and he drove her home.
“This isn’t what I had in mind when I told you I’d buy you dinner,” she said, setting the paper plates and napkins on the coffee table alongside the pizza that had just been delivered.
She’d been thinking fancy restaurant, candles and tablecloths, and soft music in the background.
Not necessarily because she liked those things.
But because he lived in a penthouse and owned a building in SF. He was probably used to fancy shit. Hell, he had that white rug where anyone might just stain it.
Then again, he’d gone to the small theater, walked on that sticky floor, and shared popcorn and a KitKat.
That wasn’t exactly fancy.
Neither was eating pizza and drinking beers.
But that’s what he’d suggested when his stomach had rumbled on the drive home, and she’d ordered the food on the app, so it had arrived almost when they did.
Ben opened the lid, inhaled deeply. “Fuck, that smells good.”
Her pussy clenched.
As though he felt it, Ben glanced over at her, and she got lost in the heat in his eyes. He closed the pizza box, prowling over to her. Her nostrils flared, and she didn’t back up when he stepped right into her space, sharing her air. “You have condoms?” he asked.
So not the most romantic of statements.
But also the same question she’d been asking herself.
The answer to which had her cursing internally.
“No,” she breathed.
His eyes slid to half-mast, and though she detected the disappointment there, the same that she was feeling (why, seriously, didn’t she have an emergency condom? Also, why didn’t he have one?) He didn’t say anything, just trailed his knuckles down her throat, halting at the neckline of the sweatshirt.
Then he took her hand and tugged her over to the couch, a plate laden with pizza plunked into her lap a moment later.
He was beside her in the next, pizza on his plate.
But neither of them ate.
Fingers on her throat again, another shiver wracking her frame. “Stop looking at me like that,” he rasped.
Her lips parted, a shuddering breath escaping. “I can’t help it.”
His plate hit the table.
His hands slid into her hair. His lips came down—
Fred launched himself onto the couch . . . and snatched a slice of pizza off her plate.
She was so in Ben’s thrall that it took her a moment to realize what Fred had done. Gasping, she jumped to her feet, Ben somehow managing to snag her plate before she dumped it on the ground.
“Fred!” she snapped, taking a step after her pooch, but the little asshole had already eaten the slice.
Stef couldn’t believe he’d done that.
She’d already fed him, and she’d broken him of the counter-surfing for food habit when he was a puppy, and he’d never been much of a food-snatcher, least of all right off her lap.
And the turd didn’t even have the common courtesy to look guilty.
He just licked his lips.
“I—I—”
Ben started laughing, setting her plate on the table, before crossing the room to crouch in front of Fred.
Everything inside her went tense for one moment.
She didn’t know this man, and if he did something to Fred . . .
He reached a hand out to her dog, stroked his fingers over fluffy, golden ears. “That was naughty,” Ben murmured in a voice that made her want to be naughty herself. “Pizza will make you sick.”
Fred had stilled, staring up at him.
“You can’t do that again, got it?” Ben ordered, firmer now. “No stealing food. No pizza.”
Fred whined and sank down onto his belly.
Apparently satisfied, Ben stood up, crossed back to the table, put another slice onto her plate, then came to her and tugged her down next to him on the couch. “Now then,” he said. “No more looking at me. Just eat.”
She opened her mouth.
“Eat,” he ordered.
She took the plate he shoved at her but didn’t pick up her pizza. Instead, she grabbed the remote, shoved it at him, then snagged her cell.
“Stef.” Another order.
Well, good thing she knew how to give orders herself . . . or at least with Ben she found that she could.
“You find something to watch,” she told him. “And I’m using Instacart to order”—heh—“us some condoms.”
His gaze shot to hers.
A grin, wicked and so different from what he’d given to her before. Different in a good way, in the best way.
She folded his fingers over the remote. “Put something on.”
Another hot look, but then he turned on the TV, she got busy on the app, and by the time their delivery showed up, the