“It’s fine,” I insisted, crossing my arms around my middle somewhat defensively even though I wasn’t facing him.
“You don’t want fine,” he growled at me. “We can do better than fine.”
We.
Except he didn’t mean we.
Not the way I wanted him to.
“I have a kitchen, a bedroom, a bath with a tub, and a balcony. What more could I want?”
“Something that gets that dead tone out of your voice, maybe?”
“I’m just tired,” I told him. It was half true. I was getting good at half-truths lately. I wasn’t sure I liked that about myself.
“You’re not tired,” he snapped, this time right behind me. “You’re shutting down.”
“So what if I am?” I asked, feeling a small bit of something then. Not something good, but something. A sadness that made my eyes sting for a second.
“I don’t like it.”
“It’s okay,” I told him, shaking my head, swallowing hard. “You only have to deal with me for a few more days. If that.”
“Alright, fucking enough,” he growled as his hand closed over my bicep, turning me, forcing me to face him. “Stop talking about yourself like you’re some–”
“Job,” I cut him off, throwing his own words back at him. “I’m just a job.”
That time, even I could hear the hurt in my tone.
“Like fuck you are,” he shot back, hand going behind my neck, yanking me to him as his lips crashed down on mine.
Sensation came back to me in a moment of blinding clarity. His fingers sinking into my skin at my neck, fingertips tangling into the roots of my hair. The feel of his unyielding body against my softer one. The way his lips branded into mine, ensuring I would feel them there days, weeks, months, years later, like they would always be marked as his.
A low, primal growl moved through him as he slammed me back against a wall, his body pushing harder into mine, his free hand sinking into my hip as his tongue traced the seam of my lips before moving inside to claim mine.
My moan whimpered out of me as my arms went around him, holding on, begging for more, for everything we had been denying ourselves since that morning back at the cabin.
But then, somehow through my pulse pounding in my ears, I heard it.
The ding of the elevator.
Seeming to hear it at the exact same time, Gunner suddenly ripped away from me, turning to face the view out my balcony as I collapsed back against the wall, trying to force my brain to work through the haze of desire.
“You look all flushed, Miss Livingston,” Andrew said, looking concerned. “Do you want me to turn the air on? It’s a bit warm in here.”
“No, no. I’m fine. Just haven’t had lunch yet. I’m a bit, ah, lightheaded,” I outright lied even as Gunner slid open the balcony door, and went outside.
He stayed there.
The whole time Andrew talked to me about rules, regulations, bills, local attractions.
The whole time I filled out my paperwork, doing so with intensity to make sure I used all of my new information, not slipping up by accident and habit.
It wasn’t until Andrew handed me a key and took the check I handed to him that Gunner had given me the day before that he finally came back in.
And this time, I wasn’t the one with guards up.
He was.
His ones, well, they made mine look like a dilapidated chainlink fence by comparison.
“Ready?” he asked. At my confused look, he shrugged. “To go to the hotel. You can’t move in with no furniture,” he reasoned. “We will deal with all that tomorrow. Today, we need food. And to go over some shit.”
Andrew seemed to stiffen a bit at Gunner’s tone or language – or both – making me need to force a smile like this was the most natural thing in the world.
“Okay, yeah, makes sense. Thank you so much, Andrew. I am looking forward to making it my own.”
“Great. Glad to hear it. You have some great neighbors to get to know,” he told me, shaking my hand, then Gunner’s, and leaving since this was, technically, my apartment now.
“Let’s go,” Gunner barked at me, loud enough to make me jump, following him automatically without even really thinking about it. Yeah, it was that stern a voice.
I didn’t think about the town as we drove through it again to get to a two-story hotel that almost had a barn-like look.
All I could think of was the kiss.
And his unexpected reaction to it.
Which seemed to be anger.
For what reason, I had no idea.
All I did know was… when we got into the hotel, there were two rooms waiting for us instead of the expected one.
Gunner all but tossed my luggage into mine before leaving it, slamming the door, and disappearing into his own room.
I waited.