on her.
Dangerously, treacherously good. Which, of course, is all the more reason I have to have this discussion.
“Which ones?”
Which ones? Funny, kid.
“You know which ones.”
Maybe doesn’t respond. Instead, she takes what has to be the biggest bite of Reuben she can fit inside her mouth and holds it there.
I have to bite my lip to fight my laughter.
“I take it you don’t want to talk about them?”
She shakes her head. Her mouth is conveniently still too full to form words.
“Can I just say one thing?” I ask and, hesitantly, she nods.
“I know they were in good fun, but I think it’s important for you to understand the New York dating scene is a little different from what you’re probably used to,” I state. “Text messages like that could get a pretty woman like you into a hell of a lot of trouble.”
Her eyes narrow, and mouth still precariously full of food or not, she finds her voice. “What is that supposed to mean?”
It’s one thing for her to send me a “deflower me, please?” text message.
But it’s a whole other fucking thing for her to send that same message to some random douche she met in a bar. There’s no telling what might happen to her.
“Look, I’m not trying to offend you,” I say softly. “A lot of the men in this city are bastards, Maybe. I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you.”
She searches my eyes for a long moment, and then she spits the remainder of her gargantuan bite into a napkin and glares. “You do realize I’m not a child, right?”
Uh oh. Where exactly did I go wrong here?
Maybe
Is he really sitting here lecturing me on the New York dating scene? Like I’m an actual child?
Like he’s my father or something?
God. Not even Bruce would be so condescending, and he’s an emotionally underdeveloped gorilla!
Before I know it, I’m glaring, spitting my food into a napkin like an honest-to-God heathen and giving Milo a piece of my mind.
“You think I’m just out there sending offers for my virginity to every Tom, Dick, and Harry?”
He sits back in his chair, obviously surprised at my ire, but I don’t let up. Now that I’ve channeled all of my embarrassment into anger, I couldn’t stop if I tried. “What? You think I’m trying to sell it on the corner like some X-rated lemonade stand?”
His hands go up in a defensive posture, but I keep on rolling.
“Like a black-market auction to give my most delicate flower to the highest bidder?”
My voice is a little too loud now, I can tell by the way he’s shaking his head and looking at the people around us at the same time, though I have no choice but to see it through.
“Well, I’m not! I’d never be so cavalier. I sent those text messages while I was all hopped up on anesthesia and thought I was heading to the other side. I thought I was dead, for Pete’s sake!”
“Maybe, calm down,” he says softly, doing his best to wrangle the beast I’ve become. “I…I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not my place.”
“You’re damn right, it’s not your place!”
“Maybe,” he says calmly, reaching out to grab both of my hands with his own. At the contact, every raging brain cell in my mind shuts down. I am immediately, frighteningly, at peace. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah…well…good.”
I look down at our hands—hands that are still gloriously touching—and take a deep breath to steady myself. I’d need a hell of a lot more than ten fingers to count how many times I’ve imagined what it would feel like to have Milo Ives’s hands on me. Now, I find myself wondering what he would taste like, what he would sound like when he comes. What those hands would feel like when they’re touching other places.
All of my teenage fantasies come rushing back in a tsunami-like wave, and I almost laugh. Just like Milo himself, my delusional daydreams about him have grown up.
I snap my eyes away from our hands, and they land right on his mouth.
His stupid, sexy mouth.
I move my gaze again, but this time end up lost in his insanely beautiful blue eyes.
I’m starting to wonder why God decided to give Milo Ives all the good stuff. It feels like some sort of sick joke.
“So…what exactly did my brother ask you to do?” I use the brief pause to redirect the conversation to something other than those damn text messages. “Just use your rich people contacts to connect me