Peanut butter. Chocolate. Something else, something hot and sweet and exhilaratingly masculine.
She found the back of his neck, the warm, soft skin, the brush of his hair against the edge of her finger. She raised her other hand to his shoulder, trailed her thumb along his collarbone. The pressure of his mouth was gentle but encouraging. Patient. Confident.
Her breathing quickened as she parted her lips cautiously. Too soon? Too fast? She didn’t want him to think—
He hummed his approval low in his throat, pushing his tongue between her teeth.
The intimacy nearly stopped her heart.
Her temporarily silenced brain whirred into motion again. When was the last time she’d been touched like this?
She remembered the last guy she slept with, while she was still in the army. A bored, drunken capitulation to impulses that had left her unfulfilled and annoyed. She’d heard his oblivious snoring, felt the bite in the Midwestern spring air as she crossed the apartment complex to her front door, recalled her limp, drained sense of defeat as she shoved her vibrator back into its box.
She remembered the year in Saudi Arabia. Days spent cloaked in a shapeless abaya, drifting around the periphery of her client’s life. Nights alone in her room in a house she shared with three male security guards whose opposite schedules meant she barely knew them. At first she’d enjoyed the privacy, the isolation, the absence of romantic pressure. It had taken a month to feel lonely, another to borrow from her client’s supply of romance novels as bedtime reading, three more weeks to wake from vivid dreams of sizzling passion, true love and the promise of happily-ever-after. One month after that she’d stopped dreaming altogether.
She thought of her mother. Beautiful. Funny. Desperate. Her bra strap falling unnoticed to her elbow as she wrote her phone number on the back of the car salesman’s business card and slid it across the counter.
She thought of her sister. Even more beautiful than their mother. Funnier, sexier, more charming, with even worse taste in men. Her niece’s father, his crooked front teeth—
“Hey.”
Oz’s soft voice jerked her into the present so fiercely she was disoriented. Slowly she put the pieces together. Hotel floor. Video game. His face, brows knitted, eyes questioning.
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere. I’m here.”
He pulled away and she felt his loss keenly, achingly, until she had to dig her fingers into the carpet so she didn’t snatch him back.
“Are you okay? Was that okay? Because if I crossed a line—”
“No, not at all.” She forced a bright smile and tried to ignore the panic drumming in her chest. “I’m fine. We’re fine.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“A mistake, clearly.” Flustered, guilty, embarrassed, she got to her feet.
“Kate? Hang on.” He trailed her to the door and put his hand on hers to stop her from turning the handle.
“I’m going. Don’t be annoyed. It’s not you. This was just a bad idea.”
She could see the why forming in his mind, working its way down to his mouth, and then disappearing. He turned the handle and pushed open the door for her.
“If for some reason the nutritionist asks, you ate the waffles,” he instructed flatly.
“Fine. Goodnight.”
She stepped into the hall, nearly colliding with a handholding couple in formalwear. The door shut behind her without a parting word from Oz. She sighed, waiting for the lovebirds to pass before she started toward the elevator.
She pressed the button too hard, jammed her fingers into too-tight fists, reproaching her foolish disappointment at Oz’s failure to chase after her.
What did she expect? She’d seen his house, his car, his job. He could have any woman he wanted.
She squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to acknowledge the hot tears welling behind her lids. I fucked up, but it’s over now. It’s done.
A ping announced the elevator’s arrival. She stepped aside as the doors slid open to reveal a hotel employee with a room-service cart.
He pushed it past her. The smell of chicken and waffles was unmistakable.
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