“Oh.”
Victor’s voice drops. “It’s worse when you’re forced to be close to them.”
“Like when you live across the hall from them?”
“Yes. When they walk around your apartment in tight pants.”
Pleased surprise rolls through me. “How dare they,” I murmur. “In their own home.”
“The audacity,” he says. His arm disappears beneath mine and a strong hand grips my fingers.
He pulls me into an empty cloakroom. Rack after rack has bare coat hangers on them. With no large audience, there’s no staff and definitely no coats.
My voice is breathless. “If you’re looking for a way out of talking about relationships, you won’t find it here.”
“Yes,” he says, hands closing around my waist. “I will.”
My lips are still smiling when he presses his against them, kissing me firmly.
It’s a while until I speak again. “Oh. Effective.”
His chuckle is dark. “The only way to shut you up.”
I press my hands flat against his chest, strong beneath the fabric of his dinner jacket. He kisses me like he had in the gym, like he knows what he wants and has no qualms about taking it.
He kisses me like he negotiates. To win.
I’ve never felt wanted this way before, never wanted quite this much in return. It’s heightened by the complicated tangle of emotions I feel for this man.
Respect, dislike, intrigue, awe. He’s an enigma.
And right now, he’s an enigma who’s entirely focused on me.
His hands dig into my hips and I meet him in the same intensity, sliding my hands into his hair. The wall is hard against my back.
“Do you think this is why they designed so many cloakrooms?” I whisper.
He laughs hoarsely, moving his lips to my neck. His beard tickles, sending goose bumps across my skin. “Yes,” he says. “The architects are married.”
“They needed somewhere to sneak off during constructions.”
His hands slide down my body, over the soft fabric of the dress, and it was worth every cent. Victor groans, his hand ghosting past the curve of my breast. A hard length digs into my hip. “Fuck, Myers. This wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Yeah,” I say, locking my knees around his hips. “It wasn’t part of mine either.”
“And yet.”
“And yet.”
He kisses me again, more languorous this time, and with each passing second the heat in my stomach grows sharper. I want him.
“If it wasn’t our first time,” he says, “I’d take you here.”
The words are like a bolt through me. Imagining him, imagining us… “Where anyone could walk by?”
He rests his head against my shoulder. “Fuck. But yes, I would.”
I reach down and palm him through his pants. The hard length throbs against my hand and he groans into my neck, nothing like the Victor in perfect control of himself and his world.