If he really partied around his friends, and initially, when he’d first told her that his friends might be around them when they were having sex, she had rejected the idea of it out of hand. Absolutely not. It wouldn’t happen. Never. She wasn’t going to take that chance. Now, knowing about the members of Torpedo Ink and their past together, she wasn’t certain what she thought. The idea of being completely safe and having Absinthe commanding her to do things for him was shockingly sexy, so much so that her body grew slick with heat just thinking about what he might demand or do.
Scarlet found the drive up to the house just as breathtaking as she had the first time they’d driven up that winding road, even knowing what to expect. The house was an incredible find. She couldn’t imagine anyone not loving it. She also knew it must have to cost an impossible amount of money. Absinthe didn’t volunteer where he’d gotten his money, but she stole hers, plain and simple, and she always had plenty to live on.
She made a mental note to herself to make certain that Joan was taken care of. She’d set it in motion already, putting money in a trust for the teen that would pay out only if Brenda cooperated. If Brenda rehired Alison as a housekeeper and treated Joan right, under Scarlet’s watchful eye she would receive money to live on. Scarlet had plenty of cameras installed in the house to make certain she could see if Brenda complied. The evidence that Brenda had sold her teenage daughter to a pedophile would be turned over to the DA immediately if she didn’t. She would be receiving that good news any day now along with the news that her benefactor had died in a house explosion.
Scarlet helped Absinthe put the groceries away, familiarizing herself with the kitchen. She’d always wanted a home of her own. She wasn’t the best cook in the world, but she was willing to learn for him. He didn’t seem to care that she couldn’t cook, and he’d told her it didn’t matter. She was big on reading and there were thousands of cookbooks. He said his sister Alena was a dynamite chef.
Since they’d entered the house, he hadn’t said much at all, only to indicate where he wanted things to be put. He was very precise about where each item belonged. She found herself looking around. She noticed his bedroom had been very neat. Every room had been. She’d put it down to the fact that he’d told her he didn’t really stay there often, but now she thought it was because he couldn’t take chaos.
“You really do pick up other people’s emotions and feel their demons, for want of a better word, don’t you?” She needed to understand him.
“Don’t you?”
She frowned, following him from the kitchen down the open space to the door leading to the U-shaped area of the house where the bedrooms were. Did she feel other people’s emotions? “Not really. Yours to some extent because we have an unusual connection, but I don’t have that with anyone else.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “I like that it’s only me you have that connection with. I wish I only had it with you. I can’t be in the same room sometimes with too many people and I really don’t like touching people. There are times when I think my head is going to come apart. You take all that craziness away for me. I didn’t think it was possible.”
Scarlet felt an explosion of happiness blossoming up from her deepest core. It happened very fast and was so strong it shook her. She loved that she did that for him. She wanted to do so much more for him.
As if he could read her mind, and she was fairly certain he could, he kept talking as he walked. “I didn’t think there was a woman alive who could make my cock so fucking hard without me commanding it to become that way until I walked into that library.”
She loved that too. Absinthe stated it so casually and that made his declaration all the more real. He walked to the master bedroom and opened the door, stepping back to allow her to precede him. The moment she walked in, her heart began to beat overtime again in anticipation. She had no idea that just the thought of what Absinthe might say or do would be so exciting to her. She spotted her bags on the floor just inside the door and leaned down to pick them up.
“Run us a bath, baby,” he said, removing the bags from her hands.
She nodded and started to turn toward the master bath.
“Strip first. You don’t need clothes in here. I have clothes I like you to wear in the bedroom, or nothing at all. You have the most beautiful body I’ve ever fuckin’ seen.”