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Ryder grins knowingly. “She offered you a job.”

  “Not right away, actually. She’d watched me take over as manager, had seen the improvements I’d made, and the effect it had on business, and for a few weeks, she just asked me a lot of questions—about me, my son, my divorce, my finances, my dreams…everything, really. I had few friends, and it honestly was cathartic to unload all that on someone. And then, yes, out of the blue, she offered me a job.”

  We’re downtown, now, stuck in the last dregs of rush hour traffic. “Mary-Jo’s passion project, after her husband died and she retired, was animal rescue. She and her husband owned a farm outside Chicago, and they rescued all sorts of animals—horses, cows, dogs, cats, pigs, even an ostrich. When her husband passed away suddenly, she had to sort of rethink things. She ended up selling the farm and sending all the animals to other farms and shelters, liquidated most of her assets, and bought a little condo downtown. Her husband had a hell of a life insurance policy, and when that kicked in, she was suddenly faced with having more money than she knew what to do with, but no purpose and no husband. The logical step for her was to start another animal rescue, but the thought of another farm without her husband was too much for her, so she opened a more traditional nonprofit dog and cat rescue. But she quickly realized she was passionate about animals, not running a business, and was looking for someone to take over the business aspect of things. She’d done several rounds of interviews with all sorts of people, and none of them fit what she was looking for.” I shrug. “For whatever reason, I fit.”

  “The reason, obviously, is that you’re amazing.” He winks at me.

  “Oh.” I laugh. “Clearly.”

  He pulls up outside a restaurant, and a valet scurries over to take the car. Ryder waits as I round the hood, and then offers me his arm in a gesture of classical gallantry. “M’lady?”

  I laugh, because his faux arch accent is funny, but the feel of his strong arm under my hand makes my stomach flip.

  Our table isn’t quite ready yet, so we find seats at the bar and Ryder orders us a bottle of red wine. We sip wine and chat—and the conversation is easy, a loose and rambling series of rabbit trails, from movies and music to funny college drinking stories, worst dates, best dates, and everything in between. Then a hostess takes us to our table and we order steaks and more wine, and the conversation continues. It deepens during dinner, as we tell stories of the things from our childhoods that have scarred us, more meandering discussions of our respective exes, and a more lighthearted exchange about how neither of us really enjoy celebrating birthdays. Talking to Ryder is the easiest thing in the world. Even talking about Paul and raising Nate by myself is easy—and somehow not awkward or tense. Usually, talking about exes and single parenting is a no-no on dates, because it’s kind of a turn-off for most guys, I guess. But Ryder initiates the discussions and asks probing questions and listens with an attentiveness that tells me he’s really, truly interested.

  He truly listens, and that’s just hot. A sexy man who can stare at you with expressive, attentive eyes and make you feel like you’re the only woman in the world while he’s hanging on your every word? It’s intoxicating. Arousing.

  God, I was an idiot for trying to find reasons not to like him—it’s pretty much impossible not to, I’m realizing. He’s a good man, a decent man, and I’m screwed.

  Finally, we’ve had dinner, finished the second bottle of wine, and spent another hour talking over a slice of cheesecake.

  “You want to take a walk?” Ryder asks, once the bill is paid and we’ve lingered over coffee. “It’s a nice night, and I’m enjoying talking to you.”

  I expected him to want to take this immediately to the hotel, and so this is an unexpected question.

  “Sure,” I say. “A walk sounds good.”

  I wore my most comfortable heels, and I did bring a sweater, and after all that food and wine and dessert, a walk along Chicago’s streets actually does sound wonderful.

  We wander around the Golden Mile area for another hour at least, strolling casually, continuing our discussion of anything and everything. There are lots of people out doing the same thing we are, and the people watching is entertaining. At some point, his hand finds mine and our fingers tangle. Never has holding someone’s hand ever felt so amazing. It’s simple, nonsexual, and…intoxicating.

  Yes, we’ve shared two bottles of wine, but that was over several hours and lots of food, so I know neither of us is even really buzzed. The intoxication is…emotional. Psychological. Neurochemical. Libidinal.

