11. Ivy
IVY
Four weeks after that one night we spent together, he still invades all my midnight thoughts. Trouble is, I have to hold all those thoughts at bay when I see him. We are a rubber band that snaps back to bodyguard-client, as if we never engaged in any other kind of relationship.
At the end of a long day in the fourth week, he escorts me to my suite. I slide off my pumps in the elevator, sighing with relief.
Exhaustion gets the better of me.
“Getting a little risqué, aren’t you?” he asks, and that—that teasing again—feels good. I’ve missed it. So damn much.
I laugh. “Nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“True. Though if memory serves?—”
He stops himself. But I know where he’s going. “I didn’t take them off that night,” I say, finishing for him.
He draws a sharp breath, taking a beat, like he’s considering whether to speak at all. When he does, his voice is low, controlled. “No, you left your shoes on,” he says, as if it costs him everything to keep his tone neutral. But it’s hardly neutral. I can hear the lust in it. Thick and heavy.
I want to revel in it. Wrap myself in it. But he needs to make the move. He needs to take the step toward me.
We reach my floor and walk down the hall, my shoes in my hand. The door seems to loom larger, like a tantalizing invitation into another world.
Into a daring, dangerous world pulsing with nighttime desires.
A world I should avoid.
A world I can’t reconcile with my days.
Just like I don’t know how to exist with wanting a man I see every day but can’t have.
When I reach my door, I turn to Callum, my heart pounding, my chest aching.
“Callum,” I say, desperate to add more, to say, Take me to bed tonight.
“Ivy.” It comes out raspy, needy.
My fingers twitch. My body aches. I want him to jerk me against him, slam his pelvis to mine, drag his hands through my hair. I want him to toss me on the bed, flip me onto all fours, pound into me, come on me.
Then hold me all night.
I draw a breath, wishing it would erase all the conflicting images.
He’s staring at my shoes still. His hands are clenched in fists.
“They’re great shoes.” He looks up, meeting my eyes, his brown irises glimmering with a thousand fires.
“For the record, you wore them the last few nights when I was home alone too,” he says in a hot, dirty whisper, then he turns to go.
I nearly moan in frustration as he leaves me with that naughty thought. Him getting himself off.
That filthy, sexy-as-hell image.
I head inside, my skin sizzling, my breath coming fast. I lean against the door, wanting desperately to yank it open and tell him to get his fine ass in here and bend me over the bed.
Resisting him is not easier.
It’s harder.
So much harder.