“Great,” I muttered, tossing it back down.
I rolled out of bed and turned on the TV just to have something in the room besides my own thoughts. I picked up the room service menu, my eyes going wide at the prices. A Mobile Omelet and some grits were going to run me almost thirty dollars. I didn’t even care. I picked up the bedside phone and ordered the heaviest breakfast they had and told them to put it on the room.
Twenty minutes later the food arrived and I ate every last bit of it. Even with a full stomach the restlessness didn’t go away. I laid back down and that’s when his scent hit me again.
Bergamot and that expensive laundry detergent he used were baked into the high thread count sheets. It was everywhere, in the pillowcase, in the duvet, clinging to the air I was breathing. My body started humming in a way I couldn’t ignore, and I knew right then I wasn’t going to be able to just sleep this off. I tried to focus on the TV, some mindless talk show, but my hand was already moving on its own. I hadn’t taken care of myself in a minute. Usually I didn’t have to, but this ache was becoming a problem.
I slid my hand under the hotel robe and found myself already slick and ready. I let out a shaky breath and closed my eyes. Instead of the ceiling I saw broad ebony shoulders. I felt the phantom weight of Dex’s body pressing into me just like it was earlier when he was teasing me against my back.
I started slow, my fingers finding a rhythm. I pictured him inside me, that arrogant smirk on his face while he talked me through it.
“Damn it Dex,” I whispered into the empty room.
I got into it then, my hips arching off the bed as I chased my release. I was so far gone that I didn’t even think about anything else. When the climax hit my toes threw up gang signs and I soaked those crisp white sheets in a way that a towel was not going to fix.
I was still in the afterglow, gasping with my robe hanging open and my hand still hovering between my legs, when the electronic beep of the door key snapped me upright.
The door swung open and the noise from the hallway spilled in. I scrambled to pull my robe together, but my fingers were shaking and clumsy and I was nowhere near fast enough.
Dex stepped in with a Starbucks cup in one hand and shopping bags in the other. He stopped dead in his tracks.
He didn’t move or say a word. He just stood there taking in my flushed skin, my wild hair, and the very obvious evidence soaked into the middle of the mattress.
The silence was so loud I could hear my own heartbeat.
Dex let out a slow dark whistle, his eyes dragging up to mine. That smirk was back but this time it had an edge to it, something darker and more deliberate.
He dropped the shopping bags in the chair and the Starbucks on the desk without looking away from me. Then he walked toward the bed, his eyes never leaving mine. I tried to pull the robe across my chest, but he was on me before I could cross the fabric. Without a word he pushed my knees apart and dove in.
“Dex—”
The protest died in my throat the second his tongue found me. If I was raining before I was a hurricane now. He knew exactly what he was doing, working me with a hunger that had my toes throwing up gang signs all over again. I gripped his head, nails raking through his waves as he chased that second orgasm. When it hit, it was more violent than the first. My back arched,and his name tore out of my throat loud enough for the whole floor to hear.
I reached for his belt before the trembling even stopped. I wanted him. I needed that solid weight inside me to finish what he started. I went after his slacks with both hands.
Dex caught my wrists.
He hovered over me for a second, his breath uneven, the struggle written plainly across his face. Then he slowly shook his head.
“As bad as I want to right now, we can’t,” he rasped, his voice rough. He pulled back and stood up, smoothing out his shirt, though the evidence pressing against his slacks said otherwise. “I need you to shower and get dressed. We got an appointment with my lawyer in forty-five minutes. "The wordlawyerhit like a bucket of ice water. Everything rushed back in sharp and stinging. I sat up clutching the robe around me and the self-loathing followed right behind it.
What the hell was I doing?
I hadn’t even been single for twenty-four hours. I was fresh out of a jail cell and already folding for Dex like I hadn’t spent two years reminding myself exactly who he was. This was the man who chose another woman over me and got her pregnant. I knew better than this.I looked at the sheets, then at him, and felt the wall go right back up.
“Whatever,” I muttered, my voice flat.
I grabbed the shopping bags without looking at him and headed for the bathroom.
“Nique,” he called out, his voice low.
I kept walking. I stepped in the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I turned the shower on as hot as it would go and stood under it scrubbing my skin until it was red. I was so disgusted with myself for being weak. For letting him walk in and erase everything I knew about him with one move. By thetime I stepped out I was dressed in what he brought. A simple black halter maxi dress and black slide sandals from Walmart. It was exactly what I would have picked for myself, which irritated me even more. I wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of knowing he did good.
Dex was standing by the window staring out at the river when I came out. I grabbed my dead phone and the new charger he’d left on the nightstand and walked straight past him toward the door.
“Let’s go,” I said, not looking back.
I had a life to fix before I made it any worse.