Before That Promise

by Violet Duke

“If I ask you, nicely this time, will you stay with me tonight?” he ventured then. “I have a two-bedroom suite so you’ll have a room all to yourself. We’ll have a chaste night of movies and gourmet popcorn before you turn in. I’ll be a perfect gentleman, I swear.”

  Something about the way she looked…disappointed by that last vow nearly took his knees out.

  “If I wanted the ‘perfect gentleman,’ I’d have gone back to Landon’s place,” she replied in a soft, you-can-be-such-an-idiot tone before turning to head back to the hotel. “I came to see you. So as long as you manage to evolve a few thousand years, and turn back into your pre-bibbity-bobbity-boo self before we make it back to your suite, then yes, I’d love to spend a chaste night with you and sleep in your spare room, thank you.”

  Holy hell.

  This was a new, equally potent side of Skylar he’d never seen before.

  And damn, he was already a fan.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The ‘chaste movie’ they’d both agreed on ended up being mostly ignored and eventually turned off completely, in favor of their taking blankets and pillows out to the lavish balcony to talk under the stars.

  Drew knew from the second she’d plopped down beside him on the cozy patio sofa that he was going to be in for the granddaddy of all cold showers later on tonight.

  So he made sure to maintain a foot-wide gap between them at all times.

  Okay, okay, so maybe it was closer to half a foot.

  He was cautious, not superhuman.

  “I know I’m three years younger than you, but is it okay for me to be proud of you?” asked Skylar, snuggling up a little closer in an effort to keep her dainty little frame warm.

  He tensed, just as he had when the six-inch gap he’d initially placed between them had shrank down to three—yes, he’d been keeping track. The inches were directly proportionate to his ability to keep his hands off of her.

  Now they were officially at zero.

  …With his right arm reaching around to tuck her in even closer.

  He was a weak, weak man.

  “You sound like Lia,” he replied eventually, remembering belatedly she’d asked a question before stealing the last of his restraint in the no-touching department. “She’s always going on about how proud she is.”

  “Oh, believe me, I know,” chuckled Skylar softly. “And she has good reason. Look at what you’ve accomplished. How many college seniors can say they were courted with job perks like these by a major Vegas hotel?” Her gaze collided with his, and held. “But more than that, I’d bet any amount in the world you tried to turn all this down at first. Am I right?”

  It appeared his white hat was perhaps a little too spiffed and polished.

  Her chuckles grew triumphant…and more affectionate. “That’s what I’ve always liked about you. I never have to wonder where due north is for you.”

  “Skylar, I’m far from a saint.” Just needed to get that out there.

  Her lips lifted into what felt like another silent laugh, which inadvertently brushed against the column of his neck, and began inspiring all sorts of vivid Skylar-based fantasies that proved just how far he was from being a saint.

  “I like that about you, too,” she admitted on a smiling whisper as she contentedly wiggled her toes in the more-expensive-than-half-his-closet fuzzy white slippers the hotel had provided. Studying the plush slippers, she released a sighing chuckle, “I should have known the owner of the hotel would upgrade you after you dazzled him with your hacker chops. And to think I knocked on the door of the room the guys had booked for you seven times.”

  Instantly, every muscle in his body seized up, with something akin to blinding panic rushing into his veins. “You what?”

  She glanced up. “I was way down on the twenty-third floor at the room Lia told me you’d be in, knocking away all night. Your best bud Landon was with me for the last couple of times, too.”

  For the first and only time that night, he was thankful of that latter fact.

  “Skylar, the hotel gave that room to someone else. It could’ve been a criminal who answered the door. Or worse.”

  His arms became full-body shackles around her when the thought of her being hurt slammed into him.

  She gave a surprised mini-yelp, and then quickly tried to reassure him, “Drew, I’m fine. No one answered the door.”

  Where once he’d thought the neverending possessiveness he felt about her was his most primal fate, he now discovered his protectiveness over her far eclipsed it. “Don’t ever do anything so recklessly romantic again. Not for me or anyone. I’d never forgive myself if anything had happened to you. And I sure as hell would’ve made sure no living soul would ever be able to forgive the man who harmed you.”

