Chapter 20
M arcus
My erection is still threatening to rip a hole in my pants as I turn around and look at Emma—who, to my great disappointment, is now fully dressed.
It almost doesn’t matter, though. The sight of her clad in nothing but lacy underwear is permanently etched into my brain—and will star in every wet dream and fantasy of mine going forward.
“Sexy” doesn’t even begin to describe her curvy little body.
Every soft, feminine inch of her seems to be designed with my newly discovered preferences in mind.
Her creamy skin is dotted in a few places with an appealing smattering of freckles, and her ass is the best I’ve ever seen: full and heart-shaped, infinitely squeezable.
Or at least I imagine it is—I somehow managed to keep my hands off it as I devoured her mouth.
And then, of course, there are those luscious breasts of hers, the sensual dip in her navel, and her small, perfectly shaped feet with red-painted toenails.
Fuck, even her little toes turn me on.
“So, about the door,” she starts again when I remain silent, eyeing her hungrily. “Should I call a repairman or…?” She lets the question trail off.
“I’ll do it,” I say huskily, and forcing myself to look away from the temptation of her, I pull out my phone.
My butler, Geoffrey, picks up on the first ring, and I inform him of the situation. “I need someone over here within the hour,” I tell him, and he promises that it will be done.
I hang up and see Emma staring at me with her mouth open, the big cat back in her arms.
“Someone is going to come on a Friday night?” she asks incredulously. “As in, right away?”
“Of course. You can’t not have a door overnight.”
It makes perfect sense to me, but she’s looking at me like I’ve sprouted a horn on my forehead—and so is her cat. “On a Friday night,” she mutters, stroking the fluffy creature. “Yeah, okay, sure.”
“We’ll stay here until they’re done,” I say, shrugging out of my coat.
Even with the cold draft coming in, it’s still too hot inside the apartment for me to wear it.
Draping it over the back of the only chair I see, I tell her, “It’ll take them a little while to fix it, so we should probably go ahead and eat.
Any preferences for delivery or takeout around here? ”
She blinks. “You… want to have dinner here?”
“Of course.” I frown. “Unless you’re not hungry?”
“Oh, no, I’m hungry,” she assures me, propping the cat higher on her chest. “I just figured that given what happened, we would, you know, reschedule or whatever.”
Oh, no. There’s no way I’m leaving her alone in a Brooklyn apartment with a broken door leading to the street.
Granted, this is not what I envisioned for our second date, but I don’t mind this development one bit—though she did almost give me a heart attack with all the falling sounds and the screaming.
I thought she’d gotten seriously hurt, and the chilling fear I’d experienced had been entirely out of proportion to the length of our acquaintance.
I don’t want to analyze why that is, or why I don’t have any desire to escape her cramped basement studio.
It reminds me of the apartment my mother and I had lived in when I was in middle school, and I hated that place, so by all logic, I should hate this too.
But I get an entirely different vibe here.
Even though the only window in Emma’s studio is the same tiny slit near the ceiling that we’d had, and the paint on her walls is also peeling in places, the stink of alcohol and desperation is missing.
Her apartment is rundown and tiny, but it’s cozy. A home, not just a place to crash.
Of course, if there were no cats, it would be even better.
I can see two more white furry creatures poking their heads from under the bed, their big green eyes staring at me.
Judging by all the meowing I’d heard when Emma fell, I have a strong suspicion they—or the huge one in her arms—were somehow responsible.
“We’re not rescheduling,” I tell Emma firmly. “I’m here, and you’re here, and that”—I point at her tiny desk—“will work as a table. All we need is food, and if you tell me what you want, I can have it delivered or ask my driver to bring it to us.”
Before she can respond, the big cat meows, fluffy tail swishing from side to side as he gives me a threatening look from his perch on Emma’s chest. I glare back at him. I know he did that hissing-meowing thing while we were making out on purpose, to cockblock me.
If not for that, Emma and I might’ve made it all the way to her narrow bed, and I would now be balls deep inside her sweet, lush body.
“Sorry,” she says, stroking the creature to calm him down. “He’s just…”
“Possessive, I know.” I would be too, if she petted me like that. In fact, just watching her small hand move over the cat’s white fur is making me jealous.
I want her to touch me like that, to run her soft hands all over my body.
“So, yeah, about the food,” Emma says when the cat starts purring. “I’m really flexible. There’s a deli on the corner that makes great sandwiches, and there’s also a gyros place I like a couple of blocks over. Neither one delivers, but—”
“Wilson will bring it; that’s not a problem. So sandwiches or gyros?”
