22. CARTER
CARTER
The construction timeline is off by six days.
The hotel manager has been talking for four minutes about it and I've caught maybe two. Something about the subcontractors. Something about the marble delivery from Tuscany held at customs. I try to ask the right question when he pauses.
The truth is that I am distracted.
I've been like this for days. Present enough just to function. My attention keeps drifting to Sienna. Whether she's on-site. Whether she has eaten and hydrated.
Today is worse. Because of Adrian’s call, this morning at six. He wanted me to hear it from him first. He told me about Sienna being arrested and why. He was worried that if I heard it from someone else, the facts would be distorted and I would end up firing Sienna.
He also told me, in the tone he uses when he's not making suggestions, that if I fired her he'd sue me on her behalf.
I told him I had no intention of doing that.
What he described is not a reason to fire someone. It's the opposite.
The hotel manager is talking about contingency timelines and I keep coming back to what Sienna did. The courage and strength she had. And how it doesn’t fit with the image that I had of her.
The hotel manager pauses. He is waiting for my input to a question I didn’t hear, because I am now watching the subject of my fixation enter the lobby.
She comes through the main doors and I know immediately something is wrong. Her posture. The set of her jaw. The way her eyes move across the lobby searching before they set on mine.
She's in jeans dark with soil from the knees down and a plain white t-shirt. She looks like a woman who has come from a battle and is already ready for another one.
She finds me. Crosses the lobby. Stops near me.
"I need to talk to you," she says. "Now."
I look at her face.
"We'll finish this later," I tell the hotel manager. I make a gesture to Sienna to follow me and we go down the corridor.
The small office is where I take calls I don't want overheard. One desk, two chairs, no windows. I hold the door for her to go through and I close it behind us.
She's still standing when I turn around. Hands at her sides. Her hair is all over the place, and there's a smear of soil on her forearm she doesn't seem to know about. She looks at me with the expression she had in the lobby and I can see she's working up to something, so I wait.
She starts talking.
No setup, no preamble. She tells me about being arrested and the reason why. She doesn't ease into any of it. The parts that don't reflect well on her, she tells those too, same tone, no softening.
I'm trying to track the actual story but I keep losing the thread because my attention keeps going to her face. To the way she's watching me for a reaction and keeping her voice level regardless.
She's the most beautiful thing I've seen in a very long time.
"I'm telling you this because I understand if you don't want MH Group associated with this mess.
" She stops. Starts again. "You're weeks away from opening this hotel.
I can see how much care you've put into it.
Associating your brand with something like this…
it would be a nightmare." A small pause. "I totally understand if—"
I take a step toward her.
Her voice picks up speed. "I know this is a bad time to—"
Another step.
"I just thought you should hear it from me directly rather than—"
I reach her.
I look at her. I can’t fight this anymore.
I pull her in.
She goes still. Hands flat on my chest, a breath of space between us, and for a second neither of us moves. Then I kiss her.
The sound she makes is soft and surprised but she's kissing me back.
I take my time with it. My hand at the side of her face. The slow, unhurried back and forth of it. She's warm and she tastes like heat with something sweet underneath.
I pull back just enough to look at her and whisper.
"Sienna?"
She answers by pulling me back in for a kiss.
My hands find her waist and I lift her onto the desk. She makes a small sound at the shift, her hands grabbing my forearms. I step between her knees.
I run my palms down the outside of her thighs, just to feel the warmth there, and she presses forward into it. I kiss down the side of her neck. She tilts her head back and I press my mouth to the line of her throat, she exhales long and unsteady, her fingers coming up into my hair.
We get frantic. I'm not exactly sure when.
One moment it's slow and deliberate, her mouth and mine, and the next her hands are at my collar and mine are at the hem of her shirt and neither of us is being careful.
The movements are frenzied and urgent, her breath against my ear, my hands everywhere I can reach.
I pull back.
"I want you," I say. "Here. Now."
She reaches for my belt.
"Yes," she says, and pulls me back to her.
I lower myself to one knee. I pull her boot off, set it aside. Then I reach up, take her jeans and underwear by the waist together, and ease them down. They end up inside-out, tangled on the ankle of the leg that still has the boot. Neither of us pays any attention to it.
I press a kiss to the inside of her knee and feel her thigh tremble under my mouth. I kiss slowly up the inside of it and she makes a small impatient sound. I look up at her.
She's watching me, bottom lip caught between her teeth.
I put my mouth at her center.
The sound she makes goes straight through me. This time I do slow down. I keep my mouth soft, learning her, working out where her thighs tighten and where her breathing shifts.
She puts her hand in my hair, not guiding, just holding on.
I press two fingers inside her, curl them forward, find the spot that breaks off her breathing mid-exhale, and I work both at once, fingers curling in a steady rhythm while my tongue circles her clit in slow tight strokes.
She starts rocking against my mouth. Her thighs close around my head.
I feel her getting closer in the way her body tightens on my fingers and the way her sounds are coming shorter now, less controlled, more urgent.
I flatten my tongue, press in harder and she comes apart completely, thighs shaking, hand gripping my hair, a low broken sound punching out of her that I feel in the whole length of my spine.
I stay through all of it. Then I stand.
My jacket is somewhere on the floor. I reach into the inside pocket and find my wallet. Thank God, there's a condom there. I send a prayer to the same God that it’s still good, because it has been a while.
I roll it on while she looks at me with those big brown eyes full of lust.
I step back between her thighs. She's still catching her breath, her hair fully loose now, dark against her shoulders. Her hands are braced on the desk behind her. She looks at me and I look at her.
I push inside her.
We both go still.
I don't move. I'm not ready to.
Her arms come around my neck and her forehead moves forward until it's touching mine. I can feel her breathing against my mouth. Long and slow, hers and mine, settling into the same rhythm.
I've been keeping my distance from this woman for weeks. Carefully, deliberately, without making it a thing. I knew that if it got here it would be more than I was prepared for. I was right.
She's got her face turned slightly into the side of my neck and I can feel every breath she takes, every small shift, and I am not in any hurry for this to be over. In here it's just this. Her and me. Connected.
She shifts her weight forward. Just a fraction. Just closer.
Her lips brush the side of my neck.
"Carter." A whisper. "Please..."
I begin to move.
Slow at first. Watching her face. She keeps her eyes on mine and I keep mine on hers pulling her closer on every stroke.
The sound she makes each time is something I'm going to carry around for a while.
I find the depth that makes her breath hitch and I stay there.
Build it. She starts moving with me, tilting her hips to meet each thrust, and my hands grip her waist tighter.
I push deeper. Her head tips back. I press my mouth to her throat and feel the sound she makes more than hear it.
I lose the measured pace. My hands on her hips, pulling her into each stroke.
Her arms tight around my shoulders, her face against my neck, short urgent sounds breaking against my skin with every movement.
I brace one hand on the desk behind her for leverage and I give her everything, deeper and harder, until she's gasping and clutching at my back and saying my name in a way that has nothing controlled in it.
She tightens around me. I feel her start to come before she makes a sound. Then she does, her whole body going rigid, hands gripping, a low broken noise into my shoulder, and I follow her over it a few strokes later with my forehead pressed against her neck.
My breathing slows. Hers does too. I can feel it in the rise and fall of her chest against mine.
Neither of us moves.