CHAPTER EIGHT
Gracie rushed to beat the elevator doors as they started to close. The car was almost full of other writers and the noise of their excitement over the conference. This was the first one she’d attended, but she’d missed so much already.
She’d been signed with smaller publishers and hoped securing an agent would help her make the leap to larger ones. Other writers were advancing their careers on their own. Who knew which was the best way to go? She hadn’t a clue.
What she did know, was that her meeting with Dondi Gable tomorrow would be uncomfortable since she’d witnessed the foreplay scene on the elevator. Her temper spiked. Webb. He just went through life doing whatever he damn well pleased.
Like interrupting her conversation with three up and coming authors by slowly caressing her arms, making her long to lean into his warmth. Then he’d kissed her inked hummingbird before kissing the other women’s tattoos. Something he obviously enjoyed doing. Leaving her unsettled as hell. She was not jealous, dammit. She had no holds on him.
So what if she was wearing a dress he’d bought, her skin soothed and scented by the perfume and lotion he’d ordered, and her one breast sporting a hickey, for God’s sake. Yes, they’d had several rounds of phenomenal sex, but it was casual and meant nothing. Didn’t she write about such encounters?
The elevator stopped again. Two laughing women stepped on.
“So, what happened next?” The gray-haired woman wearing red glasses was wide eyed.
“Well…the woman wrapped her legs around his waist and he backed her to one of the walls of the elevator.”
Red-glasses-lady covered her mouth with a hand. “No! In front of everyone?”
The curly blonde nodded. “So I’ve been told.” She leaned her head toward her gossip companion, but didn’t lower her voice. “The man stuck his finger under her thong and brought it to the front and bragged about how wet she was for him.”
Gracie looked for a hole in the elevator floor to disappear through. Dammit, she was going to be the laughing stock of the whole convention. If she wasn’t already.
A third woman chimed in. “I heard he pulled his ‘thang’ out before they got off the elevator…and it was ginormous!”
Oh for Pete’s sake! Wasn’t the truth bad enough? They had to go and exaggerate it? Not his size, but that he’d pulled his cock out in the elevator. Gracie glanced at the numbers, two more floors to go. When the doors opened, she squeezed through and placed her hand on the door-open button, holding it in.
She inhaled and gathered courage before turning around and facing the women.
“You know, if you’re going to be telling stories about an event you didn’t witness, you should at least get all your facts straight.” The elevator went silent, except for a few women who sucked air. “Yes, he slipped his finger under my thong and ran it through my sex, my very wet sex. But he did not open his fly and uncage the man-beast until we got inside his suite.”
Her narrowed-eyed gaze pinned the red-glasses lady and the curly blonde. “You know, the two of you should be characters in a book. The loose-lipped-ladies of East Bumfuck.”
With her head held high, she swayed her ass like any good hussy on the way to her room and to the man leaning a shoulder against her door.
“Why is everyone on the elevator leaning out to watch you?” Webb’s gaze ricocheted from her to the elevator and back.
She shot him a scowl. “Because conference gossip has me one step above a cheap whore after our interlude on the elevator earlier this evening and those women are waiting to see if you’ll uncage your man-beast as soon as you see me.”
His hands fisted on his hips. “My what?” He pivoted to get another look at the elevator, its doors being held open and several pair of eyes fixated on them. “Did they call you names? Insinuate stuff?” He puffed up like a rooster ready to protect the hen house. “I’ll be right back.” He tramped toward the elevator, his broad shoulders bunched in aggravation, long muscular legs looking mighty fine in that tailored suit.
Oh dear God, he was going to make a scene. Close the elevator doors, ladies, and make a run for it. Macho male is in a snit.
Why was he upset anyway? It wasn’t as if she meant anything to him.
The elevator doors closed and Webb stopped. He stood as if frozen to the expensive carpet and rolled his shoulders before pivoting back in her direction. “I think I scared them off. Tell me again what they said to upset you?”
