That seems fair but hard to measure. “How do you determine happiness?”
“I guess we’ll just have to share with each other how we feel. I’ll let you know if I am, and you do the same. We’ll have to trust each other to be honest,” she says.
“Fair enough,” I say, then we shake hands.
Most worthy adversaries indeed.
She picks up her pen and writes something in her notebook.
“Why do you use a pen?” I ask.
“It comes in handy when I want to write.”
“Cheek is your native language.”
“It is.”
“What I mean is, you’re such a digital woman. Why a pen rather than an iPad or computer?”
She smiles like she has a secret. “I kind of have a thing for handwriting.”
I sit up straighter, eager to gobble up this detail about her. “I need to know more about this thing of yours.”
“Why do you need to know more about it?” she asks with a laugh.
“Because it’s interesting.” Like you. Everything about you is interesting to me.
“I like the way it looks. I like the way it feels. But it also helps me think in different ways. So, I like to take notes by hand. It makes me use a different section of my brain.”
“It would make me use the Da Vinci code section of my brain to decipher my own handwriting.”
“Meanwhile, mine is at a Dear Diary level.”
I tip my forehead to her notebook. “Show me.”
“Do you want me to write you a love note, Easton?” she asks, all over-the-top flirty.
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
She rips out a piece of paper, nibbles on the corner of her lips. The whole look is just so fucking intoxicating. Lowering the pen, she writes a few words, then folds up the paper and hands it to me.
A part of me is hopeful it’s a very dirty note.
After I unfold it, I laugh out loud both at the overly sweet and girly style, and also at the message.
“Really? I have frosting on my chin and you’re just telling me now?”
She shrugs a shoulder. “It was kind of adorable and I wanted to see how long it would take before you noticed it.”
I wag a finger at her. “Mark my words. I’m going to take you out for dinner some night. And you’ll have a piece of spinach stuck in your teeth. And I’m going to let it be there all night long.”
She leans across the table, swipes her thumb over the frosting on my chin and whispers, “And you know you’d still be turned on by the green leaf in my choppers.”
Then she licks the frosting off her thumb.
“You’re right. I would be turned on. Like I am now,” I say, my eyes locked with hers.
“Join the club,” she says.
My mind flickers to gift bangs, to large bathrooms, to anything and everything with her.
I’m about to ask if she wants to do anything about that when the door opens, and a half-dozen fit, trim guys and gals in wheelchairs roll into the shop. A running group, from the looks of the Lycra and athletic tops.
Immediately, Bellamy stands. “Want our table?” she asks a toned blonde with a high ponytail.
“You sure you don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” she says. “We’re taking off anyway.”
“Enjoy your cake,” I say as I rise, moving the chairs to make room.
A minute later, I’m on the street with my erstwhile adversary.
“Are we done then?” I ask Bellamy, hoping her answer is a big, fat no.
“Don’t think you can get rid of me that quickly,” she says, bumping my shoulder.
It must be my lucky day. “In the mood for a coffee?”
She shakes her head.
“Me neither. But if you want a water, I live around the corner,” I suggest. “That is, if you’re still thirsty.”
I expect her to draw a line in the sand.
She licks her lips. “I’m so very thirsty.”
So am I.
27
All the Upper Hands
I had a plan.
It formed perfectly in my head as we rode the elevator to my place. It involved stripping her slowly and seductively, then worshiping her body with my tongue.
Spending a good, long amount of time between her legs and getting to know her pussy with my lips and my tongue.
But with Bellamy Hart, I’m not in charge. Whatever agenda I might have devised, she simply flicks it away with one red, polished fingernail.
She does what she wants, and at the moment, I can’t complain.
I’m pressed against the wall in the foyer as she undoes the zipper on my jeans, tugs them and my boxer briefs down to my thighs, and gazes up at me with those big, lust-filled brown eyes. “My official peace offering. See if you like it better than that cake,” she says.
“Pretty sure I will,” I rasp, but the sentence dies in my throat when she licks the head of my shaft.
I groan as she takes me into her warm, wet mouth, a tremor of pleasure skating over my skin as she licks. My fingers tangle into her hair and I rope them through those lush strands. She seems to relish that, since she hums as she teases my dick with her tongue.