Page 12 of Chasing Kings

Heat pulsed in her belly, spreading through her body and bringing a warm flush to her skin. She watched the screen through heavily lidded eyes as Ethan thrust into his costar with a frenzied vigor. The sound was up enough she could hear the other woman’s pleading, gasping moans and screams, but they were quiet enough to feel like a dream, as if Sam were eavesdropping on something happening in another room.

She attempted to match Ethan’s furious rhythm with her hand, and she started feeling lightheaded, her fingers going numb with the effort until she could almost imagine it was someone else’s hand touching her.

His hand.

The woman on screen had her eyes shut tight, and Ethan’s neck was wired with muscle as he strained harder and harder, like he might literally fuck the woman senseless.

Sam was on the verge—she felt herself building towards something light and airy, a destination so close she could taste the sweet release of it.

A knock at the door erased any hope she had of tumbling over the edge. She sucked in a breath and stilled her hand with guilty awareness. She couldn’t have been more freaked out if she had been sixteen and her mother had walked in on her.

Was the front desk coming to discuss her rental?

It didn’t seem plausible, but right then she might have believed it was someone hell-bent on scolding her for her wayward behavior. Hadn’t she challenged God right before turning on the TV?

She should know better than to make such statements.

Fate always found a way to come around and kick her in the butt when she least expected it.

Chapter Five

If he was going to be in Vegas, sitting around and waiting for Kelly to show up, Ethan couldn’t see any reason he shouldn’t try to have a little fun in the meantime. He was comfortable enough to admit he was in a bad position. But he’d been in bad places before, and he still figured he’d come out on top as soon as Kelly showed up with his money.

So why not kill time in a way he found most comforting?

Some people ate junk food to alleviate stress. He ate pussy.

Ethan did a palm check of his breath before he rapped on the door again.

There was a chance she’d gone out and his whole mission was for naught, but he had a suspicion the good girl Samantha Hart wasn’t in the mood to go traipsing up and down the Strip on a Tuesday night.

He had it in mind to change that, but first she needed to answer the door.

“Wh-who is it?” came a meek voice from inside. Where was the blustery, big-attitude girl he’d met in his suite?

Ethan stared into the peephole and waggled a brow. “Room service.”

The door swung open, and Sam stood in front of him wearing nothing but a bathrobe, her hair rumpled and a pink glow in her cheeks.

In his professional opinion, she looked like she’d been having sex. He peered over her shoulder into the dimly lit room and tried to see if she had company. There was a blue-hued glow, suggesting the television was on, but otherwise the room was quiet.

“Hi,” he said once he was satisfied she didn’t have another man hidden away. “Did I come at a bad time?”

Sam touched her hair self-consciously, then tugged her robe tighter around her, blocking out the view of her cleavage it had formerly granted. Shame.

“Ethan. W-what are you doing here?”

The wording might have been off-putting in another situation, but the way she looked at him and the faint tremor of her voice made it seem like she was more nervous than angry. He had a good sense of women and had learned to read a lot of signals and cues in his time. On the job it helped him learn what women liked and how to please them. In life it helped save his hide more than once when he’d been able to pick up pissed-off signals from the women he’d dated.

As it turned out, most of his girlfriends weren’t as okay with his job as they pretended to be initially. He had an internal dictionary that could decipher twenty-five different meanings of the word fine.

None of them actually meant fine.

“Invite me in,” he suggested.

“Why would I invite you in?” She played with the sash on her robe, and Ethan fought the urge to lean across the threshold and undo it for her.

“You got to see my room, I think it’s only fair I get to see yours.” He took her momentary hesitation as invitation and waltzed past her, striding into the room before she had time to stop him.

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