Or professional.
Yet here I am just lusting over the man in my house simply because he’s the first man I’m not related to that has given me his undivided attention.
But it’s work.
I’m work.
So with that thought like a bucket of cold water, I have no choice but to use the timebefore dinnerto get myself off because orgasms fix everything.
That…and the fact that I won’t survive the rest of the evening if I don’t relieve a little tension.
Like putting a Band-Aid on a fire hydrant…
7
TOM
“Royce!”I bark into my phone as I open and close the cabinets in Kat’s pretty but nonfunctional kitchen. Seriously, who keeps potholders all the way over by the sink when the stove is across the room? Actually, it reminds me of my nephew’s apartment.
“It’s nice to hear from you again so soon, Uncle Tommy. How are things at château Harrington?”
“You’re fired,” I grumble, placing the sauce pot on the burner and pulling a cutting board from the back of another cabinet.
He chuckles and I can hear the tapping of keys in the background. Luckily for him, it’s the only thing keeping my blood pressure in check at the moment.
Kat Harrington has a certain vulnerability to her that gets to me in a way I’ve never experienced before. I’ve seen tragedy and heartbreak and I’ve seen grotesque and vile.
But the sadness in her eyes and the way she reacted like a cornered animal this morning is something I can’t get out of my head. I’ve never wanted to wage a war just to see someone smile, but I can’t think of much I wouldn’t do to see the lightness returnto her gorgeous face. I want to make her promises I have no business saying aloud.
I want to kiss her—taste her—and own that sweet body until she forgets she ever had to worry.
But I have to keep my hands,and mouth,to myself.
So, I’ll cook and yell at my nephew because he tolerates me, thank God. The thought has a smile curving up the corner of my lips as I set the phone on speaker and prop it up on the counter.
“Are you cooking?” he asks and I sigh, pulling a knife from the butcher’s block and starting to work on the onion I found.
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m just saying…”
“She needs to eat. I need to eat. I’m making dinner.”
“Sure.” Silence fills the line but it’s comfortable, like when he first came to live with me and we didn’t have anything to talk about yet so we just occupied the same space.
“I need Ozzy to come and retrieve something she got in the mail.”
“Today?”
“I don’t know. It was hand delivered, no postage.” I pour some olive oil into the pan as it’s heating and rescue a few cloves of garlic from a bowl on the counter that have seen better days. I rattle off the information Kat had shared about how long she was away.
“So, we have a several-day window. Any thoughts?”
“My gut says it was delivered Saturday thinking she’d return home.” Swallowing hard, I add the diced onion into the pot and give it a gentle stir. “It’s a pretty significant escalation from one vandalized book to arson of several in a residential neighborhood.”
