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“Like, a thousand.”
“Okay.” He leaned back, looking me in the eye. “How about a deal?”
“Another one?”
“Everything’s a deal, honey. Nothing comes for free.”
Even though he was joking, that idea from the man I was considering spending my life with was chilling. “What’s your deal?”
“You can ask any question you want, but you lose a piece of clothing when you ask it.”
“Strip conversation?”
“Exactly.”
His grin was pure dare and I felt a new version of me rising up inside this older body. A version of me made confident by this man’s attention.
“All right,” I said. “When you said you weren’t with any other women since me, were you just talking about sex?”
“I dated a very nice woman for about six months. Never slept with her.”
“Never?”
He shook his head. “She dumped me. Clothing, King, what’s it going to be?”
I took out my pearl earring and set it down on the floor beside the couch.
“Dubious,” he said with a curled lip.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” It was outrageous I didn’t know the answer to that. But he never mentioned his family. Ever. It was like he was made, fully formed, in a suit and dropped in the King Industries lobby.
“A sister. She’s a yoga teacher in Arizona.”
“Are you close?”
“That’s a third question. You’re gonna have to shed some clothes.”
I took out the other earring, grinning at him the whole time.
“Now, answer.”
“We’re not close. She left when I was pretty young. Hasn’t been back to Texas since.”
“Do you miss her?”
“I honestly barely knew her.”
“So, when your mom died, it was just you and your dad?”
He nodded.
“Where’s your dad?”
“You’re cheating, King.”
Laughing, I reached for my socks, but he got there first and pulled both of them off by the toes, flinging them over his head. “Socks are bullshit,” he said. “Show me some skin.”
I gathered some courage and pulled off my shirt, revealing my pink bra and so much skin. I felt pale and naked under his gaze, which swept from the top of my head down my whole body.
“You are so beautiful,” he said.
“You’re avoiding my question.”
“What was it?” He pressed a kiss to my shoulder. To the top of my arm. My collarbone. My neck. He scattered his kisses like confetti all over my body until I was covered in him. He rolled forward, onto me, and I shifted until he was between my legs, his arms under my back.
“I…forget,” I said, and he chuckled into my neck.
His hips rolled into me and by his diabolical design his erection pressed against the sweet spot in my body. I gasped, pushing back into him.
“Does that feel good?”
“You know it does.”
“Say it.”
“It feels good.” He pushed forward again and it was like my brain shut down and my body lit up. My body turned into a carnival ride and it was only ever him who could make that happen. “You make me feel so good.”
He moaned low in his throat, his face buried in my neck, and I remembered his face when he came into the house. The sadness he couldn’t quite hide behind all his masks. And suddenly, lit up the way I was, I wanted him to feel good. To feel the way I did.
And I wanted to be the one to make it happen.
He hadn’t had sex in five years.
“I have another question,” I said.
“Good. I want you to take off your pants.”
“Will you let me make you feel good?”
15
VERONICA
He stilled in my arms.
“You don’t—”
“Have to,” I finished for him. That was something he always used to say, every time I offered this. Like it was something more than I should be willing to give him. Or more than he should be given. “But I want to.”
My fingers worked on his belt, feeling the warm press of his skin against my hands. He got up on his knees so he could strip off his shirt.
“God, yes,” I said. He was so fucking beautiful. Lean and elegant. But strong. I sat up and wrapped my arms around his hips, pressing my face to his stomach. Kissing the soft tender skin there.
He hissed and cupped my head.
“Don’t you have some childhood bedroom around here you want to defile?” he asked.
“Yes, please!” I said and we scurried off the couch. I grabbed his hand and led him upstairs to where I slept as a kid.
The second I left for college Jennifer had torn down my Johnny Depp posters. She got rid of my white lace canopy bed and replaced it with a king-size bed and a blue wedding-ring patterned quilt.
When I moved back after that first year, I was too busy to change it. Too busy to care.
“This was your room?’ he asked, looking around like he’d gotten lost along the way. “I thought there’d be more…you in it…”
“Like what?”
“Remember those sky photographs you really loved?” he asked. “At that art fair you made me go to?”
