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I grab her wrist and yank her on top of me. She fights against my grip for all of three seconds, before meeting my stare and slowing to compliance.
She swallows. Lowers her voice so I can barely hear it over the rain. “I mean, if there’s any chance you’ll fall in love with me, you should probably just put me on a boat and send me back to shore right now.”
We stare at each other. Then I burst out laughing.
Penelope scowls, slamming a palm into my chest. “What, is falling in love with me so hard to believe?”
I tuck a stray red strand behind her ear, ignoring the pressure expanding in my chest. “Impossible.”
She already knows my biggest secret, that I’m superstitious. She doesn’t need to know I chose the King of Diamonds instead of the King of Hearts, too.
Love isn’t an option. Let alone with the girl that’s ruined my life.
My cell buzzes on the coffee table, reminding me I have shit to do. “You staying here or not?”
“And if I wanted to leave?”
I bite my tongue. The truth would scare her: I’d drag her back onboard kicking and screaming.
Instead, I run my hands up the backs of her thighs, pulling her onto my erection. “You don’t like being fucked by me, Penelope?”
The muscle in her jaw ticks. Her lids flutter shut. “Fine. We can be enemies with benefits.”
I arch a brow. “Enemies?”
“Well, we’re not exactly friends, are we?”
I hold back a smirk. “I suppose not.” Dropping back against the sofa, I hold my hand out for her to shake. “Enemies with benefits then.”
She glares down at it, like she wants to bite off my fingers. “Of course, I have some terms and conditions.”
“Of course,” I say in amusement.
“First of all, I need my phone. I think I left it in your car when you turned into the Hulk this morning.”
Of course she needs her phone. How else am I going to obsessively listen to every vapid thought she has if she can’t spill it to my hotline? “Done.”
“And I don’t want Laurie or the others to know I’m staying here. It’s…” She saws her lip between her teeth, searching for the word. “Weird.”
I laugh. “Fine.”
“And I want to be home for Christmas.”
I consider this. It’s less than a week away. “Okay.”Doesn’t mean I don’t want you back afterward.
“And—”
“Jesus, Penelope. Do I need to fly in a lawyer?”
She tugs on my collar pin to shut me up. “And,I’m not a floating Rapunzel. If you think I’m going to be holed up here like a woman waiting for her husband to return home from war, then you’ve got another thought coming. I need to be taken back to shore whenever I want.”
“Yeah, not going to happen.”
A look of disgust dents her features. “What, worried I won’t come back?”
She’d be doing me a favor if she didn’t come back, but that’s not the reason I don’t want her flitting around the Coast right now. Raking my teeth over my bottom lip, I drink in her dark expression with amusement. “You’ll stay here until I’m back, and then we’ll discuss this again.”
To my surprise, she drops it, but then when her eyes spark with mischief, I realize there's a motive behind her obedience. She runs her finger up and down my collar pin, biting her lip. “You know, if we’re to be enemies with benefits, you’ll have to kiss me.”
