Pretty Perfect Toy - Angel Payne Page 0,3
denote a person who is special above others in a person’s life. When used, it…elevates a conversation.
“Sure as hell am.” Though his reply comes without a skipped beat, he lets one pass while drawing up and re-locking our stares. “You’re troubled. Why?”
I wrestle my gaze away. Turn it back to the horizon, banking that the sunset will hold it still for more than a few seconds. The gamble was worth it. The sky is a palette of pink and orange, the river a collection of purple and gold. I walk to the balcony’s edge. For a moment, I can truly imagine we are a knight errant and his lady, enjoying a respite as day transforms into night. “There is no room for troubled here.” I hope my peaceful breath proves how much I mean it.
“You accuse me of pulling the armeau card, then use a line like that?”
Dismissive shrug. “Worth a try.”
Cassian chuckles hard enough to make me join in. Soothes my frayed nerves a little more by stepping behind me, caging me against the stone ledge, hands flattened just next to my elbows. “You weren’t comfortable during the tour.”
I shift a little. Enough to assure myself his warmth is real…
Including the stiff ridge between his thighs.
“Not true.” I curl one of his arms forward, around my waist. More…I want so much more. Though keeping our hands from each other would be a feat close to achieving world peace, his recovery from the shooting has stopped us short from being fully passionate for the last six weeks—meaning everything about his nearness coats my senses like a wizard’s spell. His scent, cedar and soap and musk. His muscles, now leaner but more defined because of the changes in his workouts. His masculine force, potent and stringent, as if trying to gash its way out of his body and into mine. “The tour, I was very comfortable with.”
“But…?”
His voice vibrates along my ear. I swallow, struggling not to let that fire course through the rest of me…but as my toes burn with it, I embrace the defeat. “But Blythe…”
“Blythe?” He jerks back. Just a little. “You’re in a twist about him?”
“He…” My lips purse. Borrowing serenity from the sky, despite how the man swirls heat through my belly with tiny circles of his fingers, I push on. “He…wants you, Cassian. In that way.”
He resettles behind me. Expands the caresses, playing at the top of my panties through my light cotton dress, while teasing my neck with a soft chuckle. “Is that all?”
I take my turn for a little jerk. “Is that all?”
“I’ve known the man for years, Ella. And he isn’t subtle.”
“Isn’t—? Wait. You mean he’s…tried to…”
“Tried.” He has the nerve to chuckle about it. “Long ago.”
“How long?”
“Long enough.”
“And—and did you—errrm—return his—his—”
Another chuckle, huskier and sexier, before he dips in to nip at the space beneath my ear. “What do you think?”
I squirm. Battle through the steam he has thickened through my senses with his oh-so-talented fingers and lips. “I think you are a man of many passions—”
“Specific passions.” He trails that incredible mouth down, lining my shoulder with tingles of perfect heat. “Most particularly, for strawberry blondes with the sky in their eyes and heaven in their kiss.” One of his hands sprawls across the front of my throat, compelling me tighter against him. “Oh yeah…and accents. Ones that remind me of Mediterranean islands with trellises full of possibilities…”
Even in my confusion, I smile. His reference to the night of our first kiss, when he scaled a trellis to get onto my balcony then into my bedroom, can bring nothing else. “But only one of us in that room was still a virgin, Cassian. And I can accept that, even if I do not understand all of it—”
“And I don’t want you to.” His voice, deepening with new solemnity, sends vibrations of emotion through me. And confusion.
“But—”
“Ssshhh.”
“Cassian. We have been open with each other since the start—” When we had to negotiate the terms of the contract that brought me here. Forty million of his dollars. Six months of my life. And the possibility of having exactly this. A connection my spirit has never felt with anyone…
“And I’m being open with you now.” He turns me back to face him, stroking tendrils of hair from my face as the wind kicks up—and pointedly clearing his throat as our lower bodies fit against each other again. “As a matter of fact,”—his brows jump and his nostrils flare—“if I’m any more open about