by A. J. Pine
“Don’t you guys have overnight bags or something?” Brett called after them. She could hear the twinge of jealousy in his voice, and she wasn’t going to lie to herself. She enjoyed it even if she had no intention of winning him back.
She waved at the other couple over her shoulder and simply yelled back, “Don’t need ’em!” stifling a giggle as she did.
“I think you just won the breakup,” Wes said as they made it to the door.
Annie glanced back toward the elevators, but Brett and Tabitha were gone. She shoved her clutch under her arm. With both of her index fingers, she grabbed Wes by his belt loops.
“Actually, I consider that little interruption quite a setback for the team. The only way I’m winning anything tonight is if you finish what you just started in that elevator.”
He grabbed her purse and withdrew the room card, inserting it into the slot on the door. Then—click. The door opened, and he backed her inside, kicking it shut behind him.
“Whoa,” he said. Annie turned to follow his gaze.
“Whoa is right,” she added as they both set their gazes on the mammoth bed covered in a bright blue duvet and enough pillows for four people.
“Pretty sure the slogan on the website was A blissful honeymoon in every room!”
“Annie Denning,” he said, spinning her to face him again and walking her slowly toward the bed. “I will finish and start again as many times as you want me to.”
She swallowed. “Sounds blissful,” she said, her voice a throaty whisper.
Her legs hit the bed frame, and the mattress was so high she had to hoist herself onto it with her hands. She reached for his palm and pulled until it rested on her thigh. Then she dragged his fingers up, up, until they found where they were only minutes ago.
“More, please,” she said.
His jaw clenched, and his muscles ticked.
“Are you sure, Annie? I don’t want you to have any regrets in the morning.”
She nodded, then dropped to her back on the bed and kicked off her boots. To avoid any further discussion about regrets or her goofy underwear, she simply slid the briefs down her legs and let them fall to the floor.
“More,” she said again, the word slow and drawn out. “Please.”
She took his palm in hers again, placing it gingerly against her mound. He climbed up next to her so they were both sprawled width-wise across the giant bed, propping himself on the elbow of his free arm, the other waiting.
Waiting for what?
“Show me,” he said, his voice gravel rough as the tip of one finger gently slipped past her opening.
Annie breathed in sharply.
“Show me what you like,” he added.
So she did, her palm flat atop his, guiding him down slowly as he plunged deep and explored inside her. Then she slid his hand up toward her stomach until he had left her completely.
“Two fingers this time,” she whispered, and he kissed her as he obeyed, letting her set the pace as he filled her once again—his movement slow and deliberate, her hand still leading his. Long, slow, agonizingly wonderful. She’d never felt anything like it before.
“Annie,” he said softly. “This might be one of the sexiest things I’ve ever done.”
She let out a small giggle, but they still moved in tandem. She’d read the book, the one with the spectacular sex scenes, and now she’d met one of Ethan’s exes in the flesh. She wondered how much truth really did bleed into fiction.
“Really?” she argued. “Just looking at Oksana has to be the sexiest thing anyone has ever done, men and women included. And now that I know she’s Natasha?” She threw a hand over her mouth, but the words came out anyway. “Now that I know she’s Natasha, I’m killing the mood while you are doing perfectly lovely things to me.”
He shook his head.
“Annie.” He kissed her neck, and she let out a quiet hum. “I’m not letting you ruin this for yourself. This?” He tilted his head up and watched their hands perform their slow dance. “Doing this with you? It’s the fucking sexiest thing a girl has ever asked me to do.” He kissed her again. “No. Scratch that.”
See? She was right. Oksana wins at sexy.
“It’s even better because it’s with the most beautiful woman I’ve ever had the privilege to touch.”
This time, as their hands traveled back toward her belly, he paused to spread her wet heat where she ached for it most. Her back arched at the unexpected pleasure, and she decided to ride the wave instead of arguing her point further.
“Let me finish what I started, Annie.”
And that was that. Wes took the reins, pumping his fingers inside her and sliding his body down the length of hers to let his mouth take care of what she needed on the outside.
Her eyes rolled back in her head, but Annie was sure she saw stars as she gripped the bedspread and bucked against Wes’s extremely talented hand and mouth. His tongue circled her swollen clit while one of his fingers found the place to make her burst at the seams. She cried out when she finally couldn’t take any more, her arms splayed at her sides and her legs dangling over the edge of the bed.
Wes looked up at her from where he had just performed his magic and grinned.
“If you ever argue with me again about how sexy you are, Annie Denning, I’m going to have to do that again.”
She let out a soft whimper, one she hoped conveyed that she was going to need a nap before anything like that happened again. But she had enough energy for him.
“I really, really should repay you,” she said dreamily. “I mean, I want to.”
She pushed herself to sitting, her limbs like Jell-O, but she was anything if not determined. She reached for him and urged him toward her.
He didn’t argue, didn’t say another word as she pushed him gently to his back and undid his tie. Next went the buttons of his shirt, and with each one she grew greedier, less gentle, until she tore the last one free and it popped off completely and flew to the floor.
