10. Orgasms and the Perfect Latte #2
They put a medium coffee in a large cup to make room for my extra foam. I know whose idea that was and it wasn't the barista. I order extra foam all the time and they just put less latte in my cup to make room for it.
With a happy little moan, I take a sip of the vanilla latte, getting a perfect mouthful of foam with it.
"Did you check the peephole before you opened the door?" Kieran asks.
My eyes fly open and I take in dark ones narrowed and fixed on me.
Uh…"What?" Wow, talk about an intelligent response. Not.
"Your steps reached the door less than a second before you started unlocking it."
"How do you know that?" How could he know that? "I'm wearing slipper socks."
"The vibration of the floor."
Vibration of the floor? "Are you calling me fat?" I demand.
I mean. Okay, plus sized girl over here, but I don't make the floor vibrate with my steps!
"Joy makes the floor vibrate too."
"Because she jumps and skips more than she walks," I mutter, not at all appeased.
A herd of elephants has nothing on my daughter when she's feeling exuberant.
"I'm trained to be aware of my surroundings."
"I didn't know you could be trained to have the ears of a bat," I say drolly. "I thought that was more along the lines of getting bit by a radioactive spider."
"Wouldn't it be a bat?" he deadpans.
My own smile surprises me. "Touché."
"I didn't hear you. I felt you."
You'd like him to feel you all right, my inner hussy claims, triggering a wave of heat and clenching low in my belly.
I don't bother denying it. I'd know I was lying.
"Must have been some extra special training," I tease awkwardly, forcing words past a suddenly tight throat.
My libido has been all but dead for the past six years. But now? It's like I'm amped up on pregnancy hormones. My pregnancies were hard, but the one benefit to all those hormones rampaging through my body was a constant desire to make love and stronger than normal reaction to being touched.
I came more during one month of my pregnancies than all the nonpregnant years of my marriage combined. Which is to say, I came at all.
Yeah, I bought into the whole it's-the-closeness-not-the-climax that matters during sex idea when I was with Troy. Knowing what I do now about how much my dead husband withheld from me, I can't help but question if the closeness I felt was all in my imagination.
"It was."
At first, my brain goes sproing, thinking he's answering my internal thoughts. Did I say that out loud? No. Definitely not.
Oh, that's right. "Can you tell me where you learned that kind of situational awareness, or would you have to kill me if you did?" I'm on a lame joke roll.
He reaches across the small dinette table and wipes the corner of my mouth with his thumb. "Army Rangers. CIA. High intensity situations did the rest."
Kieran licks the smear of foam he wiped from the corner of my mouth off the pad of his thumb.
You've got some cream between your legs he could taste.
Does everyone's inner hussy make them blush scarlet? Asking for a friend.
"You worked for the CIA? Are you supposed to tell me that?" And why does knowing he worked for a spy agency turn me on even more?
He takes a sip of what I just know is straight black coffee. "I trust you to keep my secrets."
"How can you?" There's no humor in my voice now, just honest bewilderment.
"I'm good at reading people."
"Did they teach that to you in the Army too?"
He shakes his head and then repeats his earlier question, only this time it's a statement. "You didn't check the peephole."
"Um, I've lived in New York my entire life, Kieran. I learned not to open the door to strangers a long time ago." Okay, that's a total prevarication.
Not a lie, but not the truth.
Of course I didn't look in the peephole. I knew it was him, didn't I?
"Kenneth isn't a stranger and it could have been him at the door."
"You don't honestly think I'd let him into my apartment, do you?" Not even before all the stuff that went down yesterday.
Not that he'd ever come by, but there's no way I would have invited him inside. In fact, if Kenneth has my address, it's not because I gave it to him.
My address of record for employment and a lot of other things is a P.O. Box. Troy always insisted on using one and I kept doing it, even after he died.
After seeing some truly disturbing true crime documentaries, I wonder why more people don't.
"Once you open the door, how would you keep him out?" Kieran asks.
"Uh…tell him he can't come in." Which would work for most people, but not someone intent on doing me harm. Ugh. "I should have checked the peephole. I get it."
"Yes. Don't do it again." He brushes the backs of his fingers down my cheek. "So soft," he says so low I barely hear him. Then he says, "I want you safe."
"But why is that so important to you?" I ask again.
How many times had I asked him yesterday, or something similar to it and his answer had been because I do, because it is, or some variant of that.
