Chapter 21 #3
“Stunning.” It comes out rough. He pulls back half an inch, eyes black, and just looks at me. Bra. Underwear. Heels still on, because neither of us has bothered to take them off. “Stunning.”
“You said that.”
“I’ll say it again.”
He reaches behind me, finds the clasp, and the bra’s gone in one practiced motion that I’m choosing not to think about, and then his mouth is on my breast, and he makes a noise.
“Shh,” I say.
“You shush.”
“Jonah.”
“There are people on the other side of that wall.”
“Fine. I’ll be quiet… until you’re not.”
“Deal.” His hand slides down, hooks into the side of my underwear, and tugs, and they go too, just like that, and I’m standing in a hotel lounge in nothing but black strappy heels with Jonah Holt’s mouth on my throat and his hand low between my thighs and I am, frankly, fine with all of it.
He’s still fully dressed. I am not okay with that.
I shove at his suit jacket—he shrugs out of it, lets it fall, doesn’t even look at where it lands—and my hands go to his belt.
I am not graceful. I get the buckle on the second try.
The button. The zipper. He helps. He kicks his shoes off in a way that I will replay in my head later.
The pants go. The boxers go. He pulls a foil square out of his wallet before the wallet hits the carpet, and his hands are shaking just enough that I notice and feel a surge of triumph about it.
“You came prepared.”
“You’re wearing the dress, Lane.”
“Was wearing.”
“Was wearing.”
He gets the condom on. I don’t watch him do it because if I do I’m going to combust on the spot, and instead I put my hands on his chest—still in the white shirt, which he hasn’t bothered to take off, just unbuttoned somewhere along the way and shoved open—and I push.
He goes. He sits. He drops onto the leather couch behind him with a low sound, head tipped back, and looks up at me with an expression that I am going to carry to my grave.
“Come here.”
I come there. Heels on.
I plant one knee on the couch beside his hip. Then the other. The leather is cool against my shins. He’s hot under my hands, warm everywhere, his palms sliding up the backs of my thighs like he’s trying to memorize the route. His mouth finds the curve of my breast again. I shudder.
“Slow,” he says, hands on my hips. “Slow, Zoe.”
“You’re the one who—”
“I know. Slow.”
I lower myself onto him by inches, eyes locked on his, and his breath comes out in a long, careful exhale, and his fingers dig into the meat of my hips. I stop halfway. I have to. My whole body is a live wire, and the angle is doing something I was not braced for.
“Okay?” he breathes.
“Yeah.”
“Take your time.”
“I don’t want to take my time.”
“Zoe—”
“I cannot take my time.”
I sink the rest of the way down, slow but not careful, and I put his finger in my mouth and suck so I don’t make the sound I need to make.
I sit for a second, fully seated, forehead pressed to his, breathing him in, both of us frozen.
Then I move.
Up. Down. Slow at first because my thighs shake. He helps—his hands on my hips, lifting, guiding, the kind of strong that hockey gives a person. His mouth finds my nipple, hot and hungry, and I bite down on the side of my own hand to keep from being the reason a hotel staffer files a complaint.
“Faster,” he says against my skin.
“Yeah.”
“Faster, Zoe.”
I go faster. I am not graceful about it. Neither is he.
This is animal. His mouth, my hands in his hair, the slap of skin against skin that I’m praying the leather couch is absorbing, the smell of him under the cologne, the heat of him under my hands.
I have never had this with anyone. Not like this. Not the urgency. Not the need that lives somewhere behind the ribs and chews. The boys before him were nice. They were considerate. They asked questions. They tried.
This is not trying. This is happening.
“Zoe.”
“Mm.”
“Look at me.”
I look at him. His pupils are gone. His mouth is open.
He looks wrecked already, hair stuck to his forehead, the shirt still hanging open off his shoulders, and the sight of him under me—Jonah Holt, NHL grump, the man who filled a ballroom for me an hour ago—does something to my chest that’s going to be a problem later.
His thumb finds me where we meet. Presses. Circles.
I jerk forward against him with a noise. A loud one.
“There it is.”
“Shit.”
He’s edging me. He’s doing it on purpose.
He’s pulling back when I’m close, slowing his hips, lifting his thumb, making me chase it.
Twice. Three times. I’m going to murder him in this hotel lounge, bury him under the leather couch, and the staff will find him in the morning and my podcast will get a true-crime spinoff after all.
