“Today was crazy.” I turn her to face me, trying to read her expression in the half-dark. “You okay?”
“I am if you are.”
“What’s that mean?”
“At first, with everyone looking at me and all the phones going off and… it kind of caught me off guard.”
“And then?”
“Well, with some time to think about it,” she says, grinning, “and to nap on it, I feel the way I did before. Let ’em talk. Let them believe what they want to believe. We will show them.Dessi Blueis brilliant, Canon. I dare anyone not to be moved by this story. It’s music and art and history. It’s restorative. Redemptive. And I’m proud to be a part of it.”
She reaches up to skim her thumb across my bottom lip and then the top one, tracing the bow and trailing over my beard. “And I’m proud to be with you. How could I be ashamed of this? Of us? I’m not.”
“I’m not,” I echo back to her. She put into words what I felt when I was talking to Verity. The way forward is open. “I told Verity you were my girlfriend.”
Her eyes widen and her mouth pops open, shock projected onto her face. “You what?”
“I think it’s kind of anticlimactic after Camille’s stunt.”
“But you haven’t even asked me.”
Well, ain’t this some shit? I don’t call a woman my girlfriend for… years, and when I do, she responds like this?
“So… you don’t want to be my girlfriend?”
“Oh my God! You should see your face.” She points at me and laughs. “Of course, I want to be your girlfriend. What do you think I am? Crazy?”
She snatches the phone from my hand, waggling it in the air. “And in myboyfriend’sbest interest, I’m taking this. No work for a few minutes.”
I try to grab the phone, try to grab her, but she dances out of reach, running up the hall. I’m so damn tired, but do I literally run after her like a horny teenager?
Yes. Yes, I do.
She dashes into one of the bedrooms and I follow her in. She locks the door as soon as it’s closed.
“You fell for that?” She grins, plucking at the buttons running down the front of her sundress. “Now I have you.”
Our lovemaking has been restricted to Sundays for the last month. Having her during the week? No longer needing to keep this a secret?
I push the dress away from her shoulders and sigh at the delicious sight of her.
“Now you have me.”
FORTY-SIX
Neevah
Astorm in repose.
Genius at rest.
Canon asleep in my bed.
I should wake him because I know he has things to do before tomorrow’s first day on location, but he’s exhausted. And as much as I’d like to think it’s the potency of this pussy that put him out… it’s more than that. The man’s been working sixteen- to eighteen-hour days for months. I don’t want to touch him in case he wakes, but with my gaze I trace the powerful lines of his shoulders and the defined muscles of his torso and abs. He’s dark and rich in my sheets, like chocolate left on my pillow. I could eat him up.
I did.
Canon’s pleasure fed mine. The taste of him, the blissful agony on his face when his control broke, the rough tug of his fingers in my hair.
