“Cage and Frank Underwood? You have eclectic taste, I’ll give you that.”
She snorted. “Yours is better.”
A brisk knock at the door struck my heart into a staccato beat. I jumped up from the couch and was halfway to the door before I realized I was still on with Candy.
“It is,” I agreed, already beaming as I hung up and swung open the red door.
Sinclair was smiling too. My favorite smile, the one that curved his cheeks and broke the ice in his blue eyes so that they flooded with warmth. We stood staring at each other like that for a long time and even though I felt stupid just standing there staring at the too-good-to-be-true man in front of me, I was too giddy to care because he was doing the exact same thing.
“Hi,” I finally said, a little breathlessly.
“Hi.” His grin deepened. “Are you going to invite me in?”
“Yes, of course.” I blushed, which made him chuckle, which, of course, made me flush even further.
We had been alone together for thirty seconds and it was already the best night of my life.
I stepped to the side as he moved into the apartment and inhaled deeply when he leaned forward to press a chaste kiss to my cheek. I pressed my hand to his chest, felt the beat beneath my splayed fingers and grinned up into his face.
“Can I say that I’m so happy you’re here?”
Sinclair’s face was neutral again, perfectly held in repose more beautiful than Michelangelo’s David but his eyes gleamed with contentment.
“Only if I can say it back.”
I tipped my head back and laughed. “God, that was cheesy.”
One of his dark brows arched. “Oh, really?”
His hand slipped between my breasts, down my belly and around to the base of my spine where he flattened it, pulling me against his groin. I groaned when I felt the hard ridge of his erection against my belly.
“Is this cheesy?” he taunted, before capturing my mouth in a deep kiss, his tongue sweeping past my lips in a way that made my knees buckle.
I didn’t worry though, because a second later, his hands were under my butt, lifting me into his arms. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he pushed me against the door, gasping against his lips when he ground his hips into me.
It took me a moment to reorient myself when he suddenly pulled away, setting me gently on my feet as he stepped back. I blinked at him, my swollen lips open over my panting breath
.
His chuckle was deep, a frequency that made me shiver compulsively. “Don’t fret, my siren.” He brushed his cool thumb over my bottom lip. “We have time. We have all night.”
“What?”
“We have all night,” he repeated casually, but his lips twitched.
“Elena’s out of town?”
His thumb dipped between my teeth and rested on my tongue. Automatically, I closed my lips over it and sucked. I watched his eyes darken and felt myself throb.
“We have all night,” he said again.
My cheeks ached with the force of my grin and even though I was desperate to touch him after weeks of careful avoidance, I didn’t. There was still so much between us that if I pressed my hand to the gap stuck between us I knew it would push fruitlessly against the clotted air. There were ways to cut through it but most were so dangerous, so scary in ways both good and bad, that I didn’t know how to take action.
So, I just stared at him with a dumb smile while I cataloged the fall of his dark hair over his forehead, barely red in the low light of the entryway, and the way his tailored Oxford blue button down conformed to the honed muscles underneath. He stood with both hands in his pockets, fists clenched, and even though his face was as implacable as always, I knew that tell. He wanted to claim me just as badly as I needed to be taken by him. He could have been hesitating for so many reasons but I hoped it was because he feared that he’d lose his eternal control.
I looked at the floor, happy that my hair fell forward to cover my suddenly shy smile. “Can I take your coat?”
He slipped out of the heavy black coat and handed it to me without letting our fingers brush. My heart was beating strangely, sliding and skipping over beats in my chest. I was breathing erratically too, in anticipation.