“No. You can’t do anything about it. Our behavior on the elevator earlier was like two animals in heat. We weren’t acting like rational adults. I mean, it makes a good scene for a book, but not real life.” She exhaled a long sigh. “And since I left my temper get the best of me a few minutes ago and announced I didn’t appreciate being the object of their joke, I have no one to blame but myself and my big mouth.”
Inserting her key card, she shook her head, “I’m so used to expressing feelings to my team, I’ve lost most of what little filter I had. Now if something charges through my mind, it’s marching out my mouth, too.”
“So, the romance writers were all worked up over a little impromptu encounter?” Webb followed her into the room as if he’d been invited, which he hadn’t. “Well, fuck ʼem, if they can’t take a joke. No one says anything to insult my woman. What happens between us is between us.”
She whirled on him. “But don’t you see? There is no us!”
His eyes narrowed and a muscle ticked in his jaw.
Hang on. Mood shift alert!
Large hands seized her waist, boosting her off the floor and backing them up to the door. A muscled thigh slipped between hers. Warm lips trailed a path from behind her ear to her shoulder and her breathing quickened. The male cologne he wore that always affected her, wove a sexual spell.
“No us? Oh, angel, you’re mistaken. I’m feeling this connection. Aren’t you?” His voice had lowered and affected her in an unwanted manner.
“You really are a man who enjoys doing things your way, aren’t you? I can totally see how you earned that bad boy title.” Her one foot was on the floor now. His palm curved around her other leg as he wrapped it over his hip and skimmed fingertips from her knee to the globe of her ass. She nipped his neck in response.
“Did I give you permission to do that?” His voice was dominant, demanding, dogmatic.
Don’t tell me the Dom has come out to play.
“I don’t recall giving you permission to do the things you’ve done to me,” she countered. Although she’d loved every one of them and adored the magic he was playing over her skin right now with his lips and teeth and fingertips.
He pulled away, piercing her gaze with his. “It makes sense that you write erotic. You do respond to a Dom’s touch. Beneath your controlled exterior is a submissive, begging for a master. That’s why sex between us is so fucking phenomenal.”
She shook her head violently, unable to voice the lie—because she did enjoy being submissive.
“No lies, Gracie. You need to think about things. Consider us and how good it could be. Yes, it would be a long-distance relationship once my celibacy period is over. But with our schedules, we could make it work. Airplanes fly every day.”
“No,” she whispered, afraid of her own feelings, her own needs. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, nor had she taken her antibiotics. She opened the room service menu. “I’m going to order in a late dinner. Want something?”
Webb smiled. “Yes. You.” He sighed when she raised her eyebrows. “I’ll take a bottle of sparkling water and a chocolate dessert. Something creamy. See if they have pudding.”
While she ate her cheeseburger, he helped himself to her fries. “So tell me, coach, were you really on the Olympic basketball team?”
She nodded around a bite of her sandwich. “Bench warmer, mostly. I wasn’t good enough for first string. Sure, I was All-American twice when I played for UCON, but almost all the players had fought for that achievement.” She chewed and swallowed. “If we were ahead, I got to play the final two minutes. But I always managed to make two or three baskets.” She drank her iced sparkling water and remembered her medicine.
The heat of his gaze seemed to follow her as she rummaged in her red purse. “So, you scored in every Olympic game you played? Impressive.”
She palmed five pills and washed them down when she sat. “Thanks. Just the experience of it all is a cherished memory.”
“Are you sick, Gracie? What’s up with so many pills?”
Nosy man. “I’m just getting over a serious sinus infection. It really knocked me for a loop. Thus two types of antibiotics—rifampin and amoxicillin—which have to be taken with food because of my sensitive stomach. I forgot the doses I was to have earlier so I had to swallow two of each just now. The fifth was my birth control pill. Any other personal information you’d like to know?”
“Yes, in fact there is.” He smiled and leaned back in the chair, pointing to his dessert. “How this chocolate mousse and whipped cream will taste between your folds.”
She choked on her next sip of water and her clit pulsed. “Yo…you wouldn’t dare!”