by Jill Shalvis
like to be reminded of it.
Slipping into the heels, she stared at herself in the mirror over the dresser.
As good as it got, she decided.
She grabbed her little clutch, shoved her phone and pepper spray in it—always prepared—and left her room.
She pushed the button for the elevator, and when the doors opened she gasped.
AJ stood inside in a suit and tie, and holy sweet baby Jesus, who knew? She’d seen him in jeans, she’d seen him in sweats, she’d seen him in basketball shorts, and once, years ago, she’d seen him in the buff when they’d all gone skinny-dipping up at the lake.
But she’d never seen him in a suit. He looked …
Damn.
Edible.
And just like that, her little pep talk and resolve not to care whether he liked her or not flew right out the window.
Ten
AJ held the door open for Darcy, doing his best to keep his tongue in his mouth, but he wasn’t sure he quite managed.
“Thanks,” she said, brushing up against his arm and shoulder as she stepped into the elevator.
His free hand came out to stabilize her, a purely instinctual move. He didn’t give a thought to the fact that she hated to be helped because he couldn’t give a thought to anything.
Holy. Shit. Hotness.
Her little black dress—emphasis on little—just about killed him. The bodice was short, snug, and, at first glance, modest.
Second glance, not so much.
She bent over and fiddled with her heels, which had a strap around her ankle and screamed SEX. So did the way the hem of her dress rose up on her thighs, high enough that his eyes nearly popped right out of his head. “What are you doing?” he managed.
“Nothing.” Still bent at the waist, she shifted to her other heel, during which time he pressed his fingers into his eye sockets to keep his eyes in his head.
She was all leg and silken skin and crazy gorgeous hair, and he attempted to steel himself against her but he failed. He’d been wrong, oh so very wrong, when he said he’d be able to handle her. He couldn’t, not in her yoga pants, not in a sexy little black dress, not at work, not in his truck, not in an elevator, not in anything anywhere—he couldn’t do it, Sam I Am.
She straightened and sent him a searching look. She’d piled all that long curly hair on top of her head but several silky strands had escaped, brushing her temples and shoulders, giving her a just-got-laid look. Her lips were siren red and he knew it made him a pig, but all he could think about was her mouth and how her lips would looked stretched around his—
“We’re on time still, right?” she asked.
He had to clear his throat to answer. “Yeah.” Jesus.
The door slid shut and silence filled the elevator while they stared at each other. To keep his hands to himself, he backed to the wall.
“So,” she said, looking like she was mentally cracking her knuckles. “What are the rules here? Kiss ass? Sit, shake, and roll over on command? Tell everyone how you saved my life? Obey your every order?”
Her sarcasm helped him roll his tongue back into his mouth. “I will ask you to kiss someone’s ass never,” he said. “Same for sit and shake and roll over. And you know damn well I didn’t save your life. But as for the obeying me? That. Lots of that would be great.”
She narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, undoubtedly to slay him with her tongue, but his phone buzzed.
“It’s Wyatt,” he said, staring down at the screen.
“Saved by the bell,” she said. “Answer it, what’s wrong with you?”
Good question. No good answer … “Hey, kind of busy,” he said to his best friend.
“Did you really just tell me that you were all for me obeying you?” Wyatt asked.
AJ blinked. “Um, what?”
“You butt dialed me again. You know how I love it when you talk dirty to me, but obey you? That’s a kink I did not see coming from you.”
Darcy, clearly able to hear her brother, snorted.
A beat of heavy silence came from Wyatt. “Was that Darcy?” he finally asked, his voice not nearly as amused now.
Shit. “We’re in the elevator at the hotel in Boise, heading down to dinner.”
Another pause as Wyatt clearly took in the fact that AJ had been talking to Darcy when he’d said the obey thing. “What’s going on?” Wyatt finally asked.
Darcy leaned over AJ’s arm and spoke to the phone while her scent drifted tantalizingly into his head.
“He wants me to obey him and call him sir,” Darcy told Wyatt ever so helpfully. “I think that’s grounds for beating the shit out of him, right?”
AJ gave her a long, hard look that didn’t cow her at all. In fact, she smiled at him. A sweet, innocent smile that was complete BS. He blew out a breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “She’s kidding,” he said to Wyatt.
“No, I’m not,” Darcy said.
