The scents of roses and the ocean breeze filled the air in the penthouse suite, and Arielle breathed them in as they walked through the door.
Outside the huge windows stretching from floor to ceiling, the lights of San Francisco sparkled for a few blocks until the blackness of the bay chopped the edge off the shoreline, and the dark extended all the way to the sky.
“I can call my friends and ask if anyone has a place here in town where I can crash for the night,” Mitchell said, walking over. “Or I can post in a mass group chat we have.”
Arielle shrugged and shook her head. “You don’t have to bother. I’m a hardy girl. I can camp somewhere,” Arielle said, plunking her purse on the couch, where it flopped over.
“That’s patently ridiculous. You are not sleeping rough tonight,” Mitchell said. “I’ll kip on the couch. You can lock the bedroom door.”
Inside her purse, plastic ruffled.
The plastic bag was slithering out of the top of her purse.
Arielle grabbed at it, but the purse itself was too near the edge of the couch cushion. The shifting bag toppled her whole purse off the side of the couch.
Her purse spilled as it rushed down, a fountain of pens and receipts and tiny bottles of Advil spraying in a long arc as it descended.
Five three-pack strips of condoms fluttered through the air and drifted to the carpeting.
They landed directly in front of Mitchell’s polished brown dress shoes.
Oh, shit.
Mitchell looked down at the strips of love gloves lying on the floor by his toes.
Arielle couldn’t stop staring at the neon rectangles on the textured gray carpeting, and her mouth wasn’t working. Even lies wouldn’t surface in her brain.
He bent and retrieved one of the strips beside his toes.
He turned it over, looking at the details. From where she was standing, Arielle could see that it was XXL, lubed, and ribbed.
“They’re not for you,” Arielle blurted out.
Mitchell reached out and wrapped his arm around Arielle’s waist, pulling her against him with a swift jerk. His low voice was almost a growl. “If they aren’t for me, darling, who are they for?”
“Well, I—” Arielle couldn’t think of a lie fast enough. That was the reason she didn’t lie: because she was awful at it. “They’re just—”
“I went to the front desk to get us separate rooms,” Mitchell said, his green eyes narrowed at her. “And you bought fifteen condoms, just in case I was successful at getting you a separate room?”
Her hands were resting on his chest, his pectoral muscles heavy and rounded beneath his clothes. “No, dummy. I was going to slip them into your suitcase while we were up here,” she told him, “or just hand them to you, maybe. Probably not. That’s embarrassing. But you shouldn’t be traveling without them. It’s not safe for a guy like you to be running around locked and loaded without a silencer while you’re traveling on business. They’re just so you won’t accidentally slip and maybe get something that you didn’t want, like gonorrhea or child support. It’s just common sense that you should have some of these with you when you travel.”
“So, you did buy them for me,” he said, his gaze searching her eyes.
“Well, yeah. I had a minute while you were dealing the with the reservations desk, so I popped into the store. If you’d have forgotten toothpaste, I would’ve picked up toothpaste for you for the exact same reason, because hygiene is important.”
“They aren’t for someone else,” he said, glaring at her.
“Well, yeah. I mean, who else would I buy them for? I don’t even know anybody who lives in San Francisco. Otherwise, I would call them and crash with them tonight.”
Mitchell squinted at her. “You work at a dating app. Surely you know how people find each other and get together for a night.”
Arielle felt the skin around her eyes stretch, because no, it wasn’t something she’d thought about. “But the app is for golf.”
Mitchell’s eyes narrowed further, and he glared at her. “Maybe someone else flew in with you. Maybe you’re together with someone back in Phoenix and he’s here with you, and I was too stupid to figure it out.”
She shook her head, flipping her hair around because he was being silly and holding her quite tightly. “I’m not dating anyone. I broke up with my ex three years ago. He cheated on me, and I haven’t wanted to date anyone since. The betrayal was hard to get over.”
Mitchell slid his other arm around her, and he was still holding onto the pack of condoms behind her back. His tone was gentler. “So these are for me.”
