Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Before I could think better of it, I reached for his arm. Garrett turned back, brows lifted questioningly. “It’s just soda.” I held up the glass for him to sniff.
Garrett took it out of my hand and drained the last of it. “Diet,” he observed, putting more disgust into a single word than I thought possible.
“Well, yeah. In this room, gaining two pounds is worse than throwing up on Julian Lewis’s shoes.” I realized that my fingers were still tangled in the fabric of his suit jacket. I’d tried to grab him without touching him, but the effect was that I was clinging to him.
Garrett noticed at the same time I did. His eyes dropped to my hand, then lifted to mine. My breath caught, and I willed myself to let go.
This is a bad idea, my brain reminded me.
A very bad idea.
But I still didn’t let go.
11
GARRETT
Hollywood was packed to the rafters with beautiful people. Living here as long as I had, I thought I’d become immune to exquisite features, perfectly coiffed hair, and glowing skin all wrapped up in priceless designer dresses.
But standing in the shadowy corner, I felt sucker punched by it. When had I stopped seeing Destiny as a rebellious, hare-brained, possible prostitute, pseudo-little sister of my ex-wife? And when had I started seeing her? Her beauty, which had been tamped down and boxed in when she was a teen star, had bloomed, lush and vibrant as an adult. She was as bewitching as she was infuriating, and right now, with her hand on me, it was taking everything in me to keep from putting mine on her.
“It’s just soda,” she was saying, her lips forming the words.
I drained the glass she offered as proof. The liquid hit my tongue, sharp and artificially sweet, and without a hint of alcohol. Good for her. Bad for me.
Destiny’s fingers were still pinching a fold of my jacket, and she was staring at them almost helplessly, like she didn’t know why they wouldn’t let go already. We were standing so close in the shadows that I could smell the sandalwood and smoked vanilla perfume she always smelled like. The neckline of her dress was modest, unless you were standing right over her, looking down, and then you could see that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath that dress. My mouth went dry, despite the soda I just drank.
Destiny took a deep breath and shifted her blue-green gaze from her fingers to my face. “This is a bad idea.”
“What is?”
“Standing here, with you, here, like this.” She groped for the words. “It doesn’t look right. Not when I came here with Andrew.”
“You’re right. You should go back to him.”
Destiny let go of my jacket slowly. “I will.” She started to take a step out of our shadowy corner, but before the toe of her high heel could find its way into the light, my control snapped and I grabbed her arm, pulling her back. She tipped into me, off balance, her hands grabbing for my waist to steady herself.
Before she could steady herself, I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her up against me. Her head went back, and I saw the unfocused look was finally gone from her eyes. She was looking right at me, and her lips parted. Likely to tell me to go fuck myself, but I didn’t wait to find out. I put my other hand at the nape of her neck, beneath the heavy fall of her hair, and covered her mouth with mine. For a moment, she held herself rigid against me, and then her control snapped as cleanly as mine had, and she was kissing me back.
Even as my brain screamed at me to stop, to think about what the fuck I was doing, my body thanked me. Kissing Destiny was like getting a long drink of water after being parched for days. It was like feasting when you hadn’t realized you’d been starving. She tasted as good as she smelled, and the feel of her breasts against my chest, knowing that there were only a few flimsy layers of fabric between us, went straight to my cock.
Destiny’s tongue met mine, inviting me deeper. Her hands were still at my waist, gripping like she needed to keep her balance even though I was holding her so tightly there was no way she could have fallen. I liked the feel of her hands there, though, the way she clung to me. It had been years since I wanted a woman like this. Instantly, unreasonably, desperately.
Then, before we could do anything really stupid, the lights flickered. It was the first warning that we needed to get to our seats. The shadows deepened to twilight for an instant, then lightened. And that was when I realized that even though we weren’t in the spotlight anymore, we weren’t safe from the limelight. All it took was one person to wander over, in search of a quiet place for themselves, and we’d be caught.