He just smiled at me.
“Excuse me but didn’t we just meet yesterday? I’m not that kind of girl.”
At that, he threw his head back and laughed.
“What’s so damned funny?” I asked, frowning and just stopping myself from giving him a big, old girlie shove.
He looked at me. “You were that kind of girl this morning.”
He was right, I was. Another ten minutes and I’d have been screwed, literally. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing for a number of reasons. At the moment, most especially, I didn’t want him to know I was a virgin. That might have an adverse effect on my street cred.
“Temporary insanity,” I retorted.
“Jules, choose.”
“No.”
His hands shot out and grabbed me, yanking me forward. Then his arms wrapped around me, pulling me into his body. I should have been smart enough to learn after seeing it enough times how quickly he could move.
“How about this?” he suggested looking down at me. “We talk but we save the f**king until later, maybe after our second date when I actually take you out somewhere.”
There wasn’t going to be a second date so I took this as a boon. “Agreed,” I said.
He smiled at me in a way that made me think he knew my thoughts.
He let me go. I walked down the hall but he grabbed my hand when we were walking by the bed platform and stopped me.
I turned to him. “What?” I asked.
His eyes shifted to the bed. “Climb up,” he said.
My mouth dropped open. “I thought we were going to talk.”
“Yeah, we’re gonna do it up there.”
Was he crazy?
“We’re not going to talk on the bed!”
“Climb up, Jules.”
“We can talk in the living room.”
“Climb up.”
“No one talks on a bed.”
“Jules, climb, the f**k, up.”
I whirled to make my way into the living room. I didn’t get even a step. Lightin’ Crowe grabbed my hand again, spun me around then bent, twisting his body and lifting me so he was carrying me around his shoulders, one hand on my arm, his other arm around my thighs.
“Holy shit! Crowe put me down!” I yelled.
I figured he was going to hurt me; no way was he going to climb up steps and get me into my bed without slamming me into the ceiling. The hallway ceiling was low, the bed area was an elevated alcove, the ceiling high, there was only a small gap to get in and a lot of that was taken by the bed. Even I, after living there five years, still conked my head on the hallway ceiling at least once a month.
I shouldn’t have worried. This was Vance Crowe we were talking about. He climbed, bent nearly double, shoved his torso through with me around his shoulders, not even scraping the ceiling. He released me, rolled me in and came up behind me, snagging me under my armpits and hauling me up the bed. He lay down on his back and pulled me up over his body.
I was too shocked to move and staring at him in disbelief.