Cary (Henchmen MC Next Generation 5)

To that, I nodded. “Dezi said you, ah, liked your vegetables.”

“No,” Cary said, shaking his head. “That was not what Dezi said,” he said, holding back a smile.

No, it was not.

“No, you’re right.”

“What did Dezi say?” Cary asked, making me wince. “Come on. What did he say?”

God, I couldn’t even think it without blushing, let alone say it.

“He said he didn’t know what you liked eating more,” I admitted. “Vegetables or…”

Nope.

There was no way I could say it.

Cary, though, didn’t seem similarly afflicted with embarrassment.

In fact, he leaned down just a little closer, creating a bit more intimacy, then just went ahead and said it. In that deep, intoxicating voice of his.

“Pussy.”

“I, ah, yeah,” I said, turning so fast that I rammed into a clothing rack, jamming my shoulder hard enough that I knew there would be a pretty bruise there in a few hours. “That was what he said,” I added, moving further away.

But when Dezi had said it, it had been kind of matter-of-fact, just a throw away word, with no real emphasis on it at all.

When Cary said it, though, there had been something like dark delight in his eyes, in his voice.

And something about that look and that voice, well, it made my belly do a strange, unexpected flip-flop.

Because my mind, which had a million other things it needed to be focusing on, conjured up a truly scandalous image.

I was a long way away from my upbringing, from my naive, girlish views on what happened between a man and a woman.

Raúl had been sure to erase all of that.

But, still, there were things that had simply not been a part of my life before.

Like, you know… that.

In fact, I couldn’t fathom a man actually being willing to do it, let alone be happy to do so.

In my experience, men were more about the taking than the giving.

Though, admittedly, my experience was extremely limited. And if you compared it to the experience of a man like Cary, well, yeah, I might as well have been a naive little virgin all over again.

Frazzled, I glanced back at Cary who was busying himself with throwing pajamas into the cart, giving me a couple of seconds to rush over toward the underwear.

But I managed to grab a robe before I left the pajamas, so I could hide the undies in when I grabbed them. Why? I don’t know. Since he was clearly going to see them when we checked out, but I couldn’t seem to find the courage to just let him see all the cute little panties I was grabbing out of the display case and tossing into the robe.

From there, we went into the shoes. I put my foot down there and insisted I only needed one pair of shoes.

“Fine,” Cary conceded. “But then you have to get yourself something else. Books, some crafts, I don’t know. Something just for you.”

“This is all for me,” I told him, gesturing toward the cart.

“These are all necessities. You need to get yourself something that is to enjoy.”

“Believe me, after not being able to choose my clothes for so long, and being stuck in outfits meant to display and demean me, I am absolutely going to enjoy all of this.”

“Abs, I’m not budging on this, so you might as well give in now.”

“Does a nice, fluffy blanket count?” I asked as we strolled past the men’s department, then the electronics.

“No, but now you’re getting one of those too.”

“I need to keep my mouth shut, huh?” I asked, shaking my head at him even if I was actually delighted by him right about then.

“I want you to have anything you need and want, how about that?” he suggested, nudging me into the book section. “Do you like books?”

“I did when I was a teen. I was very limited in what I was allowed to read, though.”

“You’re all grown up now,” Cary said, gesturing toward the fiction as he turned to look at the cookbooks.

I went ahead and let myself be amazed at the fact that he not only knew how to cook, but enjoyed it enough that he was willing to buy books with new recipes in them for a long moment before I set my sight on the books.

“You’ve been staring for five minutes,” Cary said a few minutes later.

“I’m trying to decide,” I admitted.

“Between what?”

“Well, the thriller. Which is something I’ve never read. And the historical fiction, which I know I like. And this paranormal-sounding one. Oh, and this one,” I said, gesturing to the one that, from the blurb, sounded like it might be a romance or something like that, but the cover was tame.

“Well, that’s easy,” he said, and I was just about to ask him which he thought I’d like before he grabbed all of them off the shelf and put them in the fact. “Shush,” he said, grabbing the cart, and rushing off before I could say anything. “Here, take the cart and grab some snacks. I’m gonna go hunt down a suitcase for some of this stuff,” he said, gesturing toward that section.