The kiss I got was exactly the response I was looking for. I melted against him, my coat crushed between us, my mouth coming open under his. His arms wound around my waist, holding me up, holding me captive. He let me go too soon, though, and I tottered in my shoes, gripping his arms for support.
He raised his head, a mixture of confusion and embarrassment in his uncertain expression. My lipstick was smudged across his mouth, and there was a pause before he spoke, like he wasn’t sure what to say. “Sorry about that. You surprised me.”
“That was the point.” I gingerly ran my thumb along my bottom lip line. “Oh, now this is embarrassing. We’re wearing the same shade.”
He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “There’s a powder room through there.”
I took notice of my surroundings for the first time. The checked marble from the vestibule continued into the larger interior foyer, but the walls here were painted linen white. A half-bath stood open to the right, and I stepped in just long enough to check my lipstick in the mirror. When I turned back, Neil had hung up my coat. He gestured to the other doors. “Let me show you around. I should do at least that much before I rip that dress off you.”
“You can’t rip it, it’s Holli’s, and it’s her favorite,” I told him sternly as I followed him further into the apartment. There was a hallway to the left of the front door. I realized the elevator must run through the center of the apartment.
“Three bedrooms that way, media room, gym, and service.” He waved it off as though those details were unimportant. “And fine, I won’t rip the dress.”
“Service?” The word seemed utterly foreign to me as I tried to place exactly what type of room would be considered a service room. Then it snapped into place. “Oh, like a maid?”
“A housekeeper, but I’ve given her the night off. She doesn’t live here, anyway. I use those rooms mostly for storage.” He motioned toward the other side of the foyer, where a short L-shaped hallway bent out of sight. “That way is the master suite— we had better leave that part until after dinner, I think— and there is the library.”
“Library?” I let him guide me with his hand on my back. He reached through the door and flipped the light switch, and it seemed far too casual a motion to herald the revelation of French Empire style furnishings and a floor-to-ceiling collection of gorgeous, leather bound books.
I scrutinized the shelves from the door. “You don’t really read these, do you? They all match.”
“I’ve read some,” he defended himself. “But you’re right; the books for reading are in my bedroom. These are just a shamelessly showy collection.”
I walked with him to the living room, a huge space with high ceilings and a monstrously large stone fireplace. The furniture— a couch, a backless sofa, a few chairs and a low, blocky mahogany table— were all modern, but flavored by classic styles. All the upholstery was a shade of pale eggshell that highly discouraged eating or drinking near them. Overhead, dark wood beams crossed the ceiling, and the largest embroidered rug I’d ever seen concealed the wood parquet that wouldn’t have matched the furnishing.
Okay. Deep breaths. Neil was really, really, really super rich. I guess it had been easy enough to ignore when he was living in a hotel room. A swanky hotel room, but still, technically homeless. Yeah, he rode around in a Maybach, that should have clued me in, but to see the place he actually called home? Well, my reality was significantly adjusted.
“The kitchen is this way,” he led me through the arched glass double doors at the other end of the living room. We moved through the dining room, past the long table and its fourteen chairs, and we passed through another door into the kitchen.
“I was just cooking dinner,” Neil explained, moving away from me to the huge marble-topped island in the center of the room. There were tall wrought-iron chairs positioned on the side opposite the stove, and I took a seat as gracefully as I could in the world’s tightest dress. On the other side of the island was a cutting board heaped with bok choy and sliced mushrooms.
“You gave your housekeeper the night off so you could cook for me?” That was very sweet, and it put me more at ease. I watched as Neil expertly cut a pepper into thin slices, his forearms flexing subtly beneath his rolled back sleeves.
He smiled and scraped the slices aside, reaching for a clove of garlic. “I gave my housekeeper the night off so I could fuck you in any room I wanted.”
My pulse sped up.