Page 78 of Cut Off
Walking out of the room with my coat, I say, “Jonah.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know what to say to you.”
He glances over. “You don’t have to say anything.”
“That’s not how I work.”
“I know.”
I close my eyes. “You filled a ballroom.”
“I made calls.”
“You filled a ballroom.”
“Zoe.”
“You filled a ballroom with people who want to work with me.”
“You deserve it. All of it. Every bit.” The look he gives me is so unguarded, I feel itin my ribs.
Before we hit the lobby, he changes course.
My eyebrows dive. “Where are we going?”
He pulls me down a side hallway, past a fire extinguisher and a framed photo of someone’s prizewinning fish, and through a door I hadn’t noticed.
It clicks shut behind us.
It’s a lounge: some little side bar room the Kingston Hotel probably uses for cocktail receptions before big dinners, with low brass-pendant lights turned down to almost-nothing, two leather couches pointed at each other across a coffee table, a bar at the back that’s closed, locked, and dark. A single sconce by the door glows amber. The rest of the room is shadows and the green light bleeding under the bar.
It smells like furniture polish and whiskey.
I open my mouth to say something cute. Something like, A speakeasy, Holt? Or maybe, We could’ve just done it in the SUV.
I don’t get to.
His mouth is on mine before the door’s latch has finished settling.
It’s not a slow or patient kiss. This one is starving—both hands on my face, the wall at my back, his whole body pressed against me hard enough that the silk has nowhere to go. I make a sound into his mouth that I’m not proud of. His tongue. My hands in his hair. The coat hits the floor somewhere. My clutch hits the floor somewhere. I don’t care about either of those items, and I’m not sure I ever will again.
“Jonah—”
“I know.”
“This is so—”
“I know.” His mouth is on my throat, on the soft place under my jaw, on the line of my collarbone that this dress was specifically engineered to expose. “Tell me to stop.”
“Absolutely not.”
He laughs—hot and ragged against my skin—and his hands find the zipper at the small of my back and pull, slow, all the way down, and the dress just—gives. Slides forward off my shoulders, down my arms, and pools at my feet in a midnight-blue puddle.
I should care. I don’t.
“Holt—”
