"It's not a relationship. And Addie can never know."
"What if that's what I want? A relationship…with you?" He tries to cage me against the counter, but I hold up my hand to stop him.
"You don't," I tell him.
"I don't think you know me well enough to know that." Mateo gently takes my wrist and pushes it aside, closing in on me.
"I'm a mess."
"One that I desperately want to kiss." He bites the corner of his lower lip.
"So what's stopping you?" I ask. A challenge.
"Feelings."
"No feelings," I say.
"No promises," he counters.
"When's the last time you got laid?"
He grins, his mischievous one, and I can see the younger man he used to be.
"You want to fuck me. You want to ride me," he says in a sing-song voice.
"I want an orgasm I didn't self-inflict, there's a difference," I say.
"If I say no feelings, can I kiss you now?"
He must get the answer he wants from the look on my face because suddenly his lips hit mine.
And I'm kissing him back.
He tastes like coffee, and although I've never had a taste for it before, I think it's my new favorite flavor. His lips are soft, tentative at first. But then his tongue sweeps across mine, and he pulls back, sucking the hoop in my lip into his mouth with a groan.
Mateo presses his forehead to mine.
"I've wanted to do that since the moment I saw you," he admits.
"What else?" I ask.
"Oh, Storm Cloud, I've got plans for you."
"Then you should stop talking and start doing."
He licks his lips and shifts to standing tall, placing his hands on my waist and lifting me to sit on the island. I'm not a small woman so the move is shocking. My height alone is enough to stop most men from picking me up, and yet he did it injured.
"Dude, no, you're still—"
Mateo pushes my knees apart with his hands and steps between my legs.
"Tell you what," he says on a breath. "Call me dude any other time you want, but not when I'm about to make you come."
"We'll see about that, Mateo," I say his name pointedly and watch as his eyes darken in the morning light.
"Yeah, you need to work on that one," he says.
Need to work on, what? He doesn't let me linger on the thought for long as he sweeps his tongue down my neck. He skates a hand up my bare thigh, and I watch as it disappears beneath the leg of my sleep shorts.
