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His fingers slide higher.
“Elliot, we can’t.” My breath hitches as he reaches the hem of my T-shirt.
“You’re amazing, Charlotte. Amazing.”
His touch approaches the edges of my underwear, and the sight of his beautiful face blurs as my eyes drift shut. I shouldn’t allow myself to sink into this, to submit to the desire he’s awakened in me, to give myself to him. But I’ve never felt so powerless in my life, so overwhelmed by feelings I can’t control, feelings that don’t even seem to belong to me. They’re new. I don’t know them or where they’ve come from. But whatever they are, they’re here, burning inside me, consuming me.
I allow my fingers to drop to the strip of bared belly between his shirt and shorts, and stroke the downy dark hairs.
He draws in a long, low breath, fists the front of my T-shirt, and pulls me toward him, “Come down here so I can ki?—”
Knock-knock.
“Housekeeping,” calls a voice from outside the door.
My eyes fly open and lock onto Elliot’s, as I brace myself against the bed to stop myself from collapsing onto him. My heart’s pounding, my whole body on fire.
“Ignore them,” he says, his fingers pushing under the sides of my underwear at my hips. “They’ll go away.”
But my sense of logic emerges from the fog. This is dangerous. Crazy hot, but dangerous. I cannot allow this to happen. It would ruin everything.
I shake my head, pull one leg over him, and slide off the bed.
“Just a second,” I call out to the waiting housekeeper.
17
ELLIOT
Charlotte presses her face to the peephole in the door. “Could you come back in a while? This is incredibly early.”
She’s standing on tiptoes, her planner T-shirt rising higher up the back of her legs to where my hands just were. The exact spot where I stroked the soft, smooth skin of her outer thighs and hips. Right where I toyed with the edge of her underwear.
Shit. Why did I have to be so reckless and take it too far? Why did I have to go right for the hands-inside-the-clothing thing? Why didn’t I stroke her cheek and look deep into her eyes and tell her I’m crazy about her first?
Because the sensation of her touch all over my back got me so worked up, that’s why. Because the way she looked at my hard dick made it seem like she wanted to touch me there too. Because lying on the bed with her legs astride me is something I’ve wanted for years, and the reality was even hotter than in my wildest fantasies.
“Sorry,” the housekeeper says. “We have you down as checked out.”
“Well, we haven’t,” Charlotte snaps back. “That’s the second mistake since we got here.”
“Sorry for disturbing you.” The housekeeper’s voice trails off as she moves away from the door, clearly not wanting to tangle with Charlotte any further.
I grab the covers and pull them over my crotch. The housekeeper might have been a bucket of cold water, but the evidence of my desire hasn’t yet fully faded. And the evidence of Charlotte’s realization that anything more than purely therapeutic touching is entirely wrong was written in her eyes.
I need to walk this back, to prevent it from being any more awkward than it inevitably will be.
Charlotte drops back to flat feet and tugs her shirt down at the sides as she turns back to the room.
“I’ll run you a bath,” she says, without looking at me. “If you can get up and lie in warm water for a bit, it’ll do you good.” She rushes into the bathroom.
Her voice is replaced by water gushing at full tilt into the tub.
I close my eyes, my stomach knotted, and want to punch myself in the head for being such a fucking fool.
I have well and truly fucked this up by jumping in too far, too fast.
My one chance with Charlotte, and I fuck it up.
