One Good Reason (Boston Love #3)(13)

Something about that question touches a nerve. He goes still and lifts his head so our eyes meet. I don’t know him well enough to put a name on the emotion in their hazel depths. I feel dazed, my lips still tingling from his kisses as I stare up at him. His thumb moves to brush my bottom lip, as if he can’t quite help himself.

“It matters,” he says quietly. “I’m not f*cking you for the first time in a bathroom stall. In fact, I’m not f*cking you anywhere except my bed for the foreseeable future.”

The way he says that — with such certainty, like there’s no doubt in his mind we’ll be doing this again — sends alarm bells ringing inside my head.

Common sense returns in a flash.

What the hell are you doing? my brain is screaming at me. You aren’t the kind of girl who gets carried away because of… what? Lust? The promise of a good f*ck? You’re here on a job. Get your head out from between your legs and get the hell out of here.

“I have to go,” I say, pushing against his chest and sliding past him before he has a chance to corner me again. By the time he’s turned around, I’ve already crouched to retrieve my backpack and pulled it from the cabinet beneath the sink.

“Go?” His voice is full of disbelief. “I just had you pinned to a wall, with your hands in my hair and your tongue in my mouth. Darling, where exactly do you think you’re going? If the answer isn’t my place, you need to rethink it.”

“Listen, this was…” I trail off, fighting a blush as I slide the strap of my backpack up over one shoulder and edge toward the exit door. “This was…”

“Hot as hell?” Parker supplies.

I shake my head.

“Not nearly enough?” he suggests.

Another head shake. God, I’m actually blushing. Like a virginal little schoolgirl.

What the hell is this guy doing to me?

I swallow. “I don’t know what this was.” I rise to full height, avoiding his eyes at all costs. “But I have to leave now. So… thanks for…for…”

“Saving you?” He’s watching me carefully. “Or for the second part that happened just now, the part that’s got you so turned on you can’t even look at me?”

My defiant eyes fly to his. “I’m not turned on.”

“Red cheeks? Swollen lips? Wild hair?” He smirks. “You look pretty turned on, darling.”

“Well, I’m not,” I snap.

He steps closer.

I step back.

“I’m leaving now.”

“So you said,” he murmurs, still watching me.

“Don’t follow me.”

“I wasn’t planning to.” He takes another step.

I hold out a hand to stop his advance. “And don’t even think about kissing me again.”

He grins. “Seems like you’re the one thinking about it, snookums.”

“Ugh!” I whirl around to the exit door and put my hand on the knob. Before I can turn it, he’s there at my back, pressing into me — a wall of heat and need. Damn if it doesn’t feel good.

“This isn’t over,” he whispers, his lips brushing the bare skin of my shoulder in the hint of a kiss, his hand tracing the sensitive skin of my spine. It takes all my strength not to lean back into his touch.

“You’re right,” I say, wishing my voice didn’t sound so rough. “Something can’t be over if it never even started.”

Twisting hard on the knob, I yank open the door and slip out into the hallway.

This time, he doesn’t follow me… but his voice carries softy at my back and I can’t tune out his final words no matter how hard I try.

“I wouldn’t count on that, darling.”





4





The Three Stooges




My Uber driver shoots me a strange look as I clamor into his backseat and I can’t exactly blame him— kiss-bitten lips, sex hair, and an ensemble featuring a white button down layered over an evening gown doesn’t exactly scream stable. Thankfully, he chooses not to comment as he drives me across town to my loft in the Leather District. I wouldn’t be able to keep up a conversation if he tried. My body’s in the car but my mind is back in that bathroom — remembering the way Parker West’s mouth felt against mine.

I’ve never been kissed like that in my life — kissed until I lost myself, kissed until I ceded control over my every autonomous instinct, kissed until I felt possessed, owned, kept like a bargain I didn’t remember making. His mouth hit mine and suddenly I belonged to him. Worse, I liked it. His lips are the only shackles I’ve ever allowed to hold me; it’s more than a little disquieting to realize I enjoyed the sensation of their weight against my skin.

My driver pulls up outside the towering brick warehouse. The faded white paint that stretches across the side in bold letters is visible even in the dark.

EDISON PIANO FACTORY, EST. 1922

I punch in the building code, shuffle down the hallway, and shove my finger into the small illuminated panel to call the freight elevator. I hear it coming long before it arrives — rattling and groaning as it descends slowly down the shaft. The clanging, ancient brute of a machine is a relic from the original factory, built to haul thousand-pound pianos between floors. It refuses to fall apart no matter how many decades pass. With its iron bars and odd shape, it looks more like a birdcage than a viable mode of transportation. Hell, it almost makes the prospect of walking up six flights of stairs sound appealing.