CHAPTER 4
Kian
“No way!” she hisses in a hushed voice, ensuring only I can hear her attempt to scold me.
It’s fucking adorable and the most vibrant she’s looked in days.
“If you insist on waiting for me, then you wait out here.” She prods a skinny finger into my chest, and I flame inside from the contact. If only she’d run those fingers all over my body, I’d be a lucky man. Capturing that poking hand before she can recall it, I flatten it to my chest, and the bloom of color on her cheeks intensifies. I have many female relatives, so I’m well aware of how female moods work, having been on the brunt end of many over the years. But no woman is crankier than Samia, and it comes naturally, as if it’s her default setting, and she’s so gorgeous with it. She can unleash her bad temper on me, and I’ll gladly embrace it. If only she would allow herself to relax a bit. Instead, she’s a tight bundle of constriction, insisting she feels nothing for me but irritation.
If only her hot little eyes didn’t always seek me out, I’d believe her better.
“Sorry, dreamgirl, it’s me in that room with you, or we turn around and go home.”
With a count of four in my head, she doesn’t disappoint as I watch her eyes flare with temper. Behind us, sitting at a reception desk, is a nosy purple-haired girl watching us closely, listening to every word.
“My body autonomy is not your business. I already told you there aren’t any male beauticians here. What’s the big deal?”
Stepping closer, she tips her head back to shoot me a glare, and it takes everything in me not to crush her naked lips underneath mine and force her to groan into my throat. All these months, I still haven’t taken the kiss I crave.
Dropping my head another inch, I could easily taste her lips from this angle, especially with her hand still trapped between us. I use my other hand to tip her chin up.
“If you’re getting your pussy waxed, Samia, I won’t allow you to be vulnerable with a stranger in a closed room. Decide now before I march us out of here.”
I’m being unreasonable, but who cares? The thought of someone, even another woman, with her hands between Samia’s legs makes me fucking feral. I’m seconds away from insisting I’ll wax her at home, taking it nice and slow as I glide my fingers over her delicate skin. Fuck, I’d love that.
She doesn’t hide how she wants to rip into me, and I absorb how I’ve won this round when she tugs away and stalks toward the appointed room. She turns and murmurs a warning hiss when I’m looming behind her. “You’ll sit far away and not look at anything other than the ceiling or the inside of your eyelids. You got it?”
“You say it like I haven’t seen every inch of you, baby. Tasted you, smelled you, fucking worshipped every part of your body.” The air pulses around us, and Samia’s gaze lingers on my mouth before my cranky girl returns. Palming the back of her neck, I rub a little and hear her sigh.
Her voice turns softer. “Promise you won’t look at what’s happening, Kian.”
Other than telling me to leave fifteen times a day, she hasn’t asked me for anything, so this is easy.
“Of course, baby.”
What’s a little white lie between lovers?
It turns out I don’t have a chance to be a dirty pervert and view my girl with her legs open because, not even five minutes into her leg waxing, she rubs her forehead. I’ve seen the cues often, so I know what’s happening. Grabbing her purse, I fish around inside for the bottle of pills she carries and shake two into my hand. There’s a water vending machine in the room, so I feed it a five-dollar bill and grab a water bottle. Uncapping it, I stand by her head. “Headache? Open your mouth, baby.”
“Yeah, the start of one.” She sighs, accepting the pills onto her tongue; she even lets me raise her head with my hand on the back of her neck so she can sip the water. “Thanks, Kian.” She looks up at me and smiles.
Samia has no idea how much I’ll provide for her if given the chance. Helping to ease her pain is only the tip of the iceberg for how far I’ll go to make her life easier.
Once she’s had another sip of water, I toss it into her purse and stand at her head, aware of her stubbornness, so I know she won’t cut the appointment short until she’s shorn every hair from her body. I do what I can and start a twin caress on her temples. Samia instantly moans with relief, and the noise goes directly to my groin.
“Thank you.” Her pain is strong if she’s not fighting my touch.
“Close your eyes, sweetheart, and,” I check out the beautician’s name badge, “LeAnn will speed things up so I can get you home to rest.”
“Aww, you have a good one, girlie. I wish all men were as sweet as him. Mine won’t do a thing without me nagging him.” The beautician chirps while working on my girl.
Samia snorts, and I continue rubbing her temples. “Don’t buy into his charm act, LeAnn. This one is as devilish as they come.”
“Ignore her,” I smirk, “headaches make my girl talk nonsense. She loves me, really.”
Another sexy little female snort.
The waxing was an experience. I thought I was only bothered if a man was attending to Samia. Wrong. I hated every second of that woman stripping Samia of her body hair. My back teeth hurt from keeping my tongue in check before I told Samia I’d eat her whole with slurping sounds, even if she had a forest between her sweet thighs. By the time that shit is done, sweat dots my forehead, and I spring forward when Samia swings her legs down from the table. I’m the lucky one to grab her panties first.
“Don’t even think about it,” she warns, shoving the sheet over her lap.
