed on the other.
Archie rubbed a hand through his hair, gazing around the room. “I’ll take the couch. Unless...”
I answered the only way I could, by stepping into his orbit, hoping his arms would rise to pull me in. And when they did, I released every bit of fear I’d been holding inside.
I knew this was a man I should be wary of. I’d been told that for four years now, ever since my brother’s death. And yet...I felt safer with him than I ever had. Safer than I had with anyone.
Archie paused to put down the food, and then his hands found my waist, and as I lifted my mouth to his, his grip tightened, pulling me against him. One of his hands slid up my back, pressing me into him as I tilted my head, increasing the friction of our mouths together.
His tongue teased at the seam of my lips and I opened to him, jolts of excitement sizzling through me as his tongue met mine and the intensity of the connection increased. I slid my hands up his chest, pushing back the sides of the coat he wore, which suddenly felt like it was in the way.
With a grunt, he stepped back, pulling my coat off one of my arms, and then stripping it from me totally before discarding his own. A second later, his arms were around me again, and his mouth found mine.
The kiss went on and on, intensifying and then shifting, moving from something needy and desperate to an exploration and then back. Archie’s hands skimmed my back, lifting the hem of the sweater I wore and sliding across the skin of my waist beneath it. The feel of his fingers on my bare skin stole my breath and my capability for rational thought.
My own hands went about their business with little direction from my brain which was occupied entirely with the work of marveling at the fact I’d never been kissed like this before. In fact, the way Archie Kasper kissed me made me feel like I’d never been kissed before at all.
I unfastened the buttons up his chest and pulled the soft warm fabric from his body, breaking our intensity to pull itfrom his shoulders and look at the miles of golden skin I’d just exposed.
Holy muscles.
Archie wasn’t bulky, not by any stretch. He was lean without being small, and his clothes looked like they were tailored for him. But without them on? I could only judge by the top half, but he could have been a carefully made statue of male anatomy. Every muscle stood in relief, etched in clear lines without being aggressively overbuilt.
My face must’ve given away my astonishment, because Archie’s smile turned just a hint cocky suddenly. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just . . . wow.”
“Thanks,” he said with a low laugh. “If that’s a good wow.”
“It is,” I said, tearing my eyes from the perfection of his chest and abs to look back up into the dark indigo eyes of the man holding me. “Pretty amazing is all.”
The eyes darkened further, and for a beat it felt like all the tension in the universe must be gathering right here in the inches between us. And then it broke, as Archie lowered his head and kissed me again.
And then he let me go.
Confusion swept away some of the desire as Archie put space between us, one of those big hands in his perfect hair again as he dropped his gaze to the floor. He lifted his eyes to me, keeping his chin down. “I wanted to give you a second.”
I did not need a second. “Um. Okay.”
He dropped his eyes again, and blew out a long breath. “Or maybe I wanted to give me a second.”
“Sure,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself. I felt awkward suddenly, like I’d misread the situation. Had he changed his mind? Did he not feel what I did?