"You're mine to protect."
"But we just met yesterday."
His shrug says that doesn't bother him nearly as much as it does me. Or like, at all.
"Okay, I get that arranged marriages between strangers isn't as out there in mob life as it is in normal life." Only I didn't realize I was in the mob life until after Troy died…was murdered. "However, I'm assuming the reasons for them are usually mutually beneficial. What do you get out of this?"
"A family."
Those two words are too darn poignant for this early in the morning. "You could get a family the normal way. I mean, you're gorgeous and apparently have enough money to satisfy even a New York socialite."
"Like Allison?" he asks with clear distaste.
"They're not all like her."
His half shrug says he doesn't agree, but doesn't really care either way. For some reason I cannot fathom, this man wants to protect me and my girls, which apparently means marriage.
It's just been me to protect my family for so long, my heart squeezes at this man's determination to share that burden.
And I might have screwed that up already by letting my temper out in my texts to Allison.
"Uh…about Allison…" I let my voice trail off, taking another sip of the perfect vanilla latte.
Kieran tilts his head to the side in inquiry.
A quick tap on the screen and the facial recognition unlocks my phone. I hand it to him. The message app is already open to the thread with my former employer.
He reads the most recent texts and then scrolls back through the thread. A lot further back.
"That's an invasion of privacy," I say without much heat.
All he'll learn from those messages is how demanding my former employer is.
"You offered," he says without looking up from my phone.
"Well, while you're reading that scintillating string of messages demanding I come into work early, stay late or work on a Saturday, I'm going to get dressed."
Kieran kicks a chair out from the table without looking up. "Stay in here. Moving around the apartment will wake up the girls or your mom."
"I can be quiet."
"Doesn't matter."
"Care to elucidate?" I sit down in the chair he pushed out and open the pastry box, willing to satisfy my need for carbs before getting dressed.
It's not as if Kieran has noticed my puckered nipples or how the aureoles show behind the thin fabric in the bright light of the kitchen.
"Human subconscious is often aware of things the conscious mind isn't."
That makes sense, but it's not true for all people I bet, or maybe some are just better at ignoring their subconscious.
"It feels like Joy has a sixth sense for when I'm up and about." I'll get up to use the bathroom, and she'll be waiting outside the door when I come out, no matter how quiet I try to be. "I'm surprised she hasn't woken already and come to find out what I'm doing in the kitchen."
"She got up and used the bathroom right after we came into the kitchen."
"I would have heard her."
"Too stressed."
"What does that have to do with anything?" I ask around a bite of a fresh raspberry filled mini croissant.
"Your conscious mind is too occupied with current concerns to acknowledge ordinary sounds."
"So, you're saying I didn't hear my daughter go to the bathroom, but if she'd fallen or headed into the living room to turn on the TV, I would have?"
"Yes."
Huh. "I only have your word for it that she got up at all."
"Yes."
"That's all you're going to say?" The words might sound exasperated, but my tone isn't.
I wouldn't mind if he offered more, but I'm not upset that he didn't. Apparently because my conscious mind is too occupied with current concerns.
"Who is Dan?"
"What?" I lean forward and try to grab my phone. "Are you going through all my text messages?"
I haven't texted with Dan in over a month.
Kieran keeps my phone out of reach and fixes me with an uncompromising glare. "Who. Is. Dan?"
Wow. I'd read about making each word it's own sentence before, but I've never heard anyone do it.
"Dan is a friend."
"You dated him."
"Are you kidding me? How far back did you scroll on that text thread?" He must speedread because really? That's a lot of friend texts to get through before the awkward ones between Dan and me setting up our first and only date.
"Are you still dating?" Kieran demands.
Save me from nosy alpha men. "No. We're friends though. We realized pretty quickly that there was no spark."
"How?"
"How do you think?"
"You had sex with him?" There's a dangerous quality to Kieran's voice that makes me think it's Wraith the mobster asking.
"That's none of your business."
Kieran shrugs and goes back to reading my text messages.
"What does that shrug mean?" And why am I so sure it's not that Kieran has just dropped the subject.
"It won't matter if he's fucked your tight pussy, or not, if he's dead."
Gasping, I press a hand to my heart. Fucked your tight pussy. Said pussy is soaking the crotch of my pajama pants.
Is Kieran a dirty talker in bed?
When he said what he just did as casually as if he'd been making the coffee order, how can I doubt it?