  Eyes glued to his, her breathing faltered at whatever she saw in its depths. “Wh-what happened to your due north?”

  He slid his hands up to cup both sides of her face. “I’m looking at it. Don’t ever doubt that where my moral compass is concerned, you’re my due north. More than I realized. More and more every day, it seems.” Strange, how this was the first time he was admitting out loud that he often pictured Skylar in his future, and yet it didn’t sound at all foreign coming out of his mouth.

  Her gaze fell to his lips as he uttered that declaration and it took every last bit of restraint in his body to keep himself from kissing her.

  Because he knew that once he did, he’d never be able to let her go.

  “We should probably head to bed,” he whispered, his forehead lightly resting against hers. “We have an early morning drive ahead of us.”

  She blinked those incredible blue eyes in surprise, breaking the spell.

  A good thing seeing as how his thoughts had been quickly redirecting him due south, moral compass and all.

  “Drew, you don’t have to do that. I told you I have a seat on the redeye back to Arizona. I just need to be back by afternoon when everyone gets home from the care center.”

  He tilted his head and asked, even though he already knew the answer, “And what happens when—not if, but when—you hear about all those traveling working parents who desperately need to switch to an earlier flight to be able to get back to their kids so they can see their little faces when they open presents in front of the tree right after breakfast? Or all the hopeless romantics heartbroken over the idea of not being able to carry out their yearly holiday traditions they hadn’t ever been in danger of missing once until now? Or those brave, selfless soldiers who only have a one-day pass to be able to get home to see the family they hadn’t seen all year? What happens when you hear about how badly they all need a seat on your flight?”

  That adorable lip-biting was back, along with a concerned look…undoubtedly over all those hypothetical people he’d just described.

  “That’s what I thought,” he murmured, powerless to stop the faint kiss he pressed against her temple. “You’d give your seat up to every last one of them, probably every day straight through to the New Year.”

  He smiled over her silently fierce so-sue-me look. “That’s why, like I said, we have an early morning drive back to Arizona.”

  He stood them both up and forced himself to step away from her. “I’ll wake you up around six a.m. That’ll give us three hours of shut-eye before we have to head out.”

  Instead of balking over the early hour, which was basically like the crack of dawn for a decidedly non-morning person like Skylar, she surprised the hell out of him by giving him a quick peck on the cheek and a hug that wasn’t quick at all. “Thank you, Drew. For the room, the ride…everything.”

  “My pleasure. Sweet dreams, beautiful.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Skylar practically floated to her room on the other side of the hotel suite.

  After which, she proceeded to melt down to a puddle of goo when Drew texted her the absolute last thing she’d expect from any guy at this very moment:

  >> DON’T FORGET TO CALL YOUR FOLKS. I’M SURE THEY’RE WORRIED…FOR
MORE REASONS THAN ONE. AND TELL YOUR DAD HE CAN CALL ME TO ROLL OUT ALL THE FATHERLY THREATS HE WANTS.

  When she finally recovered from all the swooning, she did just that.

  Earlier tonight, after she’d found Drew, she had contacted her parents—well, texted very informatively—to let them know she was going to be staying with him instead of at the airport hotel. Her dad was the first to text back seconds later. In full dad-mode. But her stepmom Tessa was quick to follow up with a text that trumped his, mainly focused on how much they trusted her decisions.

  That aside, as Drew had correctly predicted, they were both happy to hear from her, regardless of the late hour, and noticeably relieved to hear she was getting ready for bed, specifically because of the late hour.

  She gave her dad a lot of silent kudos for not trying to suss out if her virtue was still intact at any point during the phone call. Her relaying Drew’s message about open season for fatherly threats undoubtedly helped. But she suspected toward the end, her stepmom was gently smothering him with a pillow.

