Aiden turned, placing a kiss in the center of my palm. “Dance with me?” he asked.
Slowly, I nodded, and he stood, a firm hold on my hand as he led us to the dance floor crowded with people. We stood between a former defensive player of the year and his wife, and an executive from Molly’s job at Amazon, and not once did his attention waver.
It didn’t matter who surrounded us, I realized.
It didn’t matter what he may have experienced in his past, or what I had yet to experience in my future. This was about us. Aiden gathered our joined hands against his chest, over his steadily beating heart, and his other arm curled low around my waist as he pulled me into his body. My free hand slid around his back, and I laid my head on his chest as we swayed.
His fingers strayed slowly, first to the edge of my dress where it wrapped around my body, but he dipped beneath the fabric to strum featherlight touches along the curve of my hip. With a restless exhale, I shifted closer, and he tightened his hand around mine.
The beat of the song was slow and sweet, but in his arms, it became something else entirely. It was foreplay.
All of it had been.
For days and weeks.
My fingers on his back curled, nails digging slightly into the hard, shifting muscles on his back and I lost the ability to breathe properly when I closed my eyes and imagined how they’d feel when he moved over me. He’d be relentless. He’d be brutal if I begged it of him.
Aiden’s chest expanded on a deep inhale, his nose burying into my hair. When he made a restless shift of his own, I felt how much he wanted me. The noise that started in my throat was practically a purr. And he heard it.
“We either need to stop dancing or get the hell out of here,” he rasped in my ear.
Tilting my head up so I could lock gazes with him, I licked my lips before speaking. His nostrils flared when I did. “What will you do to me if I choose option two?”
Somehow, he managed to tighten his grip on me, bring me even closer to him so that he could rest his lips against the shell of my ear. “I am going to do everything,” he growled. “And trust me, my imagination has come up with a lot since you decided to climb into my bathtub without me.”
I was panting when I stepped back, my hands shaking. At first, his face smoothed like he thought I might deny him.
“You have ten minutes to get a room,” I told him in a remarkably even voice. “I will meet you by the elevator.”
It took six minutes for me to hug and kiss Molly and Noah, who were swamped by people, and to inform the twins that I would be exiting the party early. No one argued with me, and Lia gave me an obnoxious high five.
I marched—shoes and clutch in hand—to the elevator, where I saw him waiting for me.
Calmly, he hit the button and slipped his hands into his pants pockets. I blew out a slow breath while the numbers descended.
In the quiet between us, I wondered a dozen things about how it would be between us, what waited when we opened the hotel room door to complete privacy.
But one thing I didn’t wonder was whether I’d been stupid to wait for someone who made me feel like this. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation anywhere inside me. The doors opened, and we walked in side by side, silent as the grave.
Aiden pushed the button for the correct floor, and as soon as the doors closed, as soon as we were alone, he exploded into action.
Before I could breathe, I was against the wall, his mouth hard and demanding over mine, his hands ruthless as he strained the seams of my dress by pushing his grip underneath to fill his palms with my flesh.
His tongue was hot and slick, and I whimpered when it swept around mine in a tantalizing circle. My arms were around his neck so tightly that when he straightened, I could hardly find purchase on the floor. But I didn’t need it. He wrenched my hip up and rolled himself between my legs.
This kiss was a dark prelude that we’d danced around the entire time we knew each other.
It was dirty, and everything I wanted, everything I’d dreamed of from him. He devoured my mouth, tilting his head to deepen it further, and I stole the breath from his lungs because I’d not be the one to pull away.
I’d live there, in that kiss, if he let me.
His body shook from the force of everything he was pouring into our embrace. If we stayed on that elevator much longer, I swear, I would’ve given it up to him right there.
We arrived at our floor, an inconspicuous ding heralding the gentle stop of the car, and Aiden pulled back, breathing hard, lips red from our kiss.
“Fucking finally,” he said, tugging on my hand as I exhaled a laugh.
We rushed down the hall, and when he found the right door, he almost dropped the key in his haste to unlock the door.
Behind him, I couldn’t help myself. I pressed my front to his back and started unfastening his belt. A hand shot out, bracing against the doorframe, and he muttered another foul curse word when I got the buckle undone.
“I’m going to tell you something before we walk in that room,” I whispered against his heaving back. The muscles shifted against my forehead when he lifted his head. My nimble fingers pulled the leather belt from the metal buckle. “For reasons which we can discuss later, I need you to know that I’ve never done this before.” When his whole frame, big and broad, went still as a statue, I smiled. It should have made me feel at a disadvantage that I couldn’t see his face, but I’d never felt more powerful. Never felt so in control of what I wanted.
We were still in the hallway, and I tugged his shirt out of his loosened waistband and slid my hands over the ridges of his abdomen, which was all scalding skin and heavy muscle. When I tried to push my hand lower, Aiden growled my name. I stopped.
“You’re a …you’ve never—”
He couldn’t say it.
“Never,” I affirmed.
Aiden spun, gripping my face in his hands, eyes burning down at me. “Why?”
I gave him a coy smile, reaching behind his back to finish pushing the key card into the door. “I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you. No one’s hands or mouth,” I whispered, leaning up on my tiptoes to suck his bottom lip into my mouth, “and wasting time with someone who doesn’t know how to handle me has never been appealing.” I kissed down the strong column of his neck. “But I think you know exactly what to do.”
With a tortured groan, he slanted his mouth over mine, fisting his hand into my hair. Our tongues dueled, and I felt him grapple with the doorknob. I exhaled a laugh when he still couldn’t get it open.
Down the hall, we heard the ding of the elevator, and he tore his mouth from mine to face the entrance to the room again.
The door opened with a click, and he shoved it open so violently that it banged off the wall. Aiden turned, and the look in his eye had me breathless with anticipation, because I knew he was about to absolutely destroy whatever fantasy I’d had of him in the very best way. He reached forward, gathering a fistful of my dress, and tugged me forward as he walked backward into the room.
“You’ll pay for that,” he said, glancing down briefly at his opened belt.
“Promise?”
The door slammed shut behind me, and before he could move, I reached up behind my neck and unhooked the strap holding my dress up. Before it could fall, he stepped up to me, gripping the back of my neck.