I’m about to do just that when the elevator dings. I continue kissing Elise’s mouth because it tastes like everything good about the world. But I can taste her confusion about the elevator dinging and doors rolling open onto a quiet floor, so I release her lips and appease myself by sliding my fingers into her dark hair and inhaling handfuls of it.

“Why are we here? I was…” She sounds dazed, short of breath. “I was only kidding about having a room…”

“Darling, I always get a room,” Tobias rasps.

Banks is closer than I realized, his hand propped to my left on the stainless-steel wall, watching our kiss close up, expression unreadable. “For once, I like the way you think, Tobias.” His fingers join mine and Elise’s hair, his teeth razing up and down the side of her neck. “Before we step off this elevator, tell us what you want, Elise. No pressure. No confusion.”

To my surprise, Elise looks up at me, almost adoringly? Am I imagining that? I don’t want to be imagining it. I want to soak it in and believe it. Believe in her and this magic she makes in my chest.

And then she trails her palm down the front of my body and cradles my erection in her hand, massaging the stiffness until I choke. “I don’t know. I just know I’m…” She shakes her head and I can see the thoughts are new, startling. The situation is foreign to her, but she’s trying to put her needs into words. Good. The better for me…no, us…to fulfill them. “I just know it has to be Gabe right now. After that, I don’t know.”

The sound that comes out of me is one I’ve never heard before. It’s a grinding shout let loose from the pit of my stomach. I’m not supposed to be chosen first. In a lot of cases throughout my life, I wasn’t chosen at all. How am I the priority for this incredible girl? What does she see in me that no one else ever has?

“This can’t be about pity, Elise,” I say, sounding strangled. “Please.”

“It’s not.” She shakes her head. “I don’t understand it, but there’s something…there’s something inside of me I’m supposed to give you. There’s something inside of you that you’re supposed to give me. Don’t you feel that?”

If I felt it any more, I’d pass out. “You have no idea.”

She nods, relief making her look more vulnerable, more open, while she flicks open the button of my tuxedo pants and delves her hand inside, jerking me off through my boxers, ripping a shuddering groan from my throat. Simultaneously, Banks exhales a gravelly sound against the side of her neck, his own hand busy adjusting the bulge behind his zipper.

“What are you giving him permission for?” Banks grinds out.

“Everything,” she whispers, her head falling back on her shoulders for a beat, as if she’s reveling in that single word. That single word is hedonism and freedom and it delivers yet another one-two punch of gratitude to my system. It wrecks me.