Borrow My Seat novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Fourteenth Floor

We kissed in the elevator the whole way up.

He had me against the mirrored wall by the fourth floor, one hand flat beside my head and the other at my waist.

By the ninth, my blazer was on the floor of the car.

He picked it up and handed it to me without breaking the kiss.

"You're good at this," I said against his mouth.

"I've thought about it for six days."

"You said you had a rule."

"I've been breaking it in my head since Monday."

The doors opened on fourteen.

His apartment was one big room with a wall of glass.

Behind it lay the black lake and the city lights in a long curve.

He did not turn on a lamp.

I stood in the middle of the floor, and he stood in front of me, and for a moment neither of us moved.

"Ingrid."

"I'm not drunk and I'm not sad," I said. "I want this."

"Since when?"

"Since you stood in the lobby and told me to come to your office."

"You thought I was firing you."

"I thought you were the most unfairly handsome man I'd ever seen, and I thought you were about to fire me."

He laughed, low, and then he stopped laughing.

He took my face in both hands and kissed me again, deep this time, with a hunger he had been holding in all through dinner.

I pulled his shirt out of his waistband and slid my hands up over warm skin and hard muscle.

He sucked in a breath.

"Cold hands."

"Warm me up."

He unbuttoned my blouse slowly, one button at a time, his eyes on mine.

Every nerve in me wanted him to hurry.

When it fell open he looked at me, my pale bra, my ribs rising and falling, and he said nothing for a moment.

"Look at you," he said, hoarse.

"Tobias."

"Say it again."

"Tobias," I said, and he made a sound in his throat and lifted me.

I locked my legs around his waist, and he carried me across the room to the wide bed against the glass.

He laid me down, and he stood over me for one second, taking off his own shirt.

He was broad and lean, with a scar over one rib and a line of dark hair running down his stomach.

I reached for his belt.

"Not yet," he said, and caught my wrists, and pressed them down gently into the mattress on either side of my head.

"Why not?"

"Because I want to take my time with you."

He kissed my throat, my collarbone, the slope of my breast above the lace.

He unhooked my bra with one hand and pulled it away.

His mouth closed over my nipple, hot and wet, and I arched off the bed with a gasp.

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