Arielle bobbled her head back and forth, equivocating. “Yeah, a wild man like you shouldn’t be loose without protection.”
He bent, his mouth nearing hers. “But are they for you, too, pet?”
Tiny vibrations shivered Arielle’s skin, and she felt like she should stretch. “Oh, I wouldn’t suppose anything like that. We’re together for business reasons, and that’s all. Last night was just a slip that won’t happen again, so we wouldn’t need those things.”
Mitchell’s lips hovered over hers, his breath brushing her mouth with little puffs. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely.” Her feet kept rocking toward her toes and lifting her toward him.
His eyes flicked up and met hers. “I think you’re lying.”
“Dude, I am a terrible liar. I’m awful at it.” Her heart kicked in her chest. “You saw me flopping all over the place trying to come up with a reason for why those things were in my purse.”
“Tell me the truth,” Mitchell said, his lips a fraction of an inch above hers and his arms tightening around her. “Did you get them for us?”
Every time Arielle bobbed up on her toes, Mitchell pulled away a little bit, keeping his lips away from hers. “I really didn’t think—”
“Tell me the truth.”
His body was so warm, the heat of him filtering through his clothes onto her bare arms. Her head swam with the clean masculine scent of his cologne that filled her nose when she breathed, and she slipped her arms from his chest over his shoulders and locked her hands behind his neck.
“Tell me,” Mitchell whispered, his lips so close to hers.
Arielle’s voice was a gasp. “I bought them for us.”
The ramifications of that admission swamped her and threw her into the sea, where she floundered. “Because, you know, in case we need to practice that.”
“Practice?” Mitchell repeated, raising one dark blond eyebrow.
“Oh, yeah. Because we’ve done pretty much everything else, so this would be the only thing left we need to practice. And it’s just friction and nerve endings, not emotions that would violate the contract. It can be part of our business arrangement, right?”
“Right,” he murmured, his eyes watching her lips.
“Because I wouldn’t want to slip up and say the wrong thing. What if I completely messed something up that everyone knows but I don’t?”
Mitchell paused, and his head tilted just a little bit as his eyebrows lowered. “Have you done this before?”
“Of course,” Arielle said. “Lots of times.”
It was an exaggeration but not a lie. She had been having sexual relations with her ex, Nick, before he’d broken her heart. They’d been together for years, after all.
And yet, looking back, there had been weeks between sometimes, probably because he’d been excited about new relationships with other people.
She admitted, “It’s just been a while.”
That was the truth. Over three years.
Arielle bobbed her head, the nerves coming out through fidgets. “So, I might need to, you know, practice. But I think we should practice.”
“But do you want to?” he asked.
“Yes,” Arielle said, muttering a little because, jeez. “Yes, I want to practice with you.”
His mouth captured hers, kissing her hard.
Arielle leaned into the kiss, opening her lips against his. His tongue touched hers, then stroked, and his hands firmed around her body, pressing her against him.
Mitchell was so tall that a cramp was forming in Arielle’s neck because her head was thrown back to kiss him.
He bent. As he descended, Arielle’s head moved with him, chasing to hold onto his mouth. One of his arms left her back and slid under her knees, and he lifted her.
Arielle was not a waifish girl. She’d always liked the word zaftig.
Mitchell lifted her like she was nothing but a bit of fluff.
She didn’t bother protesting. She was so secure in his arms, and he hadn’t bothered to break off the kiss or grunt when he picked her up.
It wasn’t just that Mitchell was strong enough to pick her up, it was the fact that he had and was carrying her to the bedroom as if she deserved it, and that made her yearn for more.
Nick had never—
No, she wasn’t thinking about Nick Chauvin. She wasn’t.
Mitchell Saltonstall dropped her on the bed and was on top of her with one knee between her legs. “Why did you buy those condoms? Did you just want to see what it would be like with me?”
“More like I knew it was going to happen, and I wasn’t going to do it without protection,” Arielle admitted.
“Smart girl.”