“Sorry, it’s not the Four Seasons.” I shove the room key too hard to open the door. “They don’t have connected rooms here, but it’s the best place to keep a low profile. Daytona Beach would have been too obvious.”
Once I’m in, I let go of the bags. They hit the carpet with a dull thud. I check every entry and exit point in the suite. “All clear. You can come in.”
She takes in the interior of the living area. Sand-toned walls with white trim, echoing the beach just outside. A plush loveseat in muted linen with nautical throw pillows. Driftwood weathered coffee table, with a bowl of shells and localguidebooks. Sliding glass doors open to a small patio, letting in salt air and moonlight.
“The bedrooms are this way,” I tell her. Then I nod at Brandon to leave. “Choose yours, I’ll take the other. Brandon will be in the next room.”
I walk behind him. I can’t stand to look at her, not another second. I’ll lose my fucking mind if I do.
Abruptly, just as Brandon steps out, Birdie slides in front of me, presses her back on the door and locks it.
I force my gaze back on her. “What are you doing?”
Her chin tips up, and she slowly takes off her shades. Her eyes…her eyes are molten, reckless, a wildfire set loose just for me.
The pulse in my throat hammers so hard it might crack a bone. “What the hell are you doing, Birdie?” My voice is more growl than words, ruined. That’s all it takes. One look in her eyes, and I’m ruined.
Her lips part, letting out a painstakingly slow exhale. “Is it not obvious?”
The way she says it—soft, sultry, threaded with defiance—goes straight to my cock. My hands curl into fists at my sides, fighting the urge to rip her words out of her throat. “Don’t you dare. I’m not your rebound or a one night stand distraction.”
“I agree. Those require a…far less complicated man.”
My body steps into the heat crackling between us. Her breasts thrust up as she takes in another breath, grazing me. My palms slam flat against the wood beside her head. “Fuck you, Birdie.”
“That’s precisely the point.”
I groan. “Me estás rompiendo la voluntad. No puedo más, te juro que me voy a perder en vos.”
She bites her lip. “I love it when you speak in Spanish.”
My hips press into hers until she gasps and there’s no room left for guessing how hard I am for her. I hover a breath away, yet enough to taste the cherry sweetness of her lipstick. “If this is about our deal, tell me now, because I don’t want it. I don’t want you out of obligation to square some promise—”
“I know. You want me to beg. I won’t, but I’d do this.” Willingly, she lifts her wrists, crossing them above her head. A sinful offering of her body. A complete surrender.
The moment I’ve been waiting for since I laid eyes on her.
“Here,” she rasps, “does this look like obligation to you?”
“Fuck it.” I seize her mouth, hungry and savage, passion and punishment—except she meets me with equal fury, pulling me deeper, grinding against me like she’s been starving for this, too.
I can’t process that this is actually happening. That she’s here, touching me, wanting this, me.
The world stops.
I’ve read that line countless times and laughed at the poetic way people write about first kisses in those saccharine novels, but it’s true. When her lips touch mine, it’s like someone has pressed pause on reality itself.
My hands shake as I frame her face, and I hate that she can feel it. I’ve killed men with these hands. I’ve broken bones andended lives without a tremor, but right now, with her mouth moving against mine, I’m coming apart.
Eight years, no, twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years of waiting, of watching, of wanting her with a hunger that has eaten me alive from the inside out. Twenty-seven years of suffering with every other touch, every other offer, because they weren’t hers. Because no one else mattered.
She tastes like the nights I carved her name into my mind just to feel something real, like the ache of yearning years, and yet better than every fantasy I’ve tortured myself with, better than the dreams that have haunted me.
But it’s what lies underneath that undoes me: the unmistakable taste of her skin, her pulse, her essence. It’s memory, obsession and relief colliding in my mouth.
My tongue slides against hers, clumsy and desperate. Christ, I’ve read her every book, memorized every scene like a bible, but nothing prepared me for this. Nothing prepared me for the way she melts against me, the small sound she makes in the back of her throat that throbs in my cock.
Reflexively, my hands glide down to her throat. The darkness in me roars to life, demanding more, always more. I feel it in my spine, in my fists, in the part of me I keep locked away. I want to consume her. To make her forget every man who has ever touched her. To ruin her. To mark her so thoroughly that no one will ever question who she belongs to. Forever altered. Mine.
