Chuckling, Harris guided me back to his car and placed me in the passenger seat. Dinner, I told my screaming body. Then a little while at First Bass. I could be patient. Really, I could.
Damn it.
Chapter 10
Harris
Finish dinner. Give her the present I got her. Back to First Bass.
I kept repeating those three things over and over in my head, reminding myself that I needed to follow that plan. That was the safe route, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. If we did what I really wanted, we would have already been back at my apartment, in my bed, and she would have already been screaming my name.
I shifted in the booth, trying to ease some of the pressure against my fly where my dick was trying to tear its way through. Lucy sat across from me at our private booth, smiling and talking animatedly as she ate her favorite dinner—chicken parmesan with lots of garlic knots. I was trying to make this as special for her as possible, but my lower body was trying to make this all about me.
Fucking hell, I just wanted to sink deep inside her tight little body and stay there for eternity. Was that so bad?
No. It damn well wasn’t so bad. Not now that she was eighteen. I could touch her without regret now. I could make her mine in every sense of the word.
It wasn’t going to happen tonight, though. Not when I still had to get through the rest of the night with our friends. Maybe we could sneak into my office later and we could make out for an hour or two.
“Am I talking too much?”
I lifted my gaze from where it had been trained on her lips. I hadn’t heard half of what she’d been saying because I’d been too captivated by that luscious mouth and what I wanted to do to it. What I wanted it to be doing to me. “No,” I told her honestly. “I’m just thinking about kissing you.”
Her eyes clouded with desire. She set her knife and fork down and wiped her mouth. “I really wish you would. You’ve barely touched me today.”
I reached for her hand and linked our fingers together. “I’m aching to touch you, sweetness. But I know the second I do, this day is over. I want this birthday to be perfect for you. I don’t want to end it by rushing you into bed with me.”
Her fingers tightened on mine. “Maybe I want to be rushed,” she murmured in a voice that had me shuddering with the effort to hold back.
Dinner. Present. Club.
Dinner. Present. Club.
Her damp, pink tongue left her mouth and skimmed over her bottom lip. Holy fucking hell.
Dinner.
Present.
Club.
“You’re evil, you know that?”
Her smile was flirty, her laugh soft and musical. “Yeah, babe. I know.”
Shaking my head, I reached into my pocket with my free hand and pulled out the jewelry box I’d asked the clerk to wrap for me when I’d bought it the week before. Placing the silver-wrapped gift on the table between us, I tried to distract her in hopes that it would distract me.
Dark brown eyes widened when she saw the small box. “What’s this?”
I shrugged. “Happy birthday, Lucy.”
Her hand trembled as she pulled it free of mine and reached for the small box with both hands, as if it weighed enough that she would need them both. “Please tell me that isn’t a ring, Harris.”
I snorted. “No, sweetness. That is definitely not a ring. We have a while before I hand over a diamond that big.” I winked when her head snapped up. “Relax, beautiful. Open your present.”
Her fingers still shook a little as she unwrapped the box and then lifted the lid. Her soft gasp told me she liked it even before she lifted out the diamond hoops. “You really shouldn’t have done this.”
“They weren’t that expensive,” I told her. Actually, they had cost a little more than I wanted her to know, but that didn’t matter. I had plenty of money and I wanted to spend it on her. I knew she didn’t like it, thought I was wasting money when I bought her things, so there was no way in hell I was going to tell her I’d spent ten grand on her. “Will you wear them for me tonight?”