The scene was almost pornographic, raw and sensual, and the photographer had timed it perfectly to show Trinity’s card key clutched in his fingers as he searched blindly for the slot without even lifting his mouth from hers. The urgency burned visibly between them.
He almost couldn’t look at the picture. It was too much truth, too intimate. Had Trinity known a photographer had followed them upstairs? Was that the only reason she’d given him the green light?
Last night had been real—to him, anyway. As real as the ache in his elbow from the vigorous activity, which had caused his old injury to flare up. And it didn’t sit well that something so personal had been captured and then turned into a marketing gimmick by his and Trinity’s respective publicists.
But that’s what they’d been doing all along. Why was this picture different? He didn’t like the answer. Or the kick to his stomach as he glanced up to see Trinity breeze into the restaurant and take a seat at his table without so much as a hello.
God, she was gorgeous. Even with an inch-wide green stripe running down the nonshaved side of her hair. He was almost accustomed to the heavy hand she used to apply her cosmetics, and honestly, it was part of the overt style that bled from her pores. She wore a flowy, hair-stripe-matching grass-green dress that covered her to her calves and tied up around her neck. She looked so sizzling hot that he had his suit jacket unbuttoned before he realized he’d been about to take it off so he could cover her up with it.
Moron. She’d shredded his brain cells last night.
It was a very respectable dress. It was what was under the dress that got him, and he didn’t just mean the body. Trinity was fierce on the outside, but when he’d gotten her behind closed doors, she’d melted into his arms, becoming so sweet and impassioned he could hardly fathom it.
That had been a huge surprise. And all he wanted to do this morning was pull her into his lap and stick his nose into that juncture of her neck and shoulder, where it most smelled like her. Then he’d start peeling back her outrageous shell again.
“Lara called me already,” Trinity said as she smiled at the waitress and ordered coffee. “My publicist. She’s thrilled with the traffic on our website. I have a couple of calls in to Alex to get some prelim sales numbers now that it’s close enough to the end of the month to have the data.”
“Good morning to you, too,” he said and almost didn’t choke on it.
Trinity shot him a look. “Get up on the wrong side of the bed? Or maybe in the wrong bed entirely? I told you to stay. You were the one who insisted on propriety and left.”
Because he’d had to. Sleeping in the same bed with her put a stamp of permanence on this association that he couldn’t afford. Not as far as the outside world was concerned; it was already too late for that. But in his mind. They were a real couple now, for better or worse, and he wasn’t sorry they’d taken things to the next level. But it was temporarily real.
He couldn’t forget that. Sleeping with her, wrapped up in each other all night long, would be a mistake.
Instead of letting the unsettled restlessness in his chest take over his mood, he lifted her hand from the table and kissed her palm. “My publicist is happy with the results as well. Act like you’re enjoying yourself. There’s a slew of photographers across the way.”
She peered in the direction of his subtle head jerk from the corner of her eye to where a crowd of people lined the lobby, visible over the low wall separating the restaurant from the rest of the ground floor. “They’re here early. And I don’t have to act like I’m having fun with you. I just do.”
Really? He eyed her. “You’re in Oakland, California, at a hotel eating crappy breakfast food, and I’m about to make you watch a baseball game that you don’t want to sit through. You should have higher standards.”
Her smile heated him so fast, his vision grayed. “It’s what will happen after the game that’s keeping my spirits up.”
And now he was thinking about that, too. He’d been trying not to, because they hadn’t really established any morning-after rules, like how frequently they’d take their relationship behind closed doors. Given that they’d be doing deliberate on-camera work today as well, maybe she’d want a break. What did he know about what went on in her head?
“The endless interviews and postgame strategy sessions?” he commented. “Yeah, that’ll be a blast for you.”
She’d agreed to do the whole nine yards’ worth of press junkets in hopes of getting some extra exposure, which had seemed necessary at the time but now felt excessive given that they were already burning up the internet with their presex activities in the hall.