I stared at him. “Well, shit.”
“I know, right?” His wry smile faded. “But I don’t want you to feel pressured to share a bed with me, Eva. There is no magic pill. I can sleep on the couch or I can go home, although of the two choices I’d prefer the couch. My whole day is better after getting ready for work with you.”
“For me, too.”
Reaching over, Gideon caught my hand and lifted it to his lips. “I never imagined I could have this…Someone in my life who knows what you do about me. Someone who could talk about my fuck-ups over dinner because they accept me anyway…I’m grateful for you, Eva.”
My heart twisted with a sweet pain in my chest. He could say such beautiful things, the perfect things.
“I feel the same way about you, ace.” Deeper, maybe, because I loved him. But I didn’t say that aloud. He’d get there someday. I wasn’t going to give up until he was absolutely, irrevocably mine.
With his bare feet propped on the coffee table and his computer on his lap, Gideon looked so at home and relaxed that he kept distracting me from my television shows.
How did we get here? I asked myself. This extravagantly sexy man and me?
“You’re staring,” he murmured, his gaze on his laptop screen.
I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Is that a sexual suggestion, Miss Tramell?”
“How do you see me while staring at whatever you’re working on?”
He looked up then and caught my gaze. His blue eyes blazed with power and heat. “I’ve always seen you, angel. From the moment you found me, I’ve seen nothing but you.”
Wednesday started with Gideon’s cock pushing into me from behind, my new favorite way to wake up.
“Well, then,” I said hoarsely, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as his arm hitched around my waist and hauled me closer to his warm, hard chest. “You’re frisky this morning.”
“You’re gorgeous and sexy every morning,” he murmured, nibbling on my shoulder. “I love waking up to you.”
We celebrated a night of uninterrupted sleep with a handful of orgasms between us.
Much later in the day, I had lunch with Mark and his partner Steven at a lovely Mexican restaurant tucked beneath the street. We descended a short set of cement stairs into a surprisingly spacious restaurant with black-vested waitstaff and plenty of light.
“You’ll need to bring your man back here,” Steven said, “and have him buy you one of the pomegranate margaritas.”
“Good stuff?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
When the waitress came to take our orders, she flirted outrageously with Mark, fluttering enviously long lashes. Mark flirted back. As the meal progressed, the exuberant redhead—whose name tag introduced her as Shawna—became bolder, touching Mark’s shoulders and the back of his neck every time she came by. In return, Mark’s banter became more suggestive, until I eyed Steven nervously, watching his face redden and his scowl deepen by the moment. Shifting uncomfortably, I was counting down the minutes until the tension-fraught meal was over.
“Let’s get together tonight,” Shawna said to Mark when she brought the check. “One night with me and I’ll cure you.”
I gaped. Seriously?
“Seven o’clock work for you?” Mark purred. “I’ll ruin you, Shawna. You know what happens once you go black…”
I inhaled my water down the wrong pipe and choked.
Steven leaped to his feet and rounded the table, pounding me on the back. “Hell, Eva,” he said, laughing. “We’re just playing with you. Don’t die on us.”
“What?” I gasped, my eyes watering.
Grinning, he came around my shoulder and tossed his arm around the waitress. “Eva, meet my sister, Shawna. Shawna, Eva here is the one who makes Mark’s life easier.”
“That’s good,” Shawna said, “since he’s got you to make things harder.”