22. Cassandra
I drewthe hotel key from the pocket of my jeans, pressing it to the door until the light turned green and the lock unlatched.
“Hello?” I called as I eased open the door.
“Do you think someone’s going to answer?” Diego crowded behind me, one hand on my lower back and his other on the door above my head.
“Noa and Lena?”
I hadn’t seen Lena since the game. They’d had dinner reservations and…something. I couldn’t remember what or how long they’d be out.
Inside, the hotel room was clean and empty, one light turned on by the couch and both bedroom doors closed. “Do you think they’re still out or in bed?”
Diego threw his bag onto the couch. “I think they’re?—”
“Shh!” I pressed my finger to my lip. “What if they’re asleep and you wake them up?”
He cocked his head with a look I couldn’t quite read before shrugging. “Okay, let me raid the minibar, and we’ll head to our room.”
Our room. We were sharing a room.
When Diego had booked the room, that we’d share a room the night after the game had been more amorphous. Our flirtation had been more teasing than serious.
“Or I can crash on the couch,” I offered, picking up his duffel bag from the couch.
He stopped raiding the shelves of the mini bar with a raised eyebrow. “Hell no. If you don’t want to share a room, I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to share a room.”
“Then why are you talking about the couch?” He grabbed a handful of mini bottles as he eyed me.
My cheeks blazed. “No reason. Come on. Let’s get into our room before you wake up Noa and Lena.”
During the day, a housekeeper had come through, turning down the bed and throwing open the heavy gold curtains to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the fountain. Below us, tourists milled around the sidewalk, posting up along the fence below to wait for the next show.
I set Diego’s duffel bag in the corner of the room as he dropped the drinks on the coffee table in front of the window. He grabbed a mini bottle and took a sip, staring down at the water below. “Can we hear the music from up here?”
“Yeah. One of the hotel channels. That’s what the concierge said yesterday, anyway.” I fumbled around the bed for the remote and flipped through the channels, pausing on a countdown timer. “Viva Las Vegas is coming up.”
Diego grabbed an upholstered chair butted up against the wall and dragged it to the center of the window. He sat down and patted the armrest. “Come on. Let’s watch.”
The timer had minutes left, and I eyed the chair warily as Diego uncapped a water bottle, head tipped back as he took a gulp. Hell, even the motion of his Adam’s apple did something to me. And after this off-hand comment at the bar and watching a fountain show with him by the glass pane window he’d talked about so casually, I’d spend the rest of my life getting uncomfortably aroused at the song Viva Las Vegas if I wasn’t careful.
Fuck it.
I kicked off my shoes and padded over, perching on the edge of the armrest. Diego grinned up at me, his arm looping around my hips. Despite the football game and the long evening at the museum, he looked refreshed. His black hair flopped over his forehead and his body relaxed into the seat. His grip tightened on my hips, pulling me closer, urging me to relax onto his shoulder. Or I just wanted to do that. Either way, as the music cued up and the lights around the fountain dimmed, I dropped my head onto his shoulder.
Bright lights mirrored water cannons as the song took off. The crowds of people surrounding the water melted away. I closed my eyes to the show, my focus entirely on Diego’s fingertips pressed into my hip, the soft push of his palm pulling me off the edge until I slid off the armrest and onto his lap.
“This is cozy.”
Diego’s soft brown eyes bored into mine, a look of intensity I’d only seen him wear on the field. I shivered. “This is the part where you tell me it’s a joke. All of this is a joke.”
“Call my bluff.” His voice rumbled beneath the pounding of my heartbeat. I blinked, the words piercing my lust, but not quite shifting into a place where they made sense. “If you don’t want this, call my bluff. But fuck, Cassandra, do I want this.”
The proof of that was imprinted on my ass. He cupped my chin, a calloused thumb riding over my cheekbone. I shook my head. “No. I want this too.”
His lips crashed onto mine, sucking all the oxygen from my body and leaving me feeling light-headed. His tongue teased my lips open as his hands reached under the hem of my shirt. Each brush of his fingertips lit me up like a Christmas tree, my entire body buzzing with an energy that concentrated between my legs.
I gripped his hair in my palm, my other hand brushing down his jaw and cupping his neck, my thumb strumming over his Adam’s apple that’d been driving me nuts all night. His fingers brushed down my spine, pausing over the lacy clasp of my bra and continuing a frustrating meander further down. He slipped his palm down the back of my pants, fingers spread as he palmed my ass.
“Fuck, you are sexy,” he growled into my ear before nibbling my ear lobe. A laughably untrue compliment at any other time than now. Because hell if Diego didn’t make me feel sexy. And not a drunk at three a.m. and sort of horny sexy. A type of sexy that felt more circumstantial than sincere. His eyes drank me in like I was an oasis in a desert. Like I was a present on Christmas Day. Like I was exactly what he wanted.
An insane thought that I reveled in, regardless.
