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  He wasn’t, really. Attractive, but not pretty. Still, I couldn’t help laughing. He wasn’t what I’d been expecting, but...wasn’t that the point of meeting a stranger?

  He didn’t waste any time.

  “You’re very pretty,” Sam, beer finished in record time, leaned to murmur in the vicinity of my ear.

  His lips tickled the sensitive skin of my neck just below my lobe. Already primed by the fantasy, my body reacted at once. My nipples pushed against the lace of my bra and outlined themselves in the silk of my shirt. My clit pulsed, and I squeezed my thighs together.

  I leaned close to him, too. He smelled a little like beer, a little like soap. A whole lot like yum. I wanted to lick him. “Thanks.”

  We each sat back on our stools. Smiling. I crossed my legs and watched his gaze follow the hem of my skirt as it rose to give him a glimpse of bare thigh. His eyes widened in satisfactory appreciation. His tongue slid along his bottom lip, leaving it glistening.

  He looked into my eyes. “I don’t suppose you’re the type of girl to go upstairs with a guy she just met, even if he is cute as all hell?”

  “Actually,” I told him, matching his low, breathy tone, “I think I might be.”

  Sam paid the bill and left a tip big enough to make the bartender grin. Then he took my hand to help me down from the stool, holding me steady when my foot came down wrong as though he’d known all along I’d stumble. Even in four-inch heels I had to tilt my head way back to look into his face.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “What can I say?” Sam replied. “I’m a gentleman.”

  He stood head and shoulders over most of the crowd, which had grown considerably since I came in, and he led me without faltering through the maze of tables and bodies toward the door to the lobby.

  Nobody could have known we’d just met. That we were strangers. I was going upstairs to a stranger’s room. Nobody could know that, but I did, and my heart thumped hard and harder the closer we got to the elevator.

  The walls inside reflected us both, our faces blurred by the dim lighting and the abstract pattern of gold in the mirrors. His T-shirt had rucked up out of his jeans. I couldn’t look away from his belt buckle or the hint of bare skin just above it. When I looked up again to meet his gaze in the mirror, Sam’s smile had shifted.

  I saw him put his hand on the back of my neck before I felt his touch. The mirror had created that distance, that second of delay. Like watching a movie or TV, but somehow that small disconnect made this seem all the more real.

  At the door to his room Sam took his hand away from the back of my neck to dig in his pockets for the key card. He tried both front pockets and came up with nothing but a few coins. He fumbled. His nervousness charmed me even as it prompted my own. He found the key inside his wallet, tucked into a back pocket.

  I liked his laugh when he pulled it out and fit it into the door. The lock blinked red, and he muttered a curse I deciphered by tone, not by word. He tried again, his hands so big they engulfed the slim plastic card. I couldn’t stop staring at his hands.

  “Fuck,” Sam said clearly, and handed me the card. “I can’t get the door open.”

  I reached for the card. Our hands touched. Then somehow his hand had encircled my wrist and my back pressed against the still-closed door. Sam pressed against my front. His mouth found mine already open for him. His hand discovered my leg already cocked to fit his grasp just behind my knee. He fit between my legs like the key ought to have fit in the lock, without hesitation, opening my door. His fingers slid higher beneath my skirt above the edge of my stockings and found bare skin.

  He hissed into my open mouth and his fingers tightened on my wrist. He lifted an arm above my head, pinning me with his hands and body and mouth to the door. There in the hall he kissed me for the first time, and there was nothing slow or easy about it. Nothing soft or hesitant.

  Sam stroked my tongue with his. His belt buckle pushed my belly through my silky shirt. Lower, his cock nudged me, too, through the barrier of his jeans. He let go of my wrist.

  “Unlock the door.” He stopped the kiss just long enough to speak into my mouth.

  His hand hit the door handle as I rammed the key, without looking, into the lock. Behind me the door flew open with the pressure of our bodies, but neither of us stumbled. Sam was holding me too tightly for that.

  He moved me, mouth still glued to mine, two steps into the room and kicked the door shut behind us. The slam of it echoed between my legs. Sam, breathing hard, pulled away to look into my eyes.

  “This is what you want?”

  I found the voice to rasp, “Yes.”

  He nodded, just once, and took my mouth again. His kiss might have bruised me, had he not pulled back just enough to keep it from hurting. Without the door holding me up, I had to rely on Sam’s arms around me. One slid behind my shoulders. The other left the secret treasure of my thigh to go around my lower back. He pulled me along with him even as he step-by-stepped me back toward the bed. It hit the back of my legs. He broke the kiss again.

  “Hold on a second.” Sam reached around me to tug down the comforter, tossing it unceremoniously into a pile on the floor.

  He grinned at me. His cheeks looked a bit flushed, his eyes a trifle sleepy-lidded. He reached for me again, and I stepped again into his arms. Mine went around his neck. His went around my waist.

  We made it to the bed in a tangle of limbs and laughter. Sam was as long lying down as he was standing, but on the bed I could move up to kiss him without having to tilt my head so far. I found his throat, the jut of his Adam’s apple. His skin tasted of salt. I rubbed the first poking bristles of his beard with my lips.

  My skirt had ridden up, helped by Sam’s hands. He pushed the material higher. One large hand cupped my thigh. The edge of his fingers brushed my panties, and my breath caught.

  I looked up to see him looking down with an expression of mingled amusement and something else I couldn’t quite decipher. I took my mouth from his skin and sat up a little, pushing back but not pulling away.

  “What?”

  His hand on my thigh shifted higher while his other went to prop his head. Stretched out that way, his clothes askew and our limbs tangled, he looked enviably comfortable in his own skin. Men often did. Sometimes they had to put it on, that confidence, the way they put on cologne. Sam’s seemed more innate, an awareness of himself as much a part of him as the color of his eyes or those long, long legs.

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “It can’t be nothing,” I said. “You’re looking at me funny.”

  “Am I?” He sat up a little but didn’t take his hand from my thigh. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. “Was it like this?”

  I burst into laugher. “Not quite.”

  “Ah, good.” Sam nodded and leaned to catch my mouth in another kiss, speaking without taking his lips from mine. “That would have been embarrassing.”

  Then he laid me back onto that big, soft bed and proceeded to kiss me breathless. His hand stayed on my thigh, sometimes slipping down closer to my knee and moving up again, but though his fingers occasionally brushed the lace of my panties, he never actually touched me there. He didn’t lie on top of me, either, squooshing, but kept his weight to the side. Nothing was going quite as I’d expected...but wasn’t that what I wanted? To be surprised?

  He kissed me fast. He kissed me slow. He nibbled and nuzzled and licked, and all the while his hand stayed in its maddening position so close to where I wanted it, but never quite making it there.

  “Sam,” I whispered finally, hoarsely, unable to take it any longer.

  He paused in kissing me to look into my eyes. “Yes, Grace?”

  “You’re killing me.”

  He smiled. “Am I?”

  I nodded and slid a hand between us to tug on his belt buckle. “You are.”

  His hand inched higher. “Can I make it up to you?”

  I unhooked the buckle. “I think