“More than ready is what I like to hear,” he says.
“What?” I look up at him, and he’s grinning. “Oh!” I say, finally getting the innuendo. I wasn’t thinking about sex, but I am now.
“Maybe my girlfriend will invite me in for a nightcap,” he muses.
I roll my eyes. “A nightcap? Does anyone say that anymore?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know, but it sounds more polite than saying, ‘Maybe my girlfriend will invite me in to fuck the hell out of her.’”
“Touché,” I say. “Seriously, though. I’m not complaining, but have you always been this horny?”
He chuckles. “Thishorny? No. I mean, yeah, I’ve always had a pretty healthy sex drive, but I’ve never been as horny as I am with you.”
I stare at him as we walk. “Is that true?”
His face goes serious. “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t. For Christ’s sake, Gray, my subconscious sent you a dick pic the night after I met you.”
I laugh. “Your subconscious was trying to send your ex a dick pic.”
“My subconscious knew exactly what it was doing,” he insists. “It was trying to tell me something that I was too dense to get at the time.”
I stop walking, and he does too.
“You’re really that attracted to me?” I ask. Celena would chastise me for even questioning this, but I can’t help it.
Ash stares at me for several seconds, then narrows his eyes. “Why are you questioning this?”
I shrug, trying to play it off. “I don’t know…I just…,” I say, trying to search for a way to explain that doesn’t sound completely neurotic. “The jock and the nerd only end up together in movies,” I say finally. “It doesn’t happen in real life. We just have so little in common…”
He stares at me another few seconds. “That’s really what you’reworried about?” he asks.
I give him a half-hearted, one-shoulder shrug.
“First of all,” Ash says, grabbing my shoulders, “I told you in your office, I love that you’re smart. It gets me hard to watch you argue circles around people who try to challenge you.”
My mouth falls open, but I’m not sure what to say to that.
“Also,” he says, giving me a small shake to emphasize his point, “you are a beautiful fucking woman, and when your intelligence isn’t getting me hard, then the way your breasts bounce is. Or the way your hips sway when you walk. Or when you part your lips and run your tongue along the bottom one.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Jesus, Gray. You have a thousand things you do that turn me on so much it hurts.”
It’s my turn to stare. “You really want me that much?” I ask.
Ash takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilts my head up so I have to look into his eyes. “Yes, baby,” he says with conviction. “And I need you to start believing that.”
Chapter 36
Gray
“How much did you lose that night at poker anyway?” I ask Celena as I head down the aisle of the grocery store just under a week later with my Bluetooth earbuds in. I’ve been craving peanut butter since my mother mentioned it weeks ago, but I keep forgetting to buy it.
Celena and I have texted as usual, but this is the first time we’ve talked since the gala. I think she’s been avoiding me, and she was dodging my questions over text about what happened in the poker game with Kingston. She can’t put me off any longer, though.
“I only lost twelve hundred,” she says, “but money isn’t the issue.”
Onlytwelve hundred. I would’ve been having heart palpitations if I’d lost that much, but gamblers measure money differently.
“The more important thing I lost was my dignity,” Celena goes on.
I stop walking. “What the hell happened in that game?”
