Page 62 of Late Harvest

“Licking. Heinies…and other parts.” He watched a flush rise from the neck of her Red Bull shirt—possibly the least suggestive top a person could wear…and yet, she looked delectable.

“Sebastian.” Her voice was barely a rasp.

“Yes, my queen?” Bash gave her an innocuous look. Fuck, it really was way too much fun to wind her up. It would—no, will—be way more fun to wind her up higher…and watch her detonate.

“Can you—” She coughed, cleared her throat, and started again, this time her voice held its customary cool edge. “Can you not talk about…licking parts, please?”

“If you insist. I do agree, talking about licking isn’t the best.”

“Thank you,” she replied haughtily, turning her attention to the fucking laptop.

“Doing it’s way better.”

“Sebastian!” Her face blazed, but he reveled in the laugh he saw her fighting to contain. And the rapid rise and fall of her chest.

Bullseye.

“Enough. I’m going back to my charts now. And you go back to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or whatever it is you’re reading.” She waved a dismissive hand and shifted her focus to the device that was currently battling him for her attention.

He would triumph. That was the thing with ADHD. When you were doing a ‘preferred’ task, it made it easier to focus. And, right now, Arabella Remington was his preferred everything.

He tugged one of her toes. “Hey…no disparaging Wimpy Kid. That’s a great series.”

“You read it?”

“Hell, yeah. I’m a connoisseur of the words. There can be long waits on set, and I like to read. I enjoy all sorts of books. Romance just happens to be my favorite. So how do you know about that series?”

“From a pediatric ortho trauma patient I had at Hopkins. She was a bookworm. She’d suffered a compound femur fracture in a car accident. When she woke in the post-anesthesia care unit, she kept asking for her book. Her mom didn’t know where it was—probably in the car, which had been totaled and towed away.” Arabella’s gaze was wistful. No sign of his grumpy ice queen. “This young girl didn’t even complain about her pain. She only wanted the book—at one point breaking down into tears. I ran out to a nearby bookstore, and thankfully they had the series. I wasn’t sure which ones she’d read, so I bought the whole thing.”

Bash lifted her foot and pressed a kiss to her instep. “You pretend to be all tough and hard edges, but you’re a softie, aren’t you, Arabella Remington?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she sniffed. “It was just the right thing to do.”

“Mmmhmm,” he replied, opening his book with one hand so he could continue to hold her foot with the other. He’d never had a foot fetish, but Bash was pretty sure at this point, he had an overall Arabella fetish.

“What are you reading?” She nudged the book with her toes.

“Shifter romance.”

“What the hell is that?”

“You don’t know what a shifter romance is?”

“Clearly. Pretty sure my question ‘what the hell is that’ is a dead giveaway. If you’re into conversational cues.”

“Oh, she has jokes, my friends. Well, Dr. Remington, shifter romance is a subgenre of romance. I read all the subgenres, but I’m a mood reader and I was in the mood for shifters. Basically, one or both lead characters can shift into the form of an animal—usually a wolf, but there are many others. Good plots and steamy sex. Especially when the male knots the female.”

“Come again?”

“Exactly. Come again, and again, and again. All the wolves are hung like…well, it feels weird to say ‘horses’ when I’m talking about wolves. Suffice it to say, they’re hung. And very protective. Possessive. Secretly romantic. It’s good stuff.”

“Knotting?”

“Look it up. Then tell me what you think.” Bash winked at her and he’d bet his entire bank account she’d be opening a new tab in her Internet browser before too long. “Also, remember how you were during the race, wanting to focus and all that?” She nodded at him. “Be quiet. I’m getting to the really spicy stuff. Knot forthcoming.” Then he adjusted his glasses and pretended to read.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

What do you call a steak that’s been knighted by a queen?