He chuckles. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Basically, if you don’t want to give the kisses, then you just don’t get to ask the questions. It’s a pretty straightforward interaction.”
It definitelysoundsstraightforward. But I do want to kiss him, and I do want answers, and I still feel like I’m going to walk out of this kitchen having lost something. Like my mind. Or maybe a piece of my heart.
Ugh. So dramatic. I need to stop.
“Also, I’m not your boss at the moment. And if you’re worried,” he goes on, leaning his elbow on the counter next to him. “If the kissing is bad, I promise that it won’t negatively impact your future employment.”
I’m so on to him. But I mock gasp for his benefit and say, “How dare you insinuate that my kissing might be bad.”
He shrugs. “I guess there’s really only one way to know for sure.”
He has a point. Not about the bad kissing. There’s no way in fuck it’s going to be bad. Hell, we proved that outside by my dad’s garage earliertoday. No, the point I’m interested in is the whole I’m not your boss yet thing. That’s true. If we mess around right now, it has nothing to do with the job. It would just be fun.
I take a bite of cake, pretending to contemplate this proposal.
I chew and swallow, take a long drink of water, then say, “You said your dad was pissed about your mom trying to trap him with a pregnancy, so he took you and cut her off. How old were you when you met her?”
Everett grins as if he just won first prize in a championship spelling bee. God, he is hot when he smiles.
He’s hot no matter what, if I’m being honest. Which I probably should be. Pretending not to be attracted to him or that I can just ignore him and what happened in Denver is not getting me anywhere.
“In the agreement he came up with, he had full custody and got to determine what kind of visitation she had. She was not to tell anyone that she was my mother, and there were no public records.”
“She’s not on your birth certificate?”
“That’s two questions. I need a kiss before I answer the second one.”
I hold out my hand to him, wrist tipped so that he can kiss the back of it.
He gives me a little smirk, but takes my hand, leans over it, and presses his mouth against the back of my hand. But he doesn’t stop there. He drags his mouth back and forth across my knuckles, his whiskers scuffing against my skin and sending tingles all the way up my arm.
Then he kisses down the length of my middle finger till he gets to the tip. He sucks it into his hot, wet mouth, and I barely hold back a moan. Those tingles get much stronger and spreadthroughout my body as he swirls his tongue over the pad of my middle finger, and my clit aches.
He withdraws my finger, then meets my gaze, his eyes hooded.
“There is, of course, an official public record. But for the first few years, I wasn’t seen in public with either of my parents. No one in the media or wider film industry even knew I existed. By the time I was old enough to travel, I’d go along, but so would a whole entourage of people. The media never wondered who I was, assuming I belonged to someone on the staff.”
I open my mouth, then close it quickly. I already asked a question.
He smiles knowingly and goes on. “The public never knew she was pregnant or had a child, so no one ever went looking for records. She was between projects once she was far enough along to be showing, and she went and stayed at a private island estate through the final five months of the pregnancy and the delivery. It was a private at home birth, she stayed there for a couple of months for recovery, and by the time she was back in the public eye, she looked the same and it had really only been a few months. No one even blinked. Everyone around her were trusted friends and family, who not only had her best interest at heart, but who were threatened legally and paid very good money to stay quiet.”
“It’s really never leaked?” I ask, incredulous. But, of course, I know who his mother is and never knew she had a child.
He hasn’t let go of my hand, so he pulls it closer, extending my elbow. He pushes the sleeve of the sweatshirt up and starts kissing a path up my arm. When he gets to my elbow, he sucks lightly on the skin on the inside.
I did not know that was an erogenous zone, but it certainly is. At least for me when Everett’s mouth is there.
I squirm on my seat.
He shakes his head. “Never leaked. My father is a very powerful man, and honestly, my mother didn’t want it to leak either.”
God, he’s gone through his entire life with a mother who doesn’t claim him and a father who purposefully denies both Everett and his mother that connection. “That…must be hard,” I say weakly. I don’t know how he feels about it. Maybe he doesn’t know the difference. “Are you angry about it? Hurt? Do you feel connected to her at all?”
Okay, that was three questions, kind of, and I’m sure he’s keeping track. But I don’t care.
He shakes his head. “I don’t feel connected. Which does hurt, I suppose. I didn’t realize it until…” He trails off, looking at me thoughtfully for a moment.
“Until what?” I prod. He can add it to my tally.
