Page 69 of I Want to Know What Love Is

“Where are you taking me?” He cuts through the crowd on the dance floor like butter and I remember to keep my head high.

“To your room, I presume,” he says. Dooley likes to rhyme. He’s legendary for it I’ve heard, but this is the first rhyme I’ve heard. But I’m too tense to appreciate it.

“How about if we get a drink for the road?”

“Don’t you have a minibar in your room?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll take you to our room. We have plenty of booze.”

Two shots of Jack Daniels later and Dooley is singing while I sit back in one of those uncomfortable hotel chairs. “You’d think an expensive place like this would have better chairs,” I say, When the door bangs open and three hulks come barging in—Shelby, Trey and

“Jonesy, what happened?” He looks pale and like he’s in pain and I jump from my chair, almost stumbling on my heels. I’m not used to wearing stilts, but I wanted to be able to look Gary eye-to-eye. Oh yeah, I do an internal eyeroll. That didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. Since I’d hoped to be cool and above it all. I reach Dylan and he drops the coat from his arm onto the bed revealing a bag of ice over his hand. It’s swollen and discolored.

“Your hand. Shit, that looks bad.” I go to him, not like I’m nurse nightingale, but I have a need to take away his obvious pain as he sits on the bed. I drop down beside him.

“It might be,” he says, too cool. Artificially cool. I can tell by the tightness of his lips. those gorgeous kissable lips look anguished and thin. Shelby hands him what looks like a fistful of Ibuprophen and a bottle of water which he takes in a couple of gulps like he’s done it a million times before. But this is different. That’s his throwing hand.

“What are we sitting here for?” I jump to my feet, forgetting the damn heels and almost topple over, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady myself. The contact shouldn’t affect me the way it does, sending searing heat and a shiver simultaneously through me. “Let’s get you to—”

“I’ll go to a clinic tomorrow. On the way home.” With his good hand he tugs me back down to the bed next to him. My body’s reaction skyrockets to the boiling point as I meet his eyes. The way he looks at me, raw and needy and tender and communicating an encyclopedia of emotion, paralyzes me, mesmerizes me, captures me so that I may as well be in shackles and at his mercy. We stare for a few beats and I know what my eyes are saying back to him, that I’m grateful and humbled that he stood up for me, that he came all this way like a white knight, swooping in to rescue me from Gary the terrible bully.

I hadn’t realized I needed—no wanted—saving. I’m no damsel in distress, never have been. Until today, because I wanted to weep with relief and pleasure from the first moment Dylan came up behind me and announced he was here for me, that he was mine and that he couldn’t stay away. Because it was true and I knew it was, knew how much trouble he went to, convincing his friends to come on his mission of folly, driving all this way, taking the chance of getting thrown out, all for me. To avenge my reputation. My eyes are telling him how much I love—no, not that. Not love. How much I appreciate—I break eye contact.

“Ahem,” Shelby says. “I think I could use a drink. At the bar. How about you, Trey?”

“Sounds like a good idea.” Dylan doesn’t move his eyes from me, but I dart my eyes to his friends, unsure and grateful and suddenly fearful. I don’t even realize I’ve tensed up until he puts a hand on my thigh, a soft warm touch, caressing and reassuring even as it sizzles through the silky fabric of my dress to my nerve endings sending a shot of desire straight to my core. I swear I feel my pussy swelling, a throb of need ricocheting through me.

“Don’t come back,” Dylan finally says, turning to his friends as they reach the door, his voice quiet. They don’t break stride as they leave the room. The door clicks closed behind them, reverberating in the silence.

Without hesitation, Dylan strides to the door and flips the latch to make sure they can’t come back and I laugh. It’s my nerves. I’m all jumpy with anticipation, like I’m hurling through space toward the inevitable black hole, unable to stop myself from sure destruction. And sure bliss.

“You’re going to have to help me out of these clothes,” he says, a smirk on his face. I dig deep to pull myself together, to stop the hurtling and find my sass.

“Must be fast-acting Ibuprophen,” I say. His smirk doubles up, his eyes crinkling and warming me with affectionate amusement. It’s the way he always responds to my sass, with pure pleasure. And of course, that’s why I give it to him, damn it. Damn him. And damn me.

“Must be.” He sits back down next to me and leans close so that I breathe in a dizzying gulp of his scent, male and spicy and hot. “Or it could be my body deciding it has better things to do, like shooting off all kinds of sparks and endorphins because I’m with the sexiest, most desirable woman—”

“Let’s not get carried away,” I say, my heart stutters and panic combines with pleasure.

“Too late.” He leans in and sucks my earlobe, causing a shudder to go through me. I scream at myself to pull away, but my conscience has gone deaf and I have no idea where my survival instincts have gone except buried under a sizzling heap of desire and need. Silenced and irrelevant. His lips travel in light kisses down my jawline to the corner of my mouth until he presses his lips to mine, tenderly, softly and yet passionately because I can feel the vibration of his energy, the coiled need inside him, banked and biding its time.

Turning my head, I return his kiss as my hand wraps around his neck, my mouth greedy and searching, taking and giving, telling him everything I feel in a way that I can’t name, can’t put to words, but my body knows. Deep inside me, my gut, my heart and soul rise up and take over for my poor lost mind.

I half laugh as a trill of electric excitement lights me up starting with the touch of his hand on my shoulder, pulling me close and rips through my body. It’s his injured hand, cold and icy, but the gesture which surely must pain him, sends shivers of heat through me, the kind only he has the power to ignite. Because I’ve never felt like this before. Not in my entire life, not for any reason. No man, no championship, no occasion, especially not my wedding before the jilting, ever made me so alive and excited to be who I am.

“You shouldn’t be using that hand.”

“Tell me about it.” He rests his forehead against mine and heaves a sigh. “You know I want you, right?” I laugh again and feel the nerves jangling, hear them.

“There’ve been a few clues.” I glance at his lap and slide my hand to the enormous and heady bulge in his pants, palming him. He sucks in a breath and a satisfying burst of warmth goes through me. The rumble of his chuckle ices the cake of my deep-seated pleasure, underlining the possibility that this is no ordinary tryst or night in the hay or one-night-stand or hook-up or just plain hot fuck I’m surely about to have with him.

Fear skitters along my spine, but it doesn’t extinguish the craving lust, might even enhance it because I am that far gone, that depraved and out of my mind when it comes to this man. This man.

“What you did today, coming all this way… to avenge my honor—”

“Don’t tell me it was foolish, that I’m—”