“Christ,” Wyatt said. “I don’t want to know.”
AJ grimaced.
“And you might’ve been right on this one,” Wyatt said.
He meant, of course, that asking Darcy to do this was a bad idea. No shit. “A little late now.”
“We’ll discuss it when you get back,” Wyatt said.
“No need,” Darcy said.
“Not you,” Wyatt told her. “Me and AJ.”
Darcy narrowed her eyes at the phone. “No, you won’t,” she told her brother. “I was kidding about beating the shit out of him, Wyatt. Don’t you even think about getting into the middle of this, you hear me?”
AJ opened his mouth to intervene but she put a finger in his face. “Wyatt,” she said. “You got me?”
“I got you,” Wyatt said. “I got that you’re both insane.” And then he disconnected.
AJ stared at Darcy, a little surprised at how vehemently she’d stepped in and … what? Defended his honor?
“You going to tell me what your problem is?” she asked him.
Since he wasn’t sure where to start on the list, he decided to plead the fifth.
“Look,” she said. “I’m here because of you. But you’ve had a stick up your ass since you picked me up this morning.”
“I’ve had a stick up my ass?” he asked in disbelief.
“Yeah,” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest, hard. “You. You want to tell me how to remove it?”
No one could crank him up as fast as she could. No one. He snatched the finger currently boring a hole in his chest and pushed it away from him. Or he meant to. Instead he held on to her hand, holding her arm out from her body to look her over.
“What?” she snapped.
“That dress.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What about it?”
“I said we were having dinner with a potential donator. I said we needed to impress him—not put him into cardiac arrest.”
“So this is about what I’m wearing?” She looked down at herself. “Would you rather I wear a potato sack?”
Yes, but that wouldn’t help. His heart was thumping against his ribs. Either he was stroking out or he needed to kiss her. Suddenly he couldn’t see getting through the night, or even the next five minutes, if he didn’t. “Yes,” he said, his lust running amok, burying the last of his good sense. Not that there had been much to start with.
“Hey, I look damn good in this dress.”
He met her gaze and heat coiled low in his belly and headed south from there. He took a moment to take in her features, those wide greener-than-green eyes, the flush on her cheeks, her delicious-looking mouth. He heard her quick, sharp inhale in response, and knew no matter what was going on between them—temper, resentments, whatever—in that moment she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
Well, she could have him however she wanted him, and if she wasn’t sure in what way that might be, he had plenty of ideas for the both of them. God, she drove him up the wall, batshit crazy, in the worst of ways and the best of ways.
She stared right back at him, torturing her full lower lip between her teeth. Fact was, her mouth had been his undoing from the first time they’d kissed, in that bar parking lot. “Baby, good doesn’t begin to even touch how you look in that dress.”
Utter confusion filled her gaze.
Don’t do it, soldier, he ordered himself. Don’t. Go. There.
But either his hands had a mind of their own or they overruled his brain, because he gripped her arms.
Apparently he was totally going there. “You look hot as hell.”
Still confused, she shook her head. “And that’s a problem because … ?”
He pushed her up against the wall of the elevator and slid a hard thigh between hers.
“Oh,” she breathed. Staring up at him, her fingers slid along the nape of his neck and into his hair, holding him to her.
Not necessary. He wasn’t going anywhere. To prove it, he lowered his head and kissed her, soft at first, until she moaned, muttered something against his mouth, and slapped her hands to his chest. For a beat it could have gone either way, her shoving him clear or pulling him in.
In, he thought. God, please in …
As if she could read his mind, she slid her hands inside his suit jacket and fisted his shirt at his back, holding on tight.
And then they were fighting to get closer to each other, the kiss now hard and demanding, her mouth wet and hot and desperate on his.
And that’s when he knew. One kiss wasn’t going to be enough. Nothing short of stripping her naked to run his mouth over every inch of her would be enough, and he doubted even that could satisfy him.
God, she was the sweetest, hottest thing he’d ever tasted and she was right there with him, lost in the kiss. And even though he was a guy who never forgot his surroundings, he did exactly that.
The elevator disappeared.
Hell, they could’ve been on the moon for all he noticed. His heart kept skipping beats and he couldn’t get close enough. The taste of her made him realize he’d been starving for this, for her, and the way she melted against him in such soft, delicious, perfect surrender went straight through him in waves of intense pleasure.
