Baby It's Cold Outside (35 page)

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Authors: Addison Fox

BOOK: Baby It's Cold Outside
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“It means you’ve both got someone worth taking a chance on and neither of you can do it.”
“I hardly think my situation is anything like Avery’s.”
“Okay, Grier. Than what is it like? You and Jason?”
Grier’s eyes turned stormy in the dying light of late afternoon. On a large exhale, she turned on her heel and stomped off, moving through the crowd of people who were slowly milling out of the town square.
Following at a fair distance behind, Sloan let Grier stomp off, her own long-legged strides easily keeping her a few footfalls behind.
About half a block from the Indigo, Grier’s voice floated back toward her. “I know you’re back there.”
“I know you know.”
“Well, go the hell away. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Sure you do.”
“Sure I don’t.”
They stomped the rest of the way into the Indigo, through the front door and into the lobby. A fair number of people had come in here to get warm and more than half of the tables already had a crowd.
Sloan continued on, following Grier down the hall toward the elevators.
“Get the hell out of here.”
Sloan shrugged her shoulders, projecting as much innocence as possible into her stance. “I’m just headed to my room.”
“I don’t believe you brought up his name.” Grier stabbed the button for the elevator, sighing as she looked up toward the floor indicator and saw that it was at the top.
Sloan greeted the same news with a satisfied harrumph.
It was about time they discussed this and Grier could damn well stay put. “Why? You already spilled his name to Avery. And you’ve brought him up in a roundabout fashion more times than that. I didn’t think it was that big a secret.”
“It’s my personal business.”
“It’s ancient history. And your robust and very interesting present has a man in it who’s not only crazy about you but who makes Jason Shriver look like the wanker he is.”
“Oh!” Grier’s mouth opened into a wide
O
of shock and Sloan almost backed down at the defeated expression that etched itself in the set of her shoulders and filled her gray eyes with sorrow.
And then she thought about Mick and the way he looked at Grier—with real, honest-to-goodness longing—and she laid in harder.
“Mick O’Shaughnessy not only looks at you like you’re the most beautiful woman in the world, but like you’re a precious gift he’s afraid to lose. He
sees
you, Grier.”
“I thought you liked Jason.”
“Not really. But since you did, it wasn’t my place to say anything.”
“You broke the girlfriend code.”
“Hardly.”
The elevator doors opened and Sloan waited for Grier to step through them, unwilling to risk leaving the argument unfinished if Grier opted to haul ass.
“You most certainly did. You never told me what you thought of him. Or didn’t think of him, as it were.”
“No, I didn’t formally tell you. Because when I tried to tell you in a million other ways, you ignored each and every hint. So I sucked it up, acknowledged it was my issue and left it alone.”
Grier stared at the elevator panel instead of making eye contact, but her interest was evident in the quick tilt of her head. “What didn’t you like about him? You know. Now that he’s not a part of my life and you can speak freely.”
“He never put you first. Not once.”
A small nod telegraphed her agreement before Grier leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. “No. He never did.”
“And then he went and got sucked off by that junior associate two weeks before your wedding, making it more than obvious the only person he knew how to put first was himself.”
When Grier didn’t say anything, Sloan added, “You deserve someone who puts you first.”
“So do you.”
“Yes, I know.”
The elevator hummed quietly as they climbed toward their floor, but neither of them said anything else. As the doors slid open on their floor, Sloan figured she’d made her point and walked through first. “I’ll see you at the auction.”
“Sloan.”
Turning she looked back at Grier. “Does he really look at me that way?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
Sloan decided to go for broke. “For what it’s worth, you look at him the exact same way. It’d be a shame to let something as insignificant as a broken engagement with an asshole who doesn’t deserve to kiss your feet get in the way of it.”
 
