Still, he didn’t move.
“Well …” Clutching her pocketbook tighter, she set a foot onto the lowest stair. “Good night.”
“Good night, Bailey.”
When she began to climb, he started up too. They ascended together until they hit a point where the stairs divided into separate branches. A fork in the road.
Her stomach twisting with nerves, she chanced a look across. He was looking at her too, a masculine silhouette a mere arm’s length away.
Swirling desire pooled low in her belly and she frowned. “You’re not moving.”
“Neither are you.”
Rolling back her shoulders, she issued a firm and final, “Good night.”
She hiked the rest of the stairs, right to the top. But before she could head off down to her suite, curiosity won out again. She edged a gaze over her right shoulder, to where she’d left Mateo standing seconds ago. What she saw sent her heart dropping in her chest.
He was gone. And wasn’t that what she’d wanted? What she knew was best for both their sakes?
Still, she stared at that vacant spot a moment more, feeling strangely empty and no longer so pretty in her pink designer dress. Shifting her weight, she finally rotated back … and ran right into Mateo’s solid chest.
Her heels balanced on the edge of the stairs, Bailey toppled back. But before she could fall, his arm hooked around her waist, pulling her effortlessly against him. Déjà vu. With the bodice of her dress pinned to his chest—with every one of her reflexes in a tailspin—she worked to catch her breath before croaking out, “I thought you were tired.”
“You said you were tired.” His dark eyes gleamed. “I’m wide awake.”
When she felt his hardness pressed against her belly, she gulped down another breath only to feel him grow harder still. Any doubts she may have had were blown away. The way her own blood was throbbing, taking this steadily growing attraction further seemed frighteningly inevitable.
“Maybe …” She wet her suddenly dry lips. “Maybe we should have that nightcap after all.”
His gaze dropped to her lips. “What kind of nightcap?”
“What would you like?”
His mouth came to within a whisper of hers.
“I’d like you.”
He didn’t waste time waiting for her reply. Bailey supposed he saw all he needed to know in her eyes. He angled and, before she could think beyond I need you to kiss me, she was in his arms and he was moving down the hall, away from her suite, headed for his.
The tall double doors of his suite were open. He didn’t bother to kick them shut after he’d carried her through. Nor did he switch on any lamps. What she could make out in the shadows was courtesy of the light filtering in from the hall as well as the moonbeams slanting through a bank of soaring arched windows that looked out over that garden and its statues below.
He stopped at the foot of his bed and his voice dropped to a low rasp.
“This is what you want?”
Instinctively, her palm wove around the sandpaper of his jaw. She filled her lungs with his scent then skimmed the pad of her thumb over the dent in his chin.
“Yes,” she murmured.
His chest expanded, his grip tightened then he lifted her higher in his arms as his head came purposefully down. When his mouth claimed hers, Bailey couldn’t contain the moan of deepest desire the sensation dragged from her throat. She didn’t want to contain anything. And as his mouth worked magic against hers and his stubble grazed and teased her skin, she pressed herself up and in, needing to feel even closer. Needing him as close as it got.
Her fingers wound through his hair while his throat rumbled with satisfaction and the kiss deepened. Even as her mind and body raged with desire, she was lucid enough to recognize the simple truth. Whatever it was that had sparked when they’d met, it had grown to a point where now they were downright hungry for each other. Starving for each other’s touch in a primal nothing-held-back, nothing-taboo, kind of way. She could never get enough of this burn … of the flames that already leapt and blazed nearly out of control.
When his lips gradually left hers, she felt dizzy. Her eyes remained closed but she heard and felt his breathing. At the edges of her mind, she wondered … why was this coming together so intense? So combustible?
He dipped to sit her on the edge of the mattress. With moonlight spilling in, she dragged the dress up over her head then, in her lingerie, watched as he wound the shirt off his shoulders, the sleeves from his arms. When he was naked, he bent near, slid an arm around her waist and drew her up to stand again. Holding her chin, he ran the wet tip of his tongue along the open seam of her mouth while, at her back, he unsnapped the strapless bra with one deft flick. His palm pressed down the dent of her spine and slipped into the back of her panties. She whimpered as her womb contracted and quivered … a tantalizing prelude to the climax she couldn’t wait to enjoy.
His fingertips pressed and seared into her flesh while his mouth covered hers completely again, and all the time her insides clenched and pulsed while her limbs and mind went to mush. She wanted this heaven to go on forever. But even more, she wanted him bearing down on top of her. Inside of her. Filling and fulfilling her now.
Her hands ironed down his sides. When she reached his lean hips, she urged him forward, toward her and the bed. With their mouths still joined, she felt his smile before he broke the kiss long enough to wrench back the sheets. With a determined gleam in his eyes, he crowded until the back of her legs met the cool edge of the mattress. His big hands ringed her waist and her feet left the ground long enough for him to lay her gently down. He followed a heartbeat behind.
Looming above her, everything seemed to still as he searched her eyes in a world of midnight shadows. His deep low voice seemed to fill the room.
“I didn’t ask you to stay here for this.”
She drew an aimless pattern through the hair at the base of his throat.
“I know.”
“Although I’m not sorry you agreed.”
She matched his grin. “I’m not sorry you asked.”
He dropped a tender kiss at the side of her mouth, a barely there touch that shot a fountain of star-tipped sparks through her every fiber.
“Come with me to France,” he murmured against her lips.
She groaned. The temptation was huge. She’d said no and had meant it. She was starting a job Monday. She didn’t want to take more charity. But those considerations didn’t seem quite so solid since he’d carried her to his bed.
Closing her eyes, she sighed. He was kissing the sensitive spot beneath her left lobe.
“What if I say please?”
She bit her lip. He was killing her.
“I’ll tell you what.” She filed her fingers up over his burning ears, through his hair. “I promise not to say no again if you promise not to ask.”
He moved lower to nuzzle the arc of her neck. “I don’t like when you say no.”
“To everything but that, Mateo …” She hooked her leg around his hip and drew him close. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Mateo couldn’t stop to think about how his unexpected encounter with Bailey Ross had come to this. How they’d gone from strangers to opponents to lovers