I want to trace that tattoo with my tongue, to taste her.
Hell, I want to fuck her.
What the fuck is wrong with me? She needs help and I’m panting after her like some piece of shit guy who only sees tits and an ass instead of a person.
I’m acting like my father.
The thought is a bucket of ice water poured over my head. In that moment of clarity, I pull back, but she tightens her grip on me. I’m stronger than her. I can get free if I pull hard enough, but it means grappling with her and maybe hurting her. I go still. She raises an eyebrow. “I’ll give you a dollar if you tell me what you were just thinking about.”
No way in hell am I subjecting her to that. “That’s not a good idea.” If this was a different situation, if she wasn’t stranded, I might be willing to believe all signs pointing to her hitting on me. But it isn’t a different situation, and I can’t afford to assume shit.
“Try me.” Meg smiles and traces her nail across the inside of my wrist. It feels like my whole body narrows down to that single touch. “I might surprise you, Hercules.”
I clear my throat, trying to focus past the way her touch zings through my body. I feel drunk on her, even though I haven’t had a drink since I left Olympus. Maybe that’s why I tell her the truth. “You’re beautiful.” I look down at where her paler hand brackets my wrist. “That’s what I was thinking. That you’re beautiful.” Not the full truth, but then I just met this woman. I would have to be out of my fucking mind to tell her that I can’t stop wondering what her pussy tastes like. There are lines. There have to be.
“Oh, Hercules.” She sighs a little like I’ve said something that pleases her greatly. “You really are too pure for this world, aren’t you?”
If she only knew how quickly my thoughts had gone dark and filthy. “No. Not really.”
Her smile goes sharp. “I’m afraid I haven’t been perfectly honest with you.”
“What?”
Another of those sharp smiles that has my cock throbbing in response. What is she doing to me? I’m no inexperienced virgin. I’ve had plenty of fun with both girls and boys through my late teens and early twenties. I know attraction when I see it, when I feel it. But this is… different. She touches me like she can see the desires beneath my skin and takes great enjoyment plucking them one by one. I have the strangest suspicion that she could make me come without ever touching my cock.
The idea excites me.
Fuck. Everything about her excites me.
“I didn’t call a car.” She keeps up that movement against my wrist. Back and forth. Back and forth. “I was hoping to seduce you.”
My thoughts stumble over themselves as I try to make sense of what she just said. “You want to seduce me?”
“Is that so surprising? I mean, look at you. You’re practically a walking wet dream.” She casts a meaningful glance to where I’ve tried and failed to hide my erection. “I saw you, and I wanted you.”
Now is the time to stop this. Even if what she’s saying is true, she came to dinner with another man. A man who touched her with familiarity and stirred things inside me even more uncomfortable than what I’m feeling right now. If she’s using me to get back at him… Does it matter? It shouldn’t. I don’t know him. I doubt I’ll see her again after she’s through with me. I should just take the offer she’s making and enjoy myself for once without overthinking things.
Too bad I can’t.
I gently extract my wrist from her hand, hating the way I miss the heat of her skin against mine the second her touch is gone. “You’ll regret it if you sleep with me to punish him.”
Her blue eyes go wide. “Are you for real?”
“I try to be.”
She gives herself a shake. “Look, you seem to have gotten the wrong idea. He and I are… complicated. He’s not my husband. He’s not my boyfriend. He’s…” She hesitates, clearly fighting for the right words. “Complicated.” For half a second, her barriers dissipate, and she looks vulnerable and lonely and more than a little sad.
“I don’t use women. Or men, for that matter.”
“Even when they’re asking to be used?” She looks away and then back, her gaze sharpening. “Even when I’m telling you I want to be used.”
I should stand up. Should walk out that door and down the stairs. But that vulnerability calls to me in a way that has me closing the distance between us. “I’m lonely too.”
“I didn’t—”
I kiss her. I don’t mean to, but then I never mean to get myself into trouble. Whatever her story, whatever put that look in her eyes, if I can take it away for a little bit and leave her better off than before, aren’t I obligated to at least try?