Savior (Savages 3)

"Getting dinner."

"Yeah, but this is my house."

"And?"

"And that means I pay for the food."

"You have a dick?"

"I'm sorry?" she asked, her eyes almost going comically wide. Talk about how to make heroin and she doesn't even blink, use the word 'dick' and she gets the face of a school girl.

"Dick. You got one?"

She shook her head slightly as if to clear it. "Not the last time I checked."

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from commenting on just how long it had been since she checked. "Right. I got one. So I pay for the food," I said, brushing past her toward the kitchen.

I was putting the bag on the island when she came in, arms crossed over her chest. "That's incredibly sexist of you."

"My mother calls it chivalrous," I said, pulling out the takeaway containers and putting them on the counter. "You got plates?"

"Only if you want to wash them after you use them. I'm eating out of the containers," she said, going to a sliding drawer and pulling out utensils.

"You're eating out of the containers?" I asked, watching as she pried open the lids to the food.

"What?" she asked, leaning down and sniffing the chicken parm. "You've never eaten out of a takeaway container?"

"Yeah, baby, just didn't think you would have."

"Right," she snorted, rolling her eyes. "Money like me couldn't possibly know how to eat out of plastic. It's been all fine China and silver spoons for me. I hope you didn't order either of these exclusively for yourself, because we're sharing."

As if to prove her point, she stabbed some tortellini and started cutting up the chicken. "Knock yourself out," I said as she did just that, diving into the food like she hadn't eaten in a month.

"Don't look at me like that," she said, lowering her eyes at me. "I eat fatty stuff like this maybe once every two or three months. It's here in front of me and I have every intention of pigging out."

I held my hands up, palms out. "Babygirl, you stuff your face. Something sexy about a woman enjoying her food." To that, she choked on her mouthful, bringing her hand up so she didn't spit it out. "Drink?" I asked.

She waved me toward the wine rack and I moved to it, not bothering to hide my smirk. It was no secret I had enjoyed my fair share of women. More than, if I were being perfectly honest. It was rare that one genuinely surprised me. After growing up surrounded by women then spending my teens and adulthood successfully chasing them, it was hard to find one who threw me.

Elsie threw me.

She was simply a mess of contradictions. Rich girl who liked to eat out of takeaway containers, who had the money to get lasik but wore huge dorky glasses instead, who gave me bedroom eyes then went upstairs and eased her sexual tension then practically blushed when I used the word 'dick' or said it was sexy to watch a woman eat, who seemed straight up and down in every way that mattered but was getting herself involved with a fucking street gang.

I picked a bottle at random, opened it, and poured into glasses that were beside her sink like she used them recently and rinsed them out and left them to dry. Unlike her coffee mugs, her wine glasses apparently got used.

"Gonna save any for me?" I asked, pulling up a stool and sitting down next to where she was leaning over the counter steadily devouring both meals somehow simultaneously.

"Darwin," was her mouth-filled answer, her hand up masking her lips.

"What?" I asked as she reached for her wineglass and took a long sip.

"Survival of the fittest. It isn't my fault you're weak," she said, putting her wineglass down with a clink and diving back in.

Not more than ten minutes and maybe six bites later, the food was gone, mostly into Elsie's body. She finally reached out for a stool and pulled it up to sit on as she topped off her wine.

"So you have no clue what the warehouse is for, aside from telling me it's not to make heroin or store prostitutes."

"Right," I agreed. "And you're not going to tell me why the fuck you're sticking your pretty little nose in street gang business."

"Right," she agreed with a small nod.

"So that's it?" I guessed, at a loss for how I could get her to tell me anything more than what she had already.

"That's it," she agreed, standing, making it clear dinner was over. "I'll walk you out," she said, turning and walking off toward the front room, leaving me very little choice but to follow behind. She had pulled the door open and was standing off to the side. "Thanks for the chemistry lesson and dinner."

I felt my lips tip up and nodded, moving out onto the front step before I changed my mind and swung back around, pushed inside, and pressed her up against the door in her entryway. My hands went to her hips, my thumbs spanning across her stomach as my head dipped down.