He hesitated a second while the elevator doors slid shut. Then he wound his arm around her waist, turning and pulling her close, so her belly was pressed against him.
“Honey, it’s up every second I’m near you.”
It certainly was.
Simmering heat uncoiled, spreading along her veins sending her temperature soaring, she leaned more heavily against him. Unable to resist offering. “But you’re not going to do anything with it?” she asked. “Seems a shame.”
His arm across her back tightened, but the strain around his eyes deepened. “When did you get so sassy?”
She wasn’t sassy. She was sweet on him and she wasn’t getting any better.
She looked into his eyes. As the silence built, so did the heat between them. Desire whispered in her head—the urge to lean closer, to move against him. She needed more than this almost innocent touch.
She gritted her teeth, wasn’t going to grind like the feral animal she felt herself becoming. Who knew want could be so all-consuming?
And the way he was looking at her? All that intensity again, that internal debate warring in his eyes.
“I’d kill to kiss you,” he murmured.
“That’s the whiskey addling your mind,” she whispered. “You don’t need to kill anything, you can kiss me any time.” She curled her fingers into the soft fabric of his shirt. She didn’t want to let go. Didn’t want him to step back.
His lashes lowered, his focus on her mouth. “No. I can’t.”
He released her as the elevator doors slid open.
Escaping the disappointment, she walked ahead to his suite, curling her fingers into a fist of frustration.
“You get those calls at all hours?” she asked, purely to try to take her mind off the desire that was killing her. She wasn’t going to beg.
“Often enough. I don’t mind. The promise of the hotel is that everything will be perfect. I like to ensure it is.”
“You get a lot of repeat customers?”
He nodded and let her into his room.
Yeah, she bet he did. In terms of women as well as guests. “So what do you do for fun? Play the field with Logan? Party on?”
Maybe it would help if she learned he was a total playboy sleaze.
“Sometimes.” He placed the bottle of whiskey on the table. “But other times I just relax quietly. Take a look under the bed.”
She turned a suspicious eye on him. “Are you sure? What am I going to find there? An inflatable Annie to help you relieve your problem?”
“Just go look,” he groaned.
Seriously? She went into the next room knelt beside the bed and lifted the white covering. There was a drawer built in.
“Open it.” He leaned against the doorframe.
“I’m not sure I should...”
“Dani,” he laughed. “There’s no monster in there.”
She pulled the drawer open. “Oh, wow.”
It was a library. A lying down library. Rows and rows of neatly placed books in specially built compartments in the wide drawer. All the spines faced up, to be easily read.
“This is fantastic.” She glanced up at him. “Why don’t you have them on shelves on the walls? Why keep it secret?”
“No secret. But I like my bedroom to be minimalist, just the bed. Rest easier that way.”
He didn’t rest easy? “But then you like to read in bed?”
He nodded and flicked on the lamp on the small beside table. “And it’s cool, don’t you think? In a closet-book-worm kinda way?”
She was so tickled that he was a closet book-worm. “You’re the sort of person who’d like a hidden doorway behind a bookcase, right?”
“Or a bookcase behind a door. Sure.”
She laughed.
“Find one.” He nodded at the neatly shelved books. “Read it. Sleep.”
He switched off the main light. The lamp cast a warm glow that was so much kinder on the eyes. She smiled. Everything about the hotel was stylish yet comfortable. It was unique, ornate, discreet. Everything so many of his guests wished to be themselves. No wonder it was so popular.
“Do all the suites have secret libraries?” she asked.
He nodded. “Not as big, but one shelf, yes.”
How freaking cool was that? “I read all Logan’s books when he was away skiing,” she confided. “Did you know he had a million of them stashed in his room?”
“Sure,” Rocco sat on the edge of the bed and picked a book from the drawer. “I read them too. Where do you think I got the idea?”
Yeah but Logan’s weren’t stylishly hidden like this. They’d just been piled up on the floor by his bed.
“Really?” She laughed a little sadly. “I thought it was one thing that connected me to him. I thought that seeing I liked his books, we must think in common or something. How wrong could I be?”
“Don’t think badly of him.”
She didn’t really. She didn’t expect much.
“You actually do have a bit in common.” Rocco reached forward and tousled her hair. “He doesn’t want you to make the same mistakes he did.”
Yeah, well. She hadn’t. So far.
She studied the books again. “I can’t believe you have them broken down by genre and then alphabetically by author.”
“Uh, yeah.” He looked a little sheepish.
“You come across as this so-cool success-story, but really you’re totally uptight,” she teased him.
“I am not uptight.”
“You are. This is so Type A personality. Is it going to bother you if I put this back in the wrong place?” She dropped the book she was holding into a different slot and watched him wince just that little bit. She laughed. “I bet you have everything filed away just so at work too. Your email inbox has no more than ten emails in it, right? The rest are in neat folders.”
“How else do you expect me to get things done?” He didn’t deny it.
“So everything has its place? Everything is just so?”
“No need to look like you’ve discovered the secret of the universe.” He grumbled.
But it was a little secret. She liked learning more about his style. She looked down at the books. “Which is your favorite?”
“I have particular favorites here.” He pointed to a row, picking one out and opening it at a random page.
Oh she knew that one. “There’s a really great sex scene in that book.”
Logan slammed it shut.
> “See,” she murmured. “You are uptight.” She reached for another book. “I have a scene for you.” She flipped the pages open. “You listening?”
“Always.”
She glanced up at him, saw his intense focus on her, felt her heart skip.
Yeah, so not getting over her crush.
She drew in a deep breath and moved to sit cross-legged on the bed, finding the page she wanted. It was a seriously shit-scary scene. That’s what she needed—to get her mind of all thoughts of getting closer to him.
He got on the bed too, stretching out to lie sideways at her feet and propping his head up on his hand to watch her. When she finished she peeked over the top of the book for his reaction.
“You like watching horror, reading crime... but then you get too scared?” he teased.
“That’s the point, right?” She stretched out her legs and scrunched down the bed, getting more comfortable. “Your turn to read me something.”
He hesitated for a moment. “All right.” He leaned down to his little library. “But it’s not gonna be scary,” he warned. “And it’s not gonna be sexy.”
He picked a British classic—a comedy of manners with gentle, old-fashioned humor. She laughed softly as she listened. He moved up the bed, taking the empty place beside her, but was careful to leave a suitably chaste space between them. She rolled to her side to face him and watch him read. She was so aware of his big body, his heat.
So gorgeous.
But as she listened to his deep voice, the thread of humor so evident in his tone, her eyelids grew heavy. She longed to snuggle close and lean on him.
So dreamy.
“I’ve never slept with anyone before,” she confessed sleepily, interrupting him midsentence.
He shot her a pained glance. “You already told me.”
“No I mean actual sleeping.”
He cocked his head. “Not even with those guys you just fooled around with?”
“Guys went a little cold when they realized I wasn’t going all the way,” she murmured.
He put the book down and shifted on the bed to mirror her position, rolling to his side so they lay face to face. “They hassle you about it?”
“I soon got a rep for being the frigid ski resort princess.”
His jaw clenched.