“Holt.”
“Yeah.”
“I swear to God.”
“Yeah.”
“If you do that one more time—”
He does it one more time. Slows. Stops his thumb a centimeter from where I need it. Watches my face. Smug. Beautiful. Insufferable.
“Beg,” he says.
“Absolutely not.”
“Beg, Lane.”
“Fuck me, Jonah. Before I die.”
That cracks him. His head tips back against the couch and he laughs—silent, shaking, his whole chest moving under my palms—and then his hands tighten on my hips and he drives up into me hard enough that I lose the thread of the argument entirely.
“Fine,” he says, rough. “I’ll do it.”
“Do it harder.”
He thrusts up. I grind down. His thumb is back where it belongs.
His other hand splays across my lower back, holding me to him, and I lean forward and bury my face in his shoulder and bite down on the white cotton of his shirt to keep from shouting, and he says my name, just once, low and ragged, and that’s it. That’s all I needed.
I shatter on top of him, crying out. The leather creaks.
His hips stutter, lose their rhythm, lose everything, and he follows me a beat later with a sound he muffles against my hair.
His whole body locks up under me. His fingers dig in.
I feel him pulse inside me, shuddering, and I ride every aftershock with him, slower now, helpless, both of us trembling, both of us soaked, both of us reduced to whatever this is.
For a second after, neither of us move.
I am draped over him like a fainting Victorian. My face is against his neck. His arms are around me. His heart’s going at a pace that should concern a team doctor.
“Jesus,” he says, finally, to the ceiling.
“Yeah.”
“Zoe.”
“Yeah.”
“That was—”
“Yeah.”
I lift my head. I look at him. He looks at me. His hair is a disaster. His shirt is sticking to him. There is, I notice with a slow, horrified delight, a lipstick mark on the side of his jaw.
“Holt. We have to leave this room.”
“Mm.”
“There are people out there.”
“Mm.”
“Move.”
He doesn’t move. He pulls me down and kisses me. This is a slow one, a patient one, one that takes its time and means something.
He breaks the kiss. Sets his forehead against mine.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Up.”
I climb off him. My legs don’t work. He steadies me with one hand at my waist while he deals with the condom, his pants, and the rest of his clothing situation, and I bend down and gather the silk puddle off the carpet, and there is an undignified moment where I am hopping on one foot trying to step back into a dress while also trying to find my underwear, which is somewhere under the coffee table.
He spots them first. Hands them over with a smug grin.
“Zip me up.”
He does, his knuckles brushing the line of my spine all the way to the top. I shiver, and he laughs against the back of my neck, and presses a kiss there.
I find the bra and stuff it into my clutch, which has popped open and ejected three business cards onto the carpet, which I scrabble to pick up. He buttons his shirt with the calm of a man who has not just done what he’s just done. Smooths the suit jacket. Runs a hand through his hair.
I catch my reflection in the dark glass of the bar mirror behind him.
Oh, no. I look like a woman who has just been thoroughly and athletically ruined in a hotel lounge. Hair flat on one side, voluminous on the other. Lipstick smudged. At least the dress is fine.
He licks his thumb and works on the lipstick mark on his jaw, head tilted. I fluff my hair with my fingers. Smooth the dress. Reapply lipstick. Blot on the back of my wrist.
He stands behind me and lifts one wrecked curl back into the general vicinity of where it was, and our eyes meet in the mirror.
“Okay,” he says, low. “Acceptable.”
“Acceptable?”
“Stunning.”
“Better.”
He picks up the coat. Drapes it over my arm. Opens the door an inch. Listens. Peeks. Steps back.
“All clear.”
We slip out into the hallway. The carpet feels eight thousand miles long.
We walk past the framed fish photo and the fire extinguisher and back into the lobby like two people who absolutely just stepped out of a lounge to take a private business call.
My heart’s going so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
Jonah’s hand is in the small of my back—back where it lives—and I can feel his thumb moving in tiny circles through the silk like he can’t quite stop touching me.
A staffer in a black vest nods at us as we pass. I nod back. Regal. As if my underwear is not, at this exact moment, balled up in a clutch.
We hit the chilly night air, and the valet whistles for our car. I let out a breath that’s been trapped in my chest since the moment the lounge door opened.
“Holt.”
“Let me guess: this didn’t happen.”
“Right.”