Fighter in Lingerie (Lingerie 14)

I took her phone from her hand. “My address isn’t in public records so you can’t order anything.”

“Not in public records?”

“It doesn’t exist.”

“How is that possible?”

I wouldn’t bore her with the details. “Tell me what you want, and one of the guys will pick it up.” I never ordered out, so the security team would have a new mission to complete. At least it would give them something to do.

“This is gonna be the best night ever. Pizza, beer, and sex.”

I watched the brightness in her eyes, the way she got excited over something so simple. The other women I screwed wanted a trip to Paris on my private jet and a private, five-star meal at the Eiffel Tower. All Carmen wanted was a casual night in—with me.

She drank three beers in half an hour and devoured half the pizza on her own.

I only had a few slices.

She ran laps around me, handling her beer better than most women. I saw her drink scotch, and it never went to her head. She could even finish a bottle of wine by herself and still hold her own in an argument.

Must be that Barsetti blood.

“That was the best meal I’ve ever had. So much cheese. There’s no such thing as too much cheese.” She finished off her fourth beer.

She was entertaining, sitting across from me in just my t-shirt while she ran her fingers through her hair in such a sexy way. “You act like you’ve never had pizza before.”

“Well, I’ve been here for almost three weeks, and I’ve never seen you eat a decent meal.”

“We have different definitions of decent.” My meals were nutritionally rich, low in fat, and low in carbs. She wanted to eat pizza and pasta all the time. As a woman, that was fine, but curves on a man weren’t sexy.

“You don’t even have a cheat day. It’s weird.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been in this routine for a long time.”

“You have a super-hot body,” she blurted. “But if you ate pancakes for breakfast once a week and pizza for dinner, would you really be that much less hot?” She tipped back her beer again, which was empty.

Now I knew she’d drunk too much. I pulled the glass away from her and made sure she wouldn’t have anymore. But I liked drunk Carmen. She was more candid than usual, and her openness was sexy. She called me super-hot without being remotely embarrassed about it. Most of the time, she regretted her compliments the second they were out of her mouth. But now, she didn’t think twice about them.

“Can I be honest with you?” She leaned farther toward me, tucking her hair behind her ear. She had a lazy look in her green eyes, the alcohol making her inhibitions lower even more.

“Please.” I set my beer to the side and leaned toward her, our hands almost touching in the middle. I was still in my sweatpants, my chest bare for her to see.

“Alright.” She looked down for a second before she looked up again. “I want you to stop smoking cigars.”

The request caught me off guard, so I didn’t say anything right away. Of all the things she could say right now, my smoking habits seemed to be at the bottom of the list.

“Smoking a cigar is like smoking seven cigarettes. It’s terrible for you. Do you realize how likely you are to develop lung cancer just from smoking? As well as other health complications.”

I stared at her blankly, aware of all the warnings she gave me.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “I know I have no right to tell you what to do, but…” Her hand reached for mine. “But I don’t want anything to happen to you.” She squeezed my hand, the concern in her eyes the sexiest thing in the world.

I interlocked our fingers and stared at her across the table.

She stared back at me as she waited for an answer. “So?”

“You want me to quit that badly?” I couldn’t keep back my grin, turned on by the way she cared about me. In the beginning of our relationship, she wouldn’t give me the time of day, but now she was nagging me about my health like a wife.

“Yes.” She brought my knuckles to her mouth and kissed each one slowly, seductively. She kept her eyes on me the entire time, pulling at my will with those green eyes.

I’d never even considered quitting until now. “Alright.”

“Really?” she whispered.

I nodded.

“Even after I leave?”

I hated thinking about the moment when my men would carry her stuff back to her apartment and we would say goodbye. I’d never wanted a woman the way I wanted her. Maybe in a few months, I would get bored of her like all the others, but something told me the exact opposite would happen. I wasn’t a man falling in love, but I was a man falling deeper into this intense obsession. “If that’s what you want.”