Kathleen O'Reilly - Just Surrender...

Amateur, my ass.

“Won’t the voyeurs be disappointed in mere sleeping? Although later, perhaps…” she trailed off, brushing her knuckles on her shirt.

The clerk merely yawned. “No one is watching. The theater viewing rooms aren’t open until eleven a.m. The city has ordinances.”

“A pity.” Edie sighed, feigning disappointment, idly glancing into the candy bowl. “I was looking forward to the experience—the freedom of giving myself over to the rites of passion in front of strangers. Oh, well. I suppose this will have to do.”

She took another look into the bowl. That wasn’t candy. It was condoms.

Condoms.

She picked up one, noticed the man’s raised eyebrows, and then went back for seconds and thirds, stuffing them into her pocket.

The clerk penned some numbers on a slip of paper and slid it across the desk. “Here’s the keycode. Through the double-doors, past the Medici hallway.”

Medici hallway? Edie nodded, then pressed her fingers to her lips and kissed them, Medici style.

SOMEONE WAS KISSING his neck, and it wasn’t Cynthia. Cynthia didn’t believe in neck-kissing. Tyler considered opening his eyes, but he had decided he was dreaming, and he didn’t want to quit the dream. Not yet.

“Tyler,” whispered the dream. The dream had a low, sexy voice that tickled his ear, his neck. His cock surged, wanting its own piece of the action, but Tyler stayed still, his eyes firmly closed.

“We have a room, love. A very quiet room. So much more comfortable than this table. So much more private than this table. Wouldn’t you like that? I would like that, Tyler. I want to see you, I want to feel you. I want to taste you.”

One eye opened because when tasting was involved, reality was always better than a dream.

Edie.

And at that moment, he knew, deep in his cerebral cortex, that his dreams had never been this stunning.

Wanting to taste her, needing to taste her, he took her mouth and kissed her, energy flowing through him, his body firing awake in an instant. Oh, yes. This was so not Cynthia.

Edie.

She kissed him, her tongue pushing inside his mouth. Not shy. Not genteel. Never again would he hate New York.

Tyler locked his arms around her, pushing her shirt up, wanting to do more, but she laughed, put a hand to his chest.

“Follow me…” she trilled, but Tyler wasn’t sure why he needed to. They had space here. They had privacy here. What more was required?

“But…” he protested, stumbling on his words, afraid that some new disaster lurked around the corner only waiting to knock him down again.

“Tyler,” she said, and then he watched as she unzipped her fly, and placed his hand there. Tyler followed.

EDIE PUNCHED IN THE KEYCODE, opened the door and dashed toward the bed. Tyler fell on top of her, a master of sexual efficiency. He kissed her mouth, her neck, one hand was pushing at her jeans, the other was groping inside her shirt, finding her breasts, and her body shook with the pleasure.

She could feel him against her. His sex was heavy, full…and waiting. Her breath caught as that fullness ground between her thighs. There were too many layers. Too many clothes between them.

“Pants,” he muttered, and voilà, her jeans were gone. She fumbled at the perfectly tailored wool slacks and marveled at how soon they disappeared. He pulled her shirt over her head, and pushed her back into the pillows, his mouth feeding on one breast, pulling, sucking, and she pressed her hips against his, because…of this.

This.

His questing fingers delved low in her panties, finding her, pushing into her, matching the persistent pressure of his dazzling mouth. Her hips followed rolling up toward his exquisite fingers, riding the strokes, because he knew exactly where to touch her. Exactly how to please her.

Tyler buried his face against her neck and sighed happily and Edie memorized that tiny sound because she knew in her heart that Tyler did not sigh happily. She’d done that for him, and she was going to make him gasp, make him come.

The first whisper of the dawn was new and full of possibilities and her hand searched the covers, finding the condoms, grasping one, and trying to rip it open. Sensing her frustration, possibly due to her colorful vocabulary, he took it from her, and she could feel him moving, adjusting and then…

Yes.

The aching in her stilled when he filled her, so thick, so hard, so good.

So perfect.

The air burned, her whole body flush with the heat, until he rose above her, putting a long distance between them. Those steady eyes settled on her face, studying her before he sighed again. Not so happily this time.

“Why are you here?”

Edie froze at his responsible tone, wondering if this was a trick question, hoping it wasn’t because he felt so good, so right. But, alas, all that goodness slid out of her. Alone again.

Foolishly, she pushed at his hair even though it was too short to be in his eyes. She wanted to touch the dark strands that hung low on his face. Wisely she knew that this wasn’t the time.

Dammit.

Edie sighed, not so happily, either. Although she couldn’t blame him. In fact, she should have expected it. In fact, before he had made her forget that she expected it, she had expected it. And prepared for it, as well.

Not so prepared now, are we?

She smiled her fly-by-night smile that said no big deal, and pulled out the standard Edie Higgins script. “We’re having a connection, a momentary joining of two bodies who have stumbled across each other, groping in the darkest of nights, moving toward some feeling of soulful humanity.”

“Fuck,” he muttered, rolling off her and her soulful humanity.

“Well, that is one way of stating it. Two animals copulating in a primitive ritual of procreation and species sustainability. Although the condom takes care of most of that.”

He turned his head, and met her eyes, and she hated the maturity there, the practical wisdom that saw past her words.

“Why are you here?”

Edie rolled to her side of the bed, her hands knotted in the ruby spread. “I wanted to feel better. That’s all. Sue me.”

The room was so quiet that she could hear the exhale of his lungs, the shifting against the covers, away from her. Rejecting her.

Slowly she opened her eyes, watching them in the mirrored ceiling above the bed, her eyes a little too bright, her smile a little too flip and her hair a little too casually messed. There were so many differences between them, so why did it hurt? Consistency wasn’t a fixture in Edie’s life—unless someone needed her for something. Everything in her life was part of the universal economy of bartering. Something given, something taken in return. Now Tyler wanted to disrupt her system. Tyler, the scrupulous keeper of scruples. Even without the trench coat and tie, he was who he was. Not the sort who traded favors easily. His chest was broad, strong. His legs reliable, the kind that changed tires in the rain. Legs that didn’t collapse no matter how much shit she piled upon him.

“I don’t want you to owe me.” His words were spoken quietly, but they were a lot better than what she had imagined. Edie rolled a few inches closer. “Why are you here?” she asked, curious what had finally broken him down. Wounded pride? Exhaustion?

Or Edie?

“It’s my room,” he answered, which was no answer at all. Gingerly he lifted himself on his elbows, scanned the velvety bordello furnishings and then collapsed back into the pillows. “I’d hoped it was my room. Is this my room?”

“For now,” she hedged, not wanting to say more, waiting for him to say more, which he didn’t.

“Why are you here?” she asked again, needing to know. People were simple, motivated by basic pursuits. They didn’t forgo pleasure easily. They didn’t forgo happiness—usually. Before she laid down her cards, he was going to have to have a little more skin in the game. The important kind, not the naked kind.