I don’t protest. Don’t utter a word.
“No…no kissing,” I finally whisper in a final, pathetic attempt to control some part of this.
But like a lion let loose from its cage, Jake Brand is tearing through everything in his way. “I heard you the first five hundred times,” he growls, too closely focused on his objective to bother with eye contact. “Now lie back and let me feast on this beautiful pussy.”
29
Jake
Not fucking real, she said.Not fucking real?
I don’t know why the hell those words pissed me off like they did. But, goddamnit, the woman’s got no idea. None.
For some inexplicable reason, those words were a red flag, waved in front of me.
She thinks what we’re doing, what we’ve got isnot real?
I don’t even know what it means. What is real when it comes to sex? Doesn’t matter. The fact is, Katarina Esteban sealed her own goddamn fate when she tried telling me that this connection’s all in my head.
I know better. Hell, I knew the second I saw her.
When I walked in and saw those big eyes, sad and lost and still somehow determined.
The thing is, she knew it, too. She felt this attraction. That’s why we’re here today. Why my knees are grinding into the refinished hardwood plank of a place that never once felt like a home until she walked into it.
Call me opportunistic or single-minded or whatever the hell you want, but ever since I got to town, there’s been one thingand one thing only on my mind and if she prefers denial, well, I’m happy enough to take responsibility for both of us. For every goddamn thing.
Kit’s carrying enough on her shoulders with the restaurant and her house and whatever painful past she’s lugging around.
I’ve got the rest. I’ve got this. Which isn’t a relationship, fine. But it is fuckingreal.
Practical. Not emotional.Those were her words and, in a weird way, I’m all right with that. I don’t need her to cry on my shoulder. I need her to give it up to me. That’s practical, right?
Yep. Practical Jake Brand. That’s me. Doing things because they make sense, not because I’ll die if I don’t.
Like this pussy, right here. Fuck…look at it. Pink and soft, with a little hair on the outer lips. I like that hair. Like how silky it looks.
And I fucking love how she smells up close. Musky and warm. Sex and woman and something else. Something precious and real and just out of my grasp.
None of this is within my grasp, is it? And yet, that fucked-up inner part of me is somehow convinced that it should be mine. It feels like mine.
It’s why I gave her the safe word. I’ve never felt like this before—like someone elsebelongsto me—and there’s danger there.
I’d laugh if I had any sense of humor left. It flew the goddamn coop, though, when she told me this thing…Wasn’t. Real.
Practical?You know what? Fuck that, too.
I turn and run my lips along the soft, dimpled skin of her plump inner thigh. Then, because kissing is still off the table, which pisses me off, along with a million other things, I draw them back and scrape her with my teeth instead. At her full body shudder, I turn and do the same to the other side.
Make it last. That’s the plan. Make her so fucking hungry she’ll beg and beg and beg and then…
Fuck. I don’t know. Then what? What is the end game here?
Happy families with her in her cute little yellow house?
Nah. That ain’t happening. I’m leaving. Besides, I’m not a family man.
She doesn’t want a baby daddy anyway.
