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It was also awkward, because I was half-naked, and I wanted nothing more than to pick her up, twist her around, and then bend her over one of the sawhorses.
When we got inside, she finally took the shirt out of her mouth, then tossed it back to me.
“That wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared,” she said as I caught it.
Then, she pointed out the trim around the cabinets. “This. We told the guy doing the trim that it was wrong. But he argued with us up and down about you saying it needed to be done this way. Then proceeded to put it all up anyway. We tried calling you, but Ellen answered, and refused to give the message to you until you were ‘back in the office.’”
“Jesus Christ.” I ran my hand down my face, then shrugged on my shirt.
There was a wet spot from her mouth right where my nipple would be.
She saw it, then grimaced.
I pressed my hand against it as I walked toward the trim. “I’ll handle this tomorrow. For now, let him do what he will. His ass won’t get paid until he does it correctly. Because that’s definitely not how I told him to do it, or even how it’s supposed to be done in the first place.”
CHAPTER 8
There is no reason for you to be here.
-Doormat
MATILDA
I don’t know what I was expecting when it came to opening up to Etienne, but him inviting me on a day trip with him to visit one of his favorite people in the world? That had definitely not been it.
Him also doing this with me riding on the back of his bike for four hours? That certainly had never crossed my mind.
Yet, there I was, standing beside his bike, with a helmet in my hand, wondering what the next half a day would look like for me.
I wasn’t sure why I’d said yes.
Firstly, I had about a million and one things to do, all of those beginning and ending with paperwork.
Secondly, up until about two hours ago, I was fairly certain he hated me, and I hated him.
Now, I wasn’t sure about much of anything at all.
Except one thing.
I wanted to ride on the back of his bike with him. I wanted to spend time with him. I wanted to do just about anything he was willing to do with me.
“Get on,” he urged as he held his hand out to me.
He’d been mounted for about two minutes now, and had been patiently waiting for me to get my shit together.
Joke was on him. I’d never have it together.
I stuffed the helmet onto my head—I wasn’t sure about the tightness of the helmet, as well as how it felt inside of it—yet he’d patiently waited for me to explore all the textures since he’d handed it to me.
The pressure was surprisingly nice. And when he reached up and strapped the helmet to my head, his large fingers dragging against my skin as he did? That was even nicer.
Once I was nice and strapped, he helped me get on the bike, then started it up.
When he was about to take off, he called to me, “Wrap your arms around my waist. Lean when I lean. Don’t do any sudden movements, and for the love of God, don’t touch that pipe right there.”
He pointed at the pipe, and now I wanted to touch it.
I did, and he hissed in a breath. “It’ll be hotter than Hades in about two minutes. I’m serious. You touch it, and it’ll burn like a motherfucker.”
I managed not to touch it again, and even put it out of my mind, as he took off like the bats of hell were on his heels. Or was that the “hounds of hell?”
Whatever. I didn’t know.
What I did know was riding a motorcycle was fun. It was so much fun that I didn’t even realize I was laughing and displaying my excitement until we stopped at a light about ten minutes later and Etienne turned his head. His face had a genuine smile on it when he said, “Like it?”
I squeezed him tighter. “I love it.”
I so did. As in, if we could do this all day, every day, for the rest of my life, it still wouldn’t be enough.
His hand went to my thigh, and I momentarily lost track of my thoughts.
Because all I could focus on was Etienne’s hand on my thigh. The heat that I could feel practically seeping into my skin through the thin layer of fabric.
I wanted him to move that hand.
I wanted him to…
He started to run his hand up and down my thigh—at least what he could reach of it in the positions we were in—and then farther down over my knee to the front side of my calf.
There, he left it, for what felt like forever.
