God, I love her smiling. She only seems to do it around me. When she was with her family, she did nothing but frown. She should say yes to pretend marry me, if for no other reason than she might smile more.
“How l
ong has it been?” she asks, beaming at me, and I know she’s teasing.
“Not as long as it’s been for you.”
She bites her lip and kicks off her heels, putting them up on the dashboard. Usually, that would drive me mad, to have her dirty feet on my pristine dash. But with Larkyn, I want her comfortable. I thought she might be a wreck about having sex with me. But she’s at ease. The second her begging words left her mouth, the panic evaporated, and a calm overtook her.
I kiss her hand again, wishing I could be kissing her more. But I don’t want to make her nervous of my driving. She’s been through too much already.
“It’s been three or four months,” I finally answer her question. I usually would never tell a woman something so personal, but she deserves to know. She opened up to me about being a virgin, even though I had guessed as much.
Her jaw drops open, and her eyes light up. “No way! I call bullshit. The great Kade King has had sex in the last three months. I bet you’ve had sex this week.”
I shake my head. “Nope, last time was when I was home over Christmas visiting my brother. I made a mistake with Harlow. I haven’t wanted a woman since.”
She puffs out her lips in a huff. Her eyes cut to me, as she folds her arms across her chest.
“I’m telling the truth,” I say, taking my eyes off the road for a second to see her annoyed expression.
“I know. I just can’t believe I have to take back everything bad I ever thought about you.”
I laugh, grab her hand, and kiss it again. I’ve never kissed a woman’s hand before, but I can’t stop doing it with Larkyn since it is the only place I can touch her right now without risking crashing.
“Be honest; you didn’t think that many bad things about me, did you?”
“No, but each time you shatter my preconceptions about you it makes it that much harder to…” she stops.
“Oh, hell no. You aren’t getting off that easy. You finish that sentence.”
“And, if I don’t?”
“Then, no sex.”
She chuckles, and her eyes deepen as she realizes I’m telling the truth.
“You’re serious? You wouldn’t have sex with me if I didn’t finish that sentence?”
“Yep. I’ve been through plenty of droughts before. I can hold out until you tell me.”
She stares at my dick, which is giving me away by pressing against the zipper of my pants.
“I doubt that,” she chuckles. “But fine. I’ll answer. I’m afraid I’m going to fall in love with you if we do this.”
I frown, my head snapping to her. “If we have sex?”
“Not sex. If we pretend marry. Live together. Are friends. Continue to have sex. All of it. I’m afraid I’ll fall in love with you, and you won’t feel the same. I’ll get hurt.”
Fuck, that’s a lot to take in.
Her eyes widen when I pull through the gate.
“This is your house?” she asks, her body leaning forward so she can get a better view out the window.
“Yes, I prefer condos. I have a condo in LA and New York, but I thought I should own at least one house. Makes me feel more like a grownup. Besides, there aren’t any nice condos nearby.”
As we pull up to the door, we both undo our seatbelts and stare up at my modern mansion. I thought if I designed it as modern as possible, it would feel more like a condo instead of a house. It would feel more like mine. Instead, all it feels is cold.