Filthy Vows - Alessandra Torre Page 0,17
small sip of the wine. “It was with Jonah,” I said finally, setting down the glass. “Senior year. He was in town to move his sister’s stuff and came by my apartment.”
His eyes sharpened. “You told me that.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t tell you everything.”
His hands tightened on the counter’s lip. I watched the muscles in his forearms flex and felt a spike of pleasure shudder through me. “What did you do?”
An interesting way to word it. What did I do? Sexist, really, to put the blame so solidly on me, versus Jonah. Besides, I didn’t do anything. It was all Jonah. “I didn’t do anything. But he tried to get me too. He wanted to have sex. He kissed me. I pushed him away.”
His jaw tightened. “That was it?”
“We talked for a while. Argued. He said I was making a mistake with you. That he still loved me. Stuff like that.”
“How close did you come to doing something with him?” His voice had dropped an octave, turning gruff and possessive. He was mad, but struggling to hide it, and my heart swelled at the protective claim in the reaction.
“Close.” I ran my finger around the top rim of the glass. “I wanted to. I knew that you’d never find out. And I felt this urge to teach Jonah a lesson. I wanted him to realize what he was missing. I wanted to fuck his brains out and then tear him down. Send him on his way and tell him that I was getting it a lot better with you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” I brought my finger to my mouth and sucked on the end of it. His gaze followed the motion. “Your turn.”
He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to fuck, to reclaim me as his. I could see it in the way he gripped the stool in between his legs with one hand, the other roughly running through his hair. “Ummm…”
“Think carefully.” I moved to his side of the counter and hoisted myself on the counter, hanging my legs over the side of it as I sat before him.
“Probably last—” he hesitated, tripping over the word for a moment. “Last year. There was this woman in Idaho. At the FA symposium.” His hand found my knee and squeezed the soft fabric of my sweats.
I remembered the symposium. I’d originally planned to go with him, but had come down with something a few days before the weekend. I’d spent the weekend in bed, relieved to be left out of the boring financial conference. “She was an attendee?”
“I don’t know. She was at the hotel bar. Saturday night, after you went to bed, I went down there.”
Saturday night I’d gotten Panera to deliver a bowl of chicken soup and had popped enough NyQuil to knock me out for twelve beautiful hours. Easton could have fucked an entire cheerleading team in our bedroom and I would have been oblivious to it. I looked down at his hand, still on my knee, and considered pushing it off.
I cleared my throat. “And?”
“And she made it very clear what she wanted.”
“Did you flirt with her?”
He hesitated and I saw the truth in the pause, even before he said it. “Yes.”
Emotion flooded through me, a complicated mix of jealousy and arousal. It had been too long since I’d been on the receiving end of that flirtation. I could still remember the high it brought, the drag of his eyes across my skin, the look he gave that had burned right through my clothes. I bet she did make her needs clear. I bet she whispered everything she wanted in his ear. Did she run her hand over his crotch? Did her eyes widen as she realized what he was packing in his pants?
I opened my knees wider and used my foot to hook the edge of his stool, tugging it toward me. It didn’t budge, but he saw the action and moved it forward.
“What did you say to her?” I pulled at his shirt until he was standing before me.
“Nothing much. I told her she was beautiful.”
That hurt, and I yanked at his belt with unnecessary aggression. “Was she?”
“Yes.” He watched me get the leather loose from the clasp. “I told her that I was married.”
“And?” I flipped the button fly open and tugged on the zipper.
“And she said she didn’t care.”
He was in my hand then, his breath hissing through his teeth as I wrapped my fist around him.
“I told her I couldn’t do anything to