She shivered at the twin caresses of his voice in her ears and his breath across her mouth. “Tell me.”
“I wanted to see how it tasted on your lips.” His voice had gone deeper again, to that level that made her whole body like a sound receptor vibrating from his every word.
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Even though she’d as good as told him to kiss her, she wasn’t prepared for the force of his mouth meeting hers. It wasn’t painful, because Gus was too skilled for that, but there was something different this time, and his desire for her hit her like an emotional hadouken. She’d taken all his words over the course of the night and the week in stride because he said them so calmly that it was hard to get worked up about them, but Gus really liked her. That was evident the almost desperate swipe of his tongue over her lips, in the desire in his groan when she grabbed hold of his forearms and returned his fervor.
He pulled back and looked at her, breathing hard. “And then?”
She squinted at him, wondering if his kiss had caused her to lose consciousness for a minute and miss part of the conversation because she had no idea what he was referring to. “What?”
“Earlier you said we would talk about ‘and then’ after dessert.” He stretched his hand out and closed the box containing the rest of the tarts.
She took a deep breath. “And then . . . we go to my bedroom, if you want.”
He stared at her.
“For sex,” she clarified. Her heart was pounding in her ears. “If you want.”
“Reggie, have you somehow misinterpreted me kissing you for five nights in a row? Yeah, I want. You. I want you.”
She’d grown somewhat accustomed to the deep, smooth baritone of his voice, but hearing those three words cranked her he-could-get-it meter up to 11.
He made to move toward her and then stood and walked to the door that led inside instead, sliding it open. “Milady?”
Reggie unlocked her brakes and pushed herself through the door with unsteady arms as he gestured her through. Her body was ready, that was for damn sure. Her heart? She’d worry about that later.
Chapter Eight
After each had made a quick bathroom pit stop, Gus followed Reggie into her bedroom, one of the rooms he hadn’t seen before. While the rest of the house was clean and tidy, this room was more chaotic, with clothes heaped on a laundry hamper and small piles of books and comics scattered around, though the floor was mostly clear.
“I feel weird asking the cleaners to take care of my bedroom, so a bit of a different vibe in here,” she explained sheepishly.
Gus didn’t care about the state of her bedroom. The walls were teal, her bedspread was yellow and had Aurora and Phil on it. The wooden posts of her bed were white with gauzy peach fabric strung between them, like something a princess would sleep in. He took that in with one blink, but his focus was on the face that had quickly become his favorite color combination: honey-brown eyes, golden-brown skin tanned from sitting on her deck, and the spray of russet freckles that spread over her nose and cheekbones.
He reached out and ran his thumb over each delicate eyebrow, down the bridge of her nose, over her soft, full lips. Desire tumbled down his spine and he exhaled hard.
“Can I touch you? More?”
She nodded jerkily. She was looking up at him, but he couldn’t tell what her expression was conveying—she seemed hesitant now that they were here. There was a little divot between her brows now, and her shoulders were tense.
“Are you sure?” he asked, gently removing his hand. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I’m sure.” She closed her eyes and sighed before opening them again. Her hands gripped the push rims on her wheels. “I’m just nervous, I guess? I mean, I have to be honest here. I’ve listened to your voice so many times over the last couple of years. Do you know how intimate that is? I listened so much that I thought I needed it. What happens now, when you touch me? When we . . . if we . . .” She licked her lips, a contrast of bright pink gliding over dusky rose. “What if I need that, too?”
Gus wasn’t great at word puzzles, though he could muddle through, and that was essentially what she was presenting him with. What she was saying didn’t make sense if taken at face value. Was she really worried that she would become addicted to sex with him? That seemed unlikely given what she’d told him about her previous dating experiences. He shuffled the clues he’d collected about her over the past week, and landed on the puzzle piece that stated she didn’t like depending on others. She wasn’t worried about needing sex—she was worried about needing him.
“Then I’ll give it to you,” he said. “I’ll give you whatever you need. That’s how this works.”
“It’s not that simple.” She looked up into his eyes like she wanted him to refute that, so he did.
“It is that simple.” He crouched in front of her again, resting his palms on his knees so that he wouldn’t touch her. “I want to give you . . . something. Happiness? Pleasure?”
“And what do you get out of it?”
“We already established this, Reggie. I get you.” Gus ran a hand through his hair in slight frustration, not at her, but that maybe he was missing something. “What else would I want?”
She smiled, then sighed. “Look at me. I said I didn’t do emotional things and here we are.” She released her grip on Blanche’s push rims, flipped the brakes on, and then rested her hands on his shoulders, stroking her palms over them.
Gus closed his eyes, reveling in the sensation of warmth pressing through the fabric of his shirt. She leaned forward as her hands caressed down his biceps, so that soon her trembling palms were on his forearms and her face was near his.
He waited.
Her lips glanced over one of his eyebrows, smoothed over the jut of his left cheekbone, then settled into the notch just below his earlobe, sending spirals of pleasure radiating out, like a prism of bright color spreading over his skin and pressing down into his body. Her cheek rested against his, and the scent of her hair cream—vanilla bean, fitting because she was sweet, intense, and invaluable—filled his nose.
“Reggie.” Her breath caught, and he smiled, turning his head slightly so that his nose brushed the curls at her temple and his mouth was angled toward her ear. He reached out his own hands, gliding them up her calves and resting them at the bend of her knees, where the hem of her dress brushed the hairs on his knuckles. “You know what I’ve been thinking about all week?”
“Maybe the same thing I’ve been thinking about?” Her voice was husky, and she was hot to the touch where their skin brushed.
“If it’s my head between your thighs, then yup, it’s the same thing.”
“Oh my god!” She laughed, then leaned back in her wheelchair, eyes wide and cheeks flushed. She shook her head, and then looked down at him like she was an evil queen and he was her minion. “You’re . . . absolutely right. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and I may or may not have touched myself while I did.”
She arched a brow in challenge.
Gus leaned up and forward on his knees, catching her lush mouth with his before she could say anything else. His cock was already so hard, and he just wanted to taste her. She held him by the front of his shirt as their tongues clashed, and he regretted having worn the button-up instead of a polo for casual Friday. He needed her hands on his body, but he didn’t want to take his hands off her.