Without realizing I’ve even moved, I feel the mattress pressing into my calves, and he breaks his mouth from mine long enough to lift me onto it, rising over me in the center of the bed. “I just want to kiss you,” he murmurs, his lips tracing a path from under my chin to my ear before he rolls onto his back and pulls me across him. My knee is between both of his, anchoring him to the bed as his hands run over my back and my shoulders before framing my face and pulling me down for a long, languid kiss.
Capturing his wrists, I mash them into the mattress, my hair falling over my shoulder and tickling along the side of his jaw. “That’s all you want? Are you sure?” I ask, brazen in a way I’ve never been. Because this is Graham, and he’s real and here and touching me—not a face on a screen, thousands of miles away.
He chuckles, his eyes closing as he turns his head and nuzzles my forearm, leaving soft kisses on my wrist, grazing my skin with his teeth and igniting an eruption of goose bumps straight up my arm. His eyes open and he stares at me, all heat. “No. I want everything from you, with you.” He turns his hands until they imprison my wrists, curving over me until I’m under him again. “But right now, I’m just going to keep kissing you until you make me stop.”
If he’s waiting for an objection, he isn’t going to get one. I lick my lips, a signal for kiss me please. And he does.
Chapter 9
Brooke
I scroll to Reid and hit talk. Just when I think he’s letting it go to voicemail, he says, “Yeah.”
“Time to bump up the interference,” I say. “His flight landed a couple of hours ago, but he’s not answering his phone.”
There’s a pause. Reid never looks at his phone before answering, and obviously, he’s not yet reacquainted with my voice. A rather unreasonable hostility bubbles to the surface, though I suppose I should feel privileged—his skanks don’t score his phone number at all. He learned that the hard way, I’m sure. Not that I can talk. I had to change my number half a dozen times before I finally comprehended that hot guys can turn as psycho as any girl. “Brooke?”
I puff out a sigh. “For chrissake, Reid, who do you think it is? And haven’t you put me into your contacts yet?”
“Yeah... It just says Satan, though, and I forgot I’d assigned that title to you.”
I would dearly love to choke the ever-lovin’ life out of him. “That’s very funny. You’re hilarious. Can we move on from the juvenile name-calling?”
“Sure. But really, you should consider it a compliment to your level of evil.”
“Anyway. I think we should check into the hotel. Recreate the atmosphere from Austin last fall.”
He laughs once, condescension saturating his tone. “Because that worked out so well for each of us.”
True, ass**le. But beside the point. “We weren’t working together then—hello.”
He sighs into the phone. “I’d venture to say that at least on your end, we were doing the opposite of working together. I might even suggest that one of us was actively engaged in sabotage of the other.”
I knew he could hold a grudge, justified or not, but hell’s bells. “Okay, fine, I helped screw it up for you. But I couldn’t have if you hadn’t done most of it to yourself. You could have salvaged it.”
“Says you.”
I grip the phone tighter, bound by my own designs for reconnecting with him in the first place. If he doesn’t go along with this scheme, it could prove impossible. Who am I kidding? It will prove impossible. “Reid, if you don’t believe me on this, then you won’t trust what I tell you to do to get her back and we might as well give up now. In which case I might just have to kill you.”
“Harsh.”
“Yeah, well.” I don’t hear any noise on his end, which strikes me as odd. “Where are you?”
“Driving. Going to pick up a couple of guys, do some clubs…”
“Do some girls, you mean.”
He barks a laugh. “Hey, I consider tonight my bachelor party. You told me I have to be good once I’m luring Emma into my lair, right? This may be my last night to get laid for a while.”
“Classy.” I throw his assessment of me back at him.
“Well, you asked. So. You think we need to check into the hotel where everyone else is—even though we both live in LA. Proximity to the victims makes sense, I suppose.”
Victims? “Shit, Reid. Talk about harsh. I don’t just want to screw Graham, you know.”
“I guess I don’t know. Especially considering your MO.”
For half a second, I consider hurling my phone at the wall. “Look, I’ve had it with the snide comments. I’m not any more of a slut than you are, so just lay the hell off.” Dammit, there goes my stupid twang. I can be a cold bitch all day long and sound like the perfect LA native, but get me actually pissed and I go all Texan, which just pisses me off more. If he mentions it, I swear to God…
“Okay, okay. I’ll stop. And Brooke?” His voice has turned husky, and the sound of it slams me right in the solar plexus. “That accent still gets me hot, damn you.”
I take a deep breath and shake it off. I’m not playing that game with him. “Enjoy your last night of freedom, ha ha. I’ll set up reservations for both of us at the hotel. Our story is that the studio wants us there with everyone else. No one will question it. Text me once you’re in tomorrow morning and we’ll review strategy. You remember morning, right? That brightish space of time between eight and noon when you’re usually sleeping off a hangover?”