Chapter 5: Sloane, You Feel So Fucking Good 🌶️🌶️🌶️

She hadn't expected him to lift her like that. The second the floor went out from under her, she clamped her arms around his neck and hung on.

"Holden, put me down."

He shifted his grip so she couldn't squirm. "If you don't want to be the headline tomorrow, cover your face."

She froze. He was right. Holden Ashworth, sober as a judge, carrying a half-fucked nightclub owner out of the women's restroom — that was a society blog wet dream. She yanked the lapel of his jacket up over her face, leaving only her eyes uncovered. Her voice came muffled through the fabric.

"Third floor, take a right, last door at the end."

He carried her out. The bass of the club hit them like a wall, the kick drum thudding through the floor and into her ribs. She could feel his pulse where her wrist was pressed under his collar.

"You're a regular," he said, amused. "Got your own private suite and everything."

Through the fabric, she rolled her eyes. "I own this fucking place. That's my office."

The smug uptick of his mouth — she didn't have to see it to know.

He carried her up two flights of stairs without breaking stride. They passed plenty of people on the way. Half of them tried to stop him to say hello. Not one of them risked it. There were rules, in this city, about how to address Holden Ashworth carrying a woman, and the rule was: don't.

Third floor was quieter. The bass dropped to a dull thud through the floor. He walked her down the long, hushed hallway to the door at the end. Her face was still tucked into his lapel. She had her nails pressed into the back of her thumb to keep herself from saying anything else.

This was the silence before a storm.

She had so much she could say. She was sure he had a thousand questions sitting under his tongue. Neither of them spoke.

"This it?"

He stopped in front of her door. Slowly, carefully, set her down.

The second her feet touched carpet, her knees almost gave out again. She caught herself on the wall, faced sideways from him, hair falling forward over her cheek.

"Thanks."

That was all she had. Seven years was a long time to make two people who'd known each other inside out into strangers. And she had been the one who'd let go first.

"Aren't you going to invite me in, old flame?"

His voice from behind her, light. Both hands in his pockets. She turned her head just enough to glance at him over her shoulder. Then she pushed the door open and stepped through.

She didn't say yes. She didn't say no.

He took it for what it was.

The hallway light spilled in past her. Sloane stood half in shadow at the edge of the room, watching him. He filled the doorway in his black suit, no jacket now, white shirt rumpled, tie loosened a half-inch. The seven years between them stretched flat across the carpet. So close, so impassable.

She knew her makeup was smeared. She knew her dress was torn. She knew the bruise on her shoulder where the door had hit was already coming up purple. Her eyes were still glassy from crying earlier, from the alcohol, from him. She knew she looked like a wounded thing.

She also knew he was the kind of man who couldn't see something wounded and not chase it.

He moved.

The door slammed shut behind him hard enough to rattle the frame. He had her against the wall in two strides. Her chin tipped up — she had no choice; he was bigger now, broader in the shoulders, and there wasn't anywhere else for her face to go.

His mouth came down on hers without preamble. His tongue pushed past her teeth and worked into her mouth in slow, deliberate strokes that mirrored the way he'd been inside her downstairs — in, out, drag, in. Their tongues twined. Saliva slipped from the corner of her mouth before she could swallow.

One of his hands cupped the side of her throat. Not hard. Not tight. Just there, his thumb on the pulse point, his fingers around the back of her neck. The pressure was enough to make her dizzy. Her chest started to rise and fall faster, her face flushing. The heat behind her eyes climbed.

The other hand was inside the bodice of her dress, palming her breast, kneading until the soft flesh spilled out around his fingers.

"Mm —"

A small sound got out of her into his mouth, and that was all it took. She felt him groan against her tongue.

He nudged a knee between her legs and rocked it up against the slick seam of her panties under the dress. Just pressure. He didn't take it any further. His knee moved in slow, deliberate grinds. Through her ruined dress and the wet silk between her thighs, the friction was almost worse than what he'd done to her downstairs.

He finally broke the kiss. She gasped for air. Her lips were puffy and shining, a thin slick of him still on her chin. He brushed his thumb along her lower lip, slow, then put it in his own mouth and licked it clean.

Then he pulled her flush against his chest, ducked his head to her ear, and caught the lobe between his teeth.

"Sloane," he murmured into her ear, voice slurred with want. "You feel so fucking good."