His hands drop to my waist, then lower. He grips my thighs and lifts me like I weigh nothing, pressing me against the wall while I instinctively wrap my legs around him. The skirt of my dress rides up, but I don’t care. I can feel him—all of him—hard and hot against my core, and the friction makes me whimper.
“Win.” My name is a groan against my lips. “Tell me to stop.”
“Don’t you dare.”
He kisses me again, deeper, his hips pressingforward in a way that makes stars explode behind my eyelids. My fingers find his hair, destroying whatever product he used to style it, and he growls—actually growls—into my mouth.
This is insane. We’re in a storage room at a charity gala. Anyone could walk in. We should stop.
But I don’t want to stop. I want to climb inside this man and live there.
“Banks,” I gasp. “I need—”
The door swings open.
“Oh!”
We freeze.
A woman in a catering uniform stands in the doorway, her eyes wide, a stack of napkins in her hands.
“You can’t—this area is for staff only. You can’t be back here.”
Banks sets me down slowly, keeping his body between me and the intruder. Ever the protector, even now. Even with his hair a mess, his lips swollen, and his breathing ragged.
“Sorry,” I manage, straightening my dress with shaking hands. “We were just—”
“Leaving,” Banks finishes. His voice is rough. Wrecked.
He takes my hand again—gentler this time—and leads me past the mortified caterer, back down the hallway, toward the noise and light of the gala.
We don’t speak. I don’t trust myself to speak. My lips are still tingling. My whole body is still tingling. I feel as if I’ve been struck by lightning and survived.
We’ve just reached the edge of the ballroom when Tori materializes out of nowhere.
“There you two are!” She’s flushed from champagne and dancing, with Zayden trailing behind her. “We’re taking photos by the fountain. Come on, the photographer is waiting.”
She doesn’t seem to notice my smeared lipstick or Banks’s disheveled hair. Or maybe she does notice and is politely pretending not to. Either way, she grabs my arm and starts tugging me toward the garden doors.
I glance back at Banks.
He’s watching me with an expression I’ve never seen before—dark, hungry, promising.
This isn’t over.
This is just the beginning.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Uncharted
Banks
The drive to her apartment is quiet.
Not an uncomfortable quiet. Just a silence that settles in when there’s too much to say and no safe way to say it.
I can still taste her on my lips. Still feel the phantom press of her body against mine in that storage room. I have to force myself to focus on the road.
