Chapter 5
FIVE
Ty
? Do Not Disturb – Halestorm ?
A few minutes later, we’re in the elevator at some fancy-ass hotel a few blocks from the diner, about to go into Eric’s suite.
He’d showered in his dressing room after the show, and in the close confines of the elevator, the scent of his body wash and cologne are not helping my mind stay focused on anything but him.
I know what’s coming when we enter that room. Something he’s likely done with hundreds of women before tonight and will do hundreds of times after, and something I’ve done with less than a handful of people. But right now, I can’t get myself to care.
I’ve been a good girl for twenty-nine years. Maybe it’s time I do something reckless.
Something very, very stupid.
Make a good, bad decision.
We enter his suite and it’s as clean and tidy as his dressing room was, which for some reason, surprises me. I assumed someone who lived on the road would live in chaos, but as I step inside, I notice that there isn’t a single thing out of place.
This man is nothing like I assumed he would be.
When we step into the living area, he turns to face me. His dark blue eyes are somehow even darker now and full of promises. Empty ones, I’m sure, but I’m too far gone to care.
“Can I touch you?” he asks, stepping closer to me, and I almost laugh.
“Isn’t that why I’m here?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he says, tilting his head to the side.
I consider his words. Then consider what I want.
He spent most of the afternoon talking to me. Getting to know me. Asking questions that went beyond the basics—beyond small talk just to loosen me up enough to make a move. He had me alone in his dressing room for hours and didn’t force himself on me. Took me to get something to eat.
He didn’t force me to come here. He asked, and I accepted.
Despite barely knowing this man, I feel safe. Whatever this is between us may only last one night, but I want to know where it leads.
“You should know, if you haven’t figured it out already, that I’ve never done something like this before,” I admit. “I mean, I’ve had sex before. But not with—” I stop myself before I say the wrong thing. Before I take it too far and he asks me to leave.
“Not with…?” he asks, placing a bent finger under my chin and tilting my head up, forcing my eyes to his.
“Not with people I’m not…in love with.”
“Well, you should know, if you haven’t figured it out already, that it’s impossible not to fall in love with me,” he says, a confident smile growing across his lips and revealing those goddamn dimples.
And I don’t doubt it. I can see how easily I could fall for the man standing in front of me. How easily all the other women that had come before me had fallen.
“Don’t worry,” I say, as his forehead dips to rest against mine and his hands gently cup my face. “I’m not na?ve enough to believe love has anything to do with what’s happening right now.”
He looks into my eyes, and I feel like he’s already stripped me bare.
His lips meet mine and the kiss, like the rest of him, is not what I was expecting.
I expected rushed and sloppy. All tongue and teeth with his hands groping mindlessly over my clothes.
But his hands never leave my face and his lips move slowly, almost cautiously against mine.
Like he’s not sure he wants this. Like he’s having second thoughts.
I’m about to pull away when his tongue lightly brushes mine before retreating. A silent request. An invitation. A question.
Is this okay?
I answer by lightly brushing my tongue against his, and a groan escapes his throat and vibrates through me, igniting the spark I’d been trying so hard to stifle.
He presses himself against me and any thoughts I had about him regretting this are forgotten when I feel how hard he is through his jeans.
“Holy shit, Ty,” he says against my mouth, and I moan my agreement. Just kissing this man is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
And then it’s happening. Shirts are coming off.
Breaths are shallower and more ragged. Hands slowly tease and explore.
His mouth pulls away from mine and travels down my neck and to my chest. He kisses my breasts through the fabric of my bra, and I arch into him, desperate for that barrier to be removed and flung across the room.
I want to feel his mouth on me, yet I’m also relishing the sensation of his warm breath through the fabric.
I moan and he smiles against my skin as his mouth moves lower and he falls to his knees before me.
He looks up and watches me as his fingers work the button on my jeans, then the zipper.
He tugs my jeans down my thighs with such force, I have to grip his shoulders so that I don’t fall over.
I step out of them, and he tosses them over his shoulder to who knows where, his eyes never leaving mine.
In that moment—with the man they call The King on his knees before me—I feel more powerful than I ever have.
I thread my fingers into his hair and his eyes flutter closed under my touch.
