pale flesh by his mouth.
He, honest to god, did not know how to react. The marks he left on her chest and the slight bruising he saw earlier on her hips—the result of his strong grip—only told half a story. The other half was found on the divots and scratch marks her nails left on his back.
With a boyish smirk, he snickered, “I’m sorry?”
Summer smirked and rolled her eyes. “I’m not. Although,” she drawled in a playful tone that made his heart sing, “if your plan is to whisk me away to a fancy hotel for the purpose of seducing me, I must insist on equal time.”
“Meaning?”
She lifted one shoulder and flashed an innocent look. “Oh, you know.”
He chuckled. “No, please enlighten me.”
After a long sip and some very definite ogling that left no doubt about Summer’s lusty thoughts, she quipped, “Turnabout is fair play, right? I mean, after all, it’s only right if you got to bite me, I should have the same opportunity.”
He grinned like a goddamn idiot, and then she moved in with a verbal kill shot.
“From my knees,” she purred. Her gaze dipped to his lap, and even though the table blocked her view, he was instantly turned on, knowing she was thinking about his cock. “I hear inner thigh love bites are all the rage.”
He growled. “Who told you that?” The idea of Summer entertaining sexual thoughts that did not center solely on him got his hackles up.
“I read.” She laughed. “And I have girlfriends who love to brag. Did you know gargling sperm is the number one way to score a ring?”
Arnie’s head felt like it exploded. He was on the cusp of reacting when he noticed a teeny tiny quiver at the corner of her mouth. She was playing with him.
“Did you know men ejaculate at a rate of about twenty-eight miles an hour?”
Her mouth dropped open in shock. Mentally patting himself on the back, he kept going.
“And some say the bigger the cannon, the more powerful the explosion.”
Summer gave as good if not better than she got and came right back with a challenge.
“Sorry, big guy. We live in litigious times. You’ll have to spell out consent, or your cannon goes unattended. Do you agree I have every right to tattoo my name in hickeys on your inner thigh?”
Sexy Summer’s innocent fascination with cock mechanics was both a turn-on and a hell of a challenge.
He leered, and her smoky blues flared with interest. “Tell you what, pretty lady. I’ll teach you how to use Morse code in a conversation between your mouth and my dick.”
Her giggle was the best thing to ever happen.
“Shall I take that as interest?”
With an exaggerated sigh, she sat back and looked at a watch she wasn’t wearing. “The clock is running. My next forty-eight hours are all yours, and yes, I put Morse code on our to-do list.”
Because he was a guy and had a male’s one-track mind, he stopped to consider whether sucks or nibbles would be best. Which sensation would he be able to decipher? Was his cock strong enough to handle finding out?
When he looked at her, she was licking her lips, and her gaze turned intense.
On the way out of Starbucks, Arnie swore she smiled at everyone and mostly got happy reactions in return. Her natural friendliness fascinated him. She made eye contact and had a smile for every stranger.
At the same time, he worried about the pitfalls of being an open conduit to other people. She needed a protector—someone to shield her from those who might seek to use her friendliness as a weapon. Against her. He’d have to kill anyone who messed with her. The thought was unsettling but accurate. If he had any say in the matter, the golden girl with sunshine in her smile was not to be trifled with—not unless tangling with the darker side of his personality seemed like a good idea.
Wrapping her arm around his, she matched his strides and clung. He’d never given much thought to PDA—public displays of affection—but her act of claiming affected him deeply.
“I could get used to this,” she teasingly cooed when he got her belted into the Tesla with the step-by-step safety focus of a guy running a carnival ride.
“Safety first,” he growled in as playful a tone as his libido could manage.
Summer giggled and touched his face before he drew back. “Are you sure it’s not a case of you getting off on strapping me in, or down, whichever