He chuckled. “I’m more of a straight espresso kind of guy.”
“Coming up.”
I managed to pull him a decent set of espresso shots on the first try, and pulled a can of sparkling water out of my fridge for myself.
I was hoping he would make the first move, but I was willing to…nudge things along. I brought my water and stood in front of him, sipping now and then without taking my eyes off of him. It was a taut tableau, his eyes on mine as he sipped straight espresso like it was fine whiskey, his expression unreadable. Weird how quickly he could go from expressive and open to stone-faced.
I sidled closer, then. He was just inside my kitchen, just standing there in the middle of the floor, which didn’t provide me with a wall or counter as a prop for posing…or helping with my vertical stability.
I touched his knuckles. “I’ve been trying to read what’s on these all evening.”
He set his empty espresso cup aside and clenched his fists loosely, pressed his index fingers of each hand together to present his knuckles all in a line: on his left hand, written to face the reader, LUST, and on the right, RAGE.
“Lust and rage?”
He nodded. “Reminders of my weakness. Also, mistakes of drunken youth.”
I grinned. “Are you talking about the tattoo, or the vices?”
“Both. I got the tattoos while young and drunk because I thought they looked and sounded badass. But lust and rage have both gotten me in a lot of trouble, so now I use the tattoos to remind me to be smart and calm, instead of indulgent and full of rage.” He smirked. “If I’d had more knuckles, I’d have gone with pride and wrath, two of the seven deadly sins, but that don’t fit on eight fingers.”
I traced the letters, ornate old English lettering. I tapped his left hand. “I think I like this one best.”
He used his right hand to touch my chin, my cheekbone, soft gentle touches, spider silk soft. “Same. Lust is by far my favorite sin.”
I touched his chest just above the buttons of his shirt. “It’s not a sin if it’s not wrong.”
He was close, towering over me. Staring down at me. His chest rose and fell heavily. He captured my hand in his, while his other hand, RAGE, tickled and teased over my shoulder, down my spine, to my lower back, coming to rest just above my butt.
“True,” he murmured.
He had one of my hands imprisoned within his, but I had another, and I used that one to unbutton his shirt a little more, and then a little more, until it was hanging open.
“Autumn,” he breathed.
I didn’t want to know what he was about to say. I could feel it. Maybe if I didn’t let him say it, this could keep going.
I lifted up on my toes, let my lips brush the stubble of his jawline. “Seven,” I breathed back.
RAGE drifted lower, molding over the upper swell of my ass. His touch was soft, gentle, almost hesitant. “Right and wrong are subjective, though,” he murmured.
“Maybe we could have the philosophical discussion another time,” I suggested. “I had something in mind for your mouth other than talking.”
I nipped at his lower lip. Freed my hand from his and ran both over his chest, feeling hard muscle and warm flesh. Lower, to his waist. The rim of denim just below his waistline. His navel. The cold metal button of his fly.
Pop.
Zip.
“Autumn.” His voice was a deep, dark, frustrated growl. “Wait.”
I pulled back, lowering to flat feet—and swayed in place. “I don’t want to.” I stared up at him, willing myself to see only one of him.
“Me either.” He caught at one of my hands, stopping it from delving under the elastic of his underwear. “But we should—I have to.”
“Why? I’m fully in possession of my faculties, Seven. I’m fine.”
“You’re drunk.”
I used my one free hand this time to reach up behind my back and tug down the zipper of my dress. Wiggled. Shimmied. Felt the straps slide off, down to my elbows, and then the slippery green material was pooled on the floor at my feet, leaving me in pale gray lingerie, lacy bra over my breasts and a barely-there thong.
“Autumn. Goddammit.” He let me go and stepped back. LUST dragged across his lips, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched and flexing. Shirt open, revealing a broad hard chest, hard slab abdomen rippling with shredded power. “Fuck, woman.”
“Fuck woman—that’s the general idea, yes.” I swayed on my feet again, and mentally cursed myself. “I’m a little tipsy, but that’s it, okay? I know what I’m doing. I know what I want.”
He growled, a rumbling sigh of primal frustration. “You got no fuckin’ clue how bad I want to take you at your word, Autumn Scott.”
“So take me at my word, then, Seven St. John.” I moved toward him. “I am sober enough to know I want this. I’m saying yes, with informed consent, Seven. I want you.”
Jeans open, black underwear bulging out of the V, evidence of his desire for what I was offering pressing against the cotton prison, chest heaving, jaw flexing, Seven was all man, pure sensual power. Masculine sexuality embodied.
I reached for him.
His hands yet again imprisoned my wrists. Both of them, now. “If you were some random I picked up at a bar, I’d already be inside you, Autumn. I’d have fucked you up against this island, bent you over it, and had you on your hands and knees beside it already.”
I quivered. There’s no other word for what my body did at the dirty words, the heated promise, the rough grumble of his voice. “Yes please, god yes, please.”
“You’re not some random girl from the bar.”
“I’m some random girl you saw an ad for on Instagram. Even more random, one could argue.”
“My dick wants to agree with you.”
“Listen to your dick, Seven.” I laughed. “I, a woman, am telling you to listen to your dick.”
“Problem is, Autumn, you don’t feel like a random, to me.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
He rolled his heavy, blocky shoulders, half in a shrug, half to loosen tension; he kept hold of my wrist. “It means…shit. You’re making this so fuckin’ difficult, you know that? Those legs, that ass, those tits? You know how thin my control is? I’m this fuckin’ close to ripping that lace off you with my teeth and fucking you into next week.” He pinned both wrists in one hand. Touched my chin with the other. “But I’m not gonna. I won’t. Not yet.”
I swallowed hard, rejection stinging. “Why? I told you I’m sober enough to know what I want.”
“If we were drunk together, maybe. Or, if I knew enough about how you handle your liquor to know you really are that sober, like I said, I’d already be making you scream. But I don’t know that. And even though my cock is angry as hell, begging me to forget my standards, there’s something about you, Autumn. What the fuck it is, I don’t fuckin’ know, but it won’t let me go there unless you’re dead dry sober.”
“Goddammit, Seven.”
“You said the ad was off-limits, but I can’t totally ignore it, and that’s part of it, too. Get you pregnant the old-fashioned way, it said. Was it a prank? Did you post it? Did you mean it? Why? I got a million questions, and you deserve the opportunity to answer them in your own time, but I can’t let myself get mixed up with you until I know those answers. And whoever else you are, whatever else you may or may not do regularly, to me you’re not someone I’m going to fuck once while you’re drunk and then never see you again.”