Page 6 of Some Like It Hot

I like this. She looks a little ruffled and honestly, the times I’ve been around this woman and we’ve talked, even teased, she’s seemed very confident. I like thinking I can maybe throw her off her game a bit.

I step closer again. Now I feel her body heat and if she takes a very deep breath, her breasts will brush my chest. “I do. I want you to know that. And I think you should also know that I’ve been dying to kiss you since the first time I ever saw you.”

Her eyes widen.

“Are you surprised by that?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No. I know that you’ve wanted to kiss me.”

Now my eyes widen. “Oh, really?”

“Of course. I’m just surprised you’re saying it. I figured you were going to keep fighting it.” She takes the tiny step that separates us. “For whatever reason you were giving yourself.”

I lift my hand, sliding it into her thick, silky hair. “You think I’ve been fighting it?”

I have. And in that moment, I have no idea why. I know it will come back to me, but with her spicy, citrusy scent drifting up around me, her eyes watching me with heat and a confidence that makes my dick harder than it’s been in a very, very long time, and those lips that I’m going to have to taste before the year is over, I can’t think of anything else.

“You have,” she says softly, her warm breath dancing over my lips.

That’s when I realize I’ve bent over, my mouth just centimeters from hers. I grip her hair and tip her head back.

“Well, I’m done with that,” I tell her.

“You are going to be so pissed at yourself for putting this off,” she says in a breathy promise.

I grin at her sass just before my mouth covers hers.

And just as the elevator jerks to a stop and we’re plunged into darkness.

CHAPTER 2

Elise

My mother likes to say that the first time my father kissed her, it felt like the entire world stopped. Which is adorable and romantic. Considering they wound up divorced when I was a kid, it’s not exactly the stuff of happily-ever-afters, but she meant it in a one-kiss-and-your-dad-and-I-knew-we-had-a-future kind of way.

This is not what she meant.

Not a literal stopping of a giant mechanical steel box that could plunge us to our death at any second.

Blake Wilder, the Racketeers notoriously superstitious and very grumpy goalie, has barely put his lips on mine when the elevator jolts to a grinding stop. I’m ripped from sexy to startled so quickly, I fall backwards and slam into the handrail under the mirrored wall.

“Oh!”

Pain radiates throughout my hip as I try not to lose my balance in my high heels. I’m teetering on the edge of disaster when big, strong hands land on my waist and steady me.

His breath is warm in my ear. “You okay? Are you hurt?”

Even though it’s so dark I can’t see him, I can feel him. His enormous body is everywhere, and it’s both comforting and crowding. I feel like I can’t breathe. That isn’t romantic either, because I’m about two heartbeats away from a full-blown panic attack.

I hate elevators.

All small spaces, really, but elevators in particular. Not for any reason. I’ve never been trapped in one before—oh, God, I’m trapped in an elevator—but because they shudder and groan and break down constantly in dozens of movies and books and presumably in real life.

Half the reason I jumped at the chance to move into Luna McNeill’s old apartment over the bakery is because it has one flight of steps and no death box.

But I refuse to let Blake know I’m internally freaking the fuck out.

Show no weakness.

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