‘I love Chinese.’
I resist an urge to tease her by saying ‘we’re a match made in heaven’ but I do grab her hand. ‘What are we waiting for then?’
‘Just let me grab my robe.’
I arch a brow. ‘You’ll fuck me on the table but won’t sit naked across from me?’
‘You’re not naked.’
‘Fair point.’
‘I like you naked.’
I laugh. ‘Right back at you.’
She whips my shirt off me, then snaps the waistband of my shorts. ‘Bottoms only?’
I drop my gaze to her breasts, my gut kicking. ‘Deal.’ My voice is thick, heavy with pleasure and desire and satiation and all the things she did to me while my wrists were bound. Something I honestly would have said I would never be into, but with Avery it was intense in the most incredible way. The pleasure was blinding.
A minute later we head to the kitchen. It smells amazing, the takeaway having filled the air with an intoxicating combination of spices.
‘You said the bowls are up here?’ She nods, watching as I pull out a couple then grab some spoons. ‘Wine glasses?’
She frowns, still watching me, then jolts, as if from a daydream. ‘Over there.’ I look where she’s pointing and see glasses have been slid under a cabinet, like in a bar.
I pour a couple of glasses, slide one across to her.
‘You seem very at home in the kitchen.’
I laugh. ‘I’m literally pulling takeaway from a bag.’
‘I know but you just seem—’ She shakes her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
I don’t really know where she was going with t
hat and it doesn’t seem important so I shrug and keep going, opening the container lids.
‘Did you buy everything on the menu?’
I eye the mountain of food. Maybe I did go a little overboard. ‘I wasn’t sure what you’d like.’
‘This could feed the homeless population of San Francisco for a week.’
Something about her words sparks a memory, something I should probably have been more focused on this week than I have been. ‘You run some kind of charity to do with that, don’t you?’
She stiffens almost imperceptibly. She doesn’t like the fact I know this stuff about her. I pass a bowl her way, keeping my voice measured. ‘There were four things I knew about you before I came here, Avery. Your name, the fact your mother passed away when you were fourteen, that you run a successful tech start-up and that you founded a charity—though I can’t remember the specifics of that right now. That’s it—nothing more. No one has a detailed dossier on your life.’
She’s quiet for a moment, moving towards the food, so I wonder if that’s over. But as she moves along, putting a scoop of each dish into her bowl, she says with a calmness that feels a little like the eye of a storm, ‘That’s why you’re here, though, right? To fill in the gaps?’
I’m momentarily quiet. She’s right, but I don’t know how to answer that in a way that doesn’t make me sound like a contemptible person.
‘I mean, they could have got their detective to keep digging. Or they could have come themselves. Instead they chose to send a middle man, someone who could find out what they want to know without them getting their hands dirty.’
So we’re back to being combative, to pushing me away. ‘Being a Hart is complicated,’ I say slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Protecting themselves is an instinct now. They didn’t send me because they don’t want to meet you.’
‘They just want to know what they’re dealing with first?’
I let out a sigh of frustration. ‘Is that so wrong?’