Instead, I get to enjoy this.
Curves beneath me. Long legs wrapped around my hips.
A beautiful woman staring up at me in befuddlement.
“Told you I work out,” I say blithely.
That befuddlement disappears like a puff of smoke and then I get that beautiful laughter again. “I think I was the one who made that statement.”
“Well,” I say, hips flexing ever so carefully, groan rising in the back of my throat when it presses against the softness between her legs. I bite it back, just barely. “You’re not wrong.”
Her mouth kicks up. “Are we really going to keep talking when you’re hard and on top of me?”
“I thought women liked to talk.”
“Andthat’swhy you’re single.”
I’m the one who laughs this time, loud and unbothered, then again when her nose wrinkles.
“What?” I ask, smoothing a fingertip along those ridges.
“You’re supposed to be offended.”
I shrug. “Not much offends me.”
“Hmm.” She tilts her head to the side, studying me like I’m a bug. “Stolen Lyfts don’t seem to bother you.”
“Convenient that the oneIstole brought me where I needed to go.”
“And neither do flooded condos.”
“Wasn’t my condo that got flooded.”
“But for some reason, me teasing you about sugary cereal does?”
Guilt for the way I acted earlier coils through my middle—worse because she thinks it had something to do with her and not the fucked-up childhood demons that sit heavy on my heart…so heavily sometimes that I’ve found it easier to be single.
Of course, I’ve never met a woman like Marie before.
Never been quite so obsessed.
Instead of thinking about that—or the fear that bubbles up with those words sliding through my mind—I curve my mouth into a smirk. “A man who works out doesn’t like his diet to be picked apart by a woman who’s all of a hundred pounds.”
Eyes going wide…then narrowing. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m a hundred and fifty poundsandcan bench press one-ten.”
“A regular Schwarzenegger,” I say dryly.
Which earns me a swat on the chest.
But at least she’s smiling.
“Seriously, I’m impressed.”
“You should be,” she mutters, but I don’t miss the confusion in her eyes, as though not a lot of men in her life have given her an outright compliment.
I hate that for her.
But it’s not why I answer honestly, saying, “I’m serious, gorgeous. I’m impressed.”
