Chapter 3

I had a small confession to make about penises. In my twenty-three years on earth, I can count on one hand (four fingers, to be exact) the number of times I’ve come face-to-face with one whose owner I was not in a relationship with.

But even with my general lack of experience, it wouldn’t have taken an expert on male genitalia to diagnose that what I felt rubbing against my thigh as soon as I woke up was a god among men; that and memory of all three orgasms I had, with the third intense enough to leave me so frayed and vulnerable that I began to cry from the mind-blowing cocktail of pleasure and fatigue.

After that, in the act of such surprising tenderness, Kane had gathered me up in his arms, spooning me, and not long passed before I drifted off to sleep.

Awake now, I could feel the hard length of his morning wood poke at me, jerking slightly each time it made contact with my body, which happened enough times for me to find it distracting. I squirmed at the feel of Kane pressing flush against me and wondered how I would begin to make my escape as he had an arm wrapped almost possessively around my waist.

Hell, even our legs were hopelessly intertwined.

For the next few seconds, I allowed myself the indulgence of pretending that this was a normal occurrence. I imagined that he was my boyfriend, and he’d huff, cracking open an eye as he flashed me a lazy smile, asking me to stay still before falling back to sleep.

I held onto my imaginings for a long moment, but eventually, the cold blast of air from the AC reminded me that I’d just had an amazing night with a stranger in a hotel room, and whether I liked it or not, it was a one-night stand. I sighed as I began the process of delicately extricating myself from him.

It was any wonder that Kane didn’t wake up, though I imagined the generous amounts of alcohol he’d consumed the night prior played a part in this. At one point, he let out a grunt causing me to freeze, but after one motionless minute, I realized it was a false alarm and returned to what I was doing until, finally, I sat up free.

Goosebumps rose up all over my skin as soon as I was exposed to the cold and my nipples, still sensitive from Kane’s ministrations, hardened to points as I got up, naked as the day I came into the world, and proceeded to tiptoe around the room with the single-minded mission of involves locating all my clothes and making my escape without alerting Kane’s attention.

I’d placed my purse on the coffee table, and now I fished my phone out of it to find over ten missed calls and thirty text messages from Paula, each more frantic than the last. I typed out a quick apology, letting her know I was on my way as I sent her my location. I got no reply, which meant she was probably already sleeping.

A quick glance at the time let me know it was 06:47, less than fifteen minutes before seven hit. I needed to make my escape soon as I suspected Kane was an early riser.

I didn’t have to look long for my underwear and dress, both of which sat pooled at the foot of the king-sized bed, and had just begun to search for my heels when, in my rush, I didn’t notice the lone black oxford turned on its side until I was stumbling over it and crashing to my knees.

Even though the carpet muffled the sound of my fall, Kane shot upright from the bed, and I caught a quick glimpse of the panicked expression he wore before getting distracted by how the bed sheets pooled around his waist, revealing a set of six washboard abs which looked like they could’ve been etched in stone, defined pectorals, and a happy trail.

In the morning light, with his tousled hair and olive skin, Kane looked like he’d stepped right out of the pages of a book on Greek mythology. Though it appeared as though for all the time I spent staring at him yesterday I hadn’t noticed the scar that ran down the left side of his face, beginning at the jaw and disappearing into his hairline.

Being a shade lighter than his general skin tone, it was a thin line, and I resisted a sudden urge to crawl over the bed to him and run my fingers over its length, though even if I hadn’t, the cultivated deadpan he wore would’ve dissuaded me.

Either way, I’d been trying to escape without alerting him, and now with my plans foiled, I got up off my knees, set my chin, and resumed the task of locating both pairs of my heels under his heavy gaze, praying to every deity in existence that I wouldn’t die of embarrassment in front of this man.

He’d pulled out all of the pins Paula set in place to make my updo virtually indestructible, and now my hair fell down my back in a riot of untamable brown locks, and in the oppressive silence, I shimmied into my dress.

Zipping up proved impossible, as some strands of my hair caught in the zip and wouldn’t budge so I was close to tears by the time I heard the soft rustling of sheets as Kane got up out of bed. From the corner of my eye, I watched him open a drawer and pick out a folded pair of white boxer briefs, which he put on before padding over to me.

