Primrose #2
“What did you think I’d ask?”
“Are we making it two questions each?” His tone is temptation itself.
“I think that sounds like a dangerous game.” Especially when I have at least a dozen more things I want to know. Like what was he doing at that party? Is it a regular thing—is it his thing? His kink. Did he really enjoy going down on me, because he sounded like me when I eat cake?
But mostly I want to know, what I’m a little frightened to discover is why he pushed me out the door that night in Paris.
His chest expands and his hand folds around his glass. “I would like to know—”
“I already told you,” I say quickly. Quietly.
“It was a mistake.” I force myself not to squirm as my discomfort reaches escape-my-skin levels.
I’m a fraudster—I don’t know my orgies from my lifestyle clubs—and the whole time I was there, I expected someone to point a finger and yell C’est imposteur! Kick her out!
“Pardon?”
“You kept Emmy that night, so I went out with my sister’s friend.” My gaze dips to my feet, the pink paint chipped from my big toenail. I press one foot over the other to conceal the offending toenail. “She told me we were going to a party, not a…”
My heart seems to have grown to the size of a football and lodged itself in my throat.
But when I sense him move, it swoops, landing somewhere south of my waistline where it beats rapidly.
I can’t look at him—not because I’m ashamed but because the sound of his footsteps fills my chest with something I hardly recognise.
I think it’s excitement. Perhaps a little fear.
His shadow falls over me, and his finger crooks my chin, those dark eyes seeming to search every inch of my face. “That was not my question.”
“Oh.” I bite back more idiocy by grazing my teeth against the inside of my mouth.
“I want to know.” He pauses, eyes tracking to my mouth where his thumb wipes the corner, coming away with a smudge of chocolate. His gaze holds mine captive as he leisurely sucks on the tip of his thumb.
Whoa.
“I would like to know who made you believe sex is not for you.”
“I’m…”
“What did he do to hurt you?”
“Who said it was a man?” Singular, I mean.
A frown bisects his brow, like he’s testing the hypothesis in his head. “You could be into women.”
“And that could be none of your business.” Boy, he has me all wrong. I’m no sexual dilettante. But I don’t hate that he might’ve pegged me so.
“True.” His voice is velvet and midnight as his still damp thumb drifts to my collarbone. I shiver as it draws across the wing—shiver as much from the sight of his bent head as I do from his touch. His lashes are so thick and dark, and the light catches the touch of silver at his temples.
“You don’t have to tell me, of course.” His touch slides over my shoulder and down my arm, the pads of his fingers stroking my bicep, farther to the inside of my elbow. Then my wrist. “You may like girls. But you also liked me.”
Liked, past tense. He means that night.
His thumb slides over my rapid pulse, back and forth, blood in my veins rising to the surface, my nipples hardening, aching for touch, as his attention lifts.
“That was a statement.” My answer sounds unsteady. My voice, anyway.
“And that wasn’t a denial.” His eyes burn like twin coals.
“I mean, I like cake.” With a tiny twist, I dig my fork into the confection again. His smile is slow, almost reluctant.
He catches my wrist, bringing my fork to his mouth. “I like to eat cake too.” My mouth waters as he chews, as his neck works with a swallow. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.” His gaze tracks to my wrist, where his thumb presses over my pulse. It’s probably hammering like a drum.
Am I imagining this? Imagining what he’s offering?
“You said that you haven’t had sex in a year. Is that why you were at Ardeo?”
A year is underplaying it. And while chance led me to the door, it was curiosity that took me over the threshold. Instead, I say, “Why were you there?”
“Are you asking if it was my first time?” His gaze lifts but not his head as he stares at me from under impossibly sooty lashes. It should look ridiculous, not unholy levels of scorching. It also shouldn’t make me feel this hot and bothered or make me wish my pjs would turn to dust.
He pushed you out of the door. He kept your underwear. He hasn’t even offered you an explanation.
“It wasn’t on my bingo card for the night.” Then again, neither was this. “It was a surprise. Or a shock,” I say in answer to his frown. And what happened in the basement was probably a fluke. I’m sure we couldn’t replicate the experience because I’m no good at that kind of stuff.
“Because of the experts,” he says softly.
I wonder if I ought to be offended, given his amused expression.
“It’s what you said in my office in Paris.”
Sexperts, he means. I hate that he remembers.
My gaze slides away only to come back sharply again. “How many questions are we up to now?”
Another smile, this one borderline sinful. “You can ask me anything.”
“Really?” I say in the tone of, yeah, right. Come into the parlor said the spider to the fly.
So I can eat you again.
“To use your analogy, I’m not sure if sex was on my own bingo card.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “But then a girl, a woman, stumbled across my path muttering something about sausages.”
“You were nothing but rude.”
“I was trying not to reveal my attraction because the woman looked lost.” He slides a lock of hair from my face, curling it around my ear before cupping the nape of my neck.
His breath smells of liquor, and his eyes speak of want.
My heart misses a beat as he angles his head, and our lips almost touch.
But then his shiver-inducing whisper coasts my ear instead.
“I wanted to protect her from the wolves. I didn’t mean to kiss her, and I shouldn’t want to kiss her again. But I find I do.”
My fingers grasp his T-shirt as he pulls back. “What if the problem isn’t that I like women or men?”
“Me,” he says solemnly. “You like me.”
“Liking you isn’t the problem. The problem is me.”