My lids lower. “Yeah. And I can touch you?”
“Please,” she murmurs.
I tear my eyes off her and watch Jasper, chuckling as the woman rubbing his feet tickles him and he cries out like a girl. “He’s an athlete, but it’s bowling.” He hates bowling.
“I don’t know. He obviously lives in the gym—”
“I’m not done, smarty.”
She makes a flourish with her hands. “By all means, sir, please continue ...”
“He’s the kind of guy who eats food in his bed, like cookies and crackers and popcorn, then sleeps on top of it without a care in the world.” He’s been staying with me temporarily, and I’ve seen his eating habits. Food falls out of his mouth when he talks; then there’s the trash he leaves everywhere.
She giggles. “You never eat in bed?”
“Food belongs in the kitchen.” I flash a smile. “He’s also proud of his penis. He’s named it.”
“What?”
“Cupid. Because every girl who gets the arrow falls in love.”
“You win!” she calls out as she laughs, her face upturned to me.
A zing of electricity hits me. I like her lips. Her emotional eyes. My fingers trace the curve of her cheek, grazing down her throat to her chest. I stop at her neckline, caressing the outline. “You’re beautiful.”
She slides off her seat, settles between my legs, and wraps her arms around my neck. “Thank you, my prince.”
“You’re welcome, my princess,” I say huskily as her breasts press against my chest.
“Are you wicked?” she murmurs as she tugs my hair free from the bun and presses a soft kiss to my jawline.
A deep, primitive sound comes from my throat. “Hmm, very.”
“Good.” She pulls on my gray necktie, then removes it slowly. She runs the silk through her fingers, brings it to her nose, and then tucks it inside her bodice. “My souvenir.”
“If you get to keep one, then I want one.”
“I’m your souvenir.”
My blood heats at her words, rising higher as she undoes the top button of my shirt, then another. She stops at the third one, spreading the fabric. Heat flashes over me as she kisses the bump where my shoulder was dislocated.
“Now do me.” She gazes up at me. “Who am I?”
I blink as my head refocuses off sex and stumbles through the alcohol in my system to recall our previous conversation. “You’re smart. Your career is probably something artsy. You’re wearing a locket which holds a photo of someone you lost.” I pause, remembering her tattoo with the bent wing. I graze my fingers over the yellowing bruise on her arm.I’ve seen worse,she said. “Someone has hurt you before, and if you tell me who, I will make sure he never does again.”
The air around us thickens as our eyes hold; then she glances away.
Splaying my fingers on her cheek gently, I tug her jaw back. “Hey. I shouldn’t have said the last part. I shouldn’t assume.”
Her black lashes lower. “Maybe it’s because we’re strangers that you feel you can say those things. We don’t know each other. We can spill secrets, then let it go tomorrow.”
“So I was right?” The protective alpha inside me stirs.
“No one hurts me anymore,” she murmurs. “I’m different now. Stronger.”
“My little brave princess.” I ease the veil off her head and arrange her hair around her shoulders and chest, trailing my fingers through the sleek thickness. Her head instinctively leans into my palm when I cup her cheek. She kisses my palm, and scorching lust that’s been building since she slid between my legs sizzles like an electrical line dropped in my skull.
My thumb brushes her bottom lip as I picture my cock sliding between those plump petals. “Do me.”