“Yes.”
“I’m clean. I haven’t been near a bi . . . a woman in months. Years, really. Not inside her. I had blow jobs, but not inside her. I wouldn’t lie to you. I detest using condoms with you. I’d much prefer to go without a glove. Think it over, will you?” He rubbed her bare cheeks.
“If you haven’t been with a woman, why do you have condoms everywhere?”
“I don’t know. Hopeful, maybe. I saw Reaper and Ice find their women. Steele, everyone knew it was Breezy, but then Absinthe found Scarlet. We all thought maybe there was a chance for the rest of us. I wanted to make certain my woman was protected. Now I kind of wish I hadn’t done so much overthinking.”
She laughed softly and his stomach had that peculiar reaction of a serious flip. Bog, he was bordering on sheer insanity when it came to her.
“I’ve been thinking about this room, Player. I think I’m really fond of it.”
He helped her to stand straight. “I was hoping you’d give your approval of the dining room.” He ran his finger from her collarbone to the tip of her breast. He liked to see the marks of his mouth and fingers on her skin.
A slow smile lit her eyes. “I especially love your dining room.”
“Good, then. Let me show you the rest of the house. There are actually two kitchens inside the house. One outside. A smokehouse and a wine cellar. I like cooking, so it’s my kind of house.” He flashed a grin. “Considering I have a few fantasies of eating food off your body, I think it’s fair to say we might need more than one kitchen.”
“You do?” Her eyes widened. “Have a few fantasies? Not just one?”
He laughed as he beckoned her to follow him through to the kitchen. “You should know me better than that by now. I have all kinds of fantasies, my little innocent. We’re going to need a weekend—or maybe a week—to show you a couple of kitchen fantasies.”
She nodded. “If Inez ever approves of someone to give me some actual time off, I’m all over a weekend with you.”
He stopped abruptly. “Lana is your backup.”
She rolled her eyes. “Honey. Really? I love Lana. She’s sweet, she really is, and I’m certain as a backup for a million other things, she’s your bestie, but retail, commercial, anything with putting that woman in an actual store and making her stand behind a counter and deal with customers all day, not on your life. She’d decide it was the perfect day to watch the whales go by when it wasn’t whale season, and you know it. She’d close the store.”
He shrugged. “What’s the big deal? We could close it down for the weekend.” He kept her walking through to one of the kitchens where the center island, with its freestanding counter space, had given him all sorts of ideas when he was making meals long before he met Zyah. He knew what he would do if he was ever lucky enough to find a partner and share his house with her.
“You can’t close a grocery store for a weekend. Customers depend on the store, especially over the weekend. Your club is very lucky you went into business with Inez and then you hired me. You’d go broke the first month without us.”
He wrapped his arm around her. “That’s probably true. See this island? It’s just the right height to put you on when I get hungry while I’m working.” He turned her to indicate the corner, where there was a small little table with two chairs. “And that’s the perfect corner to put you in when you need to get on your hands and knees and wait for me to come over and see what I might want to do to punish you when you’ve been a very naughty girl like you so often are.”
“I see.” She laughed and pointed to the little bench with a thick cushion on it. “And that?”
“That’s obvious. When I’m working, you can give me the blow job of the century. I recognize there’s a lot of me, me, me in here, but chefs need a lot of encouragement while they work the long, thankless hours they work.”
“I get that.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll have plenty of ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate, and just about anything else I know you like stored in the fridge to keep your strength up.”
“Nice. Very thoughtful.”
“I’m a very thoughtful kind of man. Let’s go take a shower. It will warm you up, and I can show you the master bedroom.”
He led her through the other rooms and quickly down the hall to his room. He’d done the most work there. The master bedroom was the only one of the bedrooms that was really enormous. With the same wood floor, the walls had been white, the windows long, almost floor to ceiling, to give a view of the trees and shrubbery from two sides. The ceilings were vaulted, and the room stretched to add a sitting area and then grew to accommodate a master bath.
To Player, the room had seemed as if it were more suited to a woman than a man. He had changed the colors in the room from white to muted grays, beiges and blacks. He’d treated the master bath the same, adding in a Moroccan touch, with dark wood cabinets and black vessel sinks with wood countertops. The tub was a deep black bowl with all fixtures in gold. The shower was a masterpiece of gold and black, with heated stones and jets to rinse every part of a sore body after bending over for long hours of woodworking. Heated towels waited when he stepped out on heated tiles to dry off.
“Player. I love this. I really do.”
He heard it in her voice. She really did like what he’d done with the room. It didn’t matter that she was a woman, the colors still appealed to her. “I have privacy screens to keep the light out when I need to sleep in. I haven’t ever used them, but I’m hoping someday I will.” He flashed her a little smirk.
“It won’t be tomorrow. I really have to work. But I’m okay with going to work without sleep. I already texted Mama Anat. She said Savage and Destroyer were staying with her. Maestro left when we did.”
“Yeah, he followed us to Czar’s. We usually run in pairs, and since this thing happened”—he touched his head— “Maestro’s really been hovering.”
She frowned and glanced out the window. “Is he around? I’m totally naked.”
“First, babe, he wouldn’t be looking. We grew up seeing naked bodies and others having sex. It doesn’t really faze us. That aside, no, he isn’t out there. He’s bunking down in the workroom. There’s a bed there. He texted me when we first got here to let him know if we leave. By now, he’s sound asleep. If it bothers you that he’s on the property, I’ll ask him to leave.”
Zyah shook her head, wandering over to the bathroom. The doors were really black laser-carved screens. “These are cool. Did you make these?”
He watched the way her fingers slid over the inside of the shapes in what could only be described as little caresses. She made his heart ache when she did things like that. No one gave him those little recognitions. She probably wasn’t even aware she was doing it, but to him, those gestures meant something. He came close to her, his hand on the small of her back, gently urging her forward so that she stepped inside.
The moment she did, automatic lights came on. Muted. He never had liked bright. He might rethink bright, a single spotlight over the bed to shine down on Zyah when he had her spread out, her long hair everywhere and her body undulating with heat and need. Or maybe he needed a room of mirrors to reflect every single expression on her face, every ripple of her body . . .