Reluctantly, I got up. Evie had pulled the sheet over her and didn’t move; maybe she was asleep. I quietly put on underwear, a pair of jeans, a zip-up sweatshirt, and nothing else. I grabbed Scout’s leash and took her down the elevator and outside.
It was late—one o’clock, maybe. There was no one around except for a couple of drunk guys walking past and a few taxis on the road. I stood while Scout did her thing and stared at nothing. I felt numb and oversensitized at the same time, my skin tingling. My brain kept looping backward, seeing Evie in that mirror, then shorting completely the fuck out.
It was like a hangover—a sex hangover. I’d never felt like this before. Sex was just something I did, like eating a hamburger or taking a cool shower after a hot workout. You felt the need to do it, you did it, and you pleased yourself. Like with any guy, my dick needed semi-regular attention, and as long as it got it, I didn’t think about it.
I was thinking about it now.
I was thinking about Evie. I could still feel her, on my palms, on my cock. I wanted to go back upstairs and fuck her again, make her make all those sounds again. I also wanted to run, get on a plane and get the hell out of here. She was too close. She had stripped pieces off me, and she didn’t even know it. She could see the things I didn’t want her to see. She could push salt in my open wounds and make it hurt. If only she knew.
She’s a woman, that’s all. Man up, Mason, and go back in.
I had no idea what had happened. Who I’d been while I had her in that shower, against that vanity. I had no idea what came next. And I always knew what came next—ever since Andrew’s accident, I’d rearranged my life to work that way.
Scout finished her business and sat on my shoe, ready to protect me from any dangers that came from the street. I scooped her up and carried her back inside while she tried to lick my face. I was still wrestling with her when I came in the door of my penthouse and saw that Evie was up.
She was wearing my t-shirt, which she must have picked up from the floor where we dropped it when she tore it off me. She had tied her hair back in a messy ponytail. And she had found the cereal in my cupboards, along with a bowl and some milk from the fridge.
Her brown eyes widened as I came through the door. “I’m starving,” she said, like it was an embarrassing admission. “Is this okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “Pour me one, too.” I put Scout down and unclipped the leash from her collar.
Evie watched me as she took out another bowl. “I would never peg you as a Chihuahua owner.”
“She’s not my dog,” I replied automatically. “She was Gina’s, but Gina didn’t want her anymore.”
Evie banged the second bowl down on the counter a little harder than necessary. “That sounds about right,” she said. Her voice was tight, and I remembered too late that it probably wasn’t the best time to bring up the woman who’d fucked her last boyfriend. The woman who had also been saying something I couldn’t hear—but was obviously very freaking bitchy—to Evie in the bar last night.
That had pissed me off, seeing that. It pissed me off again to see how tense Evie’s face was right now. So far Bank Boy had been my prime target for revenge in this whole mess, but Gina had just bought her way onto the list. “You want to tell me what she said to you?” I asked Evie.
She didn’t ask what I was talking about. “Insults, of course,” she said, dumping some cereal into my bowl for me. “The girl kind.”
“Girl insults,” I said, sliding the bowl away from her and picking up the milk. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Her voice was harsh. “Why does it matter?”
“It fucking matters.”
She looked at me for a second, and then looked away, blinking. “I’m dull and boring,” she said. “That was the gist of it. The fat part was implied. Also, I’m lying about sleeping with you.”
Oh, yes. There were going to be consequences to this. “You’re not those things,” I said, “and you are sleeping with me.”
Evie must have caught something in my voice, because she stared at me for a minute, distracted. Thinking about that scene in the bathroom, like I was.
Fuck, what we’d done in the bathroom. That was the hottest, dirtiest sex I’d ever had. And if it was the last thing I did, I was going to convince Evie Bates to do it again. To do me again.
“Yeah, well,” she said after a second, clearing her throat, “I was lying at the time, so I had to make some things up on the spot to sound convincing.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, digging in to my cereal. “Did you come up with something good?”
She reddened. “I told her—um, I told her you like blow jobs.”
I put down my spoon and stared at her.
She looked flustered. “Never mind. It was just—”
“I do,” I said.
She got distracted again. I knew the feeling, because I was staring at her mouth, thinking about blow jobs. Thinking about how good that would be. I wasn’t thinking of running away now; those thoughts had gone. I was thinking about her licking me and cupping my balls and—