She shrugs, looking out the window, at the lights of the city and the dimmer partially-hidden lights of the stars.
“That’s not really pertinent, I guess, but I hardly ever stop thinking about Rusty. I even went around for a while putting up posters with a photo of him. I couldn’t offer a reward. But I could appeal to human kindness. It didn’t work. So, yeah … But the point is, maybe Omar has caught up with me. It’s a long shot. But it’s probably worth looking into, right?”
“You were right to tell me,” I whisper, every tendon in me taut and ready to fire into deadly cylinders.
I picture this animal in my mind, waving a machete, roaring at my girl that he’d never forget.
Neither will I, Omar. Neither will fucking I.
She shifts closer to me and looks up into my eyes.
Her hair is messy around her shoulders from where I’ve been caressing it, and her eyes brim with fresh tears.
I reach up and stroke them as they fall, and for minutes we just sit like that, her cradled in my arms, her tears warm on my fingers.
“Please don’t be lying,” she sobs, making a visible effort to harden her face. “He tried to trick me. Countless assholes in high school tried to trick me, you know before I dropped out …”
“I’m not lying,” I tell her firmly. “Kat, I’ll never lie to you. Never.”
“Promise?” she whispers.
I lean down and kiss her warm tears from her cheeks.
“Promise. And I’m also going to put out a public notice for Rusty. Just give me a photo and I’ll offer a substantial award. If he’s out there, we’ll find him.”
She giggles slightly, through her sobs, and it’s a sight that causes a surging sense of victory to swell inside of her.
Her smile is worth more than a thousand advances from the so-called more desirable woman of the world, which is a fucking joke.
Whatever society tries to tell me I should like, it seems ridiculous as I stare down at my queen, at the woman of my dreams.
“But it comes with a condition,” I say.
She raises her eyebrow, a vestige of her sassiness causing a swelling of possessive instincts to roar out from inside of me.
“Oh, really?” she says, moving past the heartache and the terror, at least for now. “And what’s that, then?”
“You have to accompany me to a restaurant and sit there looking beautiful, and order any fucking food you want and not even dream of feeling self-conscious about it. And then you have to let me take you to the swankiest hotel in the city and book us a suite there. Because, Kat, even if I’m so happy you’re a virgin I could howl like a wolf, it doesn’t mean I want it to stay that way. Your virginity belongs to me.”
Her eyes widen and I feel the self-consciousness coursing through her.
“But what if I’m not …”
She trails off.
“What?” I growl.
“Good enough?”
I laugh savagely, unable to stop the noise from filling the back of the car, the driver not even glancing back because he can’t hear a thing. I wouldn’t speak like this if he could, about my queen’s virginity, about taking her, owning her.
Talk like that – and the sultry images that come along with it – is for me alone.
“What’s so funny?” she glowers, a mega-pout on her lips.
“I’m sorry,” I say, giving her a firm squeeze so she knows I’m not laughing at her. “It’s just that the idea of you needing to be good enough is insane to me. You’re not auditioning for anything, Kat. We’re letting our bodies do what they need to do, what they want to do. And if you tell me your womb isn’t roaring at you just as loudly as my seed’s roaring at me, then you’re a damn liar.”
Her mouth falls open and she smiles at the same time, an endearing expression.
“What?” I tease. “Are you surprised I know what you’re feeling, eh? I’ll always be able to read you, Kat.”
“It’s just crazy,” she says, and then rolls her eyes at herself. “Jeez, I know I sound like a goofball because I keep saying that …”
“No,” I grin wolfishly. “You do sound like a goofball when you say goofball, though.”
“But,” she goes on, with a mock glare, “it is, isn’t it? We only met yesterday.”
“Sure,” I say, enveloping her hands in mine and squeezing softly. “But we’ve been waiting for each other our entire lives.”
She leans in and kisses me softly on the lips, a shy smile on her face when she leans back and tilts her head at me, half quizzical and half just-Kat cuteness.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever initiated a kiss in my life,” she whispers.
“Well,” I smirk. “Why don’t you try it again?”
And she does.
I can’t wait for our fucking date … and afterward.