Walker snuck up the back stairs of the hotel to Sloan’s floor, anxious to avoid the mob of women who’d congregated on the main floor. He hadn’t seen her since the skeet shoot and was anxious to . . .
To what?
Touch her? Kiss her? Just look at her?
All of the above, he reluctantly admitted as he rounded toward the fourth-floor staircase.
Shocked and not a little winded, he dropped onto the first step to catch his breath.
Damn it, he was getting old. Time was he and the rest of the high school hockey team ran these stairs for their daily practices and he’d made all six floors and barely broke a sweat. He’d even kicked Roman’s ass on the sprints.
And now?
He fisted his coat in his hands as he tried to make sense of what was happening. He’d always considered himself in good shape, but clearly he needed to get back to the gym if five floors could force him to take a seat.
Or maybe you have to acknowledge you’re not still a fucking kid.
The thought snuck up on him like a snake waiting to strike and it left him as disoriented, too.
He knew he wasn’t a kid anymore. He had a business and responsibilities and he was an adult. A grown up.
So why did he suddenly feel old and lonely?
And why did the thought of continuing with his devil-may-care attitude toward life and love feel like an empty choice?
Sloan
.
Her name whispered across his senses, just as it had from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. She was vibrant and fun and . . .
necessary
.
She made him think of his life in ways he never had before. For the first time, thoughts of his future involved someone else, not a faceless parade of women who came and went with the seasons.
A renewed burst of energy had him on his feet and taking the rest of the stairs two at a time until he reached her floor. With a swift knock, he hammered on her door.
And proceeded to get even more winded at the sight of her in a soft pink robe and a towel wrapped around her head. “Walker!”
He leaned against the doorjamb, hoping the move didn’t let on just how weak his knees were or how badly he wanted to gulp in air. “You always open the door to strangers?”
“I figured you were Grier.” She stood back to allow him to enter. “Besides, I love it when strange men knock on my door. It adds a certain sense of danger and excitement to my day.”
Walker wasn’t sure what it was. The uncharacteristic thoughts he’d had on the way here or the sight of her slender frame wrapped in the thin cotton or the freshly scrubbed pink on her cheeks.
All he knew was that he had to have her.
Now
.
Slamming the door with his foot, he threw his coat on the floor and reached for her in a heavy rush, dragging her against him to plunder her mouth with his own.
She squeaked lightly as his mouth came down on hers, but quickly responded to his urgency in kind. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she pressed the long lines of her body to his rapidly heating one as the kiss changed.
Challenged.
Took.
For long, glorious minutes there was nothing but this responsive woman in his arms as their tongues met and plundered, retreated and acquiesced. With heightened senses, he felt everything.
The clutch of her hands at his shoulders. The rapid beat of her heart where her chest pressed against his. The rush of heat at her core where she straddled his thigh.
He fisted his hands in the soft cotton of her robe at her hips and used the pressure to pull her close, pressing his erection into the soft flesh of her stomach.
“Now, Sloan.”
She lifted her lips from his, the bright blue of her eyes almost violet in the rush of passion that filled her. “Yes. Now.”
They fell onto the bed in a flash of urgent need and desperate longing and he dragged on the tie at her waist, before diving into the opening. The towel she’d wrapped around her hair had fallen off somewhere along the trip to the bed and her hair rested against the pillow in half-dry ringlets, the blond a burnished gold from the damp.
Her rib cage contracted on a rush of air as his hands found her breasts, his fingers immediately fondling her nipples into tight peaks. She arched her back, pressing the fullness of her flesh into his palms and he replaced one of his hands with his mouth.
Sloan writhed underneath him as he made love to her breasts and her fingers played a restless tune across his back. With long, languorous strokes of his tongue he drew out her pleasure. Her movements grew more restless until he felt her tugging on his sweater. “I want to feel you,” she moaned against his ear.
He pulled back, giving her the space to lift his sweater from around his waist and drag it up over his head. His long-sleeved T-shirt quickly followed and then she dragged her hands down his chest, gliding over his nipples.
A wave of pleasure flooded him at her touch and she immediately responded to his needs, rolling him onto his back and straddling him before pressing kisses down his throat and over his chest. Walker felt the gathering storm of pleasure build up within him as she laved his sensitized nipples with her tongue and grew desperate to finish the torturous game they played with each other.
Holding her still, he reached up and dragged off the robe, baring her naked form completely to his gaze. The impact of her hit him like a swift sucker punch to the gut, the dewy softness of her skin and the long, lean length of her nearly his undoing.
“You are so beautiful.”
She looked down at him, her dark pupils dilated wide with desire. “You make me feel beautiful.” With deft movements, she shifted position to straddle his thighs and went to work on the button of his jeans. Each moment was an agony as her fingers applied pressure to his swollen cock.
He brushed her hands away with a wry smile around gritted teeth. “Why don’t you let me do that?”
Good, old-fashioned feminine laughter bubbled from the long column of her throat and Walker could only marvel at the knowing look in her eyes. It was a look for the ages, one as likely to have been seen on Cleopatra’s face for Mark Antony and in that moment, Walker knew.
Knew to the very depths of his soul that he was lost.
Lost to the same heat and passion and need that had driven men and women for millennia.
With swift movements, he sat up and dragged off his jeans, fumbling with the heavy material where the two of them lay tangled in each other.
As his jeans fell to the floor with a thud, Sloan resumed her position on top of him, positioning him at her hot, wet opening before plunging fully to take him inside of her.
The tight walls of her body closed around his length and Walker knew he’d been right. He was utterly lost to this woman.
As she began to move, more waves of pleasure flooded his body, pumping his blood in crazy, erratic bursts. His last coherent thought as the storm ripped through him was so simple—so life affirming—he wasn’t sure why it had taken him so very long to figure it out.
Only in the losing, had he finally been found.
 
Sloan felt the telltale signs—the restless urge that built and built to an almost painful crescendo—but still, she drove them on, riding the glorious length of him until they were both satiated.

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