“Every bad thing has to start somewhere too.”
Wilder bursts out into laughter at that. Then he walks up to me, all big, sexy, manly, and god-like gorgeous, and takes the can from my hand. “You don’t have to be so tough. You have too good of a heart to pull it off. And I know you don’t really hate me.”
“I put a plastic spider in your bed!”
“You did.”
“I made you move the desk up the stairs, and you hurt yourself.”
“Common sense should have told me it would never go up. I shouldn’t have even attempted it.”
“I told you to clean the cat litter.”
“Which didn’t kill me.”
“I made you buy me a new sewing machine I don’t deserve.”
“You didn’t make me do anything, and it wasn’t about deserving it or not.”
“I invited my friends over tonight just to piss you off.”
“And that backfired on you, didn’t it?”
“Yes! Because they liked you! They freaking liked you from the second they ogled you from the upstairs window while you were grilling outside.”
“I knew Vera wasn’t in the right position to have seen my arsenic when I walked in.”
I giggle now. It ends in a hiccup because I’m still not sure whether I want to laugh or cry or maybe both. I’m so confused, and my body hurts. It wants Wilder, but my brain is finally making strides, and it’s giving me one big NO after another.
“Arsenic,” I whisper. “That’s good.”
Wilder shakes the can wildly and sprays the last of the whipped cream into his mouth. It’s really too bad that it’s gone. I’ve never done anything naughty with it before, and it might have been fun to do it with him.
My lady cave and nipples like that idea, and my clit’s also on board. All of me is on board except for my brain, and even that is rapidly starting to scramble signals because I’m weakening. I can feel it. The bad decision is creeping back up again, but this time, it doesn’t feel so bad, and it doesn’t feel so dangerous.
I know for sure that when I step up to Wilder and set my palms flat on his warm, rock hard, brick wall of a chest and tug his face down so I can run my tongue over his bottom lip to taste the last of the whipped cream, I’m done.
I’m not strong enough, I’m not tough enough, and he’s right. I can’t pull it off. Maybe I’m just really tired of being celibate, and my lady cave is very lonely and sad because no one’s visited her in a while. Also, it’s likely that I’m slightly drunk on whipped cream and hormones. Sure, I’ll probably start this and wake up tomorrow with a butt load of regret, but that’s tomorrow, and this is right now, and my brain can’t put the two together to figure out how to stop me.
So it looks like I’m doing this.
Fuck it, I know I’m doing this.
I lick Wilder’s bottom lip again—this time harder and in an invitation—and with a groan that sounds more like the roar of a crazy train wreck about to take place, he claims my mouth again.
CHAPTER 14
Wilder
I’m not going to say that Esme is delicate. Because she’s strong, and she’s probably a heck of a lot stronger than I even know since she’s right. I don’t know her that well. But what I do know is that she feels so delicate in my arms. She. Feels. So. Right.
It makes me feel like a big old bag of crap for lying to her. Again. Or at least not telling her the full truth. I did tell her most of it, though—the important stuff. Later, when she’s more willing to listen and more understanding, I’m hoping I can explain to her about the car and my antique toy collection. And also, when she knows me better and can laugh about how it brought me to Silas in the first place. It really doesn’t have anything to do with what’s happening right now.
It really doesn’t.
I’m kind of slightly—and by slightly, I mean massively—floored that it’s true. This isn’t just about the car for me. Actually, ever since I walked through the door, I barely thought about the car, though before that, getting my hands on it was basically the be-all and end-all. Now that I’ve met Esme? Somehow, the car has taken the backseat, and she’s riding shotgun.
Jesus. I don’t want to think about her riding shotgun because it makes me think about her riding me, which makes my balls want to detonate, and I’m still just kissing her. If this is all I get to do, that would be okay, but ending things abruptly with a spontaneous ball explosion in my jeans would put the brakes on anything and everything.
I should take things out of the kitchen, but Esme starts tugging at my shirt while she’s attacking my mouth, and I’m attacking her mouth back, which causes all thoughts about making it back down the hall or up the stairs to an actual bed get kind of fuzzy.