“I agree. No inflicting of bodily harm and I’m not going to tie you up.” She wrinkled her nose, looked out towards the sea. “Although.”
He ran a toe up her shin. “Not on a first dirty weekend. I’m not that kind of boy.”
She whipped her head around and laughed, mouth wide. How had he ever thought she was cold? He couldn’t see any traps here. “You have to answer every question I ask to my satisfaction before you get your mitts on me.”
She frowned and filled her mouth with salmon. He amended that. “You can have one pass.”
She held up two fingers.
“I’m such a sucker. Okay, two.”
There was a lick of tension to the rest of the meal. Neither of them pointedly asking any questions. Talking about the house, the sunset, the fact she’d planned to break it off with him but packed spare underwear and a toothbrush. Complex emotions, he dug that.
He sped through a kitchen clean-up and they reconnected on the sectional, with the darkening sky outside and a single lamp inside making it intimate.
He started easy. “Did you always want to be an investment advisor?” She sat apart from him. At least three whole other people-shaped spaces away. Strategy. Jeez, might’ve screwed himself agreeing to her rules.
“No, I wanted a job where I earned good money. I never wanted to worry about not having enough for rent or being able to pay my bills. I wanted security. I wanted to have nice things.” She curled her legs up on the sofa and looked out at the stars. “I didn’t have that growing up. Only child of a single parent. Mum worked two jobs. In a café during the day and cleaning offices at night. She only works one job part-time now because she wants to, and lives in a lovely flat I pay the mortgage on in a nice neighborhood.” She brought her gaze back to him. It came with a knowing expression. “Is that a satisfactory answer?”
It knocked him sideways. It made his brain frizz with a dozen new questions and smashed his initial impression of her. Mena didn’t grow up posh and polished. The sophistication she had was earned, made, not an accident of her birth. That made her more like him than he’d ever imagined.
“Doesn’t explain why you wanted to work with money.”
“Without much supervision, I ran a bit wild. Lots of reasons to skip school. Because of that I got a real-life case study in consequences. I thought I could sail through on a good memory, but I did badly in my exams, so my options were limited. I never forgot that lesson.”
Mena running wild. That was something he needed to know more about. “What kind of wild?”
“The forging notes for the principal, climbing out of windows, minor shoplifting, underaged drinking and lots of hooking up kind. I thought I knew everything, and I was a devious and determined little witch.”
Devious and determined. He sat forward, clapping his hands to his thighs. That was the best. He didn’t care if Mena didn’t touch him, this was almost better. He made beckoning gesture. “More.”
“I was big into experimenting with fashion, makeup, hair color.”
He looked right at the nubs of her nipples, poking against the T-shirt. “Piercing.”
She smiled. “My last rebellion.”
“Having a hard time imagining you like that, but I love it. Does the consequences thing mean you don’t like working with numbers?”
“Math was the only subject I did like. Patterns I could understand. Stability. I love what I’m doing. Once I got over feeling like I’d already messed up my future and settled down, I realized I liked the magic of working with numbers. They tell stories, but they don’t lie.” She got to her knees on the sofa. All the better to crawl across it to him. “They’re reliably sexy. They don’t run around on you or skip out. If you can work them, you can trust them.”
“Okay, good.” He waited for her to move. He’d snuck in a bunch of question there and now it was time for Mena to keep her end of the bargain. When she didn’t, he pointed at his lips and puckered.
“I never said I had to touch you.”
“Oh fuck, that’s foul play.”
She shifted closer but kept her devious little hands to herself.
He groaned. “What happened about your dad?” If that was a sensitive subject she’d pass. Men were crap. Like on a generational continuum and that needed to change. Loads of his school friends had grown up with only Mum and at least half of the kids in his drum group were the same. Single mums were fucking heroes.
“He was a random boyfriend of Mum’s. Long gone before she knew she was pregnant. Doesn’t know I exist.” Mena made a hand dusting gesture. “Never missed him.”
Those devious little hands weren’t living up to their potential with the dusting, they were talented at handling his dick and it would be ace if they were showing off some skills about now. Come on, honey. Time to sex up the questions. “How old where you when you had your first kiss?”
“I was ten. My best friend Vera. It was for practice. We’re still best friends but we never kissed again.”
He slapped his thigh. “That’s so hot.”