“What do you want, Your Majesty?” I ask, and his eyes find mine once again.
“You,” he says, without hesitation.
“Then take me,” I say, and a wicked grin grows across his lips.
Heat pools between my thighs as he rises, and I take the briefest second to take him in.
To touch and memorize every hard line and toned muscle of his upper body as I brush my fingers up his tattooed arms, over every swirl of ink, then across his broad chest, and down his stomach.
I watch as goosebumps pebble his skin and his muscles contract under my fingers.
I shift my attention to the scars that stretch down his right side and around to his back.
Scars from an accident he was lucky to have walked away from. Physical reminders of a haunted past.
When I look back up at him, his eyes are closed, and his head is thrown back.
Like just my touch is enough to push him to the edge.
I pull my fingers away and his eyes find mine before he grips my face in his hands and kisses me like I’m the air he needs to breathe.
He slides his hands down my back and under my ass and lifts me into the air.
My legs wrap around his waist as tightly as they can go, and I feel his erection hard against me as he claims my mouth with his.
The muscles between my legs ache with need and my mouth waters in anticipation of what he’ll feel like against my lips. What he’ll taste like on my tongue.
He crosses the room and lays me down on the bed before kissing my neck and sliding his hands under my back to unhook my bra.
He pulls the straps down my arms and tosses it across the room in the general direction of the rest of our clothes, his mouth never leaving my body.
His hands and lips and tongue teasing every inch of bare skin, and I rock my hips against his in silent command.
Please. Please, put me out of my misery.
“What’s your hurry, Ty?” he asks against my skin, the heat of his breath only adding to the tension he’s building inside me. “Don’t you want to stay?”
Stay?
Well aware of the smash and dash situation I’m currently in, I can’t help but feel a bit confused.
“Don’t you want to, you know, get this over with so you can ask me to leave?” I ask.
He raises himself up onto his hands and looks down at me, the muscles in his arms and chest flexing under his weight. He looks directly into my eyes and says, “No.”
I swallow. The usual confident swagger he has about him is gone and has been replaced by something…else. Something I can’t place.
“No, Ty.” He leans down and nuzzles my nose with his, and the intimacy of that small act takes me by surprise. “I want you to stay,” he says against my lips.
Those five simple words set me on fire, and the last bit of restraint I was clinging to snaps.
Our mouths crash into each other. My fingers scrape down his back.
He tears his mouth from mine and kisses his way down my body.
His mouth teases me through the thin fabric of my lace underwear, and I make a sound I’m fairly certain I have never made before in my life.
“Fuck,” he says. “Do that again.”
“Make me,” I challenge.
And he does.
Multiple times.
Until we’re a boneless, sweaty mass of tangled limbs and sheets.
He collapses on top of me, his forehead resting on my chest, both of us so thoroughly exhausted that we’re covered in a thin layer of sweat and fighting to regain control of our breath.
He looks up at me like I’m a question he can’t figure out the answer to before he kisses me and withdraws from my body. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me into him, my back to his sculpted chest.
I move to get up and he tightens his grip.
“Stay,” he murmurs against my neck before placing a gentle kiss there. And then another. And another, and I want to melt into him. But I don’t. I fight to keep control.
Within minutes, his arms relax around me and his breathing deepens, and I know he’s asleep. I wait five more minutes before I move, and when he doesn’t, I pull myself out of the bed, gather my clothes from around the suite, and get dressed.
I’m about to walk to the door when I see a pad of paper and a pen on the desk beside me. I should leave a note. I owe him that much after everything he did for me tonight. Multiple orgasms included.
I press the pen to the paper and hesitate.
Stay.
Surely, he didn’t mean until morning. But…
I want you to stay.
No.
No, I need to do this. I need to get out of here and save us both from the awkward morning after. The polite smiles and the awkward glances. Or worse, the irritation in his voice when he wakes to find the random woman he pulled in off the street is still there.
Tonight was perfect. I don’t need to ruin it by overstaying my welcome.
I jot down the only words I can think of and bolt for the door. I want to look back, but I don’t.
I can’t.
Because I know if I look back, I’ll do what he asked and stay.