“No, I haven’t decided.” I lift my chin, showcasing my defiance even though I’m spent at eight thirty in the morning and smart enough to gauge where this is headed. “Certainly not without some amendments to your proposal.”
“I wouldn’t have expected anything less, Counselor.” He smirks; it’s irritating and endearing, and it makes me want to smack him. “Shoot.”
“Do you really think it’s a good idea to raise a child at La Lune Noire? One morning with you, and he’s already asking for tattoos.”
“That’s a question, not an amendment. And you love tattoos. Don’t pretend you don’t.” He narrows his glacial blues at me, and I resist the urge to fidget under his gaze, but he still bobs his head like I failed a test. “We won’t ink him until he’s at least ten. It’s the piercings we need to jump on,” he deadpans before barreling on to more nonsensical reasoning. “Raising him there is a brilliant idea, and it’s not forever. We still have that rule about no overnightguestsin the penthouse, so no worries about that. Axel and I raised Maddox, Cash, Jax, and Rena there.”
It’s not forever.Valid and perplexing since he also saidindefinite. How long then? Until Martina buzzes off?
“I’m not sure that’s your best evidence,” I counter, staring him down over the rim of my beloved coffee bowl. “This would be one of those don’t-let-them-take-the-stand scenarios.”
“They are all multimillion-dollar business owners, wise investors, and well adjusted, so I’d argue otherwise, but if you want to be all judgmental—”
“Fine,” I huff, unwilling to drag them through the mud. “What about theindefinitefake engagement? That’s ludicrous. I have needs.”
Embarrassing, but I would have told him that when we were friends, and I’m a thirty-four-year-old who hasn’t come in over three years and hasn’t felt the sensual touch of a man even beyond that. I can’t wimp out on ranking this as a higher priority than him fooling Martina, the psychotic floozy he’s been dodging for close to a decade.
“Hmm. I will require a detailed summary of the precise needs. Leave nothing out. No stone unturned. No kink left behind—” He halts abruptly because my face surely mirrors the Seventh Circle of Hell. “I promise to put your needs at the top of my priority list. In fact, let’s add an amendment that by one month’s time, I will authorize an adequate solution to your saidneeds.”
“That sounds vague,” I assert, plastering on a contrived grin for Remy, who is pulling apart the La Lune Noire model—prophetic. “What does that mean?”
His eyes rake down my body, as if he’s contemplating solutions that arenoton the table, before he finally answers, “It means, use your toys for a few more weeks. Let’s get you and Remy settled there, and I promise I’ll take thoseneedsinto consideration.”
The way his deep tenor laces obscenity into that basic word—needs—and the manner in which his tongue and lips form around the single syllable douse my kitchen in humidity.
“You’re not going to slap a mask on me and send me down to Magie Noire, are you?”
“Fuck no,” he whisper-shouts—apparently aware of little ears—as he glides his palms over my yoga-pants-clad thighs, flustering the hell out of me.
Do. Not. React.
He snatches my coffee away, setting it on the table, and returns his hands to my legs, slowly crawling in the direction of the area I’m currently labelingno man’s land. “But if that was wishful thinking …”
This is a perfect example of how opposite our worlds are now. He owns one of the most coveted and nefarious resorts for underground wealth, complete with a sex club that probably provides a kink menu. Not that I’m shaming. I used to be a free and confident woman who could embrace erotic encounters aswell as I could dominate an argument in the courtroom. That’s who he thinks he’s visiting. In my current habitat, I’m a barely-getting-through-the-day cautionary tale.
Case in point: I’ve had this recurring nightmarish daydream for quite a while about how life might have been in respect to sexual fantasies. And like I mentioned before, I tend to latch on to something, and then it sticks around like a thirty-year school loan, deferred twenty times, thereby making it a lifer.
Anyway, if I veer to certain proclivities—let’s take anal sex, for example—I instantly see myself at an old folks’ home, my kids visiting and someone talking about iconic love stories.
And suddenly, there I am, wrinkled and decrepit, screaming, “I used to get fucked in the ass!”
Of course my kids turn ten shades of a color that’s far more alarming than red and hiss, “Mom,” in the hopes of reprimanding the recollection out of me.
No such luck.
“Right in the ass!” I shout again for the hard-of-hearing folks in the back.
And then I zoom back to the present, vowing to never have any type of sex again.
Maybe the reason I haven’t orgasmed in forever isn’t all that deep. This is the type of issue I could have shared with Ryker before. He would’ve teared up and howled, insisting we dissect it. But with the way he’s ogling me, I think he’d receive that information as a conquest.
Or it would catapult us back to a platonic playing field, where I know my way around.
Still, it’s a gamble.
“Where did your mind go?” he asks at the precise second I become aware that my eyes are glued to his mouth.
“Nowhere.”
