I nudged him to stand. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
He walked along the short corridor, letting me take the lead so I could unlock the door. I pressed the card to the reader on the wall and pushed down the handle, the wooden door opening into a large living area.
“Nice,” he mumbled, sounding almost drunk with exhaustion. We walked further into the room, the lock snicking closed behind us, leaving us alone, staring out of the wall of windows that gave us a stunning view over the ocean.
“Why don’t you go have a shower, put some fresh clothes on, and I’ll order us some food.”
He dropped his messenger bag with his laptop onto the large sectional sofa. “Too tired to eat. I’m going to go take a nap.”
“Don’t. You’ll never get used to the time difference if you do, and we need your fishy brain working perfectly when you start work the day after tomorrow. Shower, eat, no arguing. I’ll feed you myself if I have to.”
He chewed his lip as he looked at me with heavy eyes. “That might be nice,” he whispered, the suggestion sending a shiver up my spine.
“Go shower. The cases will be here in a minute, so I’ll put yours in your room.”
Shoulders slumped, he started to move like every step was an effort, and then he turned, looking back over his shoulder at me. “Thank you. When I’m a bit more awake, we should talk.”
A lead weight landed with a thud in my gut, but I tried to act nonchalant. “About?”
“Us.”
My heart rate ramped up as my chest tightened. “Go shower first.”
And with that, he turned and left me to sit with my spiralling thoughts while I catastrophised every possible outcome of that conversation until I was a mess of emotion.
* * *
By the timeJasper stepped out of his bedroom, I had taken a quick shower, ordered food, unpacked my case, and got changed into some grey fitted sweats and a black oversized cropped t-shirt that hung off my shoulder. I’d debated whether it was a little too revealing as I put it on, but I was allowed to relax, despite this being a working trip, and I decided whatever happened in the sanctuary of the hotel suite, stayed in the hotel suite.
My cock stirred at the prospect of what that might be, but given that we had a suite with three rooms and Jasper wanted to ‘talk’, I presumed nothing would happen on this trip but work and I needed to hide my disappointment when he told me that.
I was pouring the boiling water into mugs over the herbal t-bags I’d found in a selection on the side, and looked up to find Jasper leaning against the doorframe of his room, his feet crossed at the ankle and his hands in the pockets of his shorts. I tried not to react when I noticed him wearing nothing on his feet or his top, and his eyes burning into me like he was about to leap across the room and sweep me off my feet.
Hope flared in my chest, but I knew how easily I read into things, so I turned my attention back to making tea. Suddenly, there was a warm body pressed against my back, and Jasper’s fresh-from-the-shower scent made it impossible to concentrate on anything but his presence.
“I like this,” he whispered, running his fingers over the hem of my shirt. The feel of him so close to my skin but not touching me made my breath hitch.
“Thank you,” I replied as I swallowed down my arousal.
“We should have probably talked about what happened before we got on that plane.”
I gripped the counter. “Why didn’t we?”
“Honestly, I thought you’d tell me you didn’t want to come or worse, that you regretted what happened.”
Shocked by his admission, I whipped around, letting out a soft groan when I realised how close Jasper was. His tongue skimmed over his top lip as his eyes bounced between mine.
“What? Why would you think that?” I asked.
Jasper rolled his eyes. “I’m thirty-six, I’ve just come out, I have no clue what I’m doing, and you, well, Finn Wells, I don’t know if you know this, but you’re rather hot and,” he scrunched his nose up, “I googled you.”
“You googled me?”Oh, Dear Lord, I may faint with excitement.
“You danced for the president?”
I held up a finger between us. “Only once.”
He chuckled while I couldn’t believe that he was suggesting he wasn’t good enough for me. Trailing my finger down his chest, I whispered, “I didn’t regret what we did and wouldn’t have told you that I didn’t want to come here with you.” My fingertip came to a stop at the waistband of his shorts as he sucked in a breath from the contact.