We lay like that for a long time. I drifted off to that no man’s land between sleep and wakefulness, where I was aware of her skin against mine, her smell, her soft hair. In my happy place, I felt her shift, sit up and pull a blanket over me.

I cracked an eye open when I realized she was getting up to leave.

“Where are you going?”

She bent to kiss my forehead. My eyes zeroed in on the way her breasts swung along with the motion of her body.

“I’m going back to my room,” she whispered.

I snaked a hand up and caught her around the waist, pulling her down on me. “No, you’re not. You’re sleeping here.”

With a tired laugh, she only halfheartedly struggled to be free of my tight hold. “The Beast has declared his will.”

“Yes, I have. The Beast needs his Beauty to lie down right here and sleep beside him.”

“So I’m Beauty, now?”

“Always,” I muttered, snuggling her against me. Then I drifted off to sleep with visions of fairytale princesses in my head, and each one had the face of the girl lying in my arms.

Chapter 21

April

I woke up before Jordan the next morning and hightailed it out of bed before we had to deal with the inevitable awkwardness of would-we or wouldn’t-we again. Apparently, there were no more condoms in the room anyway. And while I would have liked more of what we’d done last night, he’d been clear—this was a one-night-only thing.

And it had to be that way, but I wasn’t pleased about it.

I studied him in the gray morning light. He was naked, tangled in the sheets, his hard, beautiful male body all planes and angles. As tormented as his sleep had been—I’d had to give him a wide berth during the night—his face was one of peace. I wished I knew what he was dreaming about.

I went downstairs, showered, dressed and ordered breakfast from room service all before I heard him moving around upstairs. He had the opening workshop to attend this morning and then his speech came just after lunch.

He appeared downstairs in jeans and a t-shirt that stretched across his broad chest. His eyes traveled over the fare—a dish of scrambled eggs, bacon, a plate of pastries and fresh, hot coffee. Without a word, he poured himself a cup, hot and black. I watched as he raised it to his lips, blew on the surface and then sipped carefully.

His eyes drifted over to mine. “Morning,” he finally said in a gruff voice. “Sleep well?”

If sleeping next to a human hurricane meant sleeping well… “Sure,” I said unconvincingly.

“Was I that bad?”

“Uh, the sleeping or the other part?”

He laughed. “Sleeping.”

“Well, let’s just say I could tell you were nervous about today. You, um, mumbled parts of your talk in your sleep.”

“You’re lying.”

I grinned. “Nope. Honest to God. I got to hear all about videogame micro-economy, even if it was mumbled and slurred a bit.”

He smiled, walked over to the window and looked out on the overcast day, sipping his coffee again. I stole glimpses of his magnificent butt in those jeans. A very nice view indeed.

“You dreamed about her, too,” I said quietly.

He stiffened, tilted his head back and finished off his coffee. Turning, his eyes slid over me, cold and hard. “Well, what are you sitting there for? Don’t you have some assistanting to do? Sorting my schedule or something?”

My eyebrows shot up toward my hairline. Business as usual. Well…I’d been warned, hadn’t I?

“Sure, whatever you say, boss.” I cleared my throat and stood from the table, then brushed crumbs off my fingers while avoiding his gaze as he watched me tidy up and turn to leave.

An hour later, we were ready to go. He had on a dove gray blazer over those jeans and a black Polo shirt. With that dusting of growth on his face and a bit of product run through his hair so that it was artfully askew, he looked yummy enough to eat.

I gulped and pulled out my phone, ignoring how his eyes traveled over me in my dark green sweater set. “Um, we need to be at the convention center in twenty minutes.”

He gestured toward the doorway. “Lead the way.”

The morning continued about the same way it had started. Jordan didn’t say much to me. I wasn’t sure if he was still angry about the comment I made at breakfast or if he was trying to distance himself, to reinforce that our one-night fling would stay just that.

One night. He’d probably had lots of one-night stands among the countless women he’d been with. He likely thought nothing of this…except for the awkward fact that we still had to go on working with each other for another month. Maybe he didn’t feel that the sex between us had been mind-blowing on two separate occasions, but I was finding it difficult to ignore that fact.