I watch my mom lay peacefully in the hotel bed like I have so many nights before. She’s strong. She always has been. I know if I didn’t come visit her as much as I do, she wouldn’t hold it against me, but she’s all I have left. We lost my dad when I was so young I can only remember his face from the pictures mom kept. No cousins. No surviving grandparents. Just us

So even when it’s not easy, I visit every day. Even on the days when seeing her hurts because it reminds me she doesn’t have long left, or the days when work was tough and I have so much classwork I just want to go home. I still come.

She stopped chemo when the cancer came back three months ago, so the doctors told us it was only a matter of time now before the cancer shuts her organs down. Weeks, months--they couldn’t say. All we know is it won’t be long.

Her eyes flutter open. They’re walnut brown, just like mine. She raises an eyebrow when she sees me. “Enjoying the show, perv?” she asks in her usual cranky tone.

I try to hold back a smile. Encouraging her only makes it worse. She’s sixty-two years old, but most of the time, she seems more like a surly and highly mischievous child trapped in the body of an adult. “I just got here,” I say. It’s a bit of a lie, considering I’ve been waiting for her to get up for nearly half an hour, but I don’t need to give her more ammunition. “Besides, I was enjoying the view out the window. It’s not like I was just staring at you,” I add.

“And I see you just got here without my coffee. No sympathy for a poor, old, decrepit woman?”

I pull the coffee from behind my back with a half-cocked grin. It’s not piping hot, but my mom always lets it cool for a while before she drinks it anyway. “You’re not old and decrepit,” I say, setting the coffee beside her bed. “You’re a fighter. You always have been. And you’re going to beat this.”

She waves me off, letting her guard down for a split second. I see the real sadness in her eyes slip through the cracks, but she covers it just as soon as it comes. I know her sorrow isn’t for herself though. She’s sorry I’m seeing her this way. I just wish she would get it through her stubborn head that she’s my mommy, damn it. Dad’s not here to take care of her, and I’m not going to leave her to go through all this on her own.

“And you’ve always been too worried about everyone else,” she says with her voice full of scorn. “You’re young and beautiful, Lysa. You should be out breaking hearts and taking names, not stuck in a stuffy room with a cranky old coot.”

“You’re hot? You should’ve said something,” I say, getting up to turn the air down for her.

She sighs. “You’re too nice. I always tell you. Someone is going to come along and take advantage of that kindness. Then I’m going to have to go and get out of this bed to stab that someone because they hurt my baby. I’m far too old to go around murdering foolish men, Lysa.”

I grin. “You’re still young enough to go murdering, mom.” I get up to look for her prescriptions. As if she didn’t have enough problems on her plate, my mom has Crohn's disease, and she has a bad habit of forgetting her pills if I don’t remind her.

She gives me the first real smile since she’s woken up. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve said to me all week.”

“I won’t be sweet if the housekeepers threw away your pills again,” I say, after I’ve checked all the possible places for her prescriptions. “Did you move them?” I ask.

She throws her hands up in innocence. “Do I look like I’ve been up and ‘attem? Moving things around, adjusting the feng shui and all that nonsense? Maybe a little nude yoga by the window...”

I take in her graying hair and the way it’s tangled up into something a bird might mistake for a home. “It was the housekeepers. I told them last time that--” I sigh in frustration, cutting myself off short. “You know what? I’ll be back. I’m going to go straighten this out.”

She gives me a half-hearted clap. “That’s the spirit. Go ream someone out for me.”

I make my way to the lobby downstairs, still in slight awe of how nice the Beaumont Hotel is. My mom only wanted to pay for some roach hotel so she “wasn’t squandering my inheritance.” I may have gone a little overboard when I bullied her into staying here instead. Either way, the thought of her sitting alone in some cheap motel to live out the last of her days was too much. Waiting tables hasn’t left me with a ton of extra cash, but I’m not about to let my mom live out what could be her final days in a miserable, poorly lit hotel where she has to listen to people fighting and screwing all day.

I feel totally out of place here. I’m just wearing a worn out old summer dress I threw on after work to replace my sauce-stained work jeans and shirt. Compared to the sleek dresses, business-formal, and fashion chic outfits that seems to be dress code for all the other women, I look like a slob. Thankfully, the housekeepers have me pissed enough to ignore it for now. For all they know, those pills could be for some life-or-death illness.

A man with a ridiculous, pencil-thin mustache waits behind the customer service desk in the lobby.

“Excuse me,” I say, not bothering to hide my annoyance. “This is the second time my mom’s prescriptions have gone missing from her room. I need you to check with housekeeping to see if any of them were stolen or thrown away.”

