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She shrugged. “Mom and Dad were dead, so I didn’t think they’d be able to swing it.”
The blasé way she said surprised me. “Oh, uh. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”
She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I probably shouldn’t have said it like that. It’s just how I deal with things.”
“I can understand that,” I said, looking her over and seeing more of her story unfold around her. “Let me guess, too many people giving you pitying looks and trying to coddle you after it happened?”
“You got it,” she said with a nod. “And I didn’t mind some of the time, but so many people were just kinda… fake about it. They would say they were there for me for whatever I needed, but mostly they just meant for whatever was convenient. Despite all those promises, I ended up in the foster system just like I knew I would.”
Huh. Even more of the story, and I understood even more of why she clutched her barriers so tightly to herself, as well as why she might have never trusted anyone enough to be intimate with her.
But she trusted me
That thought struck me and I found arousal rushing through me again. For some strange reason, she trusted me with kissing her, with tasting her. Even if we never went further from this point, I knew without a doubt that she had shown me something special. Something she had protected for so, so long.
“People are like that,” I said instead, one of my hands slowly crossing the table to take her hands in one of my bigger ones. “They make promises that they think are appropriate but have no intention of backing up. I noticed that when I was a teenager, and I hate it too.”
She let out a breath. “Huh, for being some sort of mega billionaire who’s also ridiculously hot, you’re pretty down to Earth.”
“Doubtful,” I said with a chuckle. “I just know how shitty people can be.”
“You got that right.” Despite our sour conversation topic, she laughed, seeing to be put at ease. But right when it seemed like she was about to relax, something caused her to stiffen again. “Am I stupid for doing this?” she asked, voice quiet as her green eyes looked uncertainly over at me.
“For agreeing to go to dinner?” I thought I knew what she meant, but I had learned to let her fully explain her thoughts before assuming what she was trying to say.
She made a vague gesture with her hand. “For everything. You. Me. Letting you… do that thing to me.”
I leaned forward, letting my voice drop low in the way I had noticed she liked. “You mean going down on you in my office until you came on my face?”
I loved how she burned crimson at that, her eyes flicking everywhere before settling on me. “Uh yeah. That.”
“No. I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re a gorgeous woman with high standards whose exploring something that you didn’t have a chance to earlier because no one measured up.”
That made her relax and I felt a plume of pride within me. Even with someone as sharp as Bev, it seemed that I still knew what to say. I supposed it helped that I meant it.
“Oh, and you do measure up?”
“Well, I would hope so considering where we are right now and what we’ve done.”
“Fair enough.”
Her eyes glittered at me over her glass, a smile curling on her lips after she swallowed. That look made me burn way more than was fair, and I took a deep drink from my own glass.
Our food came soon after, with Bev making me laugh again when she enthusiastically slurped up her fettucine. She had looked up at me, lips pursed in a way that was borderline obscene and she had no idea. I couldn’t help but imagine for a second how that mouth would feel wrapped around me, but I told myself to calm down.
Such things might never happen. And if they did, it certainly wasn’t going to be soon. The best thing to do was to not get ahead of myself and just focus on the moment.
“What?” she asked, self-consciousness clearly coloring her tone.
“Nothing,” I answered quickly, picking up my own fork and knife to cut up my cannelloni. “Just glad you’re enjoying yourself.”
“I always enjoy carbs and cheese,” she retorted before digging in once more.
That made me laugh and set the tone for the rest of the meal, with us joking and bantering around our food. I didn’t think that I had ever eaten with someone so enthusiastic in ages, and that wasn’t a crack about her weight. It was just with the way her eyes widened every time she tasted something she liked, and the grin she had whenever she sipped at her wine, it was like she truly appreciated everything set out before her. She didn’t take a single thing for granted, and that made me feel… like I was a bloody brilliant provider. Like I could go out and kill a mastodon for her right then and there.
