Chapter 16 #2
I rolled my hands over the other. “Which do you prefer? All guys are in one camp or the other.”
“Never watched them.”
“No childhood binge watching?” At his headshake, I released a mock gasp. “You never sat on that block-edged sofa and had a movie night? Wait, there wasn’t even a TV. I can’t believe I didn’t notice until now.”
He shrugged. “Which are ye?”
“Also neither. I’m a Lord of the Rings girl. Let me guess, that’s a mystery to you, too.”
“I thought everyone was in one camp?”
“Girls have more options. You are missing out if you never beheld Aragorn smoking his pipe in the Inn of the Prancing Pony.”
Kane muttered something I couldn’t pick up, and I took the moment to force my lips to say what I really wanted.
“What does rough look like to you?”
He stilled. Flexed his fingers on the steering wheel then gripped it tighter. “More than last night.”
“Meaning?”
“Sure ye want to hear?”
“Spill it, Ryan, because my brain is working overtime.”
With his focus not straying from the road, Kane spoke.
“I give ye a head start of twenty seconds then catch up easily when you’re breathing hard.
I’d pin ye to a tree, my hands in your clothes gripping on to your lush body, that pretty hair wound around my fist, then my dick sliding into your tight cunt.
I don’t wait around. I take what I want and fuck ye until you’re screaming my name.
People might see. Or hear. Someone could call the cops, which means admitting to them how ye like to play. ”
A stunned silence filled the car.
I forced myself to start breathing again, though my heart pounded. “That’s what you enjoy?”
“With ye, it’s all I imagine. I know my brand of sex is not yours.”
“So last night, after… You didn’t…?”
“Jack off in the living room? No. No matter how turned on ye made me, I can handle the want.”
For a while, I got lost in the thoughts of what he’d described.
How would that chase-attack deal even work?
With a lot of trust and prior discussion, probably.
My gaze got stuck on the sight of his hands.
Big, capable hands that could so easily hold me down so I couldn’t move. That had done so in his bed.
One of his cuts from yesterday was bleeding again, the bandages I’d stuck on gone.
I reached for the glove compartment and the first-aid kit. “I’ll patch that up.”
He let me, his fingers warm.
I pondered more as I worked. “You said no girlfriend had ever stayed over, except you owned that flat for two years. Have you been single all that time?”
“I’ve always been single.”
My mouth fell open. “You’ve never had a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Never fallen in love? What about as a teenager?”
He shook his head in the negative.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty in a month. Let’s turn this interrogation around. How many times have ye fallen in love, flower girl?”
My shock morphed into a ready smile. “As a teenager, every other week. As an adult? Actually, none. Unless you count fictional characters in books, hot actors, or singers in rock bands. Then also every other week.”
Kane laughed. He cut it off before I could react. “So the guy you dumped, the arsehole outside the police station, what did he do wrong?”
“I don’t want to say. It’s embarrassing.”
I taped the fresh bandage onto his skin then released his hand.
He wrapped his fingers around my wrist. “Tell me anyway. I’ve got to have earned something for how much I’ve given up.”
“Fine. Lyle had soft hands. They gave me the ick.”
This earned a gloating smile he didn’t try to hide. “I’d say I felt bad for him, but fuck that guy. Ye wouldnae be helping me if there was someone waiting at home.”
“What do you mean? Of course I would.”
“No boyfriend would let you go off in a car with a man like me.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Let me? And what are you, exactly?”
“A threat.”
A buzz of energy chased his words. In that, he wasn’t wrong. I tried to settle my thoughts, letting the busy road calm my even busier mind.
“You’d make a good boyfriend to someone in future, if you had a little instruction.”
Kane rolled his eyes. “Trying to boyfriend-train me? Pass.”
“We could add it to our deal.”
This earned me a more serious look. “What are ye offering in return?”
Heat spread out in a pulse I felt in every part of me.
His phone rang, connected to the car speakers. Without looking at the screen, Kane swiped to answer. “Yes?”
“Kane Ryan,” a woman’s voice purred.
My heart stopped.
That was far from a professional tone.
He breathed out through his nose, his expression flat. “I can’t talk now. I’ll call you back.”
“Okay, honey. You do that.”
She hung up, but not before I registered the name on his screen.
Alice (London).
Oh God. Nausea rose in my throat.
Cringing in on myself, I turned away from him. The name and the way she spoke to him screamed hookup. Alice was probably beautiful. Slim and funny without emotional baggage and down to fuck in whatever way he wanted. Nothing like me.
Hurt chased the other horrible feelings, gutting me out. It was unreasonable. He wasn’t mine. Except for a short while, he had been.
“What?” he asked.
I didn’t answer, busy suffering a little heartbreak for no good reason.
Kane tried again. “That upset ye. I regret answering it but I didn’t know who it was.” He swore and shoved his fingers into his short hair. “Fuck. Ye don’t like me. Ye turned me down. I asked when we were in Leith and ye said no. I described my preference and ye blanked me.”
He was right. Still, I couldn’t find any words. Worse were the awful tears that burned my eyes. One slid down my cheek, and I dashed it away, horrified. But it hurt. I couldn’t pretend it didn’t.
How strange. My emotions had identified him as their target and clung.
Kane swore again then snatched up his phone. He tapped the screen a few times, then a call played out over the speakers.
The woman answered. “That was quick.”
“I’m no longer available. Delete my number.”
He hung up.
Purposefully in my eyeline, he tapped her number again then blocked and deleted it.
“Will that stop ye crying?”
I managed a tiny nod. Though now I felt bad for Alice, whoever she was. Maybe she’d liked him, too.
Kane tossed his phone into the drinks holder, his expression settling back into grumpy. It took a minute for him to form a sentence. “Ye have a high emotional range.”
“I…I know.”
“Am I the cause?”
“No, just a catalyst.”
Neither of us said a single word more, because at last, we’d entered Dixie’s city of hiding. I reset every errant feeling. My friend needed me more than whatever the heck was happening with Kane.