Chapter 2
Ridge
I meant it when I said that I don’t do this often because I don’t. Once or twice when I was younger. Even then, I didn’t make a habit of it.
Robyn is fucking beautiful, and the best part of it is that she doesn’t even know it. She isn’t parading around in a tiny dress or on ridiculous heels. She doesn’t have a face full of makeup. She thinks I’m doing her a favor by hanging out with her.
I’m not.
I would, but I’m not.
She’s sweet. I like her, even though I don’t know her.
Her dark hair is loose about her shoulders and a little messy from dancing. Her face is practically devoid of makeup. There are remnants of mascara. She’s wearing plain clothes that do nothing to hide all her curves.
She’s staring at me with the biggest brown eyes.
She smells fucking delicious. I want to eat her. I want to find out if the rest of her tastes as good as she smells. I want to make her toes curl inside her shoes. Better yet, I want her out of the shoes and naked, her heels digging into my back.
“Does that mean yes, I can kiss you, or you’re not so sure about a kiss?”
She tips her chin up. “I want you to kiss me, and then I’ll decide if I’m taking you home with me or not.”
My eyebrows go up. Unexpected. She has a bit of sass tucked inside all that sweetness, and I like it a lot.
I smile…again. I don’t think I’ve smiled this much in a long damned time.
I cup her chin in one hand, tilt her face up, and take my time. I don’t want to spook her. I press my lips to hers, soft at first, angling my head. Her lips part on a tiny intake of breath. They’re warm and full. She tastes like her cocktail, sweet and tart. Fucking perfection.
I take a second kiss. Then a third. I’m not rushing this.
She makes a small sound, almost a hum, and her free hand comes up to the back of my neck. Her fingers slide into the hair at my nape. Her other hand floats around to my back, not quite touching, like she isn’t sure if it’s okay.
It is!
I tighten my grip on her hip and pull her in a step.
Her body fits up against mine. It makes my dragon roll over inside me and pay attention for the first time tonight.
I angle in, deepening the kiss, letting my tongue slide along the seam of her mouth.
She opens for me on a soft moan, and I swallow the sound.
I press myself against her, wanting more. Her fingers flex against my neck. Her other hand finally lands flat on my back, and she makes that little noise again, low in her throat.
I’m already thinking about how fast we can get out of here. If—
Something cold hits the middle of my back.
Cold and wet and sticky, sliding down between my shoulder blades and down my shirt.
I break the kiss.
Robyn’s eyes flutter open, dazed, her mouth parted and wet and pink. It takes her a full second to focus on my face.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“You’re going to have to take me to your place,” I tell her.
Her lashes lift, and she gets this look. “Not so fast. I haven’t decided yet.” She toys with me.
I dip my head closer. “I’m afraid it’s not really negotiable since you just poured what’s left of your cocktail down my back.”
Her eyes go wide. She gasps and steps back so fast she almost knocks over the stool behind her. Her hand is still holding the martini glass, now mostly empty, at an angle that explains everything.
“Oh, crap.” She whips around to look at my back. “Oh no, Ridge, I’m so sorry.”
She puts the glass down, then dives for a stack of cocktail napkins on the nearest table. She comes back clutching a handful and starts blotting at my shirt between my shoulder blades.
“I can’t believe I did that. I’m such a klutz.”
She dabs at my back. Her lower lip is caught between her teeth.
“I ruined your shirt,” she says. “It’s white. It’s going to stain. Ridge, I’m so sorry. Please let me buy you a new one.”
“It’s a shirt. It’ll wash out.”
She keeps blotting, and I let her. Her hair brushes my shoulder.
I catch her wrist and lower it gently. The napkin is a soggy pink ball between her fingers.
“Robyn.”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to get out of here?”
She goes very still. Her pupils are huge. Her cheeks have gone a shade past pink, heading for red.
“I’d like to go back to your place,” I tell her. “If you’ve decided. No pressure if you haven’t. No pressure whatsoever.”
She lets out a small breath. She looks at the napkin in her hand like she’s forgotten what it is, then at my chest, then up at my face. Something passes across her face, nerves, want, a little flare of something brave.
“Follow me,” she says.
That’s all I needed.
She tosses the napkin on the table and grabs her bag. We push through the door and out into the warm island night.
The street is quieter than the bar. The air smells like the ocean and frangipani and the grease from a takeout place down the block. I breathe it in, and under all of it, I can still smell her.
