Wyatt’s fingers close around my wrist and as soon as we’re out of earshot, he mutters, “There’s no way in hell you’re going anywhere tonight other than my bed, Kylie.”
Yeah, we’ll see about that.
Ivy stops me halfway across the bar. She’s already wearing a jacket, and she yaws as she wraps a fringed scarf around her delicate neck. “I’ve got to go, but friend me, okay?” After I tell her that I will and get her last name, I follow Wyatt into a quiet nook located in the other corner of the bar. It looks like it used to be a spot for payphones, but now there’s only an ashtray and a crumpled Winston Lights package.
“You trying to drive me crazy?” Wyatt bends his head, leaning in close to me with his nostrils flared. His short, wheat blonde hair brushes the top of my forehead, and I automatically reach up to touch it. “You trying to see what kind of rise you can get out of me?”
I jerk my hand away from his hair. “By what? Playing a game of pool? Abso-fucking-lutely not.”
He stares at me for a long time before shaking his head. “I’m taking you back to my room and f**king you until the only thing you can think about is me.”
It’s not necessarily his jealousy that makes me want to strangle him. It’s the fact he’s already the only thing I think about, and he doesn’t realize it. “I’m going to find Heidi.” I start to walk around him, but he swings me back around.
“Heidi and Cal are long gone.”
“If you don’t let go of me, I will headbutt you in your perfect teeth, McCrae.”
He doesn’t seem to care because his lips come down on mine hard and his tongue is just as rough. His hands travel down either side of my back and slide into my jeans, pushing my flimsy panties down. “I hate this.”
“Touching me? Because, trust me, you don’t have to.”
“No, wanting to f**k up every man who touches you. It’s—”
“I don’t know whether to be flattered that you’re so jealous or freaked out,” I say.
He releases a sound and rests his chin on top of my head, but I’m so heated that I can’t bring myself to return his embrace. “Come back to the hotel with me.”
“Why? So you can beat up the front desk clerk when he looks at me for longer than ten seconds?” I start to ask him if he’s planning on challenging my doctor to a gynecologist parking lot duel, but his hands travel around from their spot on my ass to the front inside of my red jeans. Despite how tight my pants are he manages to maneuver his fingers between my legs. I gasp, tightening my thighs, but it’s no use.
He’s already found what he needed. “Because of that. Because no matter how pissed you are right now, your pu**y still wants me.”
I grip his wrist and tear his hand out of my jeans, trembling at how his fingertips drag over my clit in the process. Wyatt thinks he has me figured out. He thinks that just because my body responds to him, I’ll fall into his bed tonight, and I’ll get over him being a dick.
This time, when I step around him, he doesn’t stop me because he’s certain I’m ready to go back to his hotel room. He’s certain we’ll end the night with angry sex and start the morning with it, too. So it must be a shock to his system when I say, “Have a wonderful night, McCrae. Let’s try this again in the morning when you’re not planning on taking your frustrations out on my girly bits.”
It’s a shame, though, that when I let myself into my empty hotel room a half an hour later and tumble into bed, my thoughts are still focused on the way his hands felt.
CHAPTER NINE
It’s shortly after 4:30 AM the next morning when I hear a keycard slide into the lock to my room. I’m still so wired from the night before that I’ve yet to fall asleep. The slight clicking noise on the other side of my door makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Fully alert, I slide myself into a sitting position and grab the first weapon I find, my boot. After what happened back at the hotel in New Orleans, who can blame me for being on edge?
My fear quickly dissipates when Heidi creeps into the room, holding her pumps to her chest with one arm and easing the door shut gently behind her with the other. She turns around and starts tiptoeing across the floor but freezes after I flick on the lamp between our beds.
“Well, hell, I thought you’d be tied to McCrae’s bed or something right about now.”
I toss the clunky shoe down on the floor. “Surprise, babe.”
She drops her own shoes and kicks them, one by one, beneath the desk. “So, why aren’t you in McCrae’s bed?” She wrinkles her nose. “Is everything alright?”
Bringing my knees up to my chest, I circle my arms around my shins. I’ve spent the last several hours lying in the dark, my brain pinging between wondering whether or not everything will be fine with Wyatt until we return to L.A. and needing him. I’ve yet to come up with a solution to either. But to Heidi, I tip my head. “We’re good. We’ve got to leave so early that we decided to call it a night.”
She pauses for a few seconds, like she’s about to say something earthshattering, but then she unzips her strapless top and pulls it off. Rolling my eyes, I glance away from the pierced boobage on display until she clears her throat. When I turn my head back to her, she’s stretching a tank top down her waist, and the red silk bustier is draped over the back of the chair.
“You don’t think I’m stupid enough to believe that, right?” She loops a ponytail holder through her dark hair, which has started to frizz.