“Another Shirley?” he asked with a big smile that showed off the slight chip on his left front tooth.
“No, I’m good. I’m just going to duck to the ladies’ room, so don’t clear my stuff.”
“You got it.”
She finished her drink, then grabbed her purse and rounded the bar to the far side, where the washrooms were located.
She was in and out in a matter of minutes, having used some mouthwash, slathered on some lip gloss in the bathroom mirror, and freshened up with a wet wipe.
Caden was back at the bar, and when he saw her, his face lit up. An explosion of grass-green eyes, white teeth, and devastating dimples. “Thought you might have ditched me for a second.” The way his lips lifted higher on one side had her panties getting damp. “But then Pedro set me straight.”
Pedro shot her a wink.
“At the very least, I would have paid my tab first. I don’t stick people with my bill.”
“Mighty kind of you,” he said as she reclaimed her seat at the bar. He discreetly slid a key card over to her elbow. “We have a room.”
She glanced down at it, and her lip twitched. “I guess we do.”
You’d think they were drunk based on how they burst into the hotel room with gropey hands and sloppy kisses. But they were both stone-cold sober. They were just really horny.
He’d unhooked her bra in the elevator, and she had to keep herself from unzipping his jeans in there, too, when what lurked beneath that denim prodded her in the hip as he ground against her and his lips found her neck.
Thankfully, their room was only two doors down from the elevator, and the key card worked.
Then they were in the room, and clothes were flying everywhere as hands roamed and lips found new patches of bare skin to explore.
Her calves hit the end of the bed and he pulled his lips away from her shoulder, then with a grin, pushed her backward, so she fell to the bed with a bounce. She smiled at him when he reached for the ankles of her jeans and tugged them off.
He was shirtless, and the realistic and intense expression of a big horned owl tattoo on his left shoulder and part of his bicep made her insides hum. The eyes of the owl were vivid and sort of glaring at her. But she wasn’t scared by the intimidating expression that regarded her as prey, she was intrigued and excited by it. She wanted him to devour her.
He’d relieved her of her shirt and bra just moments after the hotel room door closed. She wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed of her body, so to tumble back to the bed topless while still in her jeans didn’t faze her at all.
But now she was just down to her panties.
His eyes lasered in on the V of her legs, where she was positive he could see the damp patch she’d created on her cornflower blue cotton underwear. If she knew she’d be having sexy-time with a man, she would have put on something a little less practical, with maybe some lace or satin. But whatever. He’d already seen her all glammed up in a corset and six-inch plastic heels. Now he could see her for how she was the other ninety-percent of her life. Practical and in a breathable fabric.
“I like your tattoo,” he said, which came out more like the purr of some wild jungle cat. He stepped between her spread legs, which dangled over the edge of the bed, and traced the fine-line tattoo of a lily on the bottom of her left ribs. “You also have one on your shoulder blade and,” he said, pointing to her right tricep, where the compass done in pointillism was. “Anything else?”
She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip and nodded.
His brows lifted, but then his gaze slid across her body, leaving a warm, glowing heat on her skin wherever his eyes touched, until he focused on her belly button and the waistband of her underwear. “I have to finish unwrapping if I want to see them all?”
She swallowed and lifted her hips as he hooked his fingers into the elastic sides of her underwear and slowly slid them over her thighs, revealing her last tattoo.
It was the smallest of all her tattoos and the simplest. But it was also the most meaningful.
Because she wasn’t the only one who had it.
It was five intersecting hearts in a row, each one slightly smaller than the one that preceded it. All but one heart were colored in. And in this case, for her, it was the fourth one—her place in the birth order of her and her four sisters. She chose hot pink just to be different.
“What do the hearts mean?” he asked, tossing her underwear to the floor and running his big thumb over the tattoo.
“For me and my sisters.”
“Five girls?” He blew out a breath. “Are they all as hot as you?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’ll never know. I could be the ugly duckling of the bunch.”