Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Connor: [laughing, pulls her back to her seat] Let’s get to the dates, shall we?
thirty-one CONNOR
Come on up. Room 1402.
My brain stutters.
When I texted Fizzy to tell her I’d arrived, I expected her to meet me down in the lobby or direct me to the banquet hall. But meeting her in a hotel room feels like the exact problem I anticipated when I gave myself a stern lecture in the mirror at home.
“Escort her,” I’d said to my reflection. “You’re her handler, the executive in charge of her. You are not her date. You are not her lover. You are doing a job.”
I can meet you down here, I type, but if she’s upstairs and asking me to come to her, it’s possible she needs help with something.
I delete it, typing, Is anyone up there with you? which sounds possessive and awkward. I delete that, too.
I see you typing, she texts. Don’t be weird. I need your help.
Laughing, I delete everything again and type simply, On my way.
I hit the button at the elevator bank and suck in a deep breath; my pulse is climbing its way up my throat. Ideally, I need the elevator ride to take a half hour. Unfortunately, I suspect today will be a continuous series of reminders that I should not have offered to escort her to this event, because I am not equipped to handle being alone with her.
Her door, I see as I approach, is propped open with the dead bolt, but I knock anyway. A bright “Come in” drifts from inside.
Pushing it open just enough to peek my head in, I call out, “I could be anyone, and you just invite me in sight unseen?”
“You’re statistically unlikely to be a criminal.” Her voice echoes from the bathroom. “You just texted, and besides, half of the people on this floor are relatives or friends.”
“Well, I’m glad the chances of someone you know seeing me walk into your hotel room are relatively high.”
Her voice gets louder as she walks into the bedroom. “I’d just tell them you’re delivering room serv—”
She stops for a breath when she sees me, but her next words are lost to the blank void of my cranium as I take in the strapless beaded gown poured over her body. It’s gold, covered with intricate beading and formfitting until about midthigh, where it spills in a wave of shimmering fabric around her feet. She’s wearing her hair piled in some complicated arrangement on her head, and a few dark strands hang loose, skimming her bare shoulders.
“Connor?”
I startle, having no idea how long I’d gone mute. “Yes—that’s—I’m here.”
When I drag my eyes to her face, she’s fighting a smile. “I asked if you could help me?”
“Uh, right—with what, exactly?”
“My dress?”
She turns to show me what she means. Awareness lands, and this view is infinitely worse. A long V of unmarred, honeyed skin is exposed in the space where the buttons lie open. I strangle down a groan but am not entirely successful, and it comes out like a whimper I must consciously rebrand into a frustration of a nonsexual variety: “A casual count tells me there are at least eighty thousand buttons here.”
“There are forty,” she tells me. “I realize I should have had an auntie do this before you got here, but alas, everyone is busy and here we are. For obvious reasons—the primary one being that I can barely bend over in this, let alone twist to button it myself—I need another set of hands.”
The words bend over are a screeching train wreck in my thoughts. I blame the image they conjure for the way my voice shakes as I approach her with a casual “Sure, of course.”
But then I do something without fully realizing it until a shiver runs down her back: I drag a knuckle down the length of her spine.
“If you do that, we’re not getting this dress on.” She turns and looks at me over her shoulder. “And I know how you feel about boundaries.”
“It is frankly exhausting to be the only one erecting them,” I mumble.
Fizzy laughs, delighted, and faces away again.
“You are reassuringly predictable.”
“Well, you’re the one who just stroked me and then said erecting.”
I exhale a dramatically weary breath. “It was an unintentional, glancing touch.”
“I’m starting to wonder if leaving this unbuttoned was an unfortunate oversight or happy accident.”
The first button is a bitch. The holes are tight, and the buttons are satin covered and minuscule, making them exceedingly hard to grasp. But by the third I’ve got it mostly figured out. We fall quiet as I carefully make my way from the curve of her lower back up to the soft expanse between her shoulder blades. And just before each button comes together, I fight the urge to lean forward and kiss the skin beneath my fingers.