“I think that might be nice.”
A relieved breath tore from him. When had he started holding it? “I’ll bring breakfast. Is seven too early?”
He was pushing her. He couldn’t help it. At the realization he wasn’t going to wake up with her in his arms, he needed to pinpoint when he would see her next. How many hours and minutes until he could hold her again. Talk to her. Hear her voice, her laugh. Make love to her.
Be with her. Just be with her.
In every goddamn—
She straightened to her feet and stepped over him. “I think I better call a taxi.”
He almost snared her wrist in his fist. Almost yanked her back down to him. He wouldn’t let her leave him. She wasn’t allowed. She was staying here with him. They needed to make love again. He needed to claim her lips with his, hold her to his body, her legs straddling his hip, his throbbing length buried in her heat.
He needed…he needed…
Her.
Christ, he needed her.
“Sienna…”
He stopped himself before he could say please stay. Just.
She scooped her dress up from where he’d tossed it earlier, covering her beautiful body with its shimmery black fabric. She looked around the floor, a tension in her shoulders he wished to hell. “Do you know where my undies are?”
He scanned the floor around him. Every breath he pulled tasted of her. “No.”
With a muttered curse, she shook her head and snatched up her stilettos and small purse. “No matter. I don’t need them.”
He hurried to his feet. Who would have thought he’d be fighting to keep a woman in his home? And doing it naked, at that. “I can drive you.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I need time to think.”
“About us?”
“About us.”
“About me making love to you tomorrow?”
“That. And other things.”
“Like what happens next?”
“Like what happens next.”
He forced a relaxed smile to his lips. “Breakfast. Something simple.”
A still wariness fell over her. She studied him, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. “Please don’t hurt me, James.”
He closed the space between them in one step, and brought his hands up to cup her face with gentle hands. “I won’t.”
And he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Not now he knew who she was.
He let her go, strode across the room to the landline, and called his private driver service. There was no way in hell he was letting her travel across Sydney in a taxi. Or an Uber.
When he turned back, she was gone.
Biting back a growl, he grabbed his tuxedo trousers from the floor and shoved his legs into them. Damn it, this wasn’t how he’d planned the evening to end.
Plan? What plan? That’s the problem.
But was it a problem? For the first time in his life, he was living entirely in the moment, free-wheeling. Not following any laid-out strategy. And it felt good. Really good.
He hurried into the foyer, zipping his fly as he went. “Sienna, are you—?”
She stopped him with a kiss, snaking her arms around his shoulders, pressing her lush body to his.
This. Forever. This…
Stepping out of his embrace before he could tighten his arms around her waist, she shook her head. Her fingers lingered on his chest, a burning touch he never wanted to end. “I didn’t want to fall for you, James Dyson. But I have, damn it.”
He stared at her, his chest constricting in a crushing vice. “I know the feeling.”
Her eyebrows knitted. “What happens next with us? Really?”
“Breakfast.” He brushed the back of his knuckles over her jaw. “Good conversation, good company, and good food.”
“And then?”
“And then we take it a day at a time. How does that sound? You have a painting of me to do, remember?”
A shaky laugh fell from her. “I’d forgotten.”
James grinned, a tight warmth curling through him. When had she stopped thinking of him just as a subject of her next work? “Are you sure you don’t want it to be a nude?”
She rolled her eyes. “Are you sure you want everyone in Australia to see you in your birthday suit?”
He laughed. “Good point. I think we’ll save the nude stuff for your preliminary sketches.”