Claim My Baby (Crescent Cove 2)

Which might set some nerves brewing at another time, but not now.

Weaving my fingers into his hair, I drew on his tongue, sucking lightly. Teasingly. Letting him know I was a sure thing if he’d decided not to retreat behind silence again as he had for a while earlier.

He responded in kind, his lips teasing mine open farther as he gave as good as he got. Better. Those sly little licks were going to kill me. Hints of pressure, flickers of need, never alighting long enough for me to settle in and lose myself.

But I was halfway there.

“Not here,” he murmured, and I found myself nodding.

Finally. We’d go back to the hotel room and finish what we’d started earlier in the night.

I wondered if he’d let me take a picture of our messed-up bedsheets post lovemaking for my memory journal? Eh, I’d worry about that once I’d been deflowered.

Petals thrown every damn where.

That was why I didn’t expect to find myself in yet another cocktail bar after we’d cashed in my windfall, nursing a cup of piping-hot coffee with a side of buttery croissant.

The croissant was to die for though. And he’d given me back my phone, but I hadn’t yet texted Ally.

I was still enjoying myself, despite my sexual frustration. The Monday-night quarterbacking could wait until it was actually Monday.

“Good croissant?” Oliver asked before sipping his own coffee.

“Delicious.” Even the coffee was. Must be a Vegas thing or else my palate was changing like the rest of me. “By the way, you’re a huge tease.”

That eyebrow thing he did verged on pornographic. “Am I now?’

“You know where I thought we were going when we left the casino. It wasn’t to drink French roast.” I leaned across the table. “I had another French occupation in mind.”

He smirked. “Is that on your sexual bucket list too? Some kind of traditionally French foreplay?”

“Kissing, you jerk.” I sat back and paused with a flaky piece of croissant nearly to my mouth. “Are there different kinds of French sex? If so, we should investigate that.”

“Try the usual first, why don’t you? Save the love languages for later.”

“I’ll try anything at this point.”

He nodded at my coffee. “How is it?”

“It’s wonderful. But—oh.” I sighed. “Duh. You’re trying to get me to sober up. But I’m not actually drunk.”

“Sure, you aren’t.”

“I was buzzing earlier. But now I’m pretty much back to normal. It’s been hours.”

He seemed dubious. “You expect me to believe you?”

“Yes. I bet I could walk in a straight line, no problem.”

He jerked his chin beside our narrow table. “Go on then.”

After bolstering myself with a couple swallows of coffee—heavily laden with cream and sugar, unlike his black—I rose and walked to the bar and back. There was a little wobbling, but not much. I got a few amused looks at my precise heel-to-toe steps, yet they didn’t stop me.

I was learning not to care so much what others thought. Trying anyway.

Once I sat again, I glanced at Oliver, who was staring at me with a strange sort of pride. “Well?”

“You hardly wavered.”