Page 56

Without turning away, Alli managed to get a hand into her clutch and found the key card by feel. She waved it in front of the doorknob, finally breaking their kiss.

The light on the lock went red. Then red again.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she muttered under her breath. “What fresh hell is this?”

He took the card from her nerveless fingers and turned it over, waving it one more time. The light went green.

Thank the heavens above.

He pushed down the handle, and they entered her room with the door slamming shut behind them. Within a split second, she was backed into the wall beside it, his lips on her again, their tongues playing a game of tag, but this time they were both the winners.

As quickly as it had all started, he stopped.

His breathing was ragged and his expression tortured, as if someone was plunging a knife into his torso repeatedly. She almost asked if he was okay, but then it hit her why he looked that way.

“Alli,” Sam said, his voice rough and low. “You can stop this right now. One word. Just say no. I’ll walk away, and we’ll never speak of it again. This won’t jeopardize your job in any way. None of this does. If I’ve been reading the signs wrong, then I humbly apologize. Just know that nothing happens here tonight unless it’s what you want.”

He’s giving me the choice. He’s not going to push.

He might be able to stop and walk away, but she wasn’t sure she could say the same. Since the moment she’d seen him that night at Tate’s, she’d been attracted to him. That had only intensified as she’d come to know him in a more personal way.

She believed Sam Winslow was a good man.

And she wanted to rip his clothes off.

She put both hands flat on his chest, not to push him away, but to look straight up at him.

“I’m not drunk. I’m not confused, and I’m not swept away. I am not going to wake up tomorrow morning and decide you talked me into something. I want this. Me. My decision. If it blows up, it blows up on me, and I’ll live with it.”

It didn’t seem like he believed her.

“So unless you’ve changed your mind,” she said, “stop being noble and kiss me again.”

This time he didn’t argue or hesitate. Thank goodness, he took her at her word and swept her back into his arms, his lips slamming down on hers.

Whatever careful thing had been holding him together all evening had left the building. They were both pawing at one another like animals, and it was possibly the hottest thing she’d ever experienced.

She didn’t have a clue how she’d managed it, but she’d somehow undone the buttons of his shirt. She pushed the material over his shoulders, and he shrugged out of it, the cuff momentarily snagging on his watch. He cursed softly but extricated it, tossing it carelessly aside.

His hands slid down her sides and gripped her hips, and he lifted easily, so that she was pressed up against the wall. She wound her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, and the black dress rode up her thighs, exposing the sensitive flesh to his questing hands.

She dug her fingers into his muscular shoulders, hanging on for dear life as the world spun and tilted. She pressed her mouth to his jaw, the tang of salt from his skin on her tongue.

His lips glided down her neck, open and hot, and she felt the scrape of his stubble and tipped her head back to give him easier access to that spot that made her eyes roll back in her head.

“Sam.”

He whispered something back, but she couldn’t hear a thing with the blood roaring in her ears. His questing fingers slid under the skirt of her dress and then her panties, finding her hot, slick, and ready. She had to muffle her own moan against his throat or the entire hotel floor would have heard her. She was already teetering on the precipice, and he’d barely touched her.

Pressed between her legs, she could feel him as well, his hard length letting her know that he was as affected as she was.

“Bed?” he panted, nibbling at her collarbone and sending arrows of arousal straight to her core.

“No time,” she shot back, insinuating her hand between them to flick open his belt.

A ragged groan escaped from his lips as her palm brushed him. It made her feel powerful that she could make him feel like this.

Slipping her hand into his trousers, she wrapped her hand around him, drawing a low, guttural moan that was hot as hell.