Page 3

CHAPTER 3

Reese

I went to the hotel after work. I rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor. I walked down the hallway to Cory’s room, and I turned around and repeated it all in reverse. I climbed back into my car, drove myself home, and sat on the couch and stared at the wall until it was almost six in the morning. Cory’s business card—the new one—was clutched in my hand for the duration.

Honestly, who did that man think he was? Waltzing into my life and throwing everything I thought I knew about myself out the window? Who had that kind of audacity to stroll into someone’s place of employment with all that arrogance? All that confidence?

Trouble, that’s who.

I finally fell asleep sometime around seven, sliding down onto the couch in a position so awkward, when I woke up after nine, I wanted to cut my head off to get away from the ache in my neck. Cory’s card had fallen out of my hand and landed on the floor, his pre-printed name and phone number gazing up at me with all the patience I knew the man himself possessed.

He wanted me to show up, but I didn’t think he’d be surprised that I hadn’t. Just like I didn’t think he’d be surprised to watch me slink out of my apartment, hit up a bagel shop drive-thru for coffee, and head back to toward the airport, cursing myself the whole way.

I only had to knock once and he had the door open, those piercing blue eyes of his watchful and alert.

“Hi,” I said awkwardly.

“I didn’t think you were going to make it,” he said.

“I mean…did I make it?”

Cory pulled the door open and stepped out of the way to let me in. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

I hummed because I didn’t know what else to say, and it was hard to think anyway with his body so close behind me I could feel the heat rolling off of him. I walked into the room and set the bagels and coffee down on the entertainment center, doing my best to ignore the messy and tangled state of the sheets on the bed.

“I haven’t slept,” I admitted, turning to face him, once again taken aback at the height difference between us. Cory had on the same low-slung pajama pants from January, and I tried to not stare at how they clung to his hips. His hand moved, coming up slowly to trace a crescent moon shape beneath my left eye.

“I can tell,” he said simply. “You should lie down.”

“I didn’t come here to lie down.”

His mouth quirked into a grin. “Didn’t you?”

Groaning, I scrubbed a hand down my face, batting his fingers off my cheekbone. I turned away from him and paced over to the window, listening to the mundane sounds behind me of Cory taking a coffee out of the cardboard drink carrier, tearing one sugar packet open, then another. The bed creaked, and I glanced back to see him sitting down on the edge, raising the white cup to his mouth.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” I said.

“To fuck, I imagine.”

If only if were that simple.

“Reese.” He said my name like a promise. “You’re overthinking all of this.”

“Am I?”

“What were you expecting when you came here tonight?”

“This morning.”

“Semantics.” Cory rolled his eyes at me and gestured toward the second coffee. “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black,” I answered.

“Good. Get it and sit with me.”

I moved to do just that...then I cursed him under my breath.

He must have seen the realization on my face, because he chuckled softly, patting the bed and making room for me to sit beside him.

“What were you expecting?” he asked me again. “Were you thinking you’d show up and I’d order you to your knees? Set some more rules about how things between us were going to go until it was time for my flight back to New York?”

That was surprisingly close to how I had thought things were going to go, and I still managed to get myself to the hotel, even if our time was shorter now than it had been at the end of my shift. Was that what I wanted?

I shrugged, hating how off my game this man made me feel.

“Would it make you feel better if I did those things for you?” He took another drink of his coffee. His eyes danced with mischief, and the whole thing felt like a setup…

A trap.

“That’s more familiar,” I said.

“And you know I don’t have a problem getting on my knees for you, Reese. So it’s not just about the kneeling, is it?”

“I…This is ridiculous.” I pushed up from the bed and set my coffee down by the TV.

“Why?”

I rubbed at my chin, two days’ worth of scruff abrading my fingers, but it was nowhere near enough to bring me out of my head to have this conversation with him.

“This is a mistake,” I said.

“Disagree.” He gave me another one of those fucking zen-af smiles of his. “We’re just two men who have good chemistry, Reese. It doesn’t need to be that serious. In fact…it shouldn’t be.”

“I’m glad it’s so simple for you.”

“Nothing about this is simple,” he corrected, setting his coffee beside mine. He stood and turned to face me, a good four inches shorter than me, but possessing all the control of a man twice my size. He stepped closer until our toes brushed, his bare against the tips of my sneakers.

“That’s easy for you to say. You breeze through town, fuck, and run.”

Cory scoffed, an unimpressed noise in the back of his throat. “Is that what you think? You don’t think I got back to New York with you consuming my entire brain? With my cock hard and my ass sore and your name still fresh on the tip of my tongue?”

“I…”

“As soon as I got home, I took the thickest toy I could find in my closet and shoved it so far up my ass it almost made me cry, Reese, and it was nowhere near as good as the real thing. I got on my knees and jacked myself off, fucking myself on this toy like it was anywhere near enough to sate the need you awakened inside of me.”

He tapped his hand against his chest, staring up at me with such a calm kind of clarity, it was impossible to not feel some of it wash over me as well.

“I didn’t know,” I whispered, because there wasn’t anything else to say. Telling him how I’d done the same things felt lacking in the wake of his bombshell confession. I still hated it seemed effortless for him to admit, but it did level the playing field for me.

At least, a little.

“Nothing about this is easy.” He repeated the sentiment, threading his fingers together behind his head and sinking to his knees in front of me. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it. And it doesn’t mean I won’t take it.”