“You’re missing the show,” I rasped out as his lips traveled down my neck and his fingers played with the straps of my bra. His thumb brushed the band, tracing the back down to the swell of my breast and back up. I arched my back, urging him to dip his fingers under the fabric, and when that didn’t work, I ground my ass against his lap.
He nipped my shoulder, the light jolt of pain somehow making the throbbing between my thighs worse. So much worse. “Is that what you want?”
The biting? The kissing? The unbearable teasing? Absolutely.
“Yes, please.”
His lips curled in a smile against my skin. “You want to watch the show? Okay.”
He lifted me out of his lap before I realized my mistake. My palms pressed against the cool glass of the window, catching my balance at the same time as he steadied me, palms on my hips. “That’s not what I meant.”
“But it was a great idea, anyway.” He pulled my hips into his as one hand wound its way up my stomach. My shirt bunched under my arms and I pulled it off as his hand cupped my covered breast.
I closed my eyes, setting my forehead against the window with a groan. “This is torture.”
“Torture?” His breath was hot against my ear. He’d stripped off his shirt and his torso grazed my back. “Torture is having you call at two in the morning to invite me over and having to say no.”
His fingers unclasped the bra and my knees buckled in relief as he pulled the scrap of lace off. It fluttered to the floor along with any rational thought I had left. He palmed my breast, and I lost all the irrational thought. I rubbed against him, the pain between my legs unbearable.
“Not yet,” he muttered into my ear. “Patience.”
One arm wrapped around my chest, he eased down my pants to the closing chorus of Viva Las Vegas. The AI voice on the television announced another song in fifteen minutes.
“Do you think you can wait fifteen more minutes?”
I shook my head. I didn’t think I would last one more minute. Hell, probably not five seconds if he kept talking in that low grumbly fuck me voice.
“Me neither,” he admitted into my ear as his fingers hooked my thong, pulling it down my legs.
I writhed against the cold glass, faintly aware I should be actively taking part but unable to make my body cooperate. Diego removed his pants and rustled around in the duffel bag that I’d set by the door. A second later, his dick slid between my thighs and his arms wrapped around my waist. “Tell me you want me to fuck you, Cassandra.”
I closed my eyes, head falling back against his shoulder as my arm wrapped around to grip his ass. “Mm-hmm.”
He shook his head. “No. Say it. I want to know that you want this as much as I do.”
I was hopelessly wet. Hopelessly horny. Hopeless. “Fuck me, Diego. Please. I want it so bad.”
I opened my eyes and stared up at him. His jaw tensed and he drove into me. He filled me completely, my entire body brimming with electricity as he pressed his palm against the window, the other gripping my waist. I leaned back into him. His hard muscled chest molding against my back as his hand slipped down my hip, navigating through the small patch of hair before his thumb swiped across my clit.
My hips bucked, and I moaned, the pleasure of having him around me and in me almost too much to take. His thumb made another pass and this time, he didn’t wait for me to move. He loosened his grip on the windowpane, curling his arm around my chest, his fingers playing with my nipple in the same intoxicating rhythm as his hand on my clit.
“Diego, I’m close,” I panted. I wasn’t just close. I was done. Head over heels. Obsessed. Finding an orgasm with the last guy I dated required dinner, a toy, and an engraved invitation, but Diego had me on the verge of coming within the span of a cheesy song from the ‘60s.
“Good.” He tightened his grip on my chest, pulling me flush with him so his breath warmed my ear. “Because I’m not going to last long, baby. After I’ve been thinking about you like this all night. Fuck, all week. Since the first time I saw you. And I want to feel you orgasm while I’m burrowed deep inside you. I want you to feel how bad you need me.”
“I need you,” I said through shuddered breath, already losing my grip on reality. I pressed both my palms against the cool window, leveraging against the glass to drive Diego deeper into me. Once. Twice. Three Times.
My body tensed as waves of pleasure washed over me. Diego thrust one last time, his arms tensing around me as my limbs turned limp and my mind went completely blank.
“Perfect,” he murmured into my hair. “So perfect.”
“Liar. But I like hearing it, anyway.”
He swept me up and placed me on the bed, my body exhausted and my mind in overdrive. Instead of a perfect post-coital nothingness, questions about what just happened clouded my mind. What about the contract? What about the rest of the season? What about us?
I beat back the thoughts.
“Noa and Lena are in the room next door, right?” I asked as my mind careened around the events that ended with me in bed with Diego.
Silence. I pushed up to face Diego, only temporarily distracted by his very chiseled, very shirtless torso. “Right? Because I haven’t heard anything from their room and now that I think about it, Lena put her suitcase in the living room before we left for the game.”
“Wow, that’s where your head is at?” Diego grinned.
“You tricked me.”
“You didn’t really give me an opportunity to correct you.” His fingertips skated along my bare back, eyes dropping down to my chest appreciatively. The edge of his lip pulled up into a grin that made my body sizzle and reminded me how screwed I was now that we’d slept together.
I settled back into his arms, setting my chin on his chest. “Fair point.”
“So, huge mistake?”
“What happens in Vegas, right?”
An imprint of a frown formed on his face before fading away. “Right.”