22. Christopher
All I can do is look at this woman in front of me. This strong, independent, classy woman. The nerves that were all in my stomach bringing her here have turned into bile, listening to her tell me her story. My hands clench into fists with each word that comes out. “So before this goes forward, you have to make a decision. Will you ever be okay knowing I was Benji’s once?” I start to open my mouth, not sure what I’m going to say, but wanting to say at least something. “You don’t have to decide now. For tonight, I want to sit down at a table with a hot man who thinks I’m just as hot as him. I want to drink wine and see if I can still flirt.” All I can do is smirk at her. “If you give me anything, at least give me tonight.”
“Are you done?” I finally ask when she reaches over to grab her glass of wine and bring it to her lips.
“Yes.” She nods, smirking back at me. “For now, I think.”
“Good.” I tap the table with my finger. “Before I say anything else, it needs to be said that you are way hotter than me tonight and every other day.” She rolls her eyes at that. “With that said, I also have to tell you I had no idea what Benji was up to with the women.” I shake my head. “Never, and I mean never, would I have been okay with that.”
“I kind of figured that,” she says softly. “Again, it wasn’t your place to do anything about it. He did that. I mean, in the last couple of months, he didn’t really try to hide it from me. Some nights, he didn’t even come home until six o’clock in the morning.”
I hold my hand up. “You are going to need to stop talking because, at this very minute, I’m wishing I could drag him back up and beat the ever-loving shit out of him.” I swallow back the anger. “You said that I have to make a decision, and you’re right.” Her eyes just watch me, and all I want is to lean over and kiss her, except I’m not sure if I should. I’m not sure she wants me to. “But with that said, you also have to decide what you want in all this. You kept saying I had to make a decision, and you are wholeheartedly right, I do. You have a say in this also, so what do you want?” I move my hand on the table to put it on hers. “You don’t have to decide now. For tonight, I want to sit down at a table with the woman who drives me crazy. With the woman who, with just one look, gets me so hot and bothered I don’t even know what is going on around us.” I wink at her. “For tonight, it’s just you and me. Good food, with great fucking company.” She smiles bigger. “Also, you’re not taking off that jacket because I swear to God I’ve already been at half-mast since you opened the door, and it’s about to go from fifty to a hundred.” She puts her head back and giggles, making my cock immediately go to one hundred and fifty. “Well, it’s at a hundred.” I lean over and kiss her neck. “I like you wearing your hair like that.”
“Yeah?” she asks as she moves her hand from under mine, to put it on top. “Why is that?”
“Easy access to this part.” I move my hand from the table to touch the back of her ear, and she shivers under my touch. “Then it leads to this.” I move my finger down her neck to underneath her jaw. “Then right about here, where I can feel how your heart beats for me.”
“I know you said you were at half-mast before.” She looks around, speaking softly, “I’d like to let you know, even if I wanted to, I can’t take off my jacket because my nipples have been hard since the minute you touched my hand.” She leans into me, and my body moves to her. “And I can tell you right now,” she whispers in my ear, “I’m wet for you.” She kisses behind my ear, and now it’s my turn to shiver. “I guess you can say I’m at a hundred.”
“I was a hundred the minute you laughed,” I admit, and her eyes get hazy with lust.
She’s about to say something when the phone rings from her purse. She reaches out to grab the handbag and unzip it. “It’s my mother.” She looks at me. “She has the kids.”
“Answer it,” I tell her, wondering if the girls are okay.
“Hey, is everything okay?” she says, and I can see the worry on her face, “Saturday morning, why?” she questions her mother, and then she laughs. “I was hoping she wouldn’t remember. It’s all good. Text me once you guys head out.” She says goodbye and hangs up.
“Everything okay?”
She nods, putting her phone back in her purse. “Rain asked about hockey on Saturday. And then threw a fit that she was missing it.” I smirk at her. “So they are coming home Friday.”
“She loves being on skates,” I state proudly.
“She always did, but didn’t have anyone to—” She shakes her head. “Not tonight.”
“Not tonight,” I agree with her. “There is a lot we need to get into, so how much did you miss me this week?”
She picks up her glass of wine. “Not even a bit.” She tries to hide her smile. “Maybe just like.” She holds up her hand and uses her thumb and forefinger to pinch just a bit. “And then maybe the next day a little more.” She opens her fingers. “But then I remembered why I was mad at you, so it went to zero.” She closes her fingers, and I can’t help but laugh at her. “But by the end of the night, it was always this much.” She uses both hands to show me.
“Good.” I chuckle. “Just so you know, I missed you too.”
“Obviously.” She takes a sip of her wine, trying to be serious but then just laughing silently. “I’m pretty fucking spectacular.”
“That you fucking are.” I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know when it happened, but Koda is under my skin, and I want her even more under my skin.
* * *
I slidemy hand in hers after putting my jacket on. Her fingers slide into mine like she’s always done this, like she was born with my hand in hers. My thumb rubs her hand while I walk side by side with her. The valet guy sees me walking outside, so he grabs my keys and rushes to get my car. I turn to her, standing right in front of her. I wrap my free arm around her waist and pull her to me. “I want to take you home with me,” I declare as she slides her hand out of mine and puts both of them on my chest. “Literally nothing more I want in this world than to take you home with me. I’d take you to bed and wake up with you.” She looks down. “But I’m not going to do that because I respect you too much. You deserve to be worshipped, but more importantly, you deserve to be shown how much you mean to me.”
