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“All right.”
He tilted his head and spoke softly. “I want to be with you so badly right now. I want to take you home with me, and put you in my bed and have hours and hours with your body wrapped up in mine to do with as I wish. I want to have you there in the morning so when we wake up I can make you come, saying my name. I want to drive you to work and pick you up when it’s time to leave. I want to go to the shops with you and buy food we can cook for dinner. I want to watch some crap TV show and have you fall asleep against me on the couch so I can watch you and hear you breathing.”
“Oh, Ethan—”
My coffee arrived and I wanted to slap the server for interrupting that beautiful speech. I busied myself with doctoring it with sugar and cream. I took a sip and tried to find my words. To be honest I was caught up in him already. Hook, line and sinker. I wanted all those things with Ethan, I just wasn’t sure I would survive him.
“Too much? Am I scaring you off?”
I shook my head. “No. It sounds very nice actually. And you should know it’s something I’ve never had before. I’ve never had a relationship like that, Ethan.”
He grinned. “That works for me, baby. I want to be your first.” He raised an eyebrow in a look that dripped of sexual innuendo and made me want to go home with him tonight to start the arrangement. “But I want you to think about it tonight and then tell me what you decide. And you need to know that I am very possessive of what belongs to me.”
“Really, Ethan?” The sarcasm rolling out of me. “Never would have guessed that from last night in my flat.”
“I could totally spank your gorgeous ass right now for the lip you’re giving me.” He winked at me. “I can’t help it. That’s just how I feel about you, Brynne. In my head, you’re mine, and that’s how it’s been since I first met you.” He sighed across the table at me. “So I’m going to be restrained this time and take you home to sleep at your flat, and kiss you goodnight at the door, and wait for you to tell me otherwise.” He signaled the server for the bill. “You ready to go?”
I giggled at the image that popped into my head.
“Are you laughing at me, Miss Bennett? Please do share.”
“I am picturing you wanting to spank me, Mr. Blackstone, yet playing the restrained gentleman that merely kisses me goodnight at my door.”
He groaned and shifted his legs in the chair, no doubt rearranging a furious hard-on I am sure. “You’ll have witnessed a miracle tonight if my car actually manages to make it to your street.”
~*~
Ethan kept his word. He did say goodnight at my door. Granted he’d taken a few liberties with his hands and I’d gotten a very good impression of what he sported behind his fly, but he’d left me like he had promised after some very thorough kisses.
I got ready for bed after a hot shower and pulled on my softest sleeping tee. It had Jimi Hendrix on the front, the picture where he is in a garden at a table set for tea; considered the last photograph of him ever taken. I loved stuff like that, and I loved Jimi so it got a lot of use.
Deciding it was time to do a little recon on my boyfriend, I fired up my laptop right in the middle of my bed and Googled the name I’d read on his driver’s license when he’d showed it to me: Ethan James Blackstone.
Not a ton really came up for him. He had a Wikipedia page and some links for Blackstone Security’s website. Wikipedia was a surprise though. Ethan was known mostly for his celebrity as a poker player for high limit games. He’d won a world tournament in Las Vegas about six years back at the impressive age of only twenty-six. A lot of money. Enough money to start a business. And with his military background in the Special Forces he must have found his niche. So that made him about thirty-two now. I did the math. Almost eight years older than me.
Google Images had some pictures of him, mostly of his big win at poker. I would have to ask my dad if he’d ever heard of Ethan. He loved poker tournaments and still played sometimes.
I kept scrolling through pages of images and stopped whenever I found one of him. There was a picture of him with the Prime Minister and the Queen. Jesus… The Italian PM and the President of France? I felt tingles roll up my back. Was Ethan like a James Bond or something? What the hell kind of security did he do? If these were people he protected then he had a very high profile clientele. I was stunned. I made a note to ask Gabrielle’s dad if he’d heard of Ethan the next time I saw him. He was London police and if anybody was in the know, it was Rob Hargreave.
I’d also not seen a single personal photo of Ethan in a social situation with a woman. And I wondered if he held the power to squelch stuff like that. There was no way he lived a celibate lifestyle, not how he oozed sex. And if he was telling the truth about not bringing them to his home, then where did he take them for sex? Ugh, I didn’t want to ponder the idea.
Shutting down my computer, I turned out the light and crawled into bed. I pulled his purple tie out from under my pillow and held it to my nose. The comforting scent of him came to me instantly. I felt even smaller in the scheme of things now. And was left wondering why a man like him had noticed me in the first place. From just my portrait at a gallery show? The idea hardly seemed believable.
I tried to conquer my fears and think about what he’d offered to me tonight. And I remembered how good it felt to be with him and how he made my body burn during sex. I didn’t have to worry about anything scary or underhanded with Ethan. He was, if nothing, brutally honest. He was dominating, sure. But I liked that. It took the pressure off of me in a sector of my life where I held little confidence. I wanted him, I just didn’t know if he would want me once he knew my whole story.
9
Waterloo Bridge grounded me the next morning. I came home to the heavenly smell of coffee started by my roommate. I passed Gaby a half-hour later on my way out the door to class.
“You going to the Mallerton exhibition on the tenth?” she asked.
“I want to. I’m conserving one of his right now, Lady Percival. I was hoping to find out a little more about the provenance on her. She’s had some heat damage and it’s melted the lacquer over the title of the book she’s holding. I really want to know what that book is. Like a secret I need to discover.”
“Yay!” She clapped and did a little bounce. “It’s his birthday exhibit.”
I pretended to count on my fingers. “Let’s see, Sir Tristan would be two hundred twenty-eight?”
“Two hundred twenty-seven to be exact.” Gabrielle was deep into her dissertation on Romanticist painter Tristan Mallerton, so when there was anything doing with him she was first in line with tickets.