  Eventually, even with my comfy heels and sweater, my feet start to hurt and I get chilly.

  Ryder notices, and we stop walking. “Done walking?”

  I shrug. “I’m enjoying the conversation, but heels aren’t made for extended walking, and it’s getting a little cold out here.” I smile at him. “Shall we go somewhere for a nightcap?”

  He doesn’t smile back; his eyes meet mine, intense, wild. “We could.” He has both my hands in his, and his thumbs brush over my knuckles.

  “You have a better idea?”

  His smirk is suggestive. “I might.”

  “Do tell,” I say, giving him a coy grin.

  “This is us,” he says, gesturing to an adorable boutique hotel right in front of us. It’s small, trendy, and inviting. I frown at him. “What about your car?”

  He smirks. “While you were in the bathroom at the restaurant, I spoke to the valet attendant. For a few extra bucks, I had them bring my car here and leave it with the hotel valet.”

  I laugh. “So this whole walk wasn’t just random wandering, was it?”

  He shrugs. “I wanted to keep talking to you.” His gaze is earnest. “I’m really enjoying getting to know you, Laurel. But no, it wasn’t random. I chose the restaurant and hotel because they were within walking distance of each other…just so we could do this.” He gestures at the sidewalk. “Just walk, and talk, and get to know each other.”

  I melt just a little more. “I like getting to know you too, Ryder.” I trace a finger across his shoulder, my eyes on his. “I wouldn’t mind going in now, though.”

  He brushes a thumb over my cheekbone, leans close, a touches a ghost of a kiss to my lips. “Thank god.” Another slide of his lips over mine, a tease of a kiss. “I’m dying to get to know you in a whole different sort of way.”

  I squeeze his hand hard, teasing him with my lips, darting away from his kiss and then closing in to nip his lip. “You want to know me Biblically?”

  He rumbles an amused laugh. “Nothing Biblical about what I want, Laurel.”

  “It’s an expression—” I start.

  He laughs, pressing closer to me, and kisses me to shut me up. “I know,” he says, whispering against my lips. “But what I want with you sure as hell ain’t the kind of thing you’d read about in a Bible.”

  “Take me to our room and show me what you mean,” I murmur back. “Please?”

  He growls as he backs away, his eyes blazing. “Don’t have to ask me twice, babe.”

  He takes my hands again, leading me into the hotel. He signs a slip to acknowledge that they have his car in valet parking, takes the ticket from them, goes through the process of getting our room key.

  The entire time, I’m leaning against him, my hand in his, fingers twined. I can’t help touching him, teasing his fingers with mine, running my finger between his, rubbing the back of his hand with my thumb, gripping his massive bicep over his blazer sleeve, resting my head against his shoulder, gazing at him as he accepts our room keys and listens to the usual spiel from the desk clerk.

  Finally, we’re on the elevator. Ryder backs me into a corner, pins me against the wall, his palms on my cheeks, thumbs brushing my skin, lips slanting against mine. My heart pounds, my eyes slide closed, and my hands roam his shoulders, up into his hair, mussing it further. I feel his hand burying into my long, loose black hair, while the other roams down my waist to my hip. His kiss is wild and hungry.

 
; All too soon, the elevator dings as we arrive at our floor, and Ryder backs away, dragging a wrist across his mouth. “Damn, girl. You kiss like you’ve never been kissed before, and I mean that in the best possible sense.”

  I follow him as he backs out of the elevator, and I touch his mouth with my fingers. “I haven’t—not in the way you kiss me.”

  “And how is that?”

  “Like…like you want me so bad kissing me is the only way to even start expressing it.”

  “That’d be an understatement.” He looks at the envelope containing our key cards, which has our room number scrawled on the outside. “I wasn’t listening when he told me the room number.” He glances at me with an amused smirk. “Somebody was playing handsies and distracting me.”

  I lift my eyebrows and endeavor to look innocent. “I haven’t just held anyone’s hand in a long time. I was enjoying it, that’s all.”

  He examines the signs on the wall, and leads us toward our room. “A likely story.”

  I laugh. “What? You think I was intentionally trying to distract you?”