  Not long after hanging up, Skylar dropped tiredly onto the cloud-like mattress, already anticipating having the bar she set for kisses get raised ridiculously out of reach thanks to some undoubtedly racy dreams she was getting ready to have about the feel of Drew’s lips on her skin. Sure, she’d had a few boyfriends in high school; and she dated semi-regularly up in Washington. She’d even had her fair share of perfectly great kisses. But none had ever seemed time-altering. None had ever made her heart hammer, and stop altogether when it ended.

  Not the way the faint, innocent brush of Drew’s mouth against her temple had.

  Damn their age difference.

  And damn him for being perfectly at ease about waiting until she reached the arbitrary age minimum he’d set, still three long years away. Though his unwillingness to budge on that dealbreaker was outrageously sexy, it was also driving her crazy.

  For crying out loud, most of the guys she’d dated in the past generally never looked beyond the next few hours, and a good portion of them had had very simple expectations for that time frame—namely, to discover the color of her panties.

  But Drew… He’d sat beside her tonight and looked years, decades into her future, predicting and expecting sheer greatness from her. For her.

  Along with endless happiness, if hopes and wishes could be hacked.

  And that’s precisely why even a barely-qualifies-and-definitely-in-the-wrong-place almost-kiss from him meant more than every other kiss she’d ever experienced, combined.

  Buzz-buzz.

  Skylar put a pin in her ponderings and reached for her vibrating phone, wondering what text bomb Drew was about to drop on her next. Because it was most assuredly him. Her tingling skin was a pretty accurate crystal ball in all things Drew.

  So admittedly, she was just a tiny bit deflated to find the following message:

  >> DO ME A FAVOR?

  Not very Drew-like. Still, she sat up and texted him back.

  >> SURE. NAME IT.

  Pause.

  >> LOCK YOUR BEDROOM DOOR TONIGHT. THERE’S A DRUNK GUY IN YOUR HOTEL ROOM WITH YOU AND I DON’T TRUST HIM.

  Now that was quintessential Drew. He just had no clue what his words did to her insides. She sighed and tried for cool and collected.

  >> YOU HAVEN’T HAD A DRINK IN HOURS. I THINK WE’RE BOTH SAFE.

  His reply was instant.

  >> FAR FROM SAFE. YOU’RE MORE POTENT THAN ANY TOP SHELF WHISKEY. IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH FOR ME TO GET DRUNK OFF OF YOU. NOW LOCK YOUR DOOR. PLEASE.

  Hand held against her heart to keep it from springing right out of her chest, she walked over to click the door lock in place.

  …And jumped back in surprise when her phone buzzed a nanosecond later.

  >> THANK YOU.

  She stared at the closed door. Knowing he was right on the other side did crazy things to her pulse rate. Put all sorts of rampant, uninhibited thoughts into her head.

  >> DREW?

  A pregnant pause, and then a one-word reply.

  >> YEAH?

  Hands shaking, breathing even worse, it took her a few tries to get the words out.

  >> MAYBE YOU SHOULD LOCK YOUR DOOR TOO.

  The muttered curse from the hall was immediately followed by slow, but sure-footed retreating steps across the hardwood floors.

  Always the good guy.

  Damn it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After throwing a few more things into his overnight duffle, Drew called in an early morning room service order. With coffee. Lots of coffee. Because as he’d discovered last night, sleep wasn’t such an easy thing to come by with a raging hard-on. Especially when the mind-wrecking cause of it was only ten yards away.

  Scrubbing the five a.m. cobwebs from his face, he headed over to his bathroom to retrieve his glasses. Last night, he hadn’t trusted himself to leave his room to grab them. Now, with his contacts out, he was practically blind as he made his way down the dark hallway.

  The near-silent, startled gasp splitting the air filtered through his brain a split second too late, and he crashed into a wet, curvy little body that, from what his hands were quickly discovering, wasn’t exactly covered in a towel.

  Then he just plain lost it.

  Growling, he turned and caged Skylar—in all her near naked, slippery-wet from the shower glory—up against the wall.

