He wanted to be with her right now, burying into her, swallowing her moans and immersing himself in that satin hair that was the color of autumn leaves. The urge to turn back around, pick up a box of condoms, and go knocking on her hotel door was great, anxious, taking advantage of his fatigue and hunger to nudge him to do the unthinkable.
Maybe if he called first…
“About time you got in. A girl could grow old waiting for you.”
Derek jerked in his doorway, reaching for his gun. Then he dropped his arm and sighed in relief when he saw his sister Claire sprawled across his couch in pajama pants with teddy bears on them.
“Jesus, Claire, what the hell are you doing here?”
At close to three in the morning, chewing on what looked like a piece of licorice, reading a book in her hand. Claire, a dozen years his junior, and the product of his mother’s second, much happier marriage, was a perky, confident young woman who had just finished graduate school.
In the four months since her May graduation, she had been assessing her options, as she put it. Derek thought that meant she was taking time off to hang at the beach all summer before she had to chain herself to a job for life. Smart girl.
He dumped his keys in the little bowl on his minute kitchen counter and headed for the overstuffed chair. Maybe if he took his shoes off he wouldn’t feel this tight throb everywhere, like his skin was too small for his bones.
“I can’t stand my roommate. I moved out and I need a place to stay.” Claire tore at the licorice with her teeth and chewed with her mouth open. She shook her straight blond hair back and sighed.
There didn’t seem to be any further information forthcoming and as he sat down, Derek couldn’t help but notice that a large corner of his living room had been given over to storage for suitcases and various boxes with labels like “School stuff”, “Ex-boyfriend’s crap” and “Alcohol—fragile.”
“How did you get all this stuff up here?” He pictured her lugging box after box up the steps and couldn’t quite reconcile it with Claire and her acrylic nails.
“The guy downstairs, you know, the sort of weird-looking guy who picks the cigarette butts out of the potted plants in the front?”
Derek knew the guy. A little odd, but a good guy, who acted as sort of a doorman slash janitor for the building.
“Well, he let me use the service elevator. And he loaded everything up onto one of those dolly thingies. We were done in twenty.”
“Oh. Great.” He’d have to remember to tip the guy tomorrow for saving him from hauling all that junk up here himself. He unlaced his shoes and sighed. The gun went on the coffee table.
“Don’t touch that,” he reminded Claire.
She rolled her eyes. “I know not to play with guns. But you probably should take the cartridge out. Where’ve you been?”
“Working.” And sinking his fingers into Reese Hampton’s wet and willing thighs.
“Well, I’m so bored I could scream. I guess I’ll go to bed now, but I didn’t want to scare the crap out of you when you came in.”
“Thanks.” Debating asking her exactly how long she planned to stay in his cramped one bedroom apartment, he watched her stand up and stretch.
“Want to hang out tomorrow? You could buy me dinner,” she said with a smile.
“I have a date,” he said before he remembered that Claire was a direct line to his mother. He braced himself.
“No kidding? Good to see you’re not still pining over what’s-her-name, like you were forforever.So where are you going?” Claire popped the last bit of licorice in her mouth and crossed her arms across the stomach of her tight tank top, revealing more of her breasts than he ever cared to see.
Wondering when exactly his baby sister had gotten so…mature,Derek rubbed at his mouth. “To a wedding.”
“Whose wedding?”
“Phillip Chatterton, the heir to Delco Pharmaceuticals. My date is the bride’s cousin.” In a manner of speaking.
“Sounds like a rich people wedding.” Her hand shot out. “Wait a minute. You are not going to wear that old tired gray suit, are you?”
“Yes,” he said in suspicion, recognizing that shopping gleam in Claire’s eye.
“No way, I won’t let you do it. We’ll go shopping in the morning and totally have you styling.”
Over his dead body. “No. Forget it. You’re not getting me to spend five hundred bucks on something that will make me look like a backup dancer.”