Instant heat curled inside me. After what had happened between us, I had no idea how to behave around him, though my body had other ideas. My libido saw Pavlov and smashed the to-the-max button.
He leaned back on the door. “You’re still here.”
Unhappiness shot the attraction down. “Was I supposed to go?”
“That isn’t what I meant. I thought you’d have walked out on me.”
My uncontrolled emotions lurched again, having a field day. I swallowed a hit of sadness. There was no give in his expression or tone, yet he’d neatly revealed how he’d been in his appointment thinking about me. Worrying.
“I don’t scare that easy.” I gestured to the coffee shop order. “A peace offering for being rough?”
Kane drove his eyebrows together but approached and set the bag and drinks on the table then stepped back. “One’s fruit tea, the other’s coffee. No sugar added, but there’s sachets with the pastries in the bag. Choose whichever you prefer. I’ll take what’s left then we’ll leave.”
I helped myself. “How did you know I like fruit tea?”
“Mila mentioned something about meeting over a drink.”
And he’d logged that information away.
Hunger tightened my belly, so I tore into a croissant, pushing the other items across the table for Kane. He didn’t sit, choosing to take his to the window to scowl at the city while he ate.
“I was rough,” he interrogated the glass.
I snorted. “You pinned me down. Then ran away.”
“Or left before I did something ye didn’t ask for.”
Damn how that hit me straight in the depths of my body. “I didn’t ask for anything.”
“Try telling that to your soaking wet pussy.”
I swallowed sheer need, trying to keep it from my face. “If last night wasn’t rough in your mind, what is?”
He didn’t reply, but I caught something in the reflection. A smirk he was hiding by facing away.
I couldn’t keep my focus off him. He’d touched me last night. He’d broken out of his control to take handfuls of me and giveme pleasure. It hadn’t been polite, but oddly, I’d liked it all the more for it.
Worse, I wanted another go.
In more ways than one, I was in trouble.
We finished breakfast, and a quarter of an hour later, he’d cleared the remaining items in his flat, which was the bedding and the towels and packets from his bathroom, bagged them up, and shoved them into large municipal bins. In the car park, I peered around. No maniacal gangsters in sight.
“They were gone when I came back down the first time last night,” Kane said.
“Kind of glad you’re moving. It’s scary here.” I squinted at the solitary new bag in the boot. “That’s it? That’s all your personal possessions from your home?”
“I don’t hold on to things I don’t actively use, and the flat will be sold as furnished, so everything else stays with it. I took a winter coat for working outdoors, spare boots, a few other clothes, then I stowed some weapons elsewhere in the car. All I need.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “You’d hate my house. There are ornaments passed down through generations, fridge magnets from seaside trips, pictures on the walls that we put up just because they’re pretty. There’s even a bag of my baby clothes in my mother’s room, under her bed. All the clutter.”
He raised a shoulder, not meeting my eye. “I can see why that might feel good. It’s not my world.”
My heart cracked a little more for all the things Kane didn’t have, whether it was by his design or someone else’s.
In the car, he hit the button for the heat.
I settled in my seat. “What work did you do here in Manchester?”
