faced me, his hands tucked into his front pockets, his eyes glancing back to the event before focusing on me.
“When I started working for Presa, I was pretty much just hormones and attitude.” He shrugged. “I was nineteen and she was … I don’t know. Thirty-five? Forty? One night, I worked late and…” His shoulders lifted, and he looked at me like he wasn’t going to finish the sentence, like that dangling morsel was all I was going to get.
“You worked late and?” I pressed.
He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “And she came into the back room in nothing but her underwear, and I fucked her over a crate of paintings.”
I blinked. “Had you had sex before?”
He raised his eyebrow at me. “Yeah. I’d had sex with a few different girls. But Presa…” His hand moved up, rubbing his neck. “Presa was different. Sex with her was different. She taught me a lot, about women, what they like. And about relationships.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “So … she was your sexual mentor?”
He pursed his lips. “If you want to call her that.”
“For how long?”
“About a year. Give or take.”
I sorted through my feelings. “Did you love her?”
Before he even answered, I found the root of my unease. It wasn’t because he’d been nineteen, and she’d been two decades older. It was because she was PRESA LITTLE and I was little ol’ broke Chloe. They’d probably had a sophisticated, sex-filled, worldly affair, while I spent Saturday nights in my apartment crying over gifts from my ex-boyfriend. In the back of my mind, an insecure part of me suggested that Carter only brought me there as a way to rekindle his romance with Presa.
He nodded. “I did.”
“Do you love her now?”
Another response, without pause. “No.”
It was a good answer but I would have loved a few sentences of clarification. Preferably a few lines about how much my killer bedroom skills trumped hers. That would have been a good response.
I bit my bottom lip and looked away. “I didn’t mean to be nosy.”
He shrugged. “It’s not the first time a girl has wanted to know.”
Girl. Not girlfriend. I wanted to chase down the distinction and stab it with the heel of my Tom Ford stilettos. Had he called me his girlfriend because that was what he wanted, or was it to ward off Presa? And at the same time, did I want to be his girlfriend? Was I ready for that step?
I liked him—a lot. Almost too much. There was still so much I didn’t know about him, and so much he didn’t know about me.
“Want to go home?”
He held out his hand and I took it, thinking about how I hadn’t yet seen Nicole. I didn’t want to, couldn’t stomach her hanging on Clarke, playing the part of loving wife. Not tonight. And even though we’d only been there fifteen minutes, the thought of seeing any more of Presa made me gag. I smiled up at him. “Yeah.”
Home. I liked the sound of that.
57. Getting Clean Never Felt So Dirty
He stripped me in the bedroom, taking his time, his fingers skimming off my dress, then my bra. I covered myself with my hands, and he smirked, clicking his tongue and shaking his head. Then he dropped to his knees, pulling my thong over my hips and down to the floor, my hands holding his shoulders as he pulled off one of my heels, then the other. “Get in the shower.” He turned me toward his bathroom and grabbed my ass, then growled and smacked it. It was just hard enough to make me jump, just hard enough to make me wet. I glanced over my shoulder as I headed to the bathroom, his eyes on me as he loosened his tie, his belt already undone, dress shoes being kicked off.
I came to a stop at the entrance to his bathroom. My last visit, I had found the bathroom half asleep in the middle of the night with an urgent need to pee. Now, I saw everything I had missed. The shower, big enough for two, a bench on one side, a rain head and a wide window that looked out on the city. Much fancier than mine.
He stepped behind me, reaching past and twisting the shower nozzles, his mouth nipping at my neck as the water came on in a rush. “Wait.” He stopped me from stepping in, his hand testing it, his other hand taking delicious liberties