She hesitates, then says, “Let’s do gyros. The place is called Gyro World.”
Okay, good. We’re having a meal together.
Concealing my satisfaction, I take out my phone and text Wilson the instructions. He immediately replies that he’s on his way, and I put my phone away—only to see Emma regarding me with a strange expression.
“What?” I frown at her. “Did I do something wrong?”
She shakes her head, then blurts out, “Is it always so easy for you? Do you always just snap your fingers and things happen?”
“You mean, can I always get gyros delivered? Yes, usually. Is that a bad thing?”
She puts the cat down. “No, of course not. It’s just… not what I’m used to, that’s all.”
She walks over to sit down on the bed, and the two cats come out from underneath to drape themselves over her lap. The big one that she just put down eyes me evilly for a moment, as if debating if I’d make a good meal, then stalks over to join the others on the bed, puffy tail held high.
I decide to ignore his disdain. It’s a cat, after all.
Taking a seat on the chair on which I hung my coat, I study Emma, trying to understand what it is about her that I find so appealing. Her looks, for sure—I can’t wait to sink my cock deep into her scrumptious little body—but her appearance is only part of the draw.
There’s also something warm and tender about her, something that tugs at me in a way I don’t fully understand.
“What are they called?” I ask, figuring that since the cats are such a big part of her life, I can at least try to get to know them. “You said that one is Mr. Puffs, right?” I nod at the bad-tempered giant, who’s staked out a spot on her left leg by shoving away his much smaller competitor.
She smiles, her eyes lighting up and her dimples coming out in full force.
“Yes, that’s right. This one”—she looks down at her right leg, where a mid-sized cat is purring up a storm—“is Cottonball. And that”—she nods at the shoved-aside cat, the smallest of the bunch, who’s now daintily licking its paw—“is Queen Elizabeth.”
“How did you get them?” I ask. “And why three? Your apartment is… not very big.” There’s barely enough space for one small woman as far as I’m concerned.
She grimaces. “I know. I hate it that they’re cooped up in this studio.
They’re used to it, having grown up here, but still, it’s not good.
I hope to afford a bigger apartment one day, but for now, all I can do is entertain them the best I can.
” She glances over her shoulder at the wall on the other side of her bed, and I realize that what I thought was a strange empty bookshelf is actually a cat maze that goes from floor to ceiling—an insane luxury in a place as space-constrained as this one.
She is committed to her pets.
“So you’ve had them from the time they were little?” I ask, and she nods, her expression darkening for some reason.
“They were barely two weeks old when I found them.”
“Found them?”
“They came into my life by accident; I didn’t plan on any pets when I got this place,” she says.
“My friend Janie and I were driving to Woodbury Common—you know, the big shopping mall upstate—and we stopped by a gas station on the way. I went around the back to use the restroom, and I heard these faint mewling sounds coming from the garbage can. When I looked inside, there was a box of kittens there—so tiny they barely had their eyes open.” Her delicate jaw tightens, and a fierce look comes over her pretty face.
“Some asshole threw them out, like they were trash.”
Asshole, indeed. I don’t consider myself an animal lover, but my hands itch with the urge to beat whoever did this shitty thing to a bloody pulp. “So you took them in?” I ask, doing my best to keep the anger out of my voice, and she nods again.
“Of course. What else could I do? Janie is allergic, and nobody at the gas station would claim them. I thought about bringing them to a shelter—the vet I took them to said they’re purebred Persians and would be adopted quickly—but they were beginning to cling to me by then, and I didn’t want to cause them any more trauma.
As it was, because they weren’t properly weaned from their mother, they kept trying to suckle everything in sight for the first two years of their lives.
It’s only recently that they’ve calmed down.
” She gazes down at them with a tender smile, all fierceness gone as she scratches one furry creature behind the ear, then pets the other two.
All three set up a loud purr, and I again battle a surge of jealousy that she’s touching them , not me .
Fuck.
I may need to consult a shrink. This can’t be healthy.
I’m about to ask her another question when I hear a knocking on the doorframe, and a spicy, savory aroma fills the apartment.
It’s Wilson with our food.
I walk over to take the bags from him, and as I’m thanking him, Emma approaches.
“Here you go,” she says brightly, stuffing what looks like a twenty into Wilson’s hand. “That should cover my portion.”
And ignoring the stunned look on my driver’s face, she returns to join her cats on the bed.