He regards me coolly, raising one well-groomed eyebrow as he looks down at me. “Do you propose I order a search of all the trash cans in the entire hotel, or perhaps a pat-down of the housekeepers for contraband, Miss…?”

“Lysa Ross. And I don’t really care how you do it, but I need those prescriptions before noon.”

He folds his hands and purses his lips. “Of course you do. Your mother--she’s quite elderly, then? Did it occur to you that she might have misplaced them herself?”

“My mother is bedridden right now,” I say. “So no, it didn’t--”

“Is there a problem?” asks a deep voice behind me.

My anger boils over at the interruption. I spin, finger raised and eyebrows drawn. I’m about to lay into whoever has the nerve to interrupt when my jaw drops open soundlessly.

The man looking down at me has green, smoldering eyes that drink me in. It’s all I see at first--those pools of emerald burning into me with so much intensity I could melt into a puddle right here in the lobby.

He’s gorgeous. No, I’ve seen gorgeous men before. Whatever this man is defies traditional vocabulary. All my brain can do is take him in piece by piece, as if the entire package is too much mouth-watering man to comprehend all at once. Stubble shades his strong jaw, giving him a gruff, almost rugged look despite the expensive suit he wears so well. The first button of his white shirt is undone enough to show a hint his muscular chest, giving me enough of a glimpse to know his body is probably full of hard-cut lines and sculpted flesh.

“You’re going to come with me,” he says firmly, eyes locked on me.

I expect the little man with the mustache to protest having me pulled away, but he nods instead. “Of course, Mr. Carlyle.”

“Come,” he says again. When I don’t move immediately to follow him. He actually grabs me by the arm and starts tugging me along.

“Hey!” I say.

He rounds on me so quickly I take a step back. Those eyes. God. It’s like looking into a furnace full of jade flames, like he wants to put his hands on me right now. Or his mouth. My body betrays me and I take a step toward him, eyes locked on his. I think I catch the glimmer of a satisfied smirk twitch across his mouth, but it’s gone so quickly I can’t be sure.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“My office,” he says gruffly.

“I’m sorry, but exactly who are you?”

“In charge,” he says almost flippantly as he continues to pull me away from the lobby.

“Of what?”

He stops mid-stride to glare down at me. “That’s quite a mouth you have.” His hand comes up to touch my face, thumb brushing my bottom lip. There’s no air in my lungs. No space for my chest to expand. It’s like the world closes in on me until my attention is laser focused on that single point of contact between the rough pad of his thumb and the soft skin of my lip. It’s all I can do not to grip his wrist and take his entire thumb in my mouth right now, to suck it while I look up into those arresting green pools of sexuality he calls eyes.

And wow. There it is. The single most insane thought I’ve ever had. I’ve never, ever thought of doing something like that to a man, let alone a stranger. It’s like this man in the suit is the embodiment of sexuality, and even my normally tame, reserved personality is getting whipped into some sort of feral frenzy just being near him.

He lets his hand drop from my face, showing that same hint of a grin. “You had better watch it,” he says.

“Watch what?” I ask breathlessly. I realize a heartbeat too late his meaning was obvious, but my brain isn’t exactly functioning on all cylinders right now.

“Your mouth. It could get you into trouble. Especially with me.”

Wow. Why does the idea of getting into trouble with him make me throb with heat between my legs? And why is my mind filling with images of him standing over me while he takes off his belt?

I really must not be sleeping enough. I’m apparently half out of my mind. In my circle of friends, I’m always the butt of jokes because I’m the last person on Earth to do anything wild or risky, especially when men are concerned. Now here I am, letting my mind run wild with every dark fantasy in the book just because this guy is giving me a little attention? It doesn’t matter, though. No matter what’s going on in my head or what I’m reading into his body language, he’s probably just going to sit me down while he calls the housekeepers and asks about the pills.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Way ahead of myself. And even if he really is planning something, I’d be way too chicken to take him up on the offer.

He starts walking without waiting to see if I follow--expecting me to follow. The assumption irks me, but I know I don’t dare cross this man. I can’t say how I know not to test his limits, but there’s a certain level of authority that seems to radiate from him. I don’t think I want to find out what would happen if I displeased him, I know that much. He pulls me along behind him as he walks, just as surely as if he grasped me by the arm again, yet he’s not laying a finger on me now. There’s a chemistry between his movements and my body I can’t seem to overcome, an attraction. A magnetism.

A few words. A few gestures. Less time than it takes to brush my teeth and this man already has my mind feeling like jelly and my body moving at his whim like a marionette.

He opens the door to his office and motions for me to sit in front of an impressive desk.

“Are you the manager?” I ask as I sit down and take in my surroundings. Large, expensive looking furniture. Gold baubles, leather-bound books, and countless items that look like they came from all over the world. I reach to touch a solid metal globe but his hand snaps out, gripping my wrist.

