“For what?”
She bites down, shaking her head, looking stubborn and pouty for a moment. “I just….”
She trails off, and I can’t help myself. I kiss her again, my hand gliding across the car toward her leg.
A horn screeches, jolting us from the kiss.
“Thank God for my tinted windows,” I growl, my lips still tasting of her.
“Why?” she asks, pawing at her mouth, red-lipped, rosy-cheeked, and mine.
“Because nobody saw us. The car in front wasn’t watching. It was the car behind who blew their horn.”
“So?”
So nobody gets to see you, ever. Nobody ever gets to touch you. You’re mine, and every single fucking piece of you belongs to me.
I make my face cold, turning back to the road. I can’t tell her this. Making myself icy is the only way to keep it down.
I’m running hot right now, burning up from the kiss, from everything the kiss might mean.
Too hot, swirling thoughts hiss embers in my mind, calling me to the future. My woman smiling sweaty and happy from the birthing bed, our child in her arms, looking at me with pure love on her face. Clasping each other tightly on our wedding night, our bodies melting together, my manhood buried inside of her where it belongs.
Forcing it all away, I focus on the road.
“It’s just better that way,” I say.
It’s the most I can offer without delving into the full magnitude of it.
Otherwise, I’ll let it all out.
And she’ll never want to speak to me again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Fiona
I try to focus as the host leads us across the restaurant. The room is tall and vast, like a ballroom, with richly colored carpets and bright fabrics for the curtains. Chandeliers shine down on us, and I notice how the host takes us around the edge of the main section, up a flight of stairs, up another one, before gesturing down a hallway at a balcony.
“Sir, madam,” he says, not looking me in the eye.
It’s like he’s been told not to, like he’s not supposed to remember my face.
“Thank you,” Felix says, waving at me to go ahead.
I walk in front of him, my lips buzzing from the kiss, my body desperate for another. If it wasn’t for what happened in the car – and how clearly private this balcony booth is – I’d think about Felix’s eyes on me as I walk.
He said he liked how curvy I am.
And the kiss….
Heck, it made me shiver as I tasted him, as our lips moved together. I couldn’t believe how hot it was.
I’ve never done anything like that, not even imagined it. My body is still pulsing now, my pussy wet and clammy, my clit rubbing against my panties.
My mind is flaring even more brightly with what the kiss might mean. The future, the closeness, the silly dreams I need to get out of my head.
Maybe it’s just better that way, like he said in the car when he said it was good nobody saw us kissing.
He pulls my seat out for me, and I shuffle into place, wishing I could relish this moment, luxuriate in the feeling of my man guiding me into position. But I can’t get those words out of my head or the way his face changed before he said them.
He was passionate and involved, and then he mentioned the tinted windows, and he transformed. It was like he stopped caring right then, withdrawing from me. It was like he decided he’d let himself get too close.
“The waiter will be here for the drinks soon,” Felix says, dropping into his seat. He waves a hand over the vast ballroom, the tables laid out two floors below. “What do you think?”
I warn myself to slow down. I don’t know if he was embarrassed, and that’s why he was relieved about the tinted windows. He didn’t want to be seen kissing me.
What other reason is there?
The ballroom is pretty from up here, the chandeliers seeming close, glistening.
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
“Are you okay, Fiona?”
“Fine. Just not used to a fancy place like this. And a secret little private table too.”
It’s not fair, but I can’t keep the vitriol out of my voice. It’s the sort of sarcasm I employed for years after mom and dad, keeping the world at bay, but I haven’t had cause to use it in a long time. It’s only during rare arguments, and I try to push it down now.
I don’t want to snipe, to be cruel, to pick at the situation. But I can’t help it.
“It is private,” he says, looking at me strangely. “This is the best table in the restaurant. I only wanted the best for you, Fiona.”
His words brighten me a little, and my smile feels genuine. I can’t let one little event like that ruin things. I can’t sabotage this, whatever this is going to be.