“Yeah,” he responded immediately.
I blinked again, stunned and feeling weird, good weird, bad weird, scary weird, Rottweiler snarling weird.
“How do you know I’ll be worth the effort?”
“I know.”
“How?” I pushed.
“I just know.”
“How?” I didn’t let it go.
“You eat shit most your life, work, sweat and bleed for anything you could get the rest of it, you know sweet when you taste it.”
Oh my God.
I didn’t know what to say to that so I didn’t say anything at all and fell silent.
“You done talkin’?” he asked after a few minutes.
I nodded.
His hand at my waist slid up my back to my head. He tucked my face into his throat and he held me.
I laid there awhile.
Then when I thought he was asleep, I took my hand from where it was pressed against his chest and I wrapped it around his waist.
When I did this, his arms went tight, he yanked out my ponytail holder and my hair spilled over his hand. He ran his fingers through it then I felt him twirling a tendril somewhere in the area between my shoulder blades.
I guessed that meant he wasn’t asleep.
Whatever.
I closed my eyes and settled in.
He kept playing with my hair.
Before I knew it, before I even would have thought it possible, I fell asleep.
Chapter Ten
Mine
I woke up with a belly in the state of advanced fluttering. In fact I was pretty certain in the recesses of my deep sleep I’d already experienced some significant flutterings and thought they were a dream.
I knew by now with Vance’s relentless pursuit of me and all that had happened during that pursuit that what I was feeling was very, very turned on.
This had to do with the fact that Vance’s body was pressed close to my back.
It also had to do with the fact that Vance’s hardness was pressed against my bottom.
But, mostly, it had to do with the fact that Vance’s hand was at my breast and his thumb was stroking lightly back and forth across my nipple.
I moved slightly and so did Vance, pressing into me.
With his mouth at the back of my neck, he said, “Mornin’.”