‘Funny, Kitten. He’s one of a kind, fortunately.’
‘He’s mad, Kai! Absolutely nuts. And if I wasn’t marrying you, I think I’d marry him, gay or not! He’s my kind of company. I’d have to lock all the booze away, of course.’
‘Tell me he didn’t serve champagne.’ When I don’t answer, he adds a heavy groan. ‘The pair will have been on top form. Why was he there? He’s not a dressmaker.’
‘Wash out your mouth! I’ve got a designer on the job. Dressmaker, indeed.’ My heart lurches, my mind going to who I did see at theatelier.I’d probably mispronounce the name of the place, anyway. ‘And we went to see him at his office.’
‘My darling has become a snob.’ He sounds amused, his voice almost purring, the vibration hitting me right in my knicker box. Also, snob sounds sort of like knob, doesn’t it?
‘Hey, you can take the girl out of the cane fields, but you can’t take the cane field out of the girl.’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you from a metropolitan city, rather than some backwater?’
‘Depends on who you’re talking to. We’re a funny lot, us Aussies.’ And we’ve got cane toads where I’m from. Loads of the buggers. Yuck.
‘Nothing else of note happened yesterday?’ he asks, directing the conversation away from idiocy, the heavy hint in his tone.
‘Not really. Unless you mean the arrival of... our new arrival.’
‘Oh, you got her, did you?’ I can almost hear his smile.
‘I got her all right.’ My own tone is less than overwhelmed, and I recall how I’d meant this conversation to go. But she’s a she, is she? How the hell would you tell?
‘You don’t seem, dare I say, pleased?’
‘It was a very lovely thought, but you really shouldn’t have.’
‘I wanted—’
‘No, youreallyshouldn’t have.’ He begins to chuckle, low and deep. ‘I’m serious! I can’t be trusted with houseplants, never mind a living, breathing thing.’
‘She’s to keep you company. To be honest, I quite liked the idea of my pussy being curled up with yours.’
‘So, she’s your cat?’ I’m almost relieved. I didn’t know Kai was a cat person. Pussy, maybe, but pets? Not so much.
And hellooo, no responsibility!
‘That’snot exactlywhat I meant.’
‘Not yours—oohh.’ How can any person have a reaction like this, shoulders sagging even as an internal throbbing begins. Yes, right inhispussy, it seems. Wonder if he can feel it.I wish he bloody could.
‘Kai, do you remember the night we first got together? The—’
‘Vividly,’ he growls, and all of a sudden, I’ve forgotten where I was going with this. ‘And on more than one occasion.’
‘Really?’ This one word sounds hopeful and breathy, not to mention a little desperate.
‘That night, when I saw you outside of the hotel, you were limping slightly. Your shoes were perhaps pinching your feet? My aim at that point was to see you barefoot, in the morning light, limping still as you left my suite.’
‘Why, were you planning on kicking me in the shins?’
‘Very funny,habibti.’
‘And they say romance is dead,’ I reply with a sigh.
‘For me, it wasn’t about romance at that point. I was just desperate to fuck you.’ His voice is all animal and growly, the pertinent word now throbbing between my legs. In a change of tone, he adds quietly. ‘Seems like a lifetime ago. Someone I was in another life. In the suite,’—he uses that tone again, the one that turns me to mush—‘I turned you against the sofa back. Do you remember?’
Not wanting to interrupt and lost in my own memories, I murmur softly that I do.