“I own this building, and some others like it,” he says, still gripping my wrist, eyes boring into mine. “I own everything in it. Everything.”

The way he says the last word makes me pause. There’s no doubt of his meaning, not with the way he’s looking at me--the proprietary way he’s gripping my wrist.

“I really need to go. If my mom doesn’t get her medication--”

“Stay right there.” He grabs the phone on his desk, punches in a number, and waits a few moments. “What are the prescriptions?”

“Azulfidine and Asacol,” I say.

He repeats the prescriptions into the phone. “Get them now and have them delivered to her room.”

He hangs up the phone. “Now you have no excuses.”

I shake my head, opening my mouth a few times but no words come out.

I stand up, suddenly sure I need to leave, sure that staying another moment will lead to something. I don’t know what, but I’ve lived my whole life turning the other way when a risk presents itself. All my hard-earned instincts are firing right now, practically demanding I leave. My back bumps into the wall before I manage to spit out a sentence. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Why--”

He walks toward me with no sense of urgency, no rush, just pure, heart-stopping confidence and purpose. “Because I want you. I saw you in the lobby and I knew I had to have you. I knew I couldn’t wait another fucking hour to taste you.”

God. Who even talks like that? Who has the nerve or the confidence?

Apparently, this guy. He’s close now. So close my nose is filled with the scent of him and my breasts are pressed between us. My hands twitch at my sides, instinctively wanting to reach out to touch him, but I hold them back. This is crazy. Things like this don’t happen in real life, and if they do, they definitely don’t happen to me. They never have.

“Look. I’m--I just can’t. This isn’t--”

He tilts my chin up with his thumb and kisses me so suddenly, I don’t even have time to resist. The warmth of his mouth and tongue swallow up my thoughts, drowning me in a world where things are simple. Where all that matters is what feels good and the here and now. A place where people I care about don’t die and my life isn’t full of dull monotony.

I pull back, closing my eyes, I’m physically trembling from the force of the sensations rushing across my skin like a hot, prickling breeze. It’s too much. Way too much. Being in that world, that place where I could forget everything but his touch is like a drug, and it’s a drug I can’t let myself get addicted to. My mom needs me too much, even if she would never admit it, and I need to stay focused on being with her while she’s still here.

“I need to go,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

I open the door and rush outside, expecting to feel the iron grip of his hand on my shoulder at any moment. I take five steps, ten, fifteen. No hand comes on my shoulder, not even a raised voice. Something akin to disappointment surges through me but I don’t stop. I can’t stop.

I don’t remember when it happened, but I gave up hoping for more a long time ago. I make enough money to pay the rent for my crummy little apartment, I have a handful of hours every night to relax, and I occasionally go on a dates with guys that leave about as much of an impression on me as raindrops on a lake. That’s my life, and I’m okay with that.

A man like him… It’s too much. I don’t do things like this. I don’t even know people like him.

I’m passing through the lobby when unexpected tears prick at my eyes. I frown, rubbing at them in annoyance. With every passing second, I feel a deeper and more real sense of loss, like I just ran away from a once in a lifetime opportunity. A scary opportunity. No, a terrifying opportunity, but one that ignited such a thrill and exhilaration in my chest I know I’ll never experience anything like it again.

It’ll pass, I tell myself. A few hours or days and I’ll forget how it felt to be in his focus. I’ll realize I made the right choice to run.

I step into the elevator, where a couple around my age smiles as they hold the door for me.

“Thank you,” I mutter. I try not to look at them, but even from the corner of my eye I can see the way she clings to him and how protectively he holds her.

I feel more alone now than I have in years. With one kiss, that man gave me my first real taste of what it is like to be connected to someone, even if it was just on a purely, lust-filled level. I felt the intensity of it and I ran like a coward.

I close my eyes and run a hand through my hair, doing everything I can to put it from my mind and failing. I hear the couple beside me take in a sharp breath together, as if surprised.

When I open my eyes, I see a hand squeeze between the doors at the last second, causing them to open again.

It’s him.

If I thought he looked determined before, this is a whole new level. He strides into the elevator, apparently oblivious of the couple beside me because he walks straight into me, like he’d walk through me if I didn’t back up. I’m pushed back by his body until he has me pinned against the wall, arms on either side of me, chest heaving and eyes heavy.

“I can’t let you go,” he breathes.

All the tangled emotions inside me are such a mess I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t want to think for once. I want to act, to do, to be reckless.

Even my awareness of the couple beside us fades to something dim and faint, like a light in the distance through a foggy window. I know they are there, but I can’t seem to make that matter right now. Nothing matters except those hungry lips of his and those strong hands gripping my hair.