  “That thing you were doing with your finger on the back of my hand? Yeah, distracting.” We reach the correct room, and Ryder slides a card through the reader, but it blinks red. “Dammit. The card’s not working.”

  “Try the other one,” I suggest.

  He does, but he has it facing the wrong way, and it blinks red again. “This is stupid.”

  I laugh. “I don’t have to try to distract you—you do that all on your own.”

  He tries the first card again. “You in that dress…that’s distracting enough.”

  Another red flash from the door. He’s getting frustrated, and I decide to lighten the mood a little. I lean up and kiss the back of his neck. Then the side of his neck. And then I lean up against his back and run my hands over his stomach and kiss along his jaw by his earlobe.

  “Is that distracting?” I breathe.

  “Nope,” he growls. “Not at all.”

  He tries the card again, and swears as it flashes red yet again. “Fucker must’ve programmed it wrong.”

  “I think you’re just doing it wrong,” I say, suppressing laughter. “You’re distracted.”

  “I’m not distracted.” He flips the card, but still gets the same reaction.

  “No?” I unbutton his shirt, button by button, starting at the top and working my way down until it’s hanging open, and I untuck it, and then slide my hands under his T-shirt, palming his stomach and caressing his hot bare skin. “Not at all?”

  He thunks his head against the door, switching cards. “This fucking thing better work.”

  I laugh. “Let me try.” I take the card from him; swipe it, and immediately the light turns green.

  Ryder laughs, both annoyed and amused. “Of course it works for you.”

  I follow him in, stumbling after him, not letting go of his skin, roaming his chest and stomach, tracing his belly just above his belt buckle. “I just have the magic touch.”

  He lets the door slam closed, stops just inside, and then spins around. He grabs both of my hands in one of his and pins them against the door over my head. “You don’t play fair, woman.”

  I suck in a sharp breath. “No, but that’s why you like me.”

  He kisses me, and I forget that he has my hands pinned over my head, I just sink into the kiss, into him, letting him take all of my weight, letting him pin me against the door with his big hard body, letting his lips scour and search mine, letting his tongue find mine and demand it and demand more, letting him press both of my hands against the door. His other hand slides down my waist to my hip, hugged by the skin-tight green dress. His touch dares further down as we kiss, to the hem, just above my knee.

  Abruptly, he backs away, once more dragging the back of his wrist across his lips. “That fucking dress, Laurel.” His tone says more than his words—heavy and thick with desire, ragged with need.

  “What about it, Ryder?” I ask.

  “I can’t fucking handle the way you look in it,” he says, his voice a deep bass snarl.

  “Then take it off.”

  Chapter 6

  Ryder steps up close to me, his eyes boring into mine. “I like the way you think.”

  He reaches for me, his hands closing over my hips, fingers digging into my flesh. With a quick jerk, he tugs me away from the door and up against him; I squeak in surprise, and then the squeak turns to a moan as he dips and slashes his lips over mine. Both hands slide up my body, bury in my hair, tilt my face up so he can deepen the kiss. His body is hard, powerful, and warm. The kiss heats, morphing from a single extended crush of mouth against mouth into a breathless tangle of lips and tongues. His hands scrape down my back and stop, hesitating at the small of my back. I arch into him, raking my hands under his shirt. In a swift, complicated maneuver, he shrugs out of his blazer and button-down at the same time and I shove his undershirt off, and then his whole mammoth, muscular upper body is bare and hot under my hands, his chest bulging with power, his arms thick and corded, his stomach hard and flat. I slam my lips against his the moment his shirt is free of his head, and scour his body with my hands, my touch as eager as my mouth.

  I arch against him again, and he takes the hint for what it is: his palms splay open and carve down over my butt, and I feel more than hear the rumble in his chest as he explores the curves and weight of my ass. His hands glide down to the hem, and then whisper up the backs of my thighs, bringing my dress up with it.

  I laugh. “Down,” I tell him, pushing down on his hands.

  He pulls back, frowning at me. “What? I thought you wanted—”

  I laugh again, putting my hands on his and guiding them to the straps of my dress, helping him tug them off my shoulders. “The dress. It goes down to take it off, not up.”

