“No, I need to go. I don’t want anyone to see me sneaking out.” She picked up one of the hotel pens from the side table and pulled my arm out, writing her number across it before I could object to being used as a notepad. She could use me however she wanted.
“And your name. I feel like I’ve earned it now.”
Her eyebrow raised. “Do you indeed? You’ll get my name at lunchtime.”
She sat on the bed to fasten her shoes, and I followed her, not wanting to increase the distance between us for any longer than necessary. She turned round to me when she was done, her incredible eyes boring right through me.
Cupping her face in my hand, I pulled her into a kiss, long and hard, and over too soon. “Let me walk you out.”
She shook her head. “No, stay here.”
She stood and walked to the door giving me a backward glance, a grin spreading across her face.
“Downstairs at twelve, Luck. Don’t forget.”
“I’ll be there.” She blew me a kiss, before walking out of the door, and my sight.
I fell back onto the bed; my adrenalin had left with her, and I was suddenly struggling to keep my eyes open. Exhaustion from a week of too much booze, no sleep and six hours of straight fucking took hold of me. I pulled a pillow into my face, I could still smell her. I wanted it again. She’d been gone two minutes, and I was already desperate to see her.
I looked at the clock.
Six hours until I would.
Chapter 3
Ifelt different. Lighter. Looser, even.
The aching I’d been carrying around was less pronounced. So much less. Barely noticeable in fact. It had been replaced by a different kind of aching. A delicious aching.
I winced slightly as I crossed my legs; the leather from the oversized club chair I was currently sitting in was cool enough from the A/C to provide some relief for my sore muscles, but not enough. As instructed by my new friend upstairs, I was waiting in the lobby and it was noon on the dot. Based on his almost frantic levels of begging, I was expecting him to walk out of the elevator the next time it opened, which was about the only thing expected in this unexpected situation.
When I’d left him as the sun was still rising, I’d gone straight from his bed to my own, creeping in carefully so I didn’t wake Mallory. I’d tried to sleep, but couldn’t. My brain had been too wired with thoughts of him and his god-like body, and what he’d been doing to mine, that it had taken until five minutes ago for me to realize I hadn’t thought about Richard in nearly twelve hours. Twelve uninterrupted hours - likely down to the fact I hadn’t had my phone on me, and his incessant calling wasn’t fogging my head – but still, twelve blissful hours.
And what a twelve hours it had been; twelve hours of more fun and more laughter, and more sweetness than I’d experienced in a long,longtime. I didn’t even know it was possible that one person, a person you’d known less than a day, could make you feel more alive than someone who was supposed to love you enough to spend the rest of your lives together.
Howcouldit be possible? It was crazy, right?
Which was why I was here in this chair with the cool leather seats, wanting to see if it had been real. Needing to see if it had been real. If the chemistry between us had been real, if I hadn’t dreamed it. Dreamed his sweetness, and unparalleled levels of sexiness.
At eleven thirty a.m., after the girls headed to the pool, I got up and dressed, and headed here. My body started throbbing almost before I’d crossed the threshold of the hotel entrance, flashes of our time together bursting in my brain.
Loud screeching from a passing bachelorette party jolted me from my daydream; I checked my phone. Seven minutes past twelve.
I worried my lip slightly, ignoring the flickering that was trying to start up in the deepest pits of my belly.
By twelve fifteen the flickering had turned into more of a rumble; the imminent warnings of worse to come.
He was coming. He was insistent I meet him. He could have just said‘see ya later’but he begged. No, he was coming. Hewouldbe here.
What had Jupiter said? That my newly single heart was like crack to an addict.
I shifted around, the comfort this chair had been providing was swiftly waning. I jumped every time the elevator doors opened, then swiftly sunk when every other resident of Vegas appeared except him. My heart may as well have been riding the Plunge on Santa Monica Pier.
I was right, itwascrazy waiting for a guy I’d known less than twelve hours. Stupid to expect him to turn up. Believe his sincerity.
Yet why did it feel like it was stupid to think hewouldn’tturn up.
“Hey,” Mallory plopped into the chair opposite me with all the weight I felt in my heart, “Where’s sex god?”
