Page 8 of After Hours

Not that he’d had any doubt. But she was proving him right just the same.

“Romily,” she said. “Romily Sargent.”

It sounded like a song to him.He’d never heard that name before, but he thoughtit suited her.

He understood then that he was going to wreck himself on this woman. That it had always been leading straight here. That this had been completely inevitable since the first moment he’d laid eyes on her months ago.

There was a kind of liberation in accepting it.

“Zachary,” he told her.

“Zachary London?”

She said it like she was putting puzzle pieces together. “You can read.”

He watched her swallow, hard. “I want to apologize—” she began.

“Oh, baby girl, it’s way too late for that,” he said. Maybe he almost crooned it, there in the thick dark.

He moved closer and, finally, he indulged himself. He pushed her hoodie back from her face. She had to tip her head way back to keep looking him in the eye and he liked that. He could see her pulse go wild in her neck and he liked that more.

Zachary reached over and slid his hand along the line of her jaw, then curled his fingers into her hair. It was silky and warm. She smelled like jasmine.

Night-blooming. His favorite.

He thought his dick might explode.

So he hauled her to him and got his mouth on hers.

And he didn’t play.

He kissed her filthy. He kissed her deep. He ate at her mouth and he didn’t take it easy on her. He kept kissing her until she was making hot, sweet noises in her throat and when he pulled back, she looked a lot like she’d come again.

Though he knew better. Coming close wasn’t coming.

He was something of an expert on that sliver of space and sensation in between.

Her pupils were dilated. Her mouth was sloppy from his. She was gripping his t-shirt like she wanted to climb him.

“Something you should know about me, Romily, is that I don’t let a woman come without my permission.” He nipped at her lip, just hard enough to make her flush a darker pink. “And certainly not twice.”

“What… how can I make it up to you?” she asked, and her voice was husky. A little bit wild.

Zachary knew surrender when he tasted it.

So he held out his hand and waited for her to take it. “Let’s call it a do-over,” he said. “We can see if you know how to behave.”

Romily didn’t pretend she didn’t know what he meant. She swallowed again, hard, at what might have been the same images of the two of them fucking in her head that he had in his. If her expression was anything to go by. “And if I don’t?”

But Zachary didn’t answer that. He just smiled. And kept his hand outstretched.

Romily looked past him, like she was judging the distance to her boat. Or her likelihood of getting tossed over his shoulder, which was currently pretty fucking high.

She didn’t run. What she did was lick her lips, which he thought might kill him.

Then she reached out and slipped her hand in his.

“Okay,” she said, though her voice still gave her away. “Let’s do this.”

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