Our meals came, and Olivia looked steadily at me over her plate. “That’s a hard way to live,” she said.
“Is it?” I dug into my steak. It felt strange to know I could now afford a proper steak. Every day, if I wanted. I looked at my hand again. I had to remember that money didn’t matter when you were dead. “I don’t mean to be depressing. It’s just how I am. Most people never learn how to make the most of their time. It’s easy to forget. So I had it put on my hand, where I can see it, and not on my arm, where I can cover it up.”
She looked at me for so long I finally gave in. “What is it?” I asked her. “What did I say?”
Her cheeks flushed a little, but she looked me in the eye. “I just realized I’m going to sleep with you again.”
I put down my fork. Thank fucking God. “Good,” I said, keeping my voice even. “You’re going to like it.”
She took a breath, and then she pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes briefly and shaking her head. “I’ve been trying to talk myself out of it,” she said. “But it hasn’t been working, so I stopped. I already have an overnight bag in my car. I don’t know how you do this to me.”
It was my turn to look at her so long that she squirmed in her seat. “Finish your dinner,” I said at last, my voice rough, “and I’ll do plenty of things to you. You’ll see.”
Chapter 15
Devon
We took my car from the restaurant, leaving hers there after she took her overnight bag.
She still didn’t have the full picture of how much I’d inherited, but as I crossed the bridge, the city fell away, and we drove to Diablo, she started to understand. I watched her look out the window, the elegant line of her neck, the dark curls resting against her skin. Neither of us said anything until I pulled into my driveway.
It had started to rain lightly, and she looked through the gloom at the house in front of us. “Devon,” she said finally, her voice quiet. “This is Diablo.”
“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.