“Complete with pelican statue?” Graham’s hands move closer to my panties.
“One almost identical to that one was in the living room.” I smile at the memory of the trip. “We only stayed a few hours. My folks couldn’t leave the bakery for an entire weekend, so we made a late Sunday afternoon trip there.”
Graham studies my face. “Those few hours meant the world to you, didn’t they?”
“They meant everything,” I whisper to control my emotions. “We ran in the sand and ate hot dogs we cooked over an open fire. We dipped our toes in the water. It was the best trip of my life.”
“Because you were all together?” His voice has a tremor in it I’ve never heard before.
“Because we were all together,” I repeat as I lean forward to brush his lips over mine.
He kisses me deeply, his tongue parting my lips softly. That draws a low moan from somewhere inside of me.
“Make love to me tonight,” I say against his mouth as soon as the kiss breaks. “I want you to make love to me.”
With effortless ease, he flips me over until I’m on my back, and he’s staring down at me.
His hand moves to grip the side of my panties. “I’m going to ruin these, dear.”
“Why am I not surprised, darling?” I ask with a smile.
“I’ll buy you a few dozen new pairs,” he promises with a soft kiss on my forehead.
I cup his face in my hands so I can gaze into his eyes. “Let me take the pelican statue with me when I move back home, and we’ll call it even.”
His brow furrows, but not a word escapes him. With a heavy exhale, he buries his face in my neck before he rips my panties from my body.
Chapter Forty-Three
Graham
“You show up empty-handed and expect me to let you in?” Kavan stands in the doorway of his home.
He’s a penthouse dweller as well, but his is on Fifth Avenue in a building that has always been, and will always be, well out of my price range.
“I need to talk to you.” I push past him, which isn’t an easy task.
Kavan has a couple of inches on me and at least twenty pounds. He’s in the best shape of his life. I am too, but still I wouldn’t challenge him to a fistfight.
“C’mon in,” he says with a sarcastic bite in his tone. “It’s late. What the hell are you doing here?”
“I need a drink,” I blurt out. “Something strong and…”
“Expensive?” he asks as he rounds me to head straight for a bar cart that sits near a bank of windows. “I’m giving you the cheap stuff since you showed up without warning. What if I had company?”
It’s a rhetorical question.
Kavan doesn’t invite people into his home or his world.
There are three people he tolerates. I’m one, and there’s Sean and Harrison. Beyond that, his world consists of business associates and lawyers. He does his best to interact with all of them as infrequently as possible.
He pours me two fingers of Macallan 15.
I greedily take it and down it all in one gulp.
“Well, then.” His arms cross his bare chest.
It’s obvious I got him out of bed with my incessant knocking on his door. I bribed the doorman to let me up. It took five hundred dollars, but it was worth it because Kavan had ignored the three calls I made on my way over here. As soon as Trina fell asleep, I got up, put my clothes back on, and left.
Panic drove me over here.
“What do you want, Graham?”
“It’s Trina,” I say and then stop.
How the fuck am I going to explain what’s going on to Bane when I can’t make sense of it myself?
“You fucked her,” he deduces the way he always does.
Nodding, I head toward the bar cart for a refill. “More than once.”
I have no goddamn idea why I add that on. It hardly matters how many times I’ve taken my wife. I was lost to her the moment she agreed to marry me. My heart became hers when we kissed.
Now, she owns me through and through.
“Help yourself,” Bane says as I fill my glass halfway.
I take another mouthful and savor it this time. The burn on my throat is exactly what I need.
“You’re in love with her,” he states as he walks toward me. “You’ve fallen in love with your fake wife.”
I finish the drink before I turn to face him. “I don’t know. I’m feeling things.”
“Things?” His hands drop to his hips. He tugs on the waistband of the black pajama pants he’s wearing. “That’s vague. Is she feeling things for you too?”
I shake my head. “I have no fucking idea.”
“Wrong answer.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I spit out the words at him.
He points a finger at me. “Your feelings scared the hell out of you, so you ran over here to hear me tell you to go back home and confess what you’re feeling to your wife.”