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“Threat or promise?”
He was still for a second. “A threat you’ll beg for after how good I make you feel.” He kissed her lips quickly.
Proving his ability to blot out her mind, he doubled his efforts. Each stroke deeper, more frantic. Her fingernails dragged down the skin of his back, leaving stripes. She fought to hold on to him while slipping off the side of the planet. Voice strained with effort, he said, “Let’s see that O face again, Red.”
“Let’s see if you can bring it, Wolf.” It was a challenge he accepted.
He nestled one of her knees in the crook of his elbow, lifting her leg and deepening their connection. She couldn’t form any words other than “Yes, Royce, yes.”
Pleased by her reaction, his smile turned rogue. Refusing to go into the abyss alone, she gripped him with her internal muscles. Surprise colored his face for a beat before he captured her mouth with his.
Seconds later, his head bucked. He bared his teeth, his hips pistoning, the slick skin of their thighs gently slapping. She watched the entire display, smugly satisfied to have her theory proven.
He was quite gorgeous when coming.
“They’re clean.” Royce handed over a pair of leggings and an MIT sweatshirt. “Gia stopped by here to change for the gala and left them. They’ve been laundered.”
He announced it evenly, as if having his clothes laundered rather than doing it himself was a normal, everyday occurrence. She supposed for the Knox family it was. She’d never seen Gia load a washing machine.
When Taylor moved from her parents’ house and rented her sizable apartment, she found she enjoyed cleaning her own space. As soon as she was promoted to COO and her hours increased, she hired a part-time housekeeper. With the hours she worked, it was impossible to do it all, but she kept a few tasks on her own to-do list.
One, cooking—the kitchen was a bright, open space that sparked her creativity—and two, her laundry. It wasn’t about finding joy in domesticity, a trait she definitely hadn’t inherited from her mother. She was particular about her clothes and what didn’t have to be dry-cleaned she cared for herself. It didn’t make sense for Royce, with his array of starched shirts and suits and bow ties, to stand around doing the wash.
“Thanks.” She accepted the clothes, covering herself with the slip first. She was strangely nervous now that they’d had sex, and him standing over her made her feel more vulnerable. “Could you...?”
“Oh. Sorry. I’ll give you a minute.” His frown returned like it’d never left and she wondered if she’d imagined the smooth-talking, smiling man who’d just turned her inside out.
Neither of them reacted as expected. She’d come here to seduce him, until her spine had turned temporarily weak. He’d reacted the complete opposite—pouncing on her the second she gave the okay.
“No. Wait. Sit down.” She lifted her hips and rolled on her thong as discreetly as possible. Royce sat, his eyes glued to her legs. “We don’t have to make this weird.”
“Too late.” His dry tone held a note of humor.
She tugged on the black leggings next, grateful to Gia for leaving them behind. As the clock ticked on, the temperature was dropping. Taylor didn’t want to drive home wearing only a slip and a tiny trench coat if she didn’t have to.
“No, we don’t have to make this weird.” He leaned an elbow on the arm of the sofa and raised his wineglass as she pulled the sweatshirt over her head. It was butter-soft and elephant gray, the wide neck falling off one of her shoulders. Royce’s eyes didn’t leave that swatch of bared skin, where the strap of her slip was visible.
“So.” She lifted her wineglass, too, snuggling into the opposite corner of his couch. “It’s taken ten years for you to notice I’m a woman.”
He rolled the wine around his mouth before swallowing. “I noticed.”
“You did?” That shocked her down to her chilly toes.
He chuckled, his chest expanding within the deep navy blue T-shirt he’d paired with baggy pajama bottoms. His feet were bare. He had nice feet. Big feet, but nice. She’d never dated a guy who wore pajama bottoms, had she? Sweats, yes; boxers, sure; but cotton pajama bottoms with skinny navy blue pinstripes? Not that she could recall.
“I’m surprised you care,” he said.
She made a choking sound in the back of her throat.
“Not a blow-off,” he amended. “More an honest observation. You were Gia’s best friend, closer to Brannon’s age than mine. What would an eighteen-year-old want from a twenty-four-year-old, anyway? Did you expect me to scoop you up and steal away your virginity?”
“Joke would’ve been on you since I’d lost my virginity two years prior.” She hoisted an eyebrow, pleased when his lips twitched. “You were twenty-four, not forty-four. It wouldn’t have been that unbelievable for us to date back then.” But even as she said it, she had her doubts. He’d had his sights set on college girls, not a high school senior who dreaded showing up to every richie-rich function their parents made them attend. He’d had no clue she’d watched him, admiring his breadth and height. The way he held himself. Always the confident one, his walk tall and words evenly spaced. Bran was quicker to laugh and less serious, which she enjoyed in a friendship, but boyfriend material to her was and always would be a man she could count on.
Like my father.
She swallowed the unexpected lump of emotion and swiftly changed the subject. “You could have asked me to be your date at any one of the charity functions I had to be dragged to.”
“And here we are a decade later still attending them.” His tone hinted that he found them as asinine as she did.
