He came with a grunt, his hand rough as he stroked himself to orgasm. Fucking pathetic that he had to jerk himself off in a hotel bathroom at the thought of his assistant.
He was going to kill Gretchen Petty when he returned, that was for damn sure.
Five minutes later, he was dressed in his sleep pants and climbing into bed when there was a knock at the adjoining door. He tensed, alarm shooting through him, and headed to the door. “Maylee?” he called, worried. Had someone tried to break in again?
When he swung the door open, she was standing there, still in his shirt. A pillow was clutched to her chest, and she looked up at him, eyes red and shining with unshed tears.
“Can I . . .” She paused and gulped, then continued. “Can I come sleep with you?”
***
Lordamercy, but Griffin Verdi was a pretty man when he was in a state of undress.
Not that he wasn’t normally pretty, Maylee reasoned. In his jacketed suits and his proper ties, his hair slicked down so not a bit was untamed, he looked right nice. Of course, when he was all done up, he was also incredibly unapproachable. Now he was freshly showered, his hair wet and a bit messy, and he wore no shirt.
Which allowed her to gawk at all those muscles that a bookworm shouldn’t have.
Griffin had a real nice chest. Real nice. Broad, with strong, triangular shoulders that tapered down to a narrow waist. His chest was mostly smooth, and had a thin line of dark hair creeping up from his navel that she found rather fascinating. He also had a black skull tattoo with money sticking out of the eye sockets on one shoulder that surprised her—His Royal Stuffiness certainly hadn’t seemed like the tattoo type.
But she liked seeing it. It made him human. Like maybe he wasn’t quite so stiff and proper as she’d pegged him.
It was that tattoo that had given her the strength to knock on his door again after he’d gone back to bed. She’d hesitated, terrified he’d say no and then give her a verbal putdown to let her know what he thought of her suggestion. And in her rather shaky state of mind at the moment, it’d probably break her.
But at her ridiculous question, he hadn’t laughed, hadn’t mocked, or anything of that sort.
He’d simply opened his door a bit wider to let her in.
And Maylee felt so relieved that she could have kissed him. She didn’t, but she would have if he’d have been even the slightest bit receptive to something like that from a country girl like her.
“Thank you,” she murmured as she stepped into his room. She’d been here earlier, and she had been a bit agog at how much nicer his room was than hers. He had fancy couches and fancy tables and an enormous window with a balcony that would probably have an incredible view of the city. The window was shut, the curtains drawn. It was late and getting later by the minute.
He ran a hand through his messy, half-wet hair and glanced around the room. “I can take the couch. You can have the bed.”
Her eyes widened at his suggestion. Sir Stuffy was going to give up his bed for her? Immediately, Maylee felt guilty. That hadn’t been her intention. She’d simply been scared to stay alone, sure that she’d have nightmares about strange men jumping out of her closet with a camera. She looked over at his bed. It was enormous. “I thought we’d both sleep together.”
“Did you.” The two words were flat.
Maylee blushed. “Not like that. But look at this bed. It’s the size of my apartment back home. We can just put some pillows in between us and it’ll be right as rain. Kinda like camp. You know?”
Griffin simply stared at her.
“And that dinky little couch looks mighty uncomfortable,” she admitted. “Especially for a man your size.” Oh, lordamercy, now she was blushing again. Why had she said man your size? She was not going to look at his happy trail. She was not. “I mean, if anyone should take the couch, it should be me.”
The room fell silent. Griffin considered the bed, then her, then gestured at the pillow she was clutching. “Go get your pillows out of your room.”
She trotted back into it happily and grabbed all the pillows, then returned to Griffin.
He took them from her and tossed them onto the bed, making a barrier between them. “I’ll sleep on the right,” he said, the imperious note back in his voice. “It’s closer to the door.”
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“And I’m going to read for a while longer. I trust that won’t bother you?”
She shook her head. “I’m kinda too wound up to sleep. Mind if I get my knitting?”
He shrugged his shoulders and climbed into his side of the bed, grabbing his book and opening it back up again, ignoring her. This was perfect, really. If he was going to pretend like she wasn’t there, she wouldn’t feel so weird about asking to sleep with him.
Maylee bounded up from the bed and went to her room, grabbed her knitting, and scurried back into his room. For some reason, her own hotel room didn’t feel safe anymore, but the moment she walked through his door, she felt like she could relax. Breathing a happy sigh of relief, she bounded back into bed, dragged the blankets up around her, and then sat up, crossed her legs, and began to knit. The feel of the yarn and the needles was soothing to her, as were the repetitive motions. It allowed her to calm down and relax, and she began to chain her yarn with easy motions.
She glanced over at Griffin, but he was silent, reading a book with tons of tiny words on the page. Looked like heavy reading. Huh. Interesting that he was so smart when he didn’t have to be. She went back to her knitting.
A comfortable silence fell between them for a long time.
“Why are you afraid to sleep by yourself?”
Maylee glanced over, and was startled to see that he was looking in her direction. His thick book was flat on that divine chest, and his hair had dried into a light brown tousle that looked different now that it wasn’t slicked down by a pound of hair gel. He looked different. Younger. Easier to approach.
Cute, even.
She felt herself blushing, though she continued to knit, her needles moving. “You really want to know?”
“Would I have inquired if I didn’t?”
“You might if you were just being polite.”
He snorted. “I can assure you that I don’t ask people about themselves unless I’m interested.”
She supposed that was the case. “I guess I should be mighty flattered then, huh? And it’s nothing big, really. My apartment got broken into when I first moved to the city. I’d only been in New York a few days. I went on a job interview and when I came back, someone had broken in my door and gone through all my stuff.”