Page 90 of The Playboy

She didn’t immediately pull her hand away. She kept it on my chest, spreading her fingers, taking in my face and the way I was staring at her. “Yes, I’m ready.”

My grip moved to her lower back as we walked through the door and toward the SUV.

“A driver tonight?” she asked as I opened the back door for her.

“It’s needed.” I shut the door and went over to the other side, climbing in beside her, where I placed my arm around her shoulders.

I couldn’t take my hands off her. I wasn’t even attempting to hold back. Whatever my fingers wanted, I let them touch. Whenever my lips ached for hers, I kissed her.

She gave me no indication that she wanted me to stop.

And until she told me to, I had no plans to back off.

She needed to feel how badly I wanted her. She needed to experience the emotion pulsing in my body for her.

She needed to see that, if we were eventually going to be together, this was how our future was going to look, and this evening would give her a solid taste of that.

We weren’t even a few minutes into the drive when we began to approach the construction of the Spade Hotel. I hadn’t realized how close she lived to it. “You know, I haven’t gotten a chance to show the hotel to you.”

“Is that what we’re doing tonight?”

“No.” I huffed. “But you’re going to see it very soon.”

Her fingers touched the glass. “I would love that. I know it’s going to be so beautiful.”

“I helped design it.”

Her head whipped in my direction. “Are you normally part of that process?”

“No, but when I came here and looked at several pieces of land and chose that one specifically, I saw the hotel in my head. I told my uncle I wanted to be on the design team. I met with our in-house architect, and we worked on it together.”

She glanced back out the window, following the property until it was past our line of sight. “It reminds me of the ocean.”

I smiled. “That’s what I intended.”

The wavy shape of the high-rise, the texture across the exterior, the way the structures were connected by wings, representing strips of beach. So much symbolism had gone into this one.

“So, as far as your role,” she said, “do you stick around until the hotel’s fully operational?”

“I’ll leave a few weeks after the grand opening. We’ll have a management team in place who will oversee everything. By then, I’m just ensuring there’s a smooth transition between the team and employees, that there aren’t any issues with the building or grounds, and that the logistics of getting every department up to speed, where they’re working efficiently, are all handled correctly.” I sighed. “So much goes into operating a hotel.”

“I know.”

That comment made me pause. “You do?”

She looked from me to the window and back. “I just mean, that hotel’s a beast. Of course it’ll take some time and lots of eyes and hands to get things running the way you want it to.” She hesitated for a second. “I get how clients and guests can be.”

“Are you in customer service?”

She nodded. “You could say that.”

“So, yes, you do understand how that’s a giant understatement.” I laughed. “And the sole reason why we only book to about sixty or seventy percent capacity for the first month. There are too many kinks to work out. I don’t want the guests to experience those hiccups, so working with a smaller occupancy gives us room to fuck up.” I leaned into her neck, breathing her in. “You’ll be learning all these things very soon—some of which, it sounds like, you already know.”

It hit me that I couldn’t recall what she did for work. Had I asked? Was it a detail I’d forgotten or something we hadn’t discussed at all?

“What kind of customer service work do you do?”

“Macon … there you go again, teasing me about the job at Spade Hotels. The way you word it, it sounds like I already have it.”

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