Page 97 of The Sweetest Return

For a few seconds, the only sound was the elevator rising and both of us breathing like we had climbed more than a few floors.

Her cream top fit close across her breasts. The soft fabric showed the hard points of her nipples, and the sight pulled every bit of patience I owned into a fist. My gaze lifted to hers. She had seen me look. Her lips parted, and then she caught the bottom one between her teeth.

Every muscle in my body tightened.

“Don’t.”

She released it slowly.

“Don’t what?”

I pushed away from the wall and crossed the elevator before either one of us could pretend I was not going to.

“Bite your lip.”

Her eyes stayed on mine.

I stopped close enough for her perfume to get into my chest.

“That’s my job.”

Heat moved through her face first, then her body. I saw it in the way her shoulders softened against the wall, the way her chin lifted, the way she looked at my mouth like she had already decided to be reckless and was waiting for me to catch up.

“Then do it.”

My hand caught the back of her neck, and my mouth came down on hers hard enough to end the conversation. She grabbed my hoodie and pulled me in, and whatever space I had been trying to keep between us disappeared under her hands.

She tasted like strawberry, gloss, and all the trouble I had been trying to avoid.

I bit her bottom lip lightly, then sucked it into my mouth.

Her body pressed into mine with a little sound that went straight through me. I slid my hand down to her ass, full and soft in my palm, and squeezed before I remembered we were in a damn elevator.

By then, Imani’s hands were around my neck, her tongue touching mine, and my sense had left. The elevator chimed somewhere behind us. The doors opened, then closed again. Neither one of us moved, and I barely heard them.

Imani’s hand slid between us, slow and sure, and when her palm closed around my dick through my jeans, my forehead dropped to hers on a rough breath.

“Mani.”

She stroked me once.

My whole body went tight.

That one touch had years in it. Memory. Want. Nerve. Her hand knowing enough to make me remember what she used to do and different enough to make me wonder what she had learned since me.

I kissed her again because thinking was about to become a problem.

Her back met the wall. My hand slid under her coat, fingers digging into the curve of her ass while she rubbed me through denim with the kind of slow pressure that made it hard to remember I was supposed to be the one with control.

The elevator moved again.

Another chime cut through the sound of our breathing.

This time, the doors opened to a hallway I did not recognize.

Imani froze against me.

I lifted my head.