Page 44 of Level With Me
His eyes bored into mine, his gaze surprisingly steady.
I looked down. “Happy now?”
“Not yet,” he said. He moved toward me.
My pulse pumped fast and hot in my throat, and I gripped the handrail. “I thought you were drunk?” My voice came out slightly strained, like I hadn’t quite found it all.
“I am. Shit-faced.”
I instinctively backed up as he came closer, my heels hitting the stair riser.
“Blake,” I said. “I’m taking you up to a room to sleep it off.” I turned away, unable to face him. Not wanting him to see me. All the bravado I put on every day like a mask was stripped away under these lights, so close to him.
When Blake brought his finger to my jaw, turning my face back toward him, I sucked in a breath. The energy in the space around us snapped with electricity.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
He leaned in so his lips were beside my ear. “What do you want me to do?”
His hot breath on me made everything sway for a moment, and I swallowed, gripping the handrail like a lifeline.
He was standing so close to me that I could take in the tiniest details about him. The texture of the skin at his throat. The gold at the edges of his caramel-colored eyes. The scent of his hair and the whiskey on his breath.
A drop of water dripped from his hair onto the bare skin of my chest, making me gasp.
His eyes followed it as it ran down my decolletage and into the crevice between my breasts.
“I want you to go upstairs,” I said, my skin burning with his gaze.
“Okay,” Blake said. He took a step back. Respectful. Waiting.
Somehow, we made it up to the third floor, which was quiet and dimly lit, with a few room service trays on the floor outside the occupied rooms. I found the room in question and swiped my card, my pulse still throbbing in my throat.
“Okay, here you go,” I said as I briskly walked into the room and stood between the two queen beds, extending my arms. “Take your pick.”
Blake came over, veering slightly so that his leg hit the bed on my left and he stumbled. He sat down hard on it and flopped backward like he was doing a snow angel.
“Okay, I’m going to go now,” I said. “You should probably take that wet suit off.”
Blake raised himself up on his elbows. “Wait,” he said.
I was already at the end of the bed.
“Please,” he said. “Not yet. I just… please stay for a bit. I hate being alone. I’m always fucking alone.”
I hesitated.
When I turned, his expression was so pained my chest squeezed. Me being alone, that was a choice. What must it be like to have the facade of a relationship but go to bed every night alone? To have everyone think you have everything, but at home you have nothing?
I supposed that was a choice, too.
“Okay,” I said. “But I’ll wait in the bathroom while you get undressed. Tell me when you’re under the blanket and I’ll… I’ll stay over here for another minute.”
Suddenly all the bleakness from a moment ago disappeared, and he grinned goofily once again.
I pinched my lips to keep the smile from spreading on my face. I liked this side of him, this uncensored, unbuttoned version of the careful, controlled Blake Harrington I was getting to know in our undrunk lives. Not that I was drunk—I’d stuck to soda water tonight.
But I couldn’t relax with Blake, not like this. If I did, it was a quick and slippery sideways step to giving in to the heat that still simmered down low from that moment in the stairwell.
