Being around her might give me an ego the size of Australia.
I have no choice but to sit there with her inches away, the intoxicating scent of her more powerful than the smell of the pancakes and bacon. My willpower, which I'd thought---or maybe prayed---had reassembled itself, is getting new cracks. I'm only a man, not a robot with no feelings and no dick. Mine, by the way, is awake and ready for action. I really hope Arden doesn't peek under the bar and see that. The woman does not need more ammunition for blowing holes in my self-control.
She wriggles her bum on her stool while humming with pleasure as she chews a bite of bacon.
Never in my life have I needed my willpower so much, and it's failing me at every turn. Am I a complete and total arsehole? I'm starting to think the answer is yes.
"Let's go for a walk," I say. I'm done eating, since unfulfilled lust apparently makes me as ravenous as a starved lion who's caught a tasty gazelle. "It looks like a beautiful day out there."
"It is." She slips a forkful of pancake between her lips, and syrup dribbles down those lips and onto her chin, a single drop of it threatening to fall off. "But I was thinking we should go to the zoo."
"The zoo?" I say the words, but I'm not actually listening to her. That drop of syrup has captured all of my attention, because if it drips off her chin, it will land on one of those gorgeous tits.
While I stare at her chin and half pray for, half curse at the possibility of the syrup splashing onto her breast, she launches into a description of everything that's "awesome and so ridiculously fun" about the zoo. When she starts rambling on about museums, even that doesn't catch my attention. That drop of syrup is still hanging there, like it's frozen in place.
I'm five seconds away from licking it off.
Arden grabs a napkin and wipes her mouth and chin.
Something like disappointment ripples through me. Maybe later, I'll get the syrup and drizzle it over her naked body so I can lick off every last molecule of it.
No, you will not do that, you raging arsehole.
I volunteer to wash the dishes while Arden gets dressed. Actually dressed this time. She comes out of her bedroom wearing jeans, a loose-fitting shirt that falls below her hips, and sandals that show off her adorable toes and the neon-green nail polish on them.
"Let's go," she says. "You're a New York virgin, and I'm going to show you all the most fabulous places in the city."
"Sounds like fun." The zoo and museums don't appeal to me that much, but I love listening to her talk about... anything. "But as a reminder, there will be no sex."
I can't say for sure which of us I'm reminding.
Arden smiles, sexily, and takes my hand. "Don't you trust me, Reese?"
Not with my willpower. Absolutely not.
But I let her lead me out of the apartment, with my hand wrapped around her smaller one, and try not to think about how good she looks in her oversize shirt.
Christ, every last thing about her turns me on.
I'm absolutely doomed.
Chapter Ten
Arden
Reese hadn't been thrilled about going to the zoo or museums, but he gets really into it once we're there. I haven't done anything this fun in a long time, since way before I went to Ecuador. I love to have a good time, but my family history can make that difficult. When I mumble something like that to Reese, thinking he won't hear me, he does hear it.
"Don't you get along with your family?" he asks.
"Of course I do. They're amazing, I love them."
"What's the problem? Why does your family keep you from having a good time?"
Reese and I are in the butterfly garden, so I focus on the beautiful critters flitting around in here when I say, "It's nothing they do. It's the fact of who we are."
"I don't understand."
How could he? Everyone in New York knows my family, or at least my grandmother, but Reese isn't from here. I don't know how to start, so I go with the blunt approach.