“I didn’t mind,” I murmured, looking in the opposite direction and grinning at the dark look he gave me. “Wish it had been yours though.” But Anton’s words before Daphne had cut in came back to me.Send-off party? He probably just meant as an early end-of-season celebration.I was about to ask Nolan about it, but with the…hungry way he was looking at me, I didn’t think he was up for a conversation.
“There’s an empty office at the end of the hall on the second floor admin wing,” he said in a low growly voice, proving me right. “Meet me there. Ten minutes.”
The need to feel his hot skin against mine, to have him between my thighs and be entirely at his mercy rushed through me with an urgency I couldn’t ignore. When the song ended, I made my way back to the table to show face before disappearing with Nolan.
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked when I reclaimed my seat.
“Hugh is chatting up some dude at the bar, and Frankie is shredding the dance floor,” Austin said.
“Yeah, and Dominic is watching her like a hawk for some reason,” noted Cora, who had taken an empty seat. She tossed back a double shot that smelled like tequila, then took the one that was in front of the empty seat beside her.
“I noticed that too,” I said, but as I glanced around the ballroom, I saw Tess deep in conversation with Cyrus, of all people. Probably trying to sell him on giving us more money to get the smell out of the carpets.
A few seconds later, Frankie plopped into her vacant chair, sweaty and exhausted.
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” I said.
Frankie swirled her wine with a sly smile and shrugged. “Ryan’s a good dancer. What can I say? I like dancing.”
I snorted. “Yeah, you like the horizontal dance with no pants the most.”
“It doesn’thaveto be horizontal. Vertical, diagonal, upside down—it all works.” Frankie winked and her gaze shifted to Ryan’s tall form leaning against the bar. But then she saw Dominic at the same post he’d been at all night. And he was frowning at Ryan as if he could make him disappear through sheer force of will.
“Dom has been eyeing you all night,” Cora said. “You should talk to him.”
With a toss of her short black hair, Frankie said, “Nah. If he’s interested, he’ll come to me.”
“You love hunting men down and eating them alive,” I said, surprised. “That’s kind of your thing.”
“Yeah, well, now I’m luring them to their deaths on the unforgiving shore with my sweet siren song,” she said, then grew pensive, tapping a nail against her glass as she ran her eyes over Dominic’s chiseled frame. “This one is different. I want to see what he does.”
“Playing with your prey,” Cora said with a nod. “I like it.”
A few seconds later, Tess tapped the microphone to announce the winners of the silent auction.Perfect timing.I made my muttered excuses and took my chance to disappear to the second floor.
As I wandered toward the end of the hall, a door cracked open and a hand shot out, yanking me into the darkness.
Chapter 25
Iletoutayelp,and that same warm hand slid over my mouth to silence me. Then a hard body pressed me against the closed door.
“You look so fucking hot in this dress,” Nolan said in between heated kisses, the ambient lighting from beneath the shelves lending us just enough light to see.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said with zero conviction as his hot mouth latched on to my neck.
Humming against my skin, he said, “But my girl loves the secret thrill.”
Damn it, I did.
“Empty conference room,” he said to my unspoken question. “No one will come in here.”
“Unless there’s another couple looking for a deserted room to bang in.”
His laugh puffed against my cheek as his mouth found mine again. “‘Bang’? Are we teenagers?”
“You want to spend our limited time making fun of me, or do you want to make me come?”
“Yes, ma’am.” On a growl, he hiked up my dress, his hand finding its way inside the sky-high slit. When his thumb brushed under my thong, I writhed with need. Then he sealed his lips to mine in a devastating kiss that had me wanting to renege on saying I wasn’t ready to have sexyet, because this wild energy coursing through my veins had me feeling anything but patient. I’d thought the anxiety from being Nolan’s secret girlfriend—or whatever—would flatten me, but if he kept kissing me like this?
