“I know,” I said.
I watched her throat move as she swallowed. “I’ve never been to Diablo.”
“Neither had I, until yesterday,” I said. I was doing this wrong—I wasn’t making her feel better about this. “It’s nice,” I said. “You’ll see.”
She looked at me. “This place is yours?”
In answer, I pulled my key ring from the car’s ignition, held it up, and spun it around my finger, showing her the keys on it. When her mouth twitched, I smiled at her. “Let’s go in.”
She followed me inside. My grandfather’s old place wasn’t imposing—there were plenty of imposing mansions in Diablo—but it was nice. Olivia could see it was nice. I turned on some of the hall lights, but then I stopped, letting her go ahead. At the end of the hall,
I could just glimpse the kitchen, the counters and the stove empty and dark, the windows beyond. I could see the wide staircase in front of us. The large front sitting room. The rain pelted softly against the front windows.
Olivia pushed her hair, damp from the walk from the car, back from her face and looked around. She kicked off her low heels, and I watched, taking in the taut muscles of her bare calves beneath the modest hem of the blue wraparound dress. The arches of her bare feet. She glanced at me, and then she walked forward into the hallway, treading softly as if there was someone she didn’t want to wake.
I kicked off my own shoes—unthinkingly following her lead—and walked after her, trailing behind as she walked down the hall to the kitchen. I wasn’t looking at the house, not looking around me at the windows or the furniture or anything. I was still getting used to this place, but somehow after only one night here, lying in that big deep bed that was so different from the cot in my cell, it was already starting to feel as familiar as skin. It was starting to feel like mine, and it had nothing to do with lawyers or inheritances and money. It had to do with blood. Like my blood recognized this place.
Maybe that was a load of shit. I didn’t care. I’d always gone on instinct anyway. Instinct rarely made sense. It also rarely led me wrong.
So I followed Olivia, and I watched her instead. I didn’t look around me. I looked at the elegant columns of her legs, the supple way her ass moved beneath the thin, clingy fabric of the blue dress. I watched the unconscious sway of her hips and the equally unconscious straightness of her spine. The things that made Olivia pure class, the things she didn’t see about herself. I watched the way her curls fell between her shoulder blades and I felt like a monster stalking its prey. That’s right. Come a little deeper into my lair. A little deeper still.
She didn’t notice. She walked into the kitchen and stepped close to the big windows, looking out at the small back deck and the expanse beyond in the rain. At the scum on the pond. She made no comment about it and turned right, past the eating space that looked out at the cold, wet deck, and she passed into the big back sitting room, filled with matching sofas and coffee tables and a brick wall that held a fireplace. She wound her way through the furniture as if she were looking at a fascinating display in a museum.
And I followed her.
I wasn’t trying to impress her. I knew I couldn’t. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. But I’d brought her here, to this house, for a reason, and I only realized it now. As I saw the tender skin on the backs of her knees flash briefly beneath the hem of the dress, I knew it was because when I fucked her—and I would fuck her—I wanted her here. In this place. My place. We’d had hot, sweaty, fugitive sex in her apartment two years ago, and it had been explosive and incredible, but this time would be different. This time, when I ran my hands—my teeth, my tongue—over the sensitive skin on the backs of her knees, I wanted her in a safe place that was mine, that belonged to me, that smelled like me the way an animal’s den did.
She circled the ground floor and back into the front hall again, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. She put a graceful hand on the newel post and looked up into the dimness.
I stepped close, and she looked at me. Her dark eyes took me in, standing in front of her. They flickered over the shirt unbuttoned at my throat, the trim beard on my jaw, the sleeves rolled up to show my tattoo. Then they moved up to my eyes and held them.
“This place is beautiful,” she said softly, seriously.
I’d been right to bring her here. Olivia was the only woman—the only person—I knew who would appreciate this place like a work of art. “I know,” I said.
She looked me up and down again. “And you,” she said, her voice just as serious, just as appreciative. “You look like you belong here.”
That made me feel uncomfortable, like I didn’t deserve it, so I reminded her, “I just got out of prison, Olivia.”
She stepped closer to me and touched the skin where my shirt was unbuttoned at my throat, drawing her finger along it as if she couldn’t help it. “You belong both places,” she mused. “I don’t know how, but you do.”
The blood was roaring in my veins at that simple touch. We’d done a lot of things already, Olivia and me, touched a lot of each other, but her finger tracing my skin made me nearly insane. My breath caught, and she noticed. She leaned forward and put her mouth where her finger had been, her lips soft against the skin of my neck, her tongue hot where she licked me.
I moaned low in my throat. There’s only so much a man who’s spent two years in prison can take. “Go upstairs,” I told her.
She kissed me a moment longer, seeming to taste my skin, and then she pulled away. She turned and walked up the stairs, her hips and ass in the dress in full view of me as she receded. This time, she was well aware of the view she was giving me, and she let it be an invitation, blatant and perfect and hot.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs for a moment, watching her go, taking in the view, letting her know I appreciated it. Then I followed.
Upstairs, after that kiss, it became a game. One I could barely stand, I was so filled with tension, I could so clearly smell her lust. She walked softly from room to room, looking at each, gazing out the windows, leading me. And I followed. I was her big, nasty shadow, unable to hold back. Waiting for his cue.
One bedroom. Another. Another. One of the bathrooms, filled with a huge soaker tub and glass shower. “It’s all beautiful,” she said softly. “All of it.”
This time I didn’t answer, and she didn’t seem to expect it.
When she crossed the threshold to the master bedroom, something in me broke. As I followed her I reached out and put a hand on her back. I slid it up beneath her hair, to the back of her neck, and I felt her skin rise in goosebumps, heard her intake of breath. She paused and I felt her muscles flex beneath my fingers, her body stretch with arousal like a cat’s.
“Olivia,” I said, my voice rough. “Walk to the dresser and bend over.”