I stepped out into the cooler air of the hallway and took a deep breath. “I’m taking the stairs when it’s time to leave.”
“Same.”
We walked down the hall, Sean obviously knowing where he was going. I fell in step beside him, not really looking forward to this party. I wasn’t sold on the engagement any more than Sean apparently was.
“So,” Sean said as we approached an apartment door.
“So what?” I asked when he didn’t continue.
“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” he said, glancing down at me.
“What am I talking about? What are you talking about? You said ‘so’ and then didn’t say anything else.”
“No, I didn’t.” The look he gave me was one where he seemed to be doubting my sanity.
He was really an exasperating person to be around. “Yes, you did.”
Sean gave me a slow smile. “Isla the Intimidator.” He lifted his hands and touched the lapels of my coat. “You don’t scare me.”
“You don’t scare me either but you do annoy me,” I said, honestly. He looked so pleased with himself that I really, really disliked him. I also really hated the fact that my body didn’t seem to agree with me. I felt warm in places that had nothing to do with my winter wear.
This would be a perfect man to hate fuck and it would probably be off-the-charts hot as hell. The thought had me breathing just a little harder, and I felt heat in my cheeks.
It was like he knew what I was thinking. His expression changed, and I saw that same flash of lust in his eyes I’d seen on the elevator.
“Grumpy girl,” he murmured.
“Jerk-off.”
“Man-hater.”
“Asshole,” I said, because it made me angry that I was sexually attracted to him and that he thought he knew anything about me at all.
His grip on my coat tightened and he was leaning in, closer to me. The kiss was actually going to happen this time.
But time stood still, and the anticipation hovered there between us. We both took a breath. It was like the moment when the presenter opens the envelope and knows the winner’s name for an Oscar but doesn’t announce it. Everyone pauses, waits, listens, doesn’t breathe. Then the name is spoken and the room reacts with excitement, cheers, winners jumping up.
It was just like that. We hovered, we waited, then suddenly my name rolled off Sean’s lips in a low, raw demand. “Isla.”
Together we exploded.
The kiss wasn’t tentative or light or questing. It was confident, hard, commanding. When our lips touched, I felt it everywhere. His hands were gripping the collar of my coat, holding me close to him, but it felt like he was stroking every inch of my body. I didn’t shiver. I didn’t melt into him. I collided with him, a hot, furious frenzy of sexual desire.
His tongue invaded my mouth in a sensual dance, a promise of things to come, as he urged me against the wall. I could feel the hard thickness of his cock against my hip and I rocked into it, unrestrained, untethered. It was wild and reckless and filled with raw moans, deep kissing, and his teeth sinking into my tender flesh.
Sean’s hand had shifted and he was cupping my breast, teasing at my nipple. Somewhere in the back of my lust-addled brain, I knew this was a bad idea, but I couldn’t seem to figure out how to stop it.
Then the elevator dinging penetrated the haze.
Someone was about to enter the hallway.
Another minute left alone and Sean would be entering me.
Instead, Sean let go of me so fast I almost fell. I actually stumbled forward, reaching up to wipe my swollen and moist lips. He was breathing hard and he adjusted his hard cock in his pants so it wasn’t as obvious. The corner of his mouth turned up in a sly smile.
“Damn. I kissed a grumpy girl and I liked it,” he said, voice low and rough, still laced with desire.
He turned and knocked on the door, while I struggled to find my equilibrium. What the hell was that? We’d gone from zero to ninety in two seconds.
An older couple emerged from the elevator and started toward us. Simultaneously, the apartment door swung open and revealed a woman in her sixties, poised and stylish. “There you are,” she said. “God, Sean, can you be on time for anything?”
“Hi, Mom.” He stepped forward and kissed her cheek.
“Is this your date?” she asked, giving me a once-over and a polite smile.
I could only imagine what his mother saw. Pink cheeks, swollen lips, disheveled hair, guilty expression. His mother. Jeez.
“No. This is a friend of Felicia’s who was on the elevator with me. She’s also late,” Sean said, giving me a quick grin.
He had just thrown me under the bus with his mother. Charming. He also looked totally unaffected by our kiss. Or our groping and grinding session masquerading as a kiss. Maybe he made out with strangers in hallways all the time, but I didn’t and it had me rattled.
I cleared my throat and managed to say, “Hi, I’m Isla. The elevator actually got stuck. We’ve been trapped in it for ten minutes.”
“Welcome, welcome,” she said. “Come in. You look like you need a drink after being trapped with Sean. God knows I would.”
There was affection in her voice, but also a little bite. Sean kept his easy smile in place, but I could see his jaw twitch in response to his mother’s jab. I felt a smidge of sympathy for him, as well as for Felicia, who was getting this woman as a mother-in-law. She turned and retreated back into the party.
When Sean leaned over to me and murmured, “Give me your number,” I shook my head.
Did I want to go into a dark room and do dirty, sexy things with him? Yes. Yes, I did.
But something about him brought out heightened reactions on my part. I would lose my cool if I spent any sort of time with him.
I didn’t like to lose my cool.
If you lose your cool, you give someone the upper hand. And I wasn’t doing that.
Not even hot sex was worth that.
I wasn’t surprised the gorgeous brunette turned me down, but I was disappointed. I wasn’t even sure what had happened between us other than it was hot as hell. One second we’d been arguing in the elevator, the next we’d been crushed together and slipping each other tongue like the world was ending in five minutes.
“Why not?” I asked her, because if we had that kind of chemistry after ten minutes, what could we do with a whole night together? It was worth pressing her for an explanation. Let her use me to hate fuck out her anger at some other guy who had obviously made her bitter. I would take that hit and enjoy every single second of it.
“Because I don’t like you,” she said, entering my brother’s apartment.
It was loud inside, festive, with holiday decorations everywhere. She peeled her coat off and I tried to take it from her to hang it up, but she waved me off. “You don’t even know me,” I pointed out, wishing for once my mother had kept her casual disdain of me to herself. She hadn’t sold me very well to Isla.
Normally it was just a mild irritation that my mother liked to take cheap shots at me. It was because I was my mother’s dirty little secret. She had stepped outside of her marriage in her thirties, bored with being a housewife, had an affair, and gotten pregnant with me. I had found out purely by accident when I was seventeen after getting kicked out of prep school for drinking. I overheard my parents arguing and it was obvious that my mother thought her reckless behavior had replicated in my own DNA, since I was a bit of a loose cannon.