TATUM
Wren stared blissfully out the window from the passenger seat of my car, pretty as a picture with her long, lean legs crossed at the ankles. The striped fabric of her skirt spilled out on either side of one thigh thanks to a high slit that had me thinking all it would take was a quick tug to tear it off of her body. The rest of the skirt completely covered her left leg, though I could see the outline of her knee brace beneath it.
Sexy fucking legs.
I reached across the console of my Camaro and wrapped my palm around her smooth skin.
She glanced at me with those blue eyes, then quickly returned to staring out the window. Her teeth sank into her red-coated lips. God, I wanted to kiss it off. Wanted to mess her up. I wanted to see her makeup smeared and her hair wild.
I wanted to ravage her.
She trailed her delicate fingers along the leather interior and mused, “I like your car.”
“We’ve covered some miles together,” I said with a grin, then pressed the pedal until the engine purred. “She was one of the first things I splurged on when I, uh, got a little money of my own.”
Compared to the luxury vehicles that some of the guys in the league drove, my Camaro was the equivalent of a second-hand Honda Civic. But it had been my draft present to myself. It moved with me to every team I’d played for. At this point, I had more of an emotional attachment to my car than anything else in my life.
I sure as hell didn’t care about what Wren was doing to the penthouse, but I didn’t say that out loud. If I did, I feared that she would do a little decorating and disappear.
I liked coming home to the ghost of her. The way her perfume lingered in whatever room she had been working in. The plastic cup of iced coffee that had been downed, then tossed in the trash can. The lipstick print on the straw.
The way I could see the penthouse going from a dime-a-dozen property to a home—a real home—was mind-blowing. It’s as if she had her finger on my pulse.
I stroked the smooth, tanned skin of her thigh with my thumb as I took a turn, following the GPS directions that were leading me to a big box mattress store. Her hips shifted in the seat, rocking back and forth ever so slightly. Wren had her elbow on the lip of the window and was chewing on her thumbnail, trying her darndest not to smile.
“Let me have it, Little Bird,” I said with a laugh. “What’s on your mind?”
Wren peered at me from the corner of her eyes. “How’d you find out where I lived?”
“Honest?”
“No, I want you to lie to me,” she deadpanned.
I chuckled and slid my hand further up her thigh. “I had Sam call your design firm and say that she wanted to send a thank you gift to your home. Some guy named Maddox gave it up.”
“That traitor!” she hissed.
“Nah, don’t be too hard on him.” I rolled my head across the back of the seat and smiled at her. “Sam can be persuasive. Besides, if he hadn’t spilled your address, we wouldn’t be going on our third date tonight.”
Wren let out a laugh like a foghorn. “Third? Is that what we’re going with now?”
I laced our fingers together and kissed the back of her hand. “Yep. Don’t question my math.”
“Why not just call it our second date?”
“Because,” I said, pulling into a parallel space in front of the mattress store. “The third date is when you stay over.”
Her eyebrows darted up. “Someone’s presumptuous.”
I unlatched my seatbelt. “Am I wrong?”
“Hm,” she hummed and leaned across the center console. “We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”
I hooked a finger beneath her chin and tilted it up. “You think I’m going into this without a game plan?”
She cocked her head to the side and our lips grazed. “You gonna give me a peek at your playbook?”
“Not a chance, Little Bird.” My breath caressed her lips. “Not. A. Chance.” I pulled away from our almost-kiss and hopped out.