pulling her wrist up to my lips. “Believe me, favori, the master of ceremonies will be just as ready for the show in a few minutes.” I bask in the laugh, however reluctant, that earns me from her. Lower another kiss to her, this time with soft thoroughness, before letting my chest rise and fall on a long breath. “Right now…I think we need to talk.”
Shit.
I really just went there.
And brace myself for the fallout.
Sheltered island girl or not, no way has the woman hung out with Kate Robbe a dozen times and not been educated about the importance of we need to talk. That truth is confirmed in the tiny knit of her brow, before she pushes up and murmurs, “All right.”
Like a lot of women in her place, she sets her chin bravely. But unlike a lot of those women, the stress over her eyes dissolves, while its focus steadies. For a moment, I allow myself to be floored by that. Despite the anxiety she’s learned from Kate, she’s clearly chosen to listen to me first. To know that if I was going to “talk” with her like that, it wouldn’t be with her thigh snuggled on my cock, her breasts pillowed against my chest, and a lot of my come still warm in her body.
After another deep breath, I decide to just dive in. “I think we should talk about last night.”
Ella folds her hands atop my left pec. Rests her chin on them with a look that’s damn near impish. “Before or after you ensured I would never look at the back of the bedroom door the same way again?”
I grunt while twirling her hair around a finger. Brilliant shades of sienna and strawberry flow across my skin, even in the room’s watercolor light. “Well, get used to it—because you’re moving back in here.” I tug on the strand, mandating she pay even closer attention. “I’ll not spend another night apart from you.” Press my lips hard, debating about adding the rest. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”
Debate over. For better or for worse.
At first, goddammit, it really feels like the latter. My chest knots as her whole face tightens, and a grimace pushes at her skin like a swimmer trapped beneath ice.
She is everything except my ice.
Everything that has brought the sun back to my world.
The innocence I’d written off as lost. A wonderment I might have never had. And a fire, in my body and in my heart, I never knew I could have…
I need to tell her.
My sweet armeau…how do I even begin to tell you?
At the very least, I can get out what was on the original agenda—yeah, from just five minutes ago—before she had to mention that heaven of penetrating her in two places at once. I’ve had less cataclysmic distractions, of course. Shit like hurricanes and emergency plane landings.
“Deal,” she finally replies—attempting to bring her game face with a finishing smile. It climbs nowhere near her eyes, and I blame myself. Mentioning our ticking time clock was a moron-level call. “I shall be happy to be your roomie again.”
I trail fingers to her face, making sure she feels the happiness in my touch. Press them in a little before pressing on. “Then you need to know that last night…how I behaved after we were together…”
She compels me to stop by forming her hand over mine. Pushes her cheek against our twined fingers. “Last night…was completely okay, Cassian.”
I twist free from the hold. Straighten against the headboard. “You’re okay with what happened?” She might as well have said two plus two equals sixteen. She couldn’t have been “okay” with that bullshit. Someone like Amelie Hampton would be “okay” with it—because a bitch like that wouldn’t have really cared in the first place. Because nobody, in a very long time, has cared…
Holy shit.
By punching out the damn shower, did I also cross the line of Mishella’s patience? Is she letting me off the hook because she’s too fed up to even extend the hook?
Christ. That makes as much sense as my warped mental bookkeeping. “Fed up” usually doesn’t come with a suggestion to appear on national TV together—or to seal the deal by “rehearsing” with your cock between her legs.
You’re getting as irrational as a girl, dammit. Pull it together and think.
That’s the moment I look at her.
Really look.
And snap together the sweet understanding in her voice with the new, somber cast of her gaze. And here I was, thinking her eyes