“Whoa.” All his scattered thoughts snapped back to the moment, and he searched her face, trying to read her expression.
“Let me help you keep your head in the right place.”
She slid her hands beneath his coat and around his waist. Her body leaned into his, a sexy slide in all the right places. She rocked her hips against his, and a starburst of lust exploded through him. Then she pushed to her toes and offered her mouth, but Jack still had to drop his head to kiss her. Instead, he let his gaze soak in the raw desire in her eyes. Basked in the feeling of being wanted. Something he only realized now he hadn’t truly felt in a long damn time.
He fought the need clawing through his body. He wanted to savor this. This thing he had a gut feeling would change him in some fundamental way.
Jack cupped her face, stroked his thumbs along her cheekbones, eased both hands into her hair, and cradled her head. She stretched up his body a little more. Jack pressed his forehead to hers and ran a thumb across her lower lip.
“Jack.” Her hands fisted in the back of his shirt beneath his jacket. “Kiss me.”
This one moment, really nothing more than a few seconds before a kiss, a moment Jack had experienced countless times in his life, suddenly seemed powerful. Steeped in the intangible—passion and possibility, knowns and unknowns, a blend of fantasy and reality.
“No rush,” he told her, and meant it. He wanted to imprint everything about her in his memory. “I’m patient, remember?”
She made a sound in her throat. A blend of frustration and desire. She turned her head and caught his thumb between her lips. But she didn’t just kiss it. She slid it deep into her mouth. Stroked it with her tongue. Sucked with enough pressure to buckle his knees.
A growl broke in his chest. He used both hands to pull her mouth to his. Open and ready, Miranda rocked his world with a wet, warm, wild kiss that sent him into a sexual haze. One that permeated every fucking cell until he couldn’t breathe.
When she broke away, Jack was dizzy. “I want passion. Not patience.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive. I’ll show you.”
That fierce look flashed over her face again. She stepped back, took his hand, and started toward the hotel with a much quicker step. This time, Jack matched her pace with an urgent need to peel back all her layers.
They climbed the front steps, and he opened the door to the lobby for her, then followed her in. At the elevator, he pushed the button and glanced up at the numbers with a beehive buzzing in his gut. From unease, excitement, maybe even a sense of adventure. And Jack wasn’t exactly the adventurous type. This was the most impulsive thing he’d done in years.
She leaned into him, her hands under his jacket, her expression sultry and amused. “Are you nervous, Jack Jonathan Taylor?”
He huffed a laugh and watched the floors light up in turn. “Like you said, I don’t do this much.”
But now that they were on this trajectory, away from the hustle of the bar, he couldn’t help but wonder how often she did this. He assumed relatively often considering how comfortable she seemed with the arrangement. And he wasn’t sure if that bothered him or not.
“You’re overthinking it again,” she told him, tightening her arms around him. “I can see your mind churning. The world won’t fall apart tomorrow just because we take a night off.”
She cuddled close and looked up at him. Her eyes shone warm in the fluorescent lighting. And, damn, had she gotten even more beautiful in the last twenty minutes? She was a refreshing mix of girl-next-door sweet and nightclub edgy.
“What are you escaping?” he asked.
“Just work.”
“How often are you at the bar?”
“Occasionally, just when they need an extra body. But I’ve got several jobs. I’m not one to sit still long.”
“What kind of jobs?”
“I pick up all sorts of odds and ends. Your work is far more interesting. Commercial, you said? What’s the biggest building you’ve designed?”
The question surprised him, and he had to think a minute, paging through his projects in his mind. “Probably the retail and commercial building I’m working on now. It’s in Melbourne.”
“Office space?”
“Yeah, with shops on the basement and first floor.”
“Do you have pictures?”
The question was so novel, he searched her expression for sarcasm. “You want to see it?”