I take her hand. Her fingers are small and cool inside mine. She glances down at our joined hands and then up at me, and there’s a tiny, surprised smile at the corner of her mouth.
“Want me to grab a cab?” I ask.
“It’s two blocks. I think we’ll manage.”
We walk, and I shorten my stride so she doesn’t have to jog to keep up. The breeze lifts her hair off her shoulders, and I catch another waft of her scent, and my dragon purrs under my skin.
“I really am sorry about the shirt,” she says.
“Don’t be. It was worth it.”
“Hmm.” Her hand tightens on mine. “Can I say something really embarrassing?” she asks.
“Go for it.”
“I’ve never been with a shifter before.” She says it fast, like ripping off a bandage, then clamps her mouth shut. Her cheeks flush again. “I mean, to be sure, you are coming back to my place to have sex with me…right? You haven’t changed your mind after the spill?”
I like how straight she is.
“I most definitely have not changed my mind, and so yes, I am going back to your place for sex. For the record, I’ve never been with a human before.”
She stops walking.
She turns to look up at me with her mouth open.
“What? Really? You look like you have lots of sex.”
I laugh. It feels good. “You look like you have lots of sex too.”
“I don’t.” She giggles. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Noooooooo.”
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
“You’re younger than me. I’m about to cradle snatch. I’m nearly thirty-eight.”
I chuckle. “That’s hardly cradle snatching. I think we’re okay.”
“You look older.”
“Geeee…thanks.”
She laughs. “I mean, you look great… I don’t mean it like that. You look good.”
“You look good, too, for an old lady.”
She gasps.
“I’m kidding.” I squeeze her hand.
We start walking again. She seems to turn it over in her head for a while.
“I guess I’m a little nervous,” she finally admits.
“You don’t have to be.”
“I haven’t gotten naked in a good, long while. I’m rusty,” she says.
“I’m pretty sure that sex is like riding a bike.”
“Hot and sweaty.”
I laugh again. It must be a record. “No. You don’t forget how to do it.”
She snickers, making a snorting noise, which is cute.
We turn onto a street lined with young palms and low apartment buildings. She points at a cream-colored block with a glass front and big planters full of bougainvillea on either side of the doors.
“This is me,” she says.
It’s nice. Newer than most of the buildings on this end of the island, with a small lobby I can see through the glass. She taps a key fob against a panel, and the door clicks open.
Inside, the lobby is all pale tile and low lighting. There’s a security desk, empty at this hour, and two elevators off to the left. She leads me to the second one, punches the button, and the doors slide open almost immediately.
“Fourth floor,” she says, mostly to herself, as she hits the button.
The ride up is short. She looks at me. I look at her. She chews the corner of her lip and then looks at her shoes. I can hear her heart speeding up.
“I’m still a little nervous,” she admits.
“You really don’t have to be.”
The doors open into a hallway with four doors in total. She leads me to the one on the end and keys the lock.
Her apartment is bigger than I expected and really nice.
It has high ceilings. A long open room with a pale sofa, attached to an open-plan kitchen with white counters and one of those fancy espresso machines.
There’s a wall of bookshelves crammed full of paperbacks, most of them with couples on the covers.
There’s a large print on the wall of a flamingo.
It smells like her in here.
“This is nice,” I tell her.
“I like it. I made my ex move out so I could keep it. But let’s not talk about that, shall we?”
She drops her bag on the side table and turns to face me; her hands twisted together in front of her.
“Okay,” she says. “Take off your shirt.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“I’ll throw it in a quick wash with something that gets cranberry out. It’s the least I can do, since I—”
I pull the garment over my head.
She stops talking. She doesn’t move so much as an inch.
Her gaze has gone soft and a little glassy. Her pupils are blown wide. Her lips part on a small inhale as she takes in my chest, my arms, the ink that runs down over my pecs and across my ribs.
“Forget the shirt,” I say, dropping it at my feet.
She blinks up at me. “Yeah, but—”
“Forget it.”
I close the distance between us in one step. I cup her jaw in both hands and kiss her.
She melts.
Her whole body softens into me. Her hands come up and plant flat against my bare chest, and she makes a sound into my mouth that goes straight to my cock. I angle her head and kiss her deeper. She gives me her tongue. She makes one of those small moans again, higher than the last one.
I could do this all night, even though there will be more. So much more.
I pull back just enough to speak against her lips.
“Where’s your bedroom?”
“Down the hall.”
“Show me.”