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He made his way to her table, distantly amazed that the place was doing a brisk business. All these people, gathered here to...pet the cats, apparently?
When he arrived at her side, he claimed the only empty chair—as the others were occupied, by cats—and sat down. And for a moment, he and Rory stared at each other. The cat in her lap stared too, and Conrad could not have said in that moment which heavy gaze on him was more disconcerting.
And this was all so deeply absurd, so comical and yet somehow perfectly Rory, that Conrad might have sat there forever.
But Rory shifted in her chair again, hugged the lummox of a cat in her lap closer still, and surprised Conrad completely by smiling.
It was like sunshine breaking through the clouds, when he knew it was a perfectly pleasant day outside.
He felt his chest tighten and resisted the urge to rub at the place where his heart seemed to beat triple time.
She was even more beautiful than he remembered, even here. Even though he found himself surrounded by animals, literally, mewling and butting up against his leg. He gazed down at the two below him, and they both flattened their ears—but stopped.
When he looked at Rory again, her smile had faded from her mouth, but was still there in her lovely eyes. It made them gleam.
“Conrad Vanderburg in a cat café,” she said, and shook her head. “This must be a dream.”
“It is certainly notmydream,” he replied darkly.
And he couldn’t help himself. He reached over and took her hand. Maybe because, once he did it, he wanted to see if it was still there.
That spark. That kick.
That impossible connection that had haunted him since the last time he’d seen her.
Nothing changed when he touched her. Neither one of them stood up, started yelling, or tipped over the table. There were still improbable cats, winding this way and that. But at the same time...everything changed.
He felt thatclickinside him. That bright edge. That space between them was only theirs, filled with desire and surrender, power and pleasure.
It was tempting to imagine that with a single touch, he could feel the truth of her. And of him.
That whether it was a simple touch of hands, or the darker games they’d played that night, it was all the same. And would always be the same.
God, how she tempted him.
“You came to find me,” she said after a moment, her voice soft. And threaded through with something like wonder. “I have to tell you, I really didn’t think you were going to do that.”
“What happened between us was unusually intense,” he said, gruffly. “I should have checked in on you sooner. In person.”
She sighed a little and looked down at their hands. “To discharge your duties, of course.”
Conrad felt that like a slap upside the head.
He had walked out of his office when he never, ever interrupted his workday. He’d been uninterested in carrying on with his usual club activities, because he simply didn’t feel the need any longer. There was only this. There was only her.
And pretending otherwise was perilously close to the kind of lies he’d always detested.
But he needed to do his duty no matter what he wanted. For her, not him.
No one had ever said that duty was easy. Or that it gave anyone what they wanted. Hadn’t he spent his life learning that lesson?
Why should this be any different?
“I have duties where you’re concerned, whether you like it or not,” he told her, keeping his gaze and voice stern.
He watched her melt at once. He watched her wriggle in her seat, then put the cat down to one side as if she needed to concentrate fully and totally on him.
Something he obviously approved of, he thought, as he felt his pulse drop down into his cock, then begin to drum.
