“Oh, good. Keep it wet. Just what I need to do to make it look even more like I’m riding the crimson wave.”
“All right, all right. If you can stop freaking the fuck out and find a place to hide out for fifteen minutes or so, I’ll bring you a change of clothes.”
“Really?” I squeal.
“Yes,” she sighs.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you, E…you’re the only woman for me. When do you want to get married? I’m thinking May at the Botanical Gardens. The hibiscus will be beautiful.”
“Shut up and lie low. I’ll call you when I get there.”
She hangs up after I agree, and now I’m left with nothing but time to kill.
I take a seat on a bucket in the corner of the room, pull out the donut that caused it all and my sketch pad, and set to work.
There’s a whole hotel here that needs designing, and the least I can do while avoiding my boss and colleagues is work.
Trent
I notice nearly immediately that Greer hasn’t followed the group when we move on from the lobby to the lounge on the sixth floor, but at some point, I expected her to catch up.
When she’s still missing twenty-five minutes later, I have no choice but to go look for her.
I hand out assignments to the rest of the group, make sure they know I’ll be back soon to check on their progress, and take the stairwell back down to the ground floor.
Backtracking is my only means of search at this point. If she’s wandered somewhere else on the property, I might not find her until her body starts to smell.
The stairwell is empty as I jog down six floors and bust through the door at the bottom with the weight of my body. There’s a long hallway of conference and banquet rooms, followed by a left-hand turn up at the end.
It’s a bit of a maze, but it’s meant to be that way. The sole purpose of this intricate design is to prevent other guests from stumbling their way into an important meeting or conference.
I’m nearly two-thirds of the way back to the lobby when a pool of red paint in the doorway to the business center catches my attention.
I pause for the briefest of moments and have to force a deep breath into my lungs.
Goddammit.
My anger fires at the carelessness of the workers, and I pick my pace back up, prepared to give whoever left it to sit on the floor coverings a stern word.
It won’t take long to soak through the cardboard we’ve laid out and stain the tile, and the time and cost of replacing this caliber of marble in the whole area is an expenditure we don’t need. My father has laid out a tight budget he expects me to follow, regardless of the necessary margin of error doing a project of this magnitude guarantees.
Careful of my step, I turn the corner…and run right into the sight of Greer’s bare back and ass, the thin string of her barely there thong the only fabric covering skin.
It’s a millimeter of surface area at most.
Jesus.
Frozen in place, I feel my heart speed up and my dick stir.
My eyes do a better job of roving than the robot thing they use on Mars, despite the fact that I haven’t given them permission.
Her hair is long and just barely waved and cascades in a perfect waterfall down the center of her back. It highlights the length of her spine, and son of a bitch, I’m now picturing fucking her from behind.
Dear God, stop thinking about that!
The effort it takes to remove myself from the doorway is almost too much to conquer, but I know the longer I stand here and stare, the more of a chance there is that she’ll notice me.
I duck just outside the door, against the wall right beside the frame, and take a deep breath.
I picture all the skin I couldn’t see. Her breasts, her stomach, her—
Fucking hell, why in the fuck is she naked?
I scrub at my eyes, trying to unsee the perfect, endless inches and inches of tanned skin, but it doesn’t work.
The curve of her hips and the tantalizing tease of her thighs are a permanent image in my mind. For the love of God, I will probably be thinking about it on my damn deathbed.
A noise sounds from inside the room, and panic overwhelms me.
Oh, fuck. She’s coming!
That’s usually a good thing, the brain in my aroused cock teases.
Unsure of what to do, I look around for something to make me look busy, make me look, like, you know, I’m the fucking boss and not some Peeping Tom, but I come up empty-handed. Instantly, I just let instinct take the wheel, and next thing I know, I’m off at a run headed back toward where I came from.