Page 2 of Bound By Words

Pulling the door open wider, I peeked through the opening and saw that I’d somehow managed to hook the corner of my pocket on the door lever on the other side.

A soft chuckle from down the hallway startled me as I tried to tug it loose. I glanced up, my eyes meeting those of someone I wasn’t expecting to see.

“Oh God,” I breathed out, fruitlessly using the pads of my fingers to pull my robe free while also trying to shield myself with the door enough that Nathan didn’t get an eyeful of red lace.

“Do you need some help?”

“No!” I shouted louder than I intended as I watched him step away from a door a few down from mine, pocketing a room key card.

“Are you sure?” he smiled, and my eyes widened as he continued to head toward where I was trapped.

My fingertips fumbled on the slippery satin material, trying to pull it free before he reached me. Leave it to me to get my robe stuck around a door handle when the male embodiment of sex personified happened to be loitering in the hallway.

He looked good. Really, really, really good. I thought he couldn’t get any hotter last summer when my intoxicated self had met him at the dinner party where Chase and my little brother Evan had gotten engaged at the end of their book tour, but I was wrong. I hadn’t known who he was when he’d shown up there, but I’d thought he was sexy as fuck with short dark hair and a smattering of facial hair.

He must have been one of those guys who grew a beard for winter because that smattering had filled in nicely, framing his full, soft-looking lips. His hair was a little longer, too, curling slightly at the ends.

“I’m good. You can go back to your room. Really. I got this.” My voice was rushed as my fingers continued to slip on the material, the angle not helping as I tried to keep my body concealed behind the door.

“Kelly,” he sighed, his voice clearly amused, small smile lines wrinkling at the sides of his soft brown eyes. “Let me help you.”

While I’d been there to help determine the seating arrangements, I’d obviously not been paying enough attention because I was sure I would’ve remembered Nathan being on the guest list. I knew that Evan had mentioned inviting their friends from Boston, but Nathan was the only one I’d met besides their editors, Isobel and Adrian.

This was a sign I needed to stop drinking because I should have remembered how sexy this man was from the last time we’d seen each other. I remembered he was attractive, but spending a few hours in each other’s company when I knew he lived on the other side of the country hadn’t formed a lasting attachment.

I didn’t do long distance. It never worked. My brother was a prime example. Chase had all but abandoned her condo in Boston and moved into my brother’s Connecticut farmhouse when she started dating him. Even Kristine had moved to Chicago to be with Sam because they hadn’t seen a future a thousand miles apart.

“Stop tugging on it. You’ll tear the material,” Nathan instructed, his voice deep and authoritative. My barely concealed breasts tingled underneath their thin lace covering––which were currently smashed up against a cold metal door—but I had a feeling it was due to the way Nathan’s mouth looked when he said stop.

I’d heard things no sister should want to hear about the friends who’d helped Evan and Chase with research for a few of their books. Nathan hadn’t been named specifically, but I knew that was how they met him. He was into things. Things that had always piqued my curiosity, but I had never had the guts—or the willing partner—to try. Things that were currently running through my imagination as Nathan’s calloused hand closed over mine, gently prying my fingers from the silky material keeping me trapped against the door of my hotel room.

“Lean forward a bit,” he murmured as he tried to get the opening of the pocket over the edge of the door lever.

“I can’t,” I whispered back, my voice raspy as I inhaled, the masculine scent of cedar filling my senses. He smelled like I’d imagine a lumberjack smelled, like the outdoors and trees…and what the hell was wrong with me? Focus, Kelly.

“Just a little,” he encouraged, gently tugging the side of my robe, the material tightening across my hips. “Just slide forward a little bit, and I can get it over the tip.”

That should not have sounded dirty, but coming from his lips…unf. The hair on the back of my neck stood as he continued to invade my personal space.

“But…” I squeaked.

“Come on, Kell. You can handle it.”

Oh, fuck me. No. Seriously. Someone needed to fuck me. You’d have thought I’d already taken a shot of the bourbon on my nightstand with how I responded to his presence.

“Kelly,” he coaxed, reaching around the edge of the door, and tugging on the empty loop at the waist of my robe. “That’s it. Good girl. You’re almost there. Just like that.”

My skin heated as he looked down at me, his fingers brushing mine as we tried to free the loop. Goosebumps rippled across my shoulders as his warm breath cascaded over my neck. It’d been too long since I’d been laid, and I was two seconds from throwing myself at a man I barely knew in a hotel hallway while I was half-naked under a robe. I clearly had issues.

“I promise I won’t look. Not if you don’t want me to,” he murmured, his voice dropping an octave as he whispered near my ear.

“But what if I want you to?” I whispered in return and then slapped a hand over my mouth, wishing I could close myself behind this door and smack my forehead into the surface of it. Repeatedly. The close proximity to him was frying my brain and filling it with images of him pinning me to the door and…

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” he chuckled, tugging until my hip slipped past the edge of the door, the taut material that had been holding me in place suddenly slack against my back.

I stepped backward, my flip flops sliding awkwardly across the floor, and I felt myself slip, pulling the door inward as I started to fall.

Nathan’s eyes widened as he reached for me, but he wasn’t quick enough as I landed—sprawled in the entryway—with my robe wide open and lingerie in full view before the door clicked closed a few feet away.

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