“We made a deal, remember?” I’m not without the means to play unscrupulously as I watch her snap her lips closed. “Let me help you get dressed. You’re hurting.”
The air is electric around us, unadulterated lust swirling between her and me, making it unbearable not to put my hands all over her as I grip her hipbones and pull her forward.
“You only have to say the word,” I rasp, silently begging her to, so I can go fucking wild on her body, with everything I’ve kept a tight leash on for fucking forever.
No doubt we’re the focus of the salon gossip when we exit the room because all eyes turn our way. It can’t be often that a boyfriend insists on being in the waxing area. They’d understand if they knew the depth of my obsession with this woman. I pay with my card before Samia can reach for hers. She only gives a token huff, and I slide a hand down to pat her ass. I then hand a hundred-dollar bill to LeAnn for her service and stuff another in the tip jar on the receptionist’s desk.
“Oh, girlie, does he have a brother? Maybe cousins?” jokes the beautician. “I see what you mean about him. He’s smooth like whiskey, just like you said he was.”
Because my hand is slowly massaging the back of Samia’s neck, she stills like she’s frozen.
“I said that? W-when?”
“Hmm, you haven’t been here for a few months, but I recall the last time you talked about a guy you couldn’t stop thinking about. You said he was all charm and big dick energy.” LeAnn chuckles and aims her heated stare my way. “I see what you mean. So happy it worked out for you. Shall I put you in the book for two weeks?”
It’s easy to notice how rattled Samia is as she nods agreement, and we exit the store. Even before I’ve gotten her to the car, she turns on me, her almond-shaped eyes full of color and worry. My poor girl. If only she’d give herself entirely to me, I’d make everything go away instantly.
“Let’s get home before that headache cracks your skull open.”
“Was I talking about you? What LeAnn said. Were you the guy I was interested in?”
“Are interested in, baby,” I reassure her with a kiss on her forehead, my lips lingering, taking any fix I can like a pathetic junkie. “I’m your man.”
“Then why don’t I remember anything about our so-called relationship, Kian? If we’ve been together for so long, why don’t I have one memory of us?” she panics, and I don’t think she realizes she’s clutched onto the front of my shirt. Gathering her in, I soothe a hand down her back.
The world falls away around us as I get her in my arms. “Dreamgirl, don’t get upset. The doctors said your lost memories should return when your brain is healed.”
She whines, dropping her forehead to my chest. “I don’t get it. I remember almost everything from my life, school, and college. The first kiss I had.” This part brings a vicious growl from my throat, jealousy racing through my skull that I wasn’t the first person to taste her sweet lips.
I’ll be the last damn man, that’s for sure.
“Don’t mention that now, Samia,” I warn, and she dares to chuckle, lifting her face before she grows sober again.
“You act so possessive of me.”
“You’re mine.”
She might as well get used to hearing it. From the second she woke up from her accident, and I was hanging onto my sanity by a hair, I haven’t hidden how I feel about her, and I won’t now.
“Was I that way about you? You know, before?”
Kissing her forehead again, I press my thumb into the base of her nape, and I’m rewarded with her moan as I stroke at her growing pain.
“My cranky girl, you can be possessive or aloof, and I’ll still want you like a crazed fucking beast.”
At least she laughs when she gives me her eyes.
“I’m trying not to act like a brat. And if you say we’re a couple, I’ll try to believe it, but to give you full disclosure, I should confess, Kian, I might have been cheating on you before.”
Of all the things she could have said, this is the one thing that makes me laugh and earns me a jab in the ribs.
“I’m serious. Aren’t you even bothered? If our relationship was so wonderful, as you claim.”
“Sweetheart,” I smirk, “we’re combustible, and if you let me get my hands on you more often, you’d know it, too. You weren’t cheating on me.”
She frowns. “But I have this sense that I had feelings for someone important.”
“That’s me.”
Her look says she’s not sure she can trust what I say.
She doesn’t need to know yet or even at all that I’ve watched her for a long time, almost like a fanatical religion.
Without her knowledge, most of the time.
Even using slightly immoral means.
It’s a step in the right direction after I get her buckled in the car and place her hand on my thigh, she leaves it there. Biting on her lip, deep in thought. I don’t push her to share those thoughts because I know everything I need to.
My dreamgirl is coming to the point of accepting she’s mine.
Elation stirs through my blood like a dizzy spell as I maneuver the car back to the Madsen brownstone house through the hectic streets.
Before long, I’ll have Samia in my home where she belongs.
When she drifts off to sleep, I lift her fingers and run my lips over the back of her knuckles; she murmurs something but doesn’t stop me.
It’s progress.
Being an overbearing prick with little principles and a head full of obsession pays off occasionally. I need to get my delicate girl settled in bed to sleep off her headache, and then there’s somewhere else I need to be.
Somewhere less pleasant than watching over her sleeping form.
It took me months, but I found the answers I’ve been searching for.
And payback is about to be a bitch.