“Let go,” he ordered, and when this failed to elicit a response from me, he repeated himself, more softly this time.

I obliged after a moment’s hesitation.

It should’ve surprised me, the way his voice rumbled out of him so clearly as if he hadn’t just woken up, but somehow it didn’t. He was a marvel, and without much thought, I’d decided to take everything about him at face value.

For a while, I thought he wouldn’t be able to get my hair out of the catch, but with a final big tug he did, zipping my dress up in one smooth movement, much to my relief. I expected him to move away after this, instead, Kane pulled my hair up over a shoulder to reveal the span of pale skin where my shoulders met my neck and let his fingers trace feather-light over it before dipping his head down and taking a nibble.

I gasped, leaning back, and felt the hard length of his cock pressed up against my arm. We remained like this for close to a minute, then, without warning, he pulled away, stepping back and depriving my body of his support. I stumbled, regained my balance, and felt my face go hot at the thought of how easily he’d once again slipped past my defenses.

“Well, this is awkward,” I said, laughing uneasily to ease the tension. I hadn’t expected him to reply, and so I was shocked when I got one.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Kane said, and I turned to see if he was teasing but saw that he’d spoken without cracking the shadow of a smile.

“Right,” I murmured, feeling the sting of humiliation begin to settle in as I put on my shoes. “I’ll head out now.”

It didn’t matter if he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen or even whether his dick could cure cancer and end world poverty – I’d be damned if I let another man have me take my self-respect for granted.

The jig was up, and I had real-world problems to deal with, like preparations for my first day of the job I’d uprooted my life for, which I was to begin tomorrow.

I was just about to get up when I felt a weight settle over my shoulders, and I looked up to see that caught up in my mental tirade, I hadn’t noticed Kane dress up. Now he loomed over me, and I looked to find that he’d draped an overcoat around my shoulders.

“It’s cold,” Kane explained with a self-conscious shrug.

For the first time that morning, I could read him, tell that this was his way of apologizing for his mercurial behavior, but even though I understood this it did nothing to ease the looming headache that’d begun to creep up on me from having to be on my toes around him all the time.

But against my better judgment, I could feel my resolve begin to dissolve, and I pushed my arms into the sleeves of the coat.

“Thank you.”

We were silent as I picked up my phone to find a paragraph from Paula, admonishing me for not informing her of where I was instead of letting her go on thinking I was dead in a ditch somewhere. I typed out an even longer paragraph in return, declaring I was unworthy of our friendship and would absolve myself of this sin by returning with steaming hot buns.

Her replying GIF of a man twerking and doing the splits sent me into a fit of giggles, and I clapped my hand over my mouth when I realized I was under scrutiny.

I turned to find Kane staring at me, a puzzled but amused expression on his own face, and his eyes danced.

“Is everything alright, Aurora?” he asked, and I nodded, a bit taken aback at the feel of my name slipping past his mouth.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, slipping my phone back into my purse. “It’s just my best friend.”

He said nothing, following a few steps behind me as I walked out of the room and into the hallway, waiting to hear the telltale click of the door shut. I figured it would be rude just to walk away, though on second thought, would it? Was there a one-night-stand guidebook filled to the brim with diagrams and explanations on how to deal with the morning after?

Quickly, I made a mental note to look up and purchase a book like that if it existed and offered up my palm for a handshake as soon as Kane turned to me.

“Thank you,” I blurted out awkwardly, and got rewarded with a front-row seat to witness a funny look spread over his face.

His eyes made a trajectory from my face to my outstretched hand, and then he took it, saying, “You’ve never done this before, have you?”

For a moment, I considered lying, saying, of course, I had, that I was a one-night-stand connoisseur, but then it dawned on me that the both of us would know I was lying, and so I let his question slip by without an answer.

He arched a brow at me as he had hours earlier when I told him my name, and I let my expression settle into a poker face. Two could play his game.

After a moment, Kane nodded to himself, closing the distance between us as he placed his other hand over the back of my palm. In my heels, I was almost as tall as he was, but not quite, and so he leaned forward and whispered into my ear.

“Have breakfast with me,” he said lowly into my ear, and pulling back, he smiled unguardedly at me, revealing uneven dimples. “Please?”

Then and there, I swear, I died.