He had absolutely zero reason to be doing this, not one single good reason, in fact had entire volumes of bad reasons. Not that this stopped him. The low ache in his body kept demanding more, so he pulled her in a little closer, a little tighter, opening his mouth wider on hers, needing to get inside of her, even if just for a moment.
And again, she was right there with him, moving against him, her breasts pressing into his chest as she made the sexiest sound of acquiescence he’d ever heard. Sliding a hand down her back, he cupped her ass and then the back of her thigh, lifting her leg, drawing it up around his waist to rock into her. “Darcy.”
A helpless moan of arousal was her only response as her dress rose to dangerous heights. Her fingers were very busy in his waistband, gliding beneath, driving him right out of his ever-loving mind, because in another few seconds she’d have him in the palm of her hand, literally, and he’d be hers.
Rocking her hips to his, rubbing against the erection now threatening to burst his zipper, she was giving him a little taste of what she’d be like in bed. He wanted to hike her dress up to her chin, tear off whatever she wore beneath, and bury himself inside her. Instead he buried his face into the curve of her neck and groaned. More. That’s all he could think. Not ready to surface, he slid his fingers into her hair and held her head as he once again kissed her, slowly, thoroughly, with long, lazy strokes of his tongue that had her practically climbing up his body.
He liked that, a whole lot, and going with the insanity plea, he was heading beneath her dress with nefarious intent when he heard someone’s throat clearing.
Darcy shoved clear of him so fast his head spun. AJ was much slower to disengage, but yeah, the elevator doors had opened.
They were still on Darcy’s floor.
“No worries,” the man standing there said, looking embarrassed. “I’ll … take the next one.”
The doors closed.
“You never pushed the lobby button,” Darcy said, her voice husky.
Right. Jesus. He tore his eyes off of her and punched the button for the lobby, barely resisting thunking his head against the steel doors a few times. He probably could have convinced himself that it had been just a kiss—if she hadn’t looked at him right then.
It was the damnedest thing, but time seemed to stop.
Darcy swallowed hard but held the eye contact, nibbling on her lower lip, and God help him but he figured out exactly what this and the warning bells going off in his head were. Yeah, he knew, and he so didn’t need this, didn’t want this, but that didn’t seem to mean a damn.
You. Are. So. Screwed …
Neither of them spoke on the ride down, the only sound being their still-labored breathing. AJ decided to take some comfort in the fact that she appeared to be having just as much trouble as he was. As the elevator slowed and then stopped, he reached out and hit the Close Door button and held it.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“We should talk about it.” He pointed to the wall where he’d pinned her and pillaged like a madman. Not that he’d been alone; he was pretty sure he still had the indentations from where her fingers had dug into his back.
But she was shaking her head. “Not necessary. I don’t know what that was but I’m going with denial. It never happened.”
“But it did,” he said.
“No.” She exhaled a long, shuddering breath. “The thing to remember here is that I annoy the hell out of you and you make me angry.”
“Yeah, I noticed that when you had your tongue down my throat,” he said.
If looks could kill … “Are you telling me that was all me?” she asked in a tone that suggested he was an inch from death.
“Are you telling me it was all me?”
“Oh my God.” She slapped his hand off the Close Door button. “Let’s just get out of here before I strangle you.”
The doors opened but he held her arm. “I want to hear why you want to pretend this didn’t happen.”
“Trust me,” she said. “You don’t want to know what I’m really thinking.”
“I do.”
“Fine,” she said and tossed up her hands. “You’re … remarkable. And by remarkable I mean remarkably egotistical and—” She broke off as another couple got onto the elevator.
Darcy stepped off and started to walk, stopping only to send a glance back at AJ. “Hurry, I want to get this over with.”
They were in the middle of the bank of elevators, alone. “Need a minute,” he said.
“Why?”
He just looked at her.
Her gaze ran over him and he knew the exact moment she saw the problem because she stared at the obvious bulge behind his zipper. “Are you kidding me?”
“Oh, and you’re not turned on?” he asked.
“Nope.” She crossed her arms. “Not in the slightest.”
He leaned in so that their mouths were nearly touching, marginally satisfied by her intake of breath and the way her gaze dropped to his mouth. “If we had even a minute of privacy,” he said, “I’d prove you a liar.”
Pushing free of him, she let out an annoyed sound and strode