  He huffs a laugh, resting his forehead against mine. “Oh. For a second I thought you’d—”

  “Changed my mind?” I ask, tangling my fingers in his beard and tugging his mouth back down to mine. “No way,” I murmur, my lips moving against his.

  “Oh. I hadn’t noticed a zipper, so I thought it would just go up and off like a shirt.”

  I snicker. “Not a chance. It’s way too tight for that. It’d get stuck…” I arch an eyebrow suggestively, “in certain places.”

  “I could try. That might be fun.”

  I smirk, suppressing a laugh. “More funny than fun if you think watching me struggling awkwardly to get out of the world’s tightest dress is funny.” I bite my lip. “When I tried this on earlier, to make sure it was what I wanted to wear before taking a shower, I tried taking it off over my head.” I laugh, then. “It was…not sexy. I got it halfway off over my head, and then it got stuck at my boobs. I was legitimately stuck in my dress for five minutes. I had to work one arm out underneath and then yank it off the rest of the way. And thank god I hadn’t done my hair yet because it would’ve been totally ruined.”

  “Ah. Well…” He tugs the strap down one shoulder, then the other. “As much as I love a good laugh…let’s go with down, this time.”

  “This time?”

  “No guarantees I won’t try it the other way at some point, just to watch you get stuck. It seems like it’d be the perfect combination of sexy and funny.”

  “You’d just stand there, watching and laughing, wouldn’t you?”

  His eyes go to my chest as he slowly peels the dress down. “Absolutely.” He guides my arms out of the straps. “And then I’d help you out of it.”

  “Good to know.” I laugh, but the humor is hard to hold on to when Ryder’s eyes blaze with lust as he slowly, carefully peels my dress down over my bra. “If I ever get stuck, I’ll have to wait for you to help me.”

  “Hey, I’m helping you right now. You looked stuck in this thing. I mean, god, it looked awfully uncomfortable. So tight, so constricting. I figured you needed help getting it off.”

  I can’t help laughing. “Oh yeah, for sure. Thank you, Ryder, for su
ch a selfless act. You must be a saint.”

  He has the dress past my breasts and continues to peel and tug it downward. It’s bunched, now, though, and stuck. I don’t help him. He sinks to his knees in front of me, and my heart leaps into my throat. Anticipation sears through me, pulsing in my blood. I tingle, his touch electric; I gasp, his gaze ravenous.

  With a yank that has me stumbling and inhaling in surprise, he jerks the dress past my hips, and now I’m standing in front of him wearing nothing but the lingerie I chose for this precise moment.

  Red lace…completely sheer. Racerback, push-up. It hides nothing, shows everything. Emphasizes, teases. Taunts. Promises.

  The thong is a barely there slip of red lace over my core and a string around my waist.

  “Fuck,” Ryder growls, sinking backward to sit on his heels. “Fucking hell, Laurel.”

  My breath catches at the utter worship in his gaze. “What, Ryder?”

  He lurches to his feet and clasps me in a swift, sudden, fierce embrace, his arms wrapping around me, curling me into him, cradling me against him. His hand claws into my ass, the other grips python-strong around my shoulders, and I’m bent backward and dipped, my head in the crook of his arm. I’m utterly helpless, off balance, off my feet completely, dangling in the air, held up only by the strength in his arms. He’s over me, his lips hungrily grazing mine, teasing, touching, and then smashing in for a searing kiss.

  I’m dizzy, giddy. Utterly enthralled.

  I’ve never in my life been dipped backward for a kiss. It looks romantic in the movies, but I always thought the reality would be frightening. In truth, it is, because I’m so helpless. I can only cling to his shoulders and palm his jaw and whimper into the kiss and let him hold me, losing myself in the hunger of his kiss. I can only trust him to keep me cradled safely in his arms.

  The kiss becomes a conflagration, swiftly igniting into more than just a kiss.

  He stands me up and presses me up against the door and palms my cheek, and his hand slides up my hip and cups my breast over the lace.

  “This one goes up,” I murmur.