the lamp between us, grinning. “A lamp-lit dinner. It’s like you’re deliberately trying not to be cliché now.”
A waiter brought our plates and left the room.
I looked at Damon, trying not to laugh. “I feel like you’re trying to apologize for something with all of this.”
“Maybe I am.”
“I feel like the one who has been on thin ice. I kept Luna a secret from you.”
“And I made you think you needed to.”
I hadn’t touched my food, but I looked down at it, unsure what to say.
“Chelsea.” Damon reached across the table and took my hand. “I don’t want to downplay the importance of this conversation. But that steak in front of you is imported Kobe beef. The chef cooked it to the exact temperature where the fat will melt in your mouth. If we sit here and talk too long, it’ll get cold.”
I snorted. “Unbelievable.”
He forked a piece of meat from my plate and held it toward my mouth. “It will be, if you stop talking long enough to try it.”
Grinning, I took a bite. As promised, it was delicious. I wiped the corner of my mouth, savoring the buttery aftertaste. “I didn’t realize you were in such a hurry to put your meat in my mouth tonight.”
Damon choked on his water, then set it down, composing himself. “If my meat was in your mouth, you wouldn’t be able to talk around it.”
I wiggled my eyebrows. “That sounds like the sort of challenge meant to bait me into giving you a blowjob.”
“I’m not too proud to resort to tricks.”
When we finished dinner, Damon took me upstairs. I noticed the wait staff and chef appeared to have left once our food was served, and as far as I could tell, we were alone in the huge building.
“What comes next?” I asked.
“If everything goes according to plan, you will.”
Damon, the man who apparently had all the jokes now, scooped me up and carried me into a bedroom with a four-poster bed and silk drapes. I didn’t have time to notice anything else before I was tossed onto the cloud-like mattress. I laughed up at him. “What if I refuse you, boss?”
“Then I’m going to have an unfortunate case of blue balls tomorrow.”
“Hmm. That would be a shame. Especially since you passed up on Tia Klein earlier. I’m sure she would’ve loved to help you with that.”
“I’d pass up a thousand Tia Klein’s for a shot with you. Easily.”
“Nine hundred and ninety-nine to go. I guess those balls are going to be blue for a while, aren’t they?”
Damon made a low sound in his throat and pulled me toward him by the ankle. He was standing at the edge of the bed and had taken his tie off at some point. I sat up, gripping the front of his shirt.
“I see you’re playing make believe,” Damon said. He traced a goosebump inducing path down my cheek. “Pretending you aren’t soaking wet for me. Pretending you wouldn’t do every little thing I say. Pretending you aren’t absolutely starving to have my cock buried inside you.”
“I don’t know if it’d do much good to bury it in me. I was thinking more about penetration.”
Damon pushed me down by the chest, reaching for his buttons. “You’re funny now, but that only makes it more satisfying to fuck the humor right out of you.”
“I don’t think it works that way.”
He was on the bed now, shirtless and coming toward me. The muscles on his arms flexed with each movement, veins straining against his smooth skin.
“I want to taste you.” Damon pushed up my dress, revealing the panties I’d worn specifically for him. I hoped he thought they were sexy. They had little bits of pink lace framing the black—
There was a sudden jerking motion and a ripping sound. Damon was holding my torn panties in a victorious fist, his eyes hungry on my bare pussy. “Did you really just—”
His head was between my legs, and it felt like my body was pinned to the bed. My eyelids fluttered as his tongue drove into me and his hands explored me, reaching and groping like he could barely control himself.
Okay. Admittedly, it was harder to think in my natural sarcastic state of mind. In fact, it was hard to think. Period.
I took a handful of his hair, licking my lips as he licked mine. I grinned at my stupid twist on words just before he slid two fingers into me while his tongue worked.
My legs tried to close in