I tried to say something along the lines ofYes, please, but Lara’s lips had blended my brain with starlight and oceanic desire and delicious paralysis, and I couldn’t remember how to make my voice box operate.
“But in the end that won’t work,” she said. “Not for either of us.”
She pushed herself up and away from me, her eyes almost glowing in the night, pulsing with the same light as the stars. She turned her face up to them and closed her eyes. “I have duties tonight. I’m sorry this is hard for you. Good night, Harry.”
And her quiet footsteps vanished over the grass.
I lay there trying to focus my eyes. My lips quivered and tingled. My body ached with pleasure that slowly faded away over the next twenty minutes or half an hour.
And that was just from a kiss.
Hell’s bells.
I was sitting there trying to recover when Molly and Bear found me an hour later.
“What happened?” Molly asked quietly.
“She threatened me,” I said, my voice rough. “Take me home.”
Chapter
Eighteen
It was a week into November, and it was after midnight.
“So, what happened after that?” she asked me.
I threw the pair of dice and got a seven. I advanced the thimble seven spaces and paid out the money for Kentucky Avenue.
“I slept for a day and a half,” I said quietly.
“But Lara kissed you once before, right?” she asked, amused.
I picked up the dice and held them out. She blew on them and I threw them for her. Six. I advanced the race car that many spaces.
“Hot damn,” she said. “I have enough for Park Place.”
I dutifully took the money from that side of the board and counted it out, turning over the property card to her side. “Yeah. But not like that. This time Lara was letting me know what she could do.”
“Ah,” she said. “So?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “So what?”
She smiled faintly. “So how do you feel about it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think it was bad for me.”
“Oh?”
“Anything that feels that good probably is,” I said.
“Harry. Are you sure you aren’t leaning Catholic?”
I stared at the board and said, “It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny,” she assured me.
I frowned and didn’t move.
