Chapter 10 #3
“Let me just—” I squeezed past him to grab my stuff off the bed, tried to ignore that both of my suitcases stood in one corner, my accessories on top of the dresser, with my straightener, curling iron, and blow-dryer right beside them because the mirror in his room was bigger than the one in the bathroom.
Because I didn’t know it would ever be his room.
I couldn’t even be particularly mad because, essentially, this was my fault.
If I hadn’t asked for nightlife suggestions, they never would’ve gone out, gotten caught, and Elliot wouldn’t have gotten in trouble with his grandfather, who wouldn’t have banished him into the intern accommodation I was currently occupying.
The only thing I could do was play it cool and hope he was drunk enough to forget the sight of my lingerie by morning. There was no need for him to know what I wore below my clothes. The thought alone brought more color to my already red cheeks and more tumult to my already fluttering stomach.
Embarrassing. Unprofessional. That’s what it was; that’s why I felt this way.
I scooped every single piece on his bed up into my arms, and it felt a little wrong, destroying my perfectly laid-out plans.
When I turned back around with a Sorry already on my lips, he was blocking the door.
Unintentionally, I think. He was just big, and this apartment was so very small in comparison to everywhere else we’d been.
The office was huge. The coffee shop was too public to be considered an intimate space. No need to mention the bar; that thing was the opposite.
This room, though, at one in the morning, was the epitome of everything one would imagine when hearing tiny room in the middle of the night with a handsome, tall man in the doorway. Small and intimate and—did his eyes just flick to my lips? Or just the clothes bunched up in my arms?
“Sorry,” I breathed. I didn’t need to be louder because he was right there. And I didn’t want to make apologizing to him a habit, anyway.
“For using my room as a walk-in closet?” he asked, and his lips quirked. “Or for cursing me with the knowledge of what’s below those perfectly curated outfits of yours for the rest of my fucking life?”
Bingo.
There was the swearing again. The reminder that he was drunk, that he didn’t mean what he was saying, that he probably (hopefully) wouldn’t remember this conversation tomorrow.
That we’d wake up, back to reluctant colleagues who’d never experienced the exact tension I’d been running away from my entire life.
I was tired. He was drunk. We both weren’t being ourselves, which made the step I took toward him more defensible. In my head, it clearly meant Could you let me through? But his pupils dilated, and his eyes widened for a second, and only then did I realize that my assumption was off.
Taking a step toward a good-looking man in dim lighting usually didn’t mean I want to leave. It usually just meant I want you.
In the way I’d told him a thousand times that I didn’t.
I didn’t answer his hypothetical question, just whispered, “Sorry.”
“What for this time?” he asked.
“I’m tired,” I prefaced.
“And I’m—tipsy.”
I suppressed my smile. “Sorry for the room. Sorry for the underwear—”
“Definitely don’t apologize for that.”
“Sorry for . . . getting closer. I shouldn’t have done that.” But I didn’t take a step back. Watched his lips curl, his tongue flick across them, and him, not moving away either. My lack of sleep was making me delirious, I think. I couldn’t explain what was happening any other way.
He shook his head. “I’m the one not letting you leave, so I should be sorry.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
Something in the pit of my stomach flared, sent heat up my spine, all the way into my cheeks. If possible, the room shrank further. Nothing between us but the bundle of clothes still in my arms.
Time passed. I didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t seem in a hurry to say anything else at all. With every second of silence, the room got hotter, my skin clammier, and the olive-green lace panties on top of the pile in my arms more obvious.
To his credit, he hadn’t glanced at them once.
Elliot sighed, crossed his arms, and leaned his shoulder against the wall. He made a decision, right then and there. “We should sleep, right?” he murmured. “It’s way past your bedtime, and nothing good happens after midnight, anyway.”
Whether the suggestion was for his sake or my own, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that it snapped me out of whatever fatigue-induced trance I’d been in—where I’d been playing with the possibility of kissing Elliot Ashwood, even if just for a second—and catapulted me out of the room.
“Sorry,” I said again, then felt incredibly stupid for it. “I’ll get the rest of my stuff tomorrow.” Because there was no way I’d step another foot in his vicinity when it was dark and late and neither of us was in a state known for critical thinking skills.
Tired and drunk, that’s all we’d been. I kept repeating the words until they lulled me into a short, dreamless sleep.