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If I had my choice, I could have just stayed there in his arms, kissing Tom languidly for the rest of the day, perfectly happy.
But that wasn’t reality. As I lay there cradled in his arms, my head against his chest so I could hear his heartbeat, he stroked his fingertips along my spine and ran his hand over my hair. The touch sent chills along my skin and kept my blood running hot through my veins.
My body couldn’t cool down completely while he was touching me that way. Brushing my lips across his skin, I was tempted to go for another round. As satisfied as he left me, I wanted more. A hunger low in my belly that felt like it would never be all the way filled up.
I swept one leg over him and eased up so I straddled him, ducking my head to kiss him. His hands came to my waist and pressed me down onto him as our mouths moved across each other. My lips parted to allow access to his tongue, and his fingertips pressed into my skin.
When his phone first started ringing beside him, Tom shook his head. His mouth was still pressed to mine, and I laughed.
“Are you going to answer it?” I asked against his lips.
“Nope,” he said. “I’m ignoring it.”
He flipped me over onto my back, coming down on me so his weight pressed against me, and I felt enveloped by his warmth. I wrapped my arms around his neck and parted my thighs to let him settle between them and tuck close to my body.
The phone started ringing again, and we continued to ignore it. It was on the third round of rings that continued one right after the other that Tom finally pulled his mouth away from mine and dropped his head to my chest, letting out a massive sigh.
“Answer it,” I said.
“No,” he replied stubbornly.
“Obviously somebody really needs to talk to you. What if there’s something wrong?” I asked.
“They can figure it out,” he said, lifting up to kiss me again. The ringing started up again after the half-second of silence it took for whoever was on the other end to push the Call button again. “Shit.”
“Go on,” I said.
He climbed off me but gave me a stern point. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t,” I said.
Tom snatched up his phone and walked out of the room. He came back after only a few seconds. His expression was hardened, and he started getting dressed.
“I have to go,” he said.
“What’s wrong?”
He stopped dressing and leaned over to kiss me. “That was Tyler. They think they’re on to something. I need to go find out what’s going on. Do you want to come with me?”
I thought about it for a few seconds but then shook my head. “No. You go on and handle that. I’ll stay behind and focus on the issue with the company.”
“Divide and conquer,” he said, then finished getting dressed.
I nodded, and he kissed me again. “I’ll see you later.”
I watched him leave, wondering how he felt about what had just happened between us. It wasn’t like it hadn’t been bubbling up ever since we got into town. Since well before that, if I was really going to be honest with myself. But thinking about something and actually letting it happen were two very different things.
Now that we had given in to our desire for each other, how would it change things between us?
I finally forced myself out of bed and took a shower before getting dressed and settling into work. After scanning over my to-do lists briefly, I called Landon. The next few hours involved several more phone calls with Landon, each one just as uncomfortable as the one before.
It was hard to talk to him now. There was no reason to think he would, but I felt like he might find out what happened just by the sound of my voice. When he asked to video chat, it was even worse. He had to be able to see it written on my face.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Tom is just really stressed, but I’m handling it. Everything is good.”
We got off the phone, and I only gave myself a few seconds of cringe time before burying myself in the rest of the tasks for the day.17TomThe papers spread across the dining room table looked more like schematics than notes from a private investigator and amateur research at the local library. For that matter, the men surrounding the table looking down at those papers and a map of the street where our bar sat, looked more like a recreation of an old Sinatra-style heist film from the sixties. I watched as Mason and Tyler grumbled over the possibility that a frankly old man could start the fire himself, while Jordan and Matt insisted it was arson for hire.
