Finally, I slide off him and land on my back at his side, both of us breathing hard and staring up at the ceiling.
Shit.
Ever so slowly, the fog of sex clears, and reality starts to seep in.
What the hell did we just do?
Chapter Three
Cole Miller
Sunlight burns into my retinas.
There’s no way. No way that happened. It had to just be the best dream of my life, that’s all.
Oh. Fuck.
I lift up the covers next to me and I’m completely naked, but it seems I have the bed to myself. Shit, maybe it really was just a dream. It seemed more real than a dream. The second I move it feels like a lumberjack splits my head like a piece of wood on a chopping block.
I’m never drinking again.
I try to think back about everything that happened last night, but once I saw Harlow by the ice sculpture, everything gets blurry. I remember bits and pieces of some ridiculously amazing sex with her. Staring around the room, I realize it’s not mine. I’m definitely in a hotel.
The toilet flushes in the bathroom. Shit.
The night comes crashing back into me as I see the light illuminated along the bottom of the bathroom door. The handle turns, like it’s all happening in slow motion.
Harlow Collins steps out of the bathroom, hair disheveled, in her wrinkled black cocktail dress from the wedding. The look on her face is priceless. It looks like she wants to murder me. It scares me and excites me all at the same time.
She sees me awake and glares lasers right at me. I have a terrible hangover and yet somehow, I love every second of this. She’s about to freak out, which means I can have a lot of fun with the moment.
I roll over, facing away from her, like it’s no big deal, and rest my head on the pillow. “It’s early. Come back to bed.” I pat the bed behind me a couple times with my hand.
I smile, where she can’t see, knowing she’s thinking about grabbing the sharpest object she can find and stabbing me in the back with it.
“Come back to bed?” She talks through her teeth. “That’s your go-to line right now?”
I turn back over, pretending to look annoyed, secretly wondering if I could get some morning sex. My dick’s stiff as a board under the covers. “What? It’s no big deal.”
She rushes at me, then stops herself at the last second. She takes a deep breath, trying to compose herself. “No big deal.” She says it at the ceiling, rolling her eyes, then clutches her head.
Seems she drank as much as I did. That’s tough to do.
I shrug. “So we had a little fun. I was good, wasn’t I?”
Harlow is in her own little world, processing last night’s actions. I don’t even know if she heard me or not. She starts pacing, as fast as her hangover will allow, talking to herself. “It’s just sex. It was just a transaction between Cole Miller and me, totally biological…”
“I’m literally lying right here and can hear you.”
She wheels around on me, glaring.
I hold up both hands in surrender. “You can fuck me if you wear a condom.” I smile right at her, then point. “That’s a direct quote.”
She rushes at me, eyes full of hate. “I’ll gouge your goddamn eyes out.”
I grip her forearms and roll over, pinning her to the bed. “You gonna calm…” I stop myself.
Energy radiates through her body. She’s aroused right now. I can feel it in my bones. There’s no way she’ll give in while she’s sober. There’s too much at stake. But I can feel it there, in her DNA, like we’re quantum entangled with one another. It’s so weird. I just feel like I know her, everything she’s thinking.
Her eyes bulge a little, and her jaw sets. “Let. Me. Go.”
I release her wrists and hold my hands up and away. She rolls off the bed and stomps back toward the bathroom.
“I know you wanna fuck again.”
“In your dreams, prick.” She throws up a middle finger.
“More like in yours, princess.” I don’t know why I goad her. I know she has to be seething when I say the word princess. “You’re wet right now, aren’t you?”
She whips around. “I’m going to go into this bathroom and make myself look presentable, and then you and I are never speaking of this again, ever. Am I clear?”
“Whatever you say.” I toss her an obvious and sarcastic wink.
She takes another step toward me. “And for the record, last night was a two out of ten, and I’m drier than the Sahara.”
I glance down at her pussy then back up at her, smirking. “Whatever you say, sweetheart.” I never call women that, ever. But something tells me it’ll get under Harlow’s skin, so why not?
She grinds her teeth. “Bitch.” She checks her phone for a second, swiping through screens, then sets it down on the nightstand and stomps back to the bathroom.
Harlow Collins might be the meanest, most dangerous woman on the earth, and I have no idea why pushing her buttons is so fun. I’m really enjoying myself right now, though. I glance over and see her phone sitting there on the nightstand. It’s blowing up with notifications. I bet she’s one of those people who has everything programmed to her phone, couldn’t live without it.
I pick it up and, surprisingly, it hasn’t locked yet. I flip through to her calendar, listening for her to come out of the bathroom. She’s not a normal chick so I imagine I have five minutes tops, not the usual thirty to an hour most women take to get ready. Harlow wants out of this room as soon as possible too, so I really may only have like three minutes.
An idea comes to me and I smile at myself for thinking of it. I program a meeting for us to discuss marketing work this week, then close out the screen and set her phone back where it was.
Sure as shit, three minutes later she comes out, and she looks as gorgeous as she did last night at the wedding; makeup, hair, everything all done. Why is it so fucking sexy, her getting ready that fast? I can’t stand when women spend an hour making you wait to get ready. It’s so inefficient and a waste of time. And if you do anything to remotely enjoy yourself while they’re getting ready, they give you shit for it, like you’re not allowed to be happy or have a good time while they’re miserable.
I don’t give a shit. I’ll leave someone there in the bathroom.
Anyway, Harlow doesn’t fuck around, and I love that about her. I’m starting to notice I like a lot of things about her, and that’s dangerous. These fucking—feelings, locked away like they’ve been in a vault inside me somewhere, and now they’re breathing air for the first time.
She gathers up all her stuff, turns to me, and says, “I mean it. Please don’t say anything to anyone.”
I give her my most sincere look I can, to let her know I may be a dick, but I’m not a total dick. “I’m not an asshole. I promise, I won’t.”
“Thank you.”
When she walks out of the room, it feels like a small sliver of me goes with her. Like I gave her a small piece of me last night, and she just took it with her. It’s like the temperature just lowered ten degrees, and like details aren’t as vivid, colors aren’t as bright.