Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
“I need to get back to the rental, Kasey,” she whispered weakly in protest, but he saw the submission in her eyes.
She wanted to stay. Wanted to be his, at least for a little longer.
He’d take it. “My parents are going to wonder where I am. What am I supposed to say? ‘Sorry to bail on family vacay, I’m busy getting dicked down’? ”
Slipping out of his seat of the booth, he shushed her when she protested as he slid in beside her, pressing his thigh against hers and draping his arm around her shoulders.
“That fucking mouth,” he drawled on a chuckle, then silenced her with his mouth on hers. “You’re going to be a handful.”
“Good thing you have two hands,” she snapped dryly, but he recognized the breathlessness in her voice. The fight had gone out of her sometime in the last twelve hours. She fought valiantly to maintain it, but he knew it was rapidly disintegrating.
“What’s your favorite color?” he asked, and nearly chuckled at the confusion that crossed her beautiful face.
“Excuse me?” she asked, her eyebrows drawing close together in a V.
Tapping her on the tip of the nose, he quipped, “Come on now, I know you know English. What is your favorite color?”
“What does that matter?” Leaning away from him slightly, she shook her head.
He shrugged. “I can guess if you’d like. See how close I am.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes, tossing her braid over her shoulder as she reached for her coffee. Bringing it to her lips, she took a long drink, then turned those stunning sapphire eyes on him again. Defiance, a taunt, hung in the air. “Go right ahead, big guy.”
Taking a drink of his own coffee, he studied her. “Blue.” Her face went blank and he grinned. “Am I correct?”
Her eyes narrowed on him. “That wasn’t even a fair question, half the world’s population’s favorite color is blue. That’s just a lucky guess. You won’t get that lucky twice.”
“Try me,” he murmured, sitting back in the booth next to her, his thigh still pressed close against the length of hers under the table. The waitress arrived then with their plates of food, and they each said a quiet thank you before she turned back to him. “You choose the question.”
Stabbing her fork into the decadent, strawberry cream cheese stuffed French toast, she stuck a bite into her mouth and moaned, the sound going straight to Kasey’s dick, making it thicken in his sweatpants. Not great timing.
“What’s my favorite movie?”
Slathering his omelet with the sausage gravy, he used his fork to cut a bite before sticking it into his mouth. “That’s a very broad question. Narrow it down a bit. Are we talking favorite overall, favorite comfort movie, or what?”
Chewing on a bite of her food, she swallowed, then turned to him. “Favorite comfort movie.”
“Princess Bride.”
Her gasp made him grin. She didn’t even have to say the words; he knew he was right. “But your guilty pleasure movies are The Fast and the Furious series.”
“Have you been spying on me?” she snapped, setting down her fork and staring at him. “This isn’t funny, Kasey. That’s creepy as fuck.”
“You’re much easier to read than you think,” he said simply.
“Your phone case has blue tiger lilies on it, and the tag on your suitcase is some other kind of blue flowers. That one was just a lucky guess. I didn’t take you for a pink kind of girl.
The Fast and the Furious series is a no brainer with your affinity for cars.
I’ll bet you and Tristan have had marathons watching those movies just the two of you.
” Picking up his coffee, he took another drink.
“The Princess Bride was a little tougher, but you made several references to it in your maid of honor speech yesterday; so that was really just a wild guess.”
“That’s still creepy,” Shaun muttered, turning back to her food.
“I’m just observant,” he chuckled. “I was the odd man out, the middle child, so I spent a lot of time watching other people as a kid. Just something that followed me into adulthood, I suppose.”
“Is that how you knew?” she whispered, looking at him with narrowed eyes. “You could see it?”
His heart thudded in his chest. He knew what she was referring to. “It was more… what I didn’t see.”
Her fingers tightened around the fork in her hand and she stabbed another bite of French toast, her motions stilted and angry.
“What happened, Shaun?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head, then turned to fix him with that intense sapphire gaze.
“I’m not rehashing my failed engagement with you, Kase.
If I decide to stay, and that’s a big if mind you, there’s no digging into pasts, no long, heartfelt talks.
I don’t want to get to know you, and quite honestly, I don’t want you to know anymore about me than you already do.
This can be a break from constantly making each other’s lives hell, but at the end of it, nothing changes.
This is just to scratch the itch of whatever this is. Understand?”
His lips twitched with the need to smile at her fervent declaration, knowing full well that this wasn’t going to be finished at the end of this holiday break.
Her eyes narrowed, witness to the teasing glint in his own, and she waved the tines of her fork in his direction.
“I mean it, Kasey. We get this out of our system, and we go our separate ways. I can’t deny that we have chemistry, and clearly we are attracted to each other.
But at the end of the day, I can’t stand you and you can’t stand me. ”
“Bet I can change your mind, darlin’,” he drawled, reaching out and running his finger down the edge of her jaw and down the side of her neck.
“Kasey…” she muttered through clenched teeth, though her head did tilt into his touch, her eyes softening as desire took over. Damn woman would try to fight to the bitter end.
“Get that whipped cream to go,” he murmured, sliding his mouth over hers languidly. “If this weekend is all I get, I’m going to ruin you, darlin’.”