  “Woman, you shouldn’t play games like this. I wasn’t kidding last night when I said I wasn’t sure if I trusted myself around you.”

  With both palms flat against the wall on either side of her head—to keep them from wandering—he waited to hear what she had to say for herself.

  Surprisingly, she had quite a lot to say. Unfortunately, having an encore hard-on without a happy ending between shows pretty much just zapped all the neurons he needed to focus on whatever she was saying. The next few minutes were a series of buzzes and clicks that provided background music to the hypnotic sight of her wet shoulders and wet lips moving in dance-like harmony.

  Then she raised a frustrated arm to stab an angry finger at the bathroom on her end of the hall, and he felt one of the two tiny hand towels she’d been holding against her body slip down to danger zone levels.

  Her arm shot down to catch the scrap of terry cloth…which would have put her hand far too close to his own danger zone for his peace of mind had he not intercepted it. Restraining her wrist up in his grip then, he immediately wedged her back against the wall to keep the lower half of her body from being bared to his gaze completely.

  “Why the hell aren’t you at least wearing a bath towel?” he rumbled out in a rough, gritty tone he didn’t recognize at all.

  Her voice was nearly unrecognizable as well as she huffed out, “I just explained it to you!”

  She had?

  With all the blood roaring in his ears, there was a good chance that was true.

  “Again.” The word sounded more caveman grunt than anything else, but it was the best he could manage with all her indignant wriggling.

  “I said, your ridiculous ‘modern’ shower back there has a bizarre sliding shower head on some weird chrome vertical bar that won’t stay put above waist-level. I kept shoving it back up to a normal shower height but it just kept sliding back down. And when crouching on the floor to shower got old, I decided to wrap part of the showerhead hose around the top of the bar so it would at least hold position half way. Only, that made the water pressure too weak to rinse out my shampoo. So, logically, I turned the water up. Which was when the demonic water torture device uncoiled like a snake on acid and began shooting water all over the place!”

  About midway through the last sentence, she’d started waving her arms around again, probably around the same point in her story as the last time. But with her right arm shackled to him, without thinking, her other hand fired out to pick up the slack.

  Realizing that she was too riled up to notice, Drew muttered a violent oath and further plastered his body against
hers, from shoulders to knees, to keep her second towel from dropping.

  Jesus, these towels are thin.

  He could feel her heart racing nearly as fast as his own, but he was now under the distinct impression that hers was from red-hot irritation instead of the smoking-hot wet reasons currently making his pulse rate pound in an entirely different body part.

  “Drew, the damn thing nailed me on the top of my head like a freakin’ mallet—a couple of times, until I finally managed to shut it off.” She glared back at the malicious bathroom on trial. “But it didn’t end there. Since water had sprayed all over every square inch of that bathroom, the floor was completely wet. When you come back to finish your job here, you tell the hotel owner that shiny, granite tiles on the floor of a possessed bathroom is a lawsuit waiting to happen! I practically hydroplaned five feet smack dab into the wall, and the stupid towel rack I’d grabbed onto came out of the drywall like it’d been installed with Scotch tape and a prayer. And because the distances and angles in that deathtrap undoubtedly form a perfect red-glowing pentagram, the towel bar flung up and catapulted both bath towels right into the toilet!”

  By this point, Drew was trying really hard not to laugh, a struggle that wasn’t lost on Skylar.

  She stomped her foot down on his. Hard. “I stood in that bathroom for two whole minutes with my ear to the drenched door to make sure you weren’t out here before I came sprinting out completely bare-assed except for these tiny sink towels. But then I discovered that the brilliantly-designed bedroom door handle that you told me to lock last night apparently still opens to let me out on my side even while it remains locked when I try to get back in.”

  God, she was adorable when she was riled up. Sexy as hell, too.

  “So finally, I had no choice but to run over to your bathroom to get a human-sized towel …which was when I ran into you—the jerk that made me tell this humiliating story twice!”

  Her irate voice came to a shuttering stop when his hands slowly slid down her back.