“Goes with your sunny disposition, eh?”
I narrow my eyes at her, making her flush pink. I imagine how she’d squeal if I smacked her ass for that sassy mouth of hers. How I’d love to bend this woman over my knee and teach her some manners.
“Hey! Is this my room up here?” Toni asks. We never made it upstairs, so she never saw her room.
It’s then that I realize she hasn’t called me by name.
“It’s rude to call someone hey, Toni,” I say, heading to the stairwell. Samantha follows and Prince trots behind her.
Toni stands in front of a doorway. “Well, you never told me what to call you.”
Dear God. Why did it not dawn on me before that she’ll call me uncle.
“Well, I’m your uncle,” I say awkwardly. No one’s ever called me uncle before, and by the look on her face, she’s never called anyone uncle either.
“Uncle… Miguel?”
Why does my throat feel all tight? I swallow and nod. “That’ll do. And yes, that will be your room.”
All the bedrooms are on the second floor. The master suite’s above the living room, so it affords me the same view of the Common. Hers is at the other end of the hall but has a private bath so we don’t have to share space.
“Can I see your room?” Toni asks, hands on hips.
I gesture down the hall to my room. “Help yourself.”
She runs down the hall, and Prince follows behind. I’ve never had children or a dog in here before, but I have to admit… I don’t hate it.
“Wow,” Samantha says. “This is… extra, huh?”
She turns to face me with a curious look on her face.
“Extra?”
“You’ve got… an en suite, a walk-in closet, a fireplace… and is that… two studies?”
“His and her baths and separate studies.”
She gets an odd look on her face, but then follows Toni as I go to head downstairs to start dinner.
“Keep the dog out of my bedroom, or I chain him outside on the patio,” I yell over my shoulder.
I turn around to face her as Toni comes back down the hall and shuts the door to her room, and I hear the bed creak. The dog had trotted after her and I can just imagine her flopping face first on the bed, the dog leaping up onto it next to her. I cringe. What’s this kid gonna do to my home?
Samantha mutters something to herself.
“Did you say something?”
“Nothing.”
Oh no she doesn’t.
“It wasn’t nothing. What’d you say just now?”
She stands erect, all five foot nothing of her, and plants her hands on her hips. Not sure she knows this, but the move accentuates her waist, and her breasts are nearly spilling out of her shirt. It’s a move I like.
“I said I don’t think he has any more interest in your bedroom than I do!”
That does it.
She’s been giving me shit since we met, and I’ve given her no reason to. I stalk back toward her, noting the way her eyes go a little wider, and she takes a step back.
“Is that right, Samantha?” I ask, pronouncing each syllable carefully as I stalk toward her. The hallway is narrow, so in just a few paces I’ve got her pinned up against the wall. Heat surges through me at the way she stares at me, her much-smaller frame dwarfed by my larger one.
“What are you doing?” she asks, panic in her voice.
I don’t answer at first. I’m enjoying taking control of the situation, far more than I should. I rest my forearm against the wall, gently curving it over her head, and place my right hand flat on the wall, palm down.
“Oh, me? Doing nothing,” I say with a shrug, while I hold her gaze. “Just wanted to hear what you said to me just now is all. Right up close and personal.”
She clears her throat. “I didn’t stutter, did I?”
No, but I’d like to make her.
“Let me go,” she whispers, but it’s a feeble little whisper like one might use to say, “I really shouldn’t, but…”
“I’m not holding you. You’re free to go as you please.”
I watch as her eyes get a wicked gleam in them, an almost triumphant smile tipping her lips upward. Jesus, she’s gorgeous when she smiles.
She leans in, her warm, sweet breath brushing my cheek. Her words are a mere whisper, and my pulse races. I want to taste those lips. I want to hold her slight body against mine, feel her heat and her touch. I want to see her melt beneath me as I lay her down and show her exactly what I’d do in that bedroom she supposedly has no interest in.
“Mr. Santiago,” she whispers.
I almost tell her to call me Miguel, but I like the way my formal name sounds on her lips.
“Yes?”
“Superman’s flying low,” she says in a seductive purr.