She’d covered her thighs, but she still appeared shell-shocked, a bit dazed from what they’d just done. He couldn’t blame her. He was rather dazed himself.
He hadn’t intended to kiss her the first time, though heaven knows he’d wanted to from the second she walked into the room. Bad enough to know she was naked in his bath. At least then he’d been spared the torment of the sun shining straight through the thin cotton shirt, revealing the dark shapes of her bra and panties.
Shapes he was altogether too familiar with. Under that shirt, she wore purple satin trimmed with black lace over creamy white skin, and she wore it well. He’d had no intention of seeing her nearly naked last night, but it had happened, and the experience had kept him awake for hours. He wanted her. Badly. The hunger of it surprised and disconcerted him.
Whoever she was, she seemed to have a knack for surprising and disconcerting him.
When he’d kissed her, he’d meant it to be a little thing. An experiment. A way to wipe that uncertainty from her eyes and make her feel better, as she was obviously unhappy about the state he’d found her in last night.
Though, if he were being honest, his primary reason for kissing her hadn’t been charitable. Nev had wanted her to notice him, to shake her up the way she did him.
He hadn’t stopped to think whether she’d kiss him back, nor had he had the faintest notion how quickly things would heat up between them. They’d practically set the table alight.
Another surprise.
She was so small, just a wisp of a woman, and so … brash. Not at all the sort he usually went for. But he’d fallen asleep thinking of the shape of her body, the softness of her skin under his palms when he’d lifted her from the floor. Those tattoos. At the center of her lower back, a songbird with its wings spread wide. Swirling lines surrounded it—some thin and curling, others thicker and more angular. He hadn’t gotten a good look at it, but there had seemed to be other figures embedded in the pattern, which curved around onto her stomach. He’d wanted to trace the lines of the ink with his fingers and his tongue.
He hadn’t, of course. He wasn’t a complete cad. But the impulse remained.
He came to himself standing in his office, staring blankly at the cupboard. For heaven’s sake. What had this woman done to him?
Shaking his head in an attempt to clear it, Nev grabbed the broom from the cupboard and returned to the studio. He kept his attention on the floor as he swept up any tiny pieces of glass that remained. Safer not to look at her.
Safer, because he’d been a hairbreadth from taking her on the table in his studio without so much as knowing her name, and he absolutely would’ve done it if the jar hadn’t fallen and broken. Even now, he wasn’t sure how long he could remain in the flat with her without dragging her off to bed.
It wasn’t the sort of thing “City” would do, he expected.
The thought made him want to do it all the more.
He dumped the contents of the dustpan into the bin and looked up at last. She was clearly ready to bolt, all coltish legs and nervous energy.
If she leaves now, you’ll never get to kiss her again.
The thought prompted him to say the next desperate thing that popped into his head. “How about a cup of tea?”
“Yeeeah,” she answered, drawing out the word in her brassy American accent. “That would be good.”
Maybe it was the hangover, but it was the best sandwich she’d ever had. Or maybe it was City. He moved around his tiny kitchen like he knew what he was doing, and he’d fussed over the sandwich for a long time.
Beyond asking her how she liked her tea, though, he didn’t say a word, and that was fine with Cath. She wasn’t sure what social script applied when you’d passed out on someone, woken up in their bed, and then immediately thereafter come very close to mating with them on a table. The best strategy would no doubt have been flight, but she’d needed the sandwich.
The food gave her necessary fuel, and it also provided time to regroup. Bad Cath and Good Cath were duking it out in her head, and she was having trouble keeping her wires from crossing.
Good Cath was screechy, slightly hysterical: What do you think you’re doing? Sex on a table with a stranger? You don’t do that anymore! Hell, you didn’t even do that before. Knock it off. Put your clothes on. Go home. It’s still possible to turn this into a blip! It’s not too late, but you’re cutting it close, missy.
Bad Cath, by contrast, practically purred with lust: That man can kiss, Mary Catherine. What could it hurt to do it again? You’re already here. You made your mistake. What’s the big deal if you make it a little bigger? And speaking of big, did you notice the way City felt pressing between your legs? Yeah. That. You’re going to walk out on that? Don’t kid a kidder, babe.
What could she do but feed her stomach and try to drown out the voices?
Plus, it wasn’t like she could simply flee the scene. She was only half dressed. At least she knew where her clothes were now. She’d spotted them drying on a rack in the corner as soon as she walked into the kitchen. City must have put them through the wash for her, but he, like so many of his backward countrymen, didn’t have a dryer.
He could deny being nice all day long, but the guy was definitely a Boy Scout. A Boy Scout who kissed like a Hell’s Angel. Not that she’d ever kissed a Hell’s Angel. And not that anyone had ever kissed her quite like City just had. Zero to sixty in three-point-four seconds. The man knew how to ring her bell.
But she was done with the bell ringing, right? Right. New Cath didn’t sleep with strange men on studio tables. New Cath said, “Thanks a bunch,” got dressed, and clomped on home.
Do that, New Cath instructed. Do that right now.
“Listen, City,” she said. “About last night. Thanks for—”