I nod, letting my arm fall away.
“Look at me,” he whispers. “Look at me and say it.”
“I’m dead.” I manage to drag my eyes open, but it takes me a few breaths to get words out. “No one has ever done it to me like that.”
He points his tongue, circling it around and around. “Like what?”
A kink for the words, this one.
“So wild and—” I gasp up to the ceiling. “Hard.”
I can feel him staring at me for a second longer before he turns his attention back to my breasts, licking and sucking, wet. The sound of his mouth pulling away, his low groans against my skin, make me shake with longing: how he makes me feel completely insatiable and greedy after coming so hard not two minutes ago is unreal. But I understand his intentions when he rises over me, shifting to straddle my ribs, and pressing my breasts together around his cock.
“This okay?”
I nod, but he shifts his gaze to my face, flicking up a playfully annoyed eyebrow. “I like it,” I tell him, grinning.
He plays with my breasts as he starts to move, leaving me free to run my hands over his thighs, his waist and chest, scraping my nails gently over his nipples, making him hiss out a tight, hungry sound.
“Yeah,” he says when I do it again.
And that single word becomes a whispered call and response, with his growing tighter, mine more encouraging; I have never in my life seen anything more erotic than Alec hungrily chasing pleasure.
My hands smooth over his skin everywhere and finally come over his fingers, wet and slippery, and he leaves me to hold my breasts around him as he reaches up, gripping the headboard.
“Gigi,” he says, and then his throat bobs with a heavy swallow. “I’m coming.”
He cries out sharply and then again, and I watch his face as his pleasure jets from him, warm and wet across my chest and neck. In the panting quiet that follows, I raise my fingers to it, watching him watching me.
“You okay?” he asks, gently dragging his thumb along my lower lip.
I nod. “You’re ruining me. Sex won’t ever be like this again.”
“Was it before?”
“Please. Any man who goes down the way you do has had plenty of good sex.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been quite like that. That wild, like you said,” he adds. “I worried I’d hurt you.”
I smile up at him. “Do I look injured?”
“No.” He scoots back, settling over me, and speaks the next words against my lips. “You’re beautiful.”
And there it is, the entwined bliss and tragedy of this. He makes me feel beautiful, even sweaty and spent on a rumpled hotel bed.
He shifts back, stands, and walks to the bathroom. The water runs, and Alec returns with a warm, wet cloth, bending to clean my fingers, my neck, between my breasts.
“To think,” I say, using my free hand to finger-comb his hair off his forehead, “I came here thinking I was getting information and we did this instead. I can’t even be mad that I lost two hours of editing time.”
Alec pauses as he folds the washcloth inside out and then carefully runs the clean side over my neck again. He lets out a quiet sound of acknowledgment, a rumble in his throat. “I promise I’ll tell you if and when I can.”
I tilt my head, looking up at him. “Actually, you probably couldn’t tell me anything on the record anyway. We’ve sort of destroyed any objectivity.”
Setting the washcloth on the bedside table, Alec lies down facing me on his side, head propped on a hand. “Well, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable talking to anyone but you about this.”
“Alec, what is going on?” My question ends just as a single, sharp knock lands on the door.
He startles, glancing toward the door before his attention bolts to the clock beside the bed. I don’t even bother to look. I’m sure we’re out of time, but I’m made suddenly uneasy by his tone. He seems upset—devastated, really; it’s the first time it occurs to me that this might not be as straightforward as Alec knowing someone who knows something. If he doesn’t answer my next question, Yael Miller will actually have to drag me out of the room by my feet.
“Hey,” I say, touching his chin, redirecting his attention to me, and trying to keep my voice steady, my hands from shaking. “At least tell me I don’t have to worry about your safety.”
“I’m okay,” he says with convincing urgency. “I really am.” His gaze drops to where his finger draws spirals on my collarbone. The knock lands again, twice this time. “But that’s the best I can do before Yael walks in here.”