“I’m sorry!” she said, wide eyed, but then started laughing.
“Don’t be.” Wes’s voice was low with an undeniably sexy rasp. “I admire your enthusiasm.”
That was all the encouragement she needed before flicking open the button of his pants and tugging them and his boxer briefs to his ankles. He kicked off his boots, and then his garments were no more.
She sat above him and his proud length, her throat bobbing.
“I take it all back,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
He propped himself on his elbows, his brows furrowed. “Take what back?”
“All those things I said about your sex scenes being too good. That Ethan’s—talent had to be you compensating for something.”
He tilted his head back and laughed. “You never said that.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I did. Just not to you.” She wrapped her palm around him, stroking him once from root to tip, and he groaned. “I’d say I stand corrected.”
And with that her lips were on him, tongue swirling as her mouth followed her hand down to where it had started and back up again, her palm now slick against his erection. He hissed, and she smiled before she sank over him again, and again, and again, savoring the taste of him with slow, determined movements until her name fell from his lips like it was some sort of revelation.
And it was. He was.
She’d had her mind made up about him the second he walked into her bookshop. But now? Now she climbed up next to him and rested her head on his shoulder as he lay grinning, satiated—and she had been the one to put that smile on his face.
They were both spent and sprawled on the bed. And as her eyes fluttered shut, the same thought continued to dance around in her head.
Who is this guy?
And who was she when she was with him? The answer was what scared her the most.
Herself.
The whole night Annie had been 100 percent Annie, and she’d never felt more comfortable in her own skin.
Chapter Eleven
Wes closed his eyes and willed the punishing spray of cold water to bring him back to his senses, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d shown him what she liked, how she guided him through what felt almost more intimate than if they’d had sex.
He hadn’t wanted to leave Annie passed out on the bed all alone, but he needed time to think. Fuck. He was hard again. So he switched the water to hot since he was going to be in there longer than expected.
Release came easily. All he had to do was recall the sounds Annie made for him or the way her body moved when he touched it. The way her lips felt on his cock. He’d intended tonight to be about her, to prove… He didn’t know what the hell he was trying to prove. It started with the book, but he knew it had quickly turned to something more. But what that was he couldn’t define. The writer was once again at a loss for words.
He stepped out of the shower and onto the cool tile of the Blissful Nights bathroom floor. “Huh,” he said aloud, rubbing the fog from the mirror to get a good look at the guy staring back at him. He was smiling, which—yes—was fucking weird. As self-involved as he was when it came to his writer life, he wasn’t one for grinning at himself like an asshole. Yet here he was.
Quite the predicament.
He wrapped a towel around his hips and peeked out the bathroom door and saw that Annie had found her way to one of the pillows and was curled up on her side. His smile widened.
Shit.
He needed to get his head back in the game. This was Jeremy’s sister. Jeremy—who’d not only given him a temporary place to stay but also a temporary job while he figured his shit out. He could not afford to fuck that up. Then there was Annie. She just got out of a relationship. She certainly didn’t need a guy with the emotional maturity of the teenage boy she used to know thinking that he could feel something for her.
“You are a fucking joke,” he said softly to himself. “You can’t even make fictional relationships work. You think you deserve a shot at someone like her?”
Excellent. Now he could add mildly insane to his list of datable qualities.
Annie rolled to her other side and let out a sweet moan.
Tonight. They had tonight. He could keep any and all baggage from infiltrating whatever time they had left together. So he pulled his boxers back on and padded over to the bed, sliding in next to her and pulling her back to his chest. But as much as he tried, he couldn’t ignore that sweet smell of home.
He lasted an hour with her pressed against him, a sweet yet agonizing hour where sleep wouldn’t come. He’d eventually gotten up, intending on jotting down a few notes as a distraction, but he was on page twenty of the hotel notepad, said pages strewn across the small table at which he sat. Some would call it a mess, but Wes liked to think of it as organized chaos. If he didn’t take a break soon, his hand would cramp up completely. But the words wouldn’t stop, so he kept writing.
“Do you have any idea how sexy it is to watch what I assume is a book in progress? Total book lover porn.” She stretched her arms over her head and yawned. “It also helps that you’re almost naked while writing. Seriously. Nothing hotter.”
He kept writing for several more seconds, needing to complete the thought before he forgot it. Then he glanced up to see Annie awake in bed, her red hair adorably disheveled and the bedsheet barely covering her breasts.
He dropped his pen, massaging his cramped hand.
“I was inspired,” he said, unable to hold back his grin when she looked at him like that, not just like she maybe wanted to devour him, but also like she was genuinely interested in what he was doing.
Max was interested because he was Wes’s agent, and to him words were money. For both of them.
Joanne, his editor—sure. She was interested, too. But it was her job.
But Annie had no ulterior motive. Okay, maybe, if he really thought about it, if he wrote another bestseller and she put it on her store’s shelf—yeah. Money, money, money. But that was far beyond the scribbled sheets that lay before him now.
