Sinclair spoke from experience. As far as Savannah could tell, her sister focused exclusively on attraction, affection, and fun. She had her own theories about why her little sister avoided anything more, but now wasn’t the time to delve into them unless she wanted to drag them both through some extremely messy emotions.
But maybe, in this case, Sinclair had a point. “Enjoy a little perk, huh?”
A knock from the other side of the wall made her jump.
Sinclair stepped back from the bed. “What the hell was that?”
“Beau,” she mouthed, and then pointed at the wall behind her and whispered, “His bedroom is on the other side.”
Her sister looked at the wall. “Do you think he heard us?”
She lifted a shoulder.Who knows?
Sinclair climbed onto the bed, leaned her face close to the wall, and motioned for Savannah to do the same.
“Good night on three,” she whispered, and used her fingers to tick off the count.
In unison they called out, “Good night, Beau!”
“Good night, Smiths,” he called back.
Sinclair grinned and crawled under the blankets. Savannah did the same, and then clicked off her bedside light, plunging the room into darkness.
A voice through the wall disrupted the silence. “For the record, there’s nothing little about my perk.”
Chapter Eleven
Beau glanced at Savannah’s door as he climbed the steps to his apartment. UPS had left a letter-sized cardboard envelope on her welcome mat. He’d bet his last beer it contained the fellowship packet she was waiting for, including her travel stipend and airline tickets. He turned to his apartment, but then hesitated. Her doorstep seemed like a bad place to leave important documents.
A glance at his watch told him it wasn’t quite eight o’clock. She might work for another four or five hours. He could take the envelope to his place for safekeeping, but he knew she was anxious to receive the information. He could call and let her know it had arrived, but they’d called and texted enough in the past few days for him to know that if she was working she wouldn’t pick up.
Just drive over to the studio and deliver the damn thing. It wasn’t as if he had plans for tonight, and he’d been meaning to take her up on her invitation to watch her work. When they had dinner with his parents tomorrow, he ought to be able to speak coherently about her process.
And he was spending a lot of mental energy justifying a simple decision. Yes, he liked the idea of seeing her this evening. So what? He turned and headed downstairs to his car before he could waste any more time debating this move like a thirteen-year-old girl.
The studio wasn’t far. He had a general idea of the location, butas the restaurants, grocery stores, and mini malls transitioned to more of an industrial district, the idea of Savannah working at night got a lot less appealing. The small parking lot in front of the studio was decently lit, at least. He parked his Yukon next to her Explorer, grabbed the envelope, and took the steps to the heavy doors of the two-story brick warehouse. Music ambushed him as soon as he stepped through. From invisible speakers, a deep-voiced singer begged someone to take him to church, loud enough to rattle the cement block walls.
Inside, a series of dormant utilitarian workstations divided the open space into sections. The north and south walls each held a pair of furnaces—one large, one smaller—and before one of the small furnaces stood Savannah.
He walked closer, the music obscuring the sound of his footsteps on the concrete floor. A pair of sunglasses shielded her eyes as she stared into the furnace. She had her hair pulled up in a bundle at the back of her head, and wore faded jeans that clung to her ass like a second skin, along with a snug white T-shirt bearing a Marble City Glassworks logo across the back with the words “Best Blow Job in Tennessee” emblazoned in big black letters below the logo.
The glow from the furnace turned her skin gold. She held one end of a long, narrow pipe in the round opening at the front of the furnace, twirling it at a constant rate. After a moment she stepped back, removing the length of pipe from the furnace, and bringing a molten glob of red-hot glass out of the heat. Still twirling the rod steadily, she brought the other end to her lips. Her chest rose as she inhaled. Then she blew into the pipe. The glob expanded like a lopsided balloon, but quickly evened into a sphere as she continued to twist and blow.
He watched her hands as she worked, and her lips, mesmerized by the assurance with which she finessed the delicate balance between air and gravity. Mesmerized…and turned on. Herfingers danced along the metal shaft, and he imagined those deft fingertips touching his skin. She closed her lips around the end of the pipe, pursing them slightly to ensure a tight seal, and his cock begged for the same treatment.
No complications.
What’s so complicated about two consenting adults tearing the clothes off each other and fucking until they can’t stand?
Uh-uh. No way. This was not an argument he was going to have with himself. She inspired a dangerous mix of gratitude, affection, and lust, but they’d both be better off not blurring the boundaries of their arrangement with a physical relationship. That was not the plan.
A bead of sweat trickled between his shoulder blades when she slid the rod from between her lips and absently licked them as she considered the glass. Apparently satisfied, she shoved her sunglasses up to the top of her head and turned toward a large table with a stainless steel top. Then she spotted him and lost her grip on the pipe. It clattered to the floor, and the molten mass at the end splattered on the concrete like a burst bubble.
He closed the space between them, to make sure she was okay, and apologize for scaring her, and yeah, to read her the riot act for working alone in an unlocked studio at this time of night. But somewhere around the moment he got close enough to touch her, his self-control shattered as irrevocably as the glass. All those plans fell away under the force of a different imperative.
Don’t…
He tossed the envelope on the table, sank his hands into her upswept hair, and kissed her.