“I’d like to go back to the hotel now,” I said conversationally. “Unless you wanted to stay? I know you haven’t even had a drinkyet or that food I promised you. And it’s a shame to waste this outfit.” I trailed a finger down the row of buttons from his chest to his flat belly. “It’s your call, Goodman.”
“I… I thought you were gonna pick someone appropriate and bring them back to the hotel. I thought you were going to get laid.” His voice was hopeful, but he seemed to need me to spell it out for him, and I understood why. It was my own fault for being so indecisive for so long.
I leaned in close enough to soak up the ocean scent of him, then scraped my teeth along the edge of his jaw so I could whisper in his ear.
“I am.”
CHAPTER NINE
GAGE
“It’s your call, Goodman.”
“Since when?” I wanted to ask, but I was pretty sure I knew.
Knox hated change and was deeply suspicious of things that made his life easier and better. The things he fought the hardest—becoming friends with me, or updating a billing procedure at the orchard, or eating triangular sandwich halves—were sometimes the things he wanted most, but his brain needed to consider the matter slowly. Deliberately. Like a computer running a background operation.
He had to run the numbers.
He had to analyze the risk.
But then, once he actually changed his mind—which sometimes took minutes, and sometimes days or weeks, and sometimes didn’t happen at all—Knox had zero ego about admitting that he’d been wrong. He’d leave the office at night refusing to acknowledge that I had a point, then come into the office the next morning talking about the new billing procedure while eating a triangular sandwich and wearing a “Gage is my BFF” T-shirt (sadly, not literally).
It was unpredictable.
It wasinfuriating.
It was fascinating. And thrilling.
And it was so fucking adorable,it made me want to kiss the man senseless… which was exactly what I did the second we got into the Lyft.
And again against the rough brick exterior of the hotel.
Then again in the elevator, and at various points in the long corridor from the elevator to my hotel room.
I didn’t need to understand how his brain worked to appreciate it.
He’d chosen this. He’d picked me. His hands were in my hair, holding my head at just the right angle while he kissed me against the hotel room door and his erection jutted against my hip.
That was as much as I needed to know.
“What do you want?” I demanded breathlessly when we got inside. “Because I have a list of fantasies, but I’m willing to hit all the highlights of your fantasy list, too, obviously.”
“Generous of you.” He did that thing with his teeth on my neck that made my eyes roll back in my head. “But I don’t have a list. We’ll go with yours.”
“Wait, really?” I pulled back just slightly. “So you haven’t been thinking about?—?”
He snorted. “Fuck, of course I have. But if I’d let myself get far enough to make a list, this would have happened a long time ago.” He grasped my hips and let his thumbs coast over the front of my pants mere inches from where I wanted them. “I wouldn’t have been able to hold back.”
I personally didn’t see the downside of him giving in a long time ago, but I was mature enough not to sayI told you so. And those thumbs rubbing slow semicircles were hella distracting.
“M’kay,” I said breathlessly. “I want you to fuck me. Me on top. No, wait, you on top first. And also blow jobs. But… Okay, wait, no. I maybe didn’t order the list.”
Knox took my earlobe in his mouth and sucked lightly. “Inefficient,” he teased in a hot whisper.
“Shut it. Okay, blow jobs first, then…shit. Then I want you to fuck me. Yeah?”
He made a humming noise against the tendon in my neck that sounded like agreement, and I melted against him.