“Christopher,” she says my name, and once again, it shoots straight through my heart and down to my dick.
“No, I’m not going to bend on this. When we go there, and we will get there, Dakota.” She smirks at me. “It’s going to be the last time it’ll be a first for both of us.”
“What do you mean?” Her fingers tap my chest.
“I can’t see the future,” I admit, “but if it’s going to be anything like right now, right here at this moment, I know there will be no one else after you, which means there will be no one else for you.”
Her eyes go big. “So that is something else you have to think about. It’s not a game I want to play, but it’s a game I’m going to fucking win because the result is something I can’t imagine losing.”
“Tonight is the best date I’ve ever been on,” she confesses, looking down and then looking back up. “You know why?” I wrap both hands around her waist, pulling her flush to me. “I’ll tell you why. Because I knew without a shadow of a doubt there was no one else you wanted to be sitting in front of you. Never, not once, did your eyes stray from mine to look around the room to see who was there or who was looking at you. You had eyes just for me, and I’ve never, ever had that.” She smiles so big her eyes crinkle as she moves her hands from my chest to my neck. “I never knew how much I liked that until now. So thank you for that.”
“Anytime, baby,” I assure her, bending my head and kissing her lips softly. “I’m at one hundred and seven.”
“I know.” She laughs. “I can feel it.”
“Great.” I know I should be embarrassed, but I’m not. She fucking drives me wild, and she needs to know that.
“Also, you should know I want to have a make-out session in your car.” She pulls away from me when my car stops right beside us. “Like a hot-and-heavy one.”
“Are you trying to kill my dick?” I ask as the valet gets out of the car and rushes over to open her door, but I step in front of him, grabbing the handle. “I got her.” I look over my shoulder, making sure I block all access to Dakota that I can. When she is in the car, I close the door, turning to look at the guy. “Thank you.” I slide him a twenty-dollar bill before walking around the car and getting in.
I pull away from the restaurant, heading in the direction of our houses. Pulling into the subdivision, and then, instead of driving toward her house, I drive toward mine. “Where are we going?”
“You said you wanted a hot-and-heavy make-out session in the car.” I turn to her, worried she changed her mind. “I’m not going to have your neighbors talk about you making out in a car, so I’m going to go to my house. We will drive into the garage and make out with each other, and then I’ll drive you home.”
“What is wrong with you?” She shakes her head, and I twist my head to look at her. “You can’t be that perfect.”
“I mean, I’m not going to say I am because if you talk to my sisters, they can tell you exactly why I’m not perfect.” I press the button to open the garage door. “I’m far from perfect.” I put the car in park and shut it off before pressing the button to shut the door.
“I don’t know about that. You are pretty fucking perfect to me,” she states, taking off her seat belt and turning in her seat, her back toward the door. “All of you is pretty perfect.”
I undo my seat belt and then reach over to grab her face in my hands. Her hands fly to my face at the same time our lips meet. Her tongue slides into my mouth, and I swear to God I see fucking stars kissing her. She kisses me back with everything she has. I let one hand leave her face while pressing the button to make my seat extend all the way back. The whole time our tongues are fighting a match, but in the end, we’re both winners. When it’s all the way back, I grab her and pull her over the middle console and into my lap. I expect her to sit on my lap, but instead, she turns to straddle me. Her back leans against the horn, making us both jump and then laugh hysterically. “I should have taken the truck. There is much more room in the truck.”
“Nothing like getting a heart attack while making out.” She leans forward, and her smile fades when she kisses me again. This time, it starts out slow, us both taking our time, but it’s not long before it’s hot and heavy all over again. Her hands roam up and down my chest while my hands roam up and down her back toward her ass.
“I should get you home,” I tell her when she grinds down on me, making us both moan, “before I forget everything I said earlier and end up fucking you on the hood of the car.” Her eyes literally close halfway when I say that. “Okay, so the second time I fuck you will be on the hood of the car.” I kiss her one more time before she gets off me.
“Going to have to make a list,” she mumbles once she buckles herself up and I turn on the car.
“What list is that?” I ask, pulling out and she shocks the fuck out of me when she answers.
“Places I want to have sex.” My foot hits the brake, jerking us both forward.
“Excuse me?” I shake my head, not sure I heard her.
“I never thought about it before you said you were going to fuck me on your car.” She points at the hood. “But now that I think about it, I kind of want to get fucked on your car and maybe other places.”
“Dakota,” I say her name through clenched teeth. I’m sure my jaw is twitching.
“What?” she says, looking over at me. “It’s something that came to my mind.”
I shake my head and pull out of the driveway and head over to her house. I get out of the car to walk to the door. She takes out the key and opens it but doesn’t step inside. “Thank you for tonight, Christopher.” She gets on her tippy-toes to kiss me on the lips before turning and stepping into the house.
I watch her smile at me as she closes the door, and when she almost has it shut is when I speak. “I want to see that list,” I tell her, and her eyes fill with lust, “because I have my own as well.” I wink at her before walking down the steps and then looking over my shoulder. “Night, baby.”