He waits in silence for me to regroup, but I doubt if that’s possible. I think this conversation is going to leave me permanently scarred.
When I finally gather enough courage to glance at him, a tremor runs through my body at what I see in his eyes.
I clear my throat. “Also, that sounds like you’d need very good coordination to pull off. And maybe an extra set of hands.”
For the first time, he smiles at me.
It comes on slow and sensual, a gradual upward curve of his mouth that ends with a show of straight white teeth. It’s a beautiful smile, and also a frightening one.
Frightening because of how much I like it.
Flustered and sweating, I jolt to my feet. “Well, this has certainly been…interesting.” My laugh sounds deranged. “Have a nice night.”
Before he can reply, I whirl around and bolt toward the exit.
I’m so beside myself, I nearly fall down the stairs on the way out. Panting like a terrier, I burst through the glass doors of the casino and throw myself at the uniformed valet at the little stand under a wide black umbrella.
“I need a taxi, please.”
“Certainly, miss.”
He picks up a handheld two-way radio and requests a cab from whoever’s listening on the other side. Normally, casinos have a parking lot nearby where the cabs wait for customers, so hopefully I won’t have to stand here long.
I’m afraid I’ll shatter into a million jagged pieces if I don’t get as far away from Kage as soon as possible.
“Then come sit on my lap and let me finger fuck you while I feed you dinner.”
His words play over and over in my head. Pure torture.
Worse? I can picture it. So can my kitty, because she’s wet and aching between my legs, plaintively mewling for Kage’s big rough hand to pet her.
When I met David at twenty, I was naive. I didn’t have the wild high school experience, or the wild college experience, or any of the shenanigans Sloane enjoyed when she went away to Arizona State. I lived at home while I went to the modest and boring University of Nevada, over the hill in Reno.
I was a good girl. A small-town girl. A virgin.
Except for that one time with my high school math tutor, but ten seconds probably doesn’t count.
The point is that I don’t have the kind of experience to deal with a handsome, dangerous, virile male in his prime saying such things to me.
I’d better stop at the convenience store on the way home and pick up an extra set of batteries. I’m going to really need to work this one out.
“I apologize if I offended you.”
I stiffen, sucking in a startled breath.
Speaking low, Kage stands behind me, close enough that I can smell him and feel his body heat. He’s not touching me, but he’s got to be mere inches away. I feel as if I’m getting burned right through my dress.
I answer without turning my body or head. “It wasn’t so much offended as stunned.”
His exhalation stirs a tendril of hair on my neck. “It’s not often I…”
He rethinks whatever he was going to say and starts over. “I’m not a patient man. But that’s not your problem. If you ask me to leave you alone, I’ll honor that request.”
I don’t know how to answer that. At least not honestly. Because if I were to tell him the truth, we’d already be naked somewhere.
I settle on, “I’m not the girl who jumps into bed with strangers. Especially not ones who are leaving town in a few days.”
Still behind me, he moves closer and puts his mouth near my ear. In a voice like velvet, he says, “I want to taste every inch of you. I want to hear you scream my name. I want to make you come so hard, you forget your own. I don’t have time to fuck around—excuse the pun—with the kind of wooing I’d usually do to win you, so that’s why I’m being so blunt.
“Ask me to leave you alone, and you have my word I will. But until I hear that, I have to tell you, Natalie, that I want to fuck your sweet cunt and your perfect ass and your luscious mouth and anything else you’ll let me fuck, because you are the single most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”
He inhales deeply against my neck.
I almost collapse into the street.
A big black SUV pulls to a stop in front of the valet stand. Kage brushes past me and strides around to the driver’s side, hands money to the valet who hops out, and roars off without another glance in my direction.
7
Nat
“He said that?”
“Verbatim.”
“Holy shit.”
“That was pretty much my reaction, too.”
Sloane pauses. “And you didn’t throw yourself to your knees, rip open his zipper, and latch on to him like a sucker fish?”
Rolling my eyes, I sigh. “And they say romance is dead.”
It’s the next morning. I’m at home, where I’ve been doing the same thing I’ve been doing since the cab dropped me off last night. Namely, pacing.
No lights were on next door when I got home. There’s been no movement at his house this morning, either. There’s been no sign of Kage at all. I don’t even know if he’s there or not.
“Seriously, babe, that’s got to be the hottest thing I’ve ever heard. And I’ve pretty much heard everything.”
Chewing my thumbnail, I turn around and pace the other direction.
“I agree that it’s hot. It’s also way over the top. What kind of woman would react with ‘Sure, great, please fuck all my holes, Mr. Complete Stranger, sounds like a totally solid and not at all dangerous plan’?”
“Well, for starters…me.”
“Oh, come on! You would not!”
“Have you even met me? I totally would! If he would’ve been into me, I was ready to leave with him at the bar the other night without even knowing his damn name!”
“I think it’s time you seriously reexamine your life choices.”
She scoffs. “Listen to me, Sister Teresa—”
“It’s Mother Teresa, and stop comparing me to frickin’ nuns.”
“—that man is not the man you pass up when he offers you a ride on his elephant.”
I stop pacing long enough to look at the ceiling and shake my head.
She’s still talking.
“With that level of dirty-talk game right out of the gate, I’ll bet you a million bucks he’d give you thirty orgasms within ten minutes if you slept with him.”
“You don’t have a million dollars, and that’s not even physically possible.”
“It is with him. Hell, I could get off a dozen times alone just by looking at him. That face! That body! Jesus, Natalie, he could melt the polar ice caps with a look, and you turned him down?”
“Calm down.”
“I will not. I’m indignant on behalf of sex-starved women everywhere.”
“Excuse me, but the only sex-starved person on this phone call is me.”
“My point is that he’s a once-in-a-lifetime fuck. You could be having lovely daydreams about him at eighty when you’re in your rocking chair in the nursing home, soiling your diapers. Instead, you’re out here acting like you’re constantly being showered with prime sausages like confetti.”