“You look beautiful.”
“No, seriously, what do you think?”
Axl was confused seeing as he’d just answered that question.
“Honey, you look beautiful.”
Looking down at herself, she shifted her hips side to side, which meant the skirt drifted around her legs.
Axl was watching that as she asked, “Is it too casual?” Then she decided for him. “It’s too casual. It doesn’t say Cherry Creek.”
He tore his eyes from her hips and stated firmly, “Hattie, look at me.”
She looked at him.
“You. Look. Beautiful,” he declared.
She kept gazing at him for a few beats before she said, “Okay. Phew. Now, hair up or down?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Down.”
“Right!” she for some reason cried loudly, then rushed out of the room, her skirt flying out behind her.
He found her in the bathroom, leaning over the sink, yanking something out of her hair.
It came tumbling down.
Well, hell.
That went straight to his dick.
He had to shower, and they had to get on the road. They didn’t have time for a quick fuck.
“Babe, I need to shower.”
She turned to him. “If my hair is down, I need product. And fiddle time. Are you okay to shower with me in the bathroom?”
“Of course.”
She grinned at him. “Then shower.”
And back she went to her hair.
He moved to his room, pulled off his clothes, tossed them on the chair, boots and socks remained on the floor, then walked naked back into the bathroom.
She turned to him again, her eyes doing a full body scan, but sticking on his cock.
This meant he got behind her, fit himself to her body, bent in and kissed her neck, getting a whiff of her perfume, feeling his cock stir (again), and he said in her ear, “You can have it later.”
“Mm,” she hummed.
He kissed her neck again then went to the shower.
When he got out, Hattie was still at the sink fucking around with her hair, but now she was doing it with Cleo sitting on the bathroom counter, tail swishing, staring at her in fascination.
Axl didn’t question that.
He understood a fascination with Hattie’s curls.
But when he reached for a towel, Cleo remembered nothing fascinated her. And doing so, she tossed him a look, jumped down, and Axl stopped and stared as she ran her body along the backs of Hattie’s legs as she strutted out.
“Jesus, what’d you do to my cat?” he asked.
“Well, as she’s a girl,” Hattie told the mirror, “and I’m a girl, I realized the best way to win any girl over was to offer her girl time.” She stopped fucking with her hair and turned fully to him. “In other words, I took some time with Cleo, and she and I had a chat which was mostly me chatting, and Cleo snarfing down a bowl of tuna.”
“In short, you bribed her with food.”
“Totally.”
Axl chuckled.
Hattie leaned a hip against the basin and watched him towel off.
“Babe, it’ll take me five minutes to dress and we need to be out the door in five minutes. I don’t have time to fuck you which means we don’t have any for you to change your mind seven more times about your dress, or your shoes, or—”
“I got it, I got it,” she said, whirled, her skirt flew, and she was out the door.
He seriously wished he had that twenty minutes he’d wanted to have before they needed to leave when he walked from the hall, dressed in jeans and a white button-down, his shoes in his hand, to see Hattie rise from the bed wearing a pair of high-heeled yellow sandals with a thin ankle strap, a little gold at her throat and wrist, and a sheen of gloss on her lips.
He’d woken her up to fuck her that morning before he had to get up and shower, then leave.
With Sly at the door to take duty, he’d left her in his bed.
That fuck, officially, wore off the minute he saw her in those shoes with that lip gloss.
Now he was wishing even more than he did before—and he wanted this visit out of the way, but he’d never been looking forward to it—that he hadn’t caved when his mother pushed for this dinner.
He beat back the need to at the very least kiss her, and hard, which he knew would lead to them both wanting other things, which in turn would mean his resolve would buckle, and he got on with putting on his shoes.
She grabbed her purse. He grabbed her hand.
And at the door to the garage, he called, “Later, Cleo.”
Nothing.
“Later, shmoochmagooch,” Hattie called.
A distant meow.
“Shmoochmagooch?” he asked.
“During our chat I learned she likes baby talk,” she told him.
Fucking hell.
This made him grin and he kept doing it even when he was backing them out of the garage.
Bad news, they were on their way and it was always a crapshoot with his dad how things would go.