Frankly, I wanted to climb Leander like a tree and hump him until that feeling hit again. Holy crap, if this was what sex could really be like, no wonder people talked about it all the time and wrote songs and books about it!
I mean, good Lord.
“You liked that, I take it?” Leander’s voice was smirking and self-satisfied. Anyone else sounding like that and I would’ve thought they were an arrogant asshole. But no, Leander had every right to sound so smug.
“You’re r-r-really good at that.” Oh my God, I hadn’t had a stutter since I was a kid, but he’d blown me so off-kilter that apparently it was back. I couldn’t care. “R-r-r-really g-g-g-good.” I dropped my head face-first against his chest and inhaled. “J-just need a m-minute.”
“You okay there?” he asked, sounding a little concerned.
“J-j-just never done that,” I confessed, face still in his shirt.
He laughed. “What, been finger-fucked in a penthouse kitchen?”
Well crap, I wasn’t about to admit my virginal status now. So I laughed it off. “Something like that,” I murmured, pushing from where he’d pinned me between his hot body and the cool countertop.
“You’re running away again,” Leander said, frown line appearing between his brows like earlier. “Why are you always doing that? I’ve barely begun to taste you.”
And just like that, he put the finger he’d had inside me, still slick with my juices, in his mouth. He sucked it long and deep. The way his nostrils flared, you’d have thought it was the finest ambrosia.
My legs were jelly. A reckless part of me wanted to go back and wrap my legs around him. But if he’d undone me that much with the mere twitch of his fingers? We were still strangers, no matter how much I felt like I knew him.
I continued to put distance between us. With every step away from him I took, my head seemed to clear more and more.
But my body remembered all too vividly the heights he’d brought me to.
I ran my hand shakily through my hair.
“See you in the morning,” I managed unevenly, clinging to what composure I could as I backed away from the fridge and the gorgeous movie star—still haloed from behind by the light of the open fridge. I realized the fridge had started to beep from being open so long, though I only now registered the noise. “Nice, um, running into you.”
He smirked at me.
“Sleep tight, little Hope,” he said, his voice a whisper in the shadows as I raced back up the stairs.
9
MORNING AFTER
My body was electric with what Leander had awakened in me. How had I made it through twenty-seven years of life without ever experiencing that?
I bounded downstairs the next morning, thrilled and slightly terrified to see if the same chemistry would still be there between me and Leander in the daylight.
But when I got to the kitchen and found Milo and one of the twins sipping coffee, I could immediately tell by his posture that it was Janus, not Leander. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just did. There was something about the way the two brothers carried themselves. At least when cameras weren’t rolling and paparazzi weren’t around.
“Where’s Leander?” I asked, and Janus looked up.
“How do you know I’m not Leander?”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed an orange from a basket in the center of the counter, peeling it while I popped some English muffins in the toaster. “You’re not.”
“Yeah, but how did you know?”
I waved a hand. “So where is he? There’s not much time before we’ve got to go.”
Milo made a face. “He heard we were flying commercial and caught a ride with Lena since she chartered a private jet. She only invited him, though, apparently. We’re stuck in the cheap seats that got booked when Geena was barely doing her job.”
But I was still fixated on caught a ride with Lena. Leander and Lena had dated for a while, during the movie shoot. And now, during these few weeks of doing press together, would they rekindle their romance?
All of a sudden I was furious. Why was Leander playing Handsy McHandsy with me in the kitchen last night if he was gonna just get back with his co-star the next day?
I shook my head, feeling foolish for letting my emotions run away with me like this. These guys were all players and I couldn’t forget it. If I was gonna lose my V-card to one of them, I couldn’t make it out to be more than it was. Just fun and games.
Still, I couldn’t deny the stab of disappointment that hit me low in the stomach.
I’d live. I’d gotten through plenty of disappointments before and I’d survive this one too.
“I’ll try to get y’all on private jets from now on, “ I said, “but it was too late to change at the last minute. I had to work with what was already booked.”