“Can I read?” she asked, then bit her bottom lip.
Shit, she could ask him for all his earthly possessions, and if she did that little lip-biting thing after, he’d give her everything.
“I’ll massage your hand when I’m done,” she added. “And—maybe massage other things, too?”
This time her teeth grazed that full, pink lip, and Wes’s mouth went dry. He swallowed hard.
No one read his rough drafts. Hell, Down This Road was basically his senior thesis, and even after he polished it and turned it in to his professor, he still spent a year after graduation editing and reworking the piece until he couldn’t stand it any longer. It was the only way he survived his mom’s death—throwing himself into his work so completely that everything else didn’t seem real. Was this chemistry between him and Annie real? Or was it just another way to drown out the noise? Whatever it was, it seemed to be working.
He surveyed the table before him, pages everywhere, some crumpled into balls and others still intact. But even the ones he was keeping—to take home and try to use as a start to fifty pages his editor might not laugh at—they were in no shape to be read. By anyone, especially Annie.
“Oh my God, Wes Hartley. I just offered various types of massaging, and you are still trying to think of a way to let me down gently, aren’t you?”
His eyes met hers again, and her brows raised at him in accusation. She crossed her arms and held his gaze, fierce and unrelenting.
“Seriously?” She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “Well, it is two o’clock in the morning. I suppose I could just go back to sleep—have a nice, cozy lie in until late checkout…”
He groaned. “You hated my book.”
Annie rolled her eyes. “Maybe hate is too strong of a word. I just had some issues with the choices your main character made—like choosing to be alone and miserable. Like, refusing to say three simple words that could have brought him happiness. Okay, I had some major issues with that, but whatever. I never said your writing wasn’t brilliant. So what do you say? New book. New main character. New choices. Maybe I’ll love it?”
He leaned back in his chair and eyed her for a long moment.
“You hated my story…but you think my writing is brilliant? I might be able to get behind that.”
“Narcissist.”
He laughed. “I’m a writer. Have you met me?”
She held out her hand, palm turned up. “Gimme.”
Hell, he could not resist this girl.
He gathered up the pages, putting them in some semblance of order, and headed for the bed.
“They’re all yours,” he said. Then he grabbed his clothes and threw them on before making his way to the door.
“Wait,” Annie said. “Where are you going?”
He slid into his boots and shrugged.
“Crossing my fingers there’s a bar still open downstairs. Otherwise I’ll just wander the halls for the next twenty minutes. Letting you read doesn’t mean I have to stay and bear witness.”
He winked at her and slipped out the door before she had a chance to respond—and before she saw him go into panic mode. He paced for a good ten minutes in front of the elevators. Adrenaline pumping through his veins, he had too much energy and hoped he could burn it off before heading downstairs. He was wiping his palms on his pants when he finally pressed the button. His pulse quickened every second he waited for those freaking doors to open.
“Come on,” he said aloud. Being out of the room wasn’t enough. He needed off this floor. He needed something cold in his palm other than his own sweat. He needed reality to be altered just a fraction enough for him to be able to shrug it off when she told him his words were shit. Or better yet, when she flipped out at the likeness of his fiery-haired love interest, Evie, and threatened to sue him for—for—for what? Embellishing life? Wasn’t that what fiction was—a fantastical version of what happens in the normal da
y-to-day? Not that what happened between him and Annie in that room a few hours ago resembled anything close to normal, but still.
Where the fuck is the elevator?
He’d returned to pacing by the time he heard the tell-tale ding, but before he could step foot inside, he heard the click of a handle being turned, heard the soft whoosh of the door sliding open over the carpet. He could still step into the vessel that would lead him to safety—albeit temporarily. Or he could turn toward the sound. Because somehow he knew that open door was for him.
Elevator. Hotel room. It was like he was in the Matrix. Blue pill—he’d find an open bar and make himself forget how much was at stake, that his whole career hinged on the words in her hands and what he was able to turn them into by Monday. Or the red pill. He could go back to the room, take the criticism he knew was coming, and be a better writer for it. Jesus. He was already a bestseller, but somehow the opinion of this one woman meant more than spending ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
The elevator doors closed, and Wes still stood outside them. He shoved his hands in his front pockets and pivoted back toward room five-eleven. When he got there, Annie stood in the open doorway wrapped in the sheet, the pages clutched against her chest—against her heart—beaming.
She was beaming.
At him.
After reading his words.
“She’s not you,” was the first thing he said, which of course made him sound like a dick. “I mean there’s truth in all fiction, right? But Evie is—”
“Plucky,” Annie said with a grin. “I like her. Smart girl with a good head on her shoulders. Though that soda gun incident does sound familiar…”
He laughed softly.
“You have to admit it would be a crime not to memorialize that in fiction.”
She shook her head. “I’m not arguing with you there, sir. But—we need to talk about Jack. The hero.”
Here it was—the big blow. He braced himself. Literally. One hand on each side of the doorframe.
