“I’m trying to shelve that smooth asshole I’ve been for the last few years. With you, I just want to be me. Trouble is, inside, below the layers of fame and music and slickness, I’m just a little twerp with no game.”
She let out a surprised laugh. “That takes balls to admit. And since I don’t enjoy games very much—I was the kind of kid who’d upturn a board game if I was losing—I’m happy you don’t want to play them with me.” After draining the rest of her champagne, she set it down on the table beside her. “Tell me the truest thing about you.”
I captured her hand in mine, drawing her against me like we’re slow dancing. There wasn’t any music, but I rocked us like there was. She moved with me, her hands against my chest.
“The only people I really love are my sister and my band.” I’d never said that out loud, but there it was.
“Should I think poorly of you now?” she asked. “Is that what you expect?”
“I don’t know. I guess I think it’s pretty shitty not to love my parents.”
“Were they shitty parents?”
I sighed, letting my forehead rest against hers. “Yeah. They were.”
Dipping my head, I took her mouth in a slow kiss, tasting her again, getting to know the give of her lips beneath mine.
I was nervous as hell too. There was something here, at least on my end, that felt bigger than tonight. This wasn’t anything I was looking for, and I had no idea what it meant, only that I wanted Michaela. Not just in my bed, although there was no doubt I wanted her bare skin on my sheets. No, I wanted what she offered—to remind each other who we really were.
She tugged at the bottom of my shirt, sliding her palm up my stomach, then around to my back. Up and down, she caressed, her touch firm, warm, searching but confident.
Panting, I let go of her lips to kiss along the razor-sharp edge of her jaw. “Jesus, Michaela.”
She let her head fall back. “I know.”
Cupping the back of her head, I captured her cloudy gaze. “Tell me the truest thing about you.”
Her hands slid to the waistband of my pants, fingers dipping just below. “Sometimes I think I don’t have a clue what home is. The place where I can take a breath and burrow in.”
I understood that feeling more than I could put into words. I had a wanderer’s heart, but a piece of me longed for that same burrow Michaela was looking for.
“How about this? No matter what happens after tonight, I’ll be your burrow. Call me, come to me, whatever, and I’ll be there. You can carry that with you, Michaela. Take a breath with me.”
She stilled, her dark eyes soft and wide. “That’s funny, because I was thinking this night is the first one in a while I haven’t been aware of every molecule of oxygen entering my lungs. I’m breathing with you.”
I was breathing with her too. And it had crossed my mind once or twice that the way I was feeling being around her might’ve been what Gabriel and Nick were talking about. Those could’ve been the deluded thoughts of a drunk man, but I’d been drunk before—hell, lately, I was drunk more often than I should’ve been—andneverhad I been with a girl I barely knew and felt an inkling of what I did with Michaela.
“I don’t have a clue about a lot of things, but this, right here…this is right,” I said.
We undressed each other with slow, drunk hands. She threw off my shirt, and I slid hers over her head. Her skin was smooth everywhere and smelled like candied almonds. My mouth dragged along her shoulders and neck while my fingers closed around the clasp of her plain, black bra. I unhooked it and eased the straps down her arms. She let it fall, allowing me to see her.
I palmed her small breasts, thumbing her tight, dark brown nipples. She shuddered, sucking in a shaky breath. Perfect. Her reaction, how her tits looked in my hands, the feel of her…all of it was perfect.
“I need you in my bed. Is that all right?” I asked.
“Yeah, Moses. It’s more than all right.”
I caught her by the backs of her legs and lifted. She wrapped her legs around my waist, and our lips fused together as I carried her blindly through the suite. I knocked over lamps and into walls. Tomorrow, we were bound to be bruised, but tonight, all I could feel was her.
Next to my bed, Michaela’s feet met the floor, followed by her knees. She kneeled in front of me, working my fly with fingers more deft than they had any right to be with all the drinks she’d had tonight. If I’d been more of a gentleman and less desperate to have her, and maybe slightly less drunk myself, I’d have put a stop to where her hands were going, laid her down on my bed, and held her all night.
But I was no fucking gentleman, and I wanted to consume this woman.
My jeans were shoved down to my knees, then kicked off somewhere in a dark corner. I lifted Michaela to her feet by her elbows, and she went to work on her own jeans, shimmying them down her hips until she fell back on the bed, laughing. I yanked them the rest of the way off, tossing them away with mine.
One second, then two, then more. She waited for me as I looked at her in a little black thong and nothing else. She was the tiniest hourglass, all delicate bones and plush hips. I could probably wrap both my hands around her waist, but I sure as hell knew I could get lost in the flare of her hips.
Rolling to her side, she arched her back and peered over her shoulder at me, a cocky little smile on her lips. I took a step, then another. Laying my hand on her shoulder, I eased her facedown, then ran my palms down the line of her spine and up the slope of her ass. My finger trailed between her ass cheeks, following her thong. She was wet, soaking the cotton covering her pussy.