Brushing a few loose hairs away from her face, he nodded. “You know I was.”
No, she didn’t know that.
Wrong. She did know.
She knew. And there was no more denying what she’d been denying for months.
What she’d been wanting for months.
Justin.
CHAPTER TWO
RILEY HADN’T INTENDED to go home with Justin.
Ha—even a few hours ago, when they’d been swirling and laughing on the dance floor, she’d still been telling herself their kiss had been a one-off.
So much for good intentions and all that jazz.
Here she was, in his bedroom, in the midst of something straight out of someone else’s life, practically ripping Justin’s shirt off his muscled chest.
He trailed hungry kisses over her throat, slid her spaghetti straps down her shoulders while her every nerve cell strained to be nearer to his talented lips.
She’d lost her purse somewhere. Possibly it was in the Jeep he’d driven them in to his apartment. Or maybe she’d tossed it somewhere between his front door and where they were now wrapped around each other next to his bed.
His big bed.
A big bed he’d probably brought countless women to.
Hesitation hit. Did she really want to be another notch on Justin’s belt?
Abandoning their fumbling at his shirt buttons, her fingers lowered, tracing over the rich, smooth leather encircling his waist. Seriously, what was she doing? Feeling for literal notches on his belt?
She pressed her forehead to his chest, resting against the soft cotton material. Closing her eyes, she breathed in his amazing scent, full of spice and temptation.
It made women crave more.
It made her crave more.
Don’t inhale, Riley. Do not inhale.
Wasn’t that when she’d first lost her mind in the garden? When she’d allowed his scent to intoxicate her? Weaken her to his powerful sensory onslaught?
Swallowing, she clenched his belt and ordered her brain to use logic, not hormones, to calculate how she wanted to proceed.
Or not to proceed.
Unaware of her inner turmoil, he dipped his tongue into the indentation at the base of her throat as his fingers connected with her dress’s zipper.
A moan rose from deep inside her chest.
She was here, in Justin’s bedroom, the sole recipient of his many talents. Was she really going to tell him to stop?
He would. As wrapped up as he was in what was happening, she didn’t question the fact that if she told him she’d changed her mind he’d stop.
Letting go of his belt, her hands went back to working those last few shirt buttons free. The time for stopping had gone. Just like her inhibitions, apparently.
Possibly this was happening because she’d been so emotionally raw at Cheyenne and Paul’s party. And she’d drunk champagne while eating very little, because she was on yet another diet in the hopes of getting rid of the extra fifteen pounds she perpetually carried.