I darted around. Zeke stood behind me, watching me, not the painting. And I hadn’t felt the ants on my neck.
“Sorry.” I hadn’t talked to him in a long time. I didn’t even know how long. That was totally rude.
“Why?” He walked toward me. “I brought you here so you could enjoy yourself. I like to look for a few seconds and move on to the next one. It’s fun for me to visit, but I don’t really get anything out of it. Watching you, I think that you do. From that one. It really spoke to you. What did it say?” I turned around to look again, and he wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Tell me what you see.”
“In this case, of course technique. It’s extraordinary. I don’t have the education to tell you what exactly he did. I wish I did. Dad denied me art. Told me it wouldn’t lead to anything good.”
He made that noise again that was something like hmmm, and I never knew what it meant. “That’s…too bad.” Zeke sounded funny, but when I would have turned to look, he held me still. “What else do you like?”
“How it feels like a captured moment in time. Always with us. Never gone.”
“Wow.” He kissed my neck. “That’s beautiful.”
We moved on after that and eventually headed back into his car to go to dinner. The second we stepped outside, I felt the ants on my neck. The security must be somewhere. Like Zeke’s staff, we never saw him, but his presence was real.
The wine was perfect, and I was a little bit drunk. Zeke wasn’t, since he was driving, but he grinned at me like he was just as happy in that moment as I was.
“No, you didn’t.” I shook my head at him. His story had to be impossible.
“I did.” He laughed. “The man was chasing me down the boardwalk in Atlantic City, so I stashed the cash with a mime and ran on. The dude held it for me, silently, and I paid him twenty percent.”
I was practically giddy with how this night was going.
“Layla, the designs you made for me. They were for wine bottles, right?”
I nodded, some of my glee fading. Yep, I’d forgotten they did that. I’d put a Z around a flower. His initials linked in another one. And the third had a Z at the bottom of a rose.
“They were so spectacularly beautiful. Thank you. If I ever actually achieve that dream, I’m going to pay you for them.”
“No.” I sat forward. “They’re a gift.”
“They’re branding. People get paid for that, and you are really good. I love them. Thank you.”
I’d never been so happy in my life. All the joy from before plus more flooded through me. “I’m just so glad you like them.”
“Love them.”
There was that word. It swelled around me. He hadn’t told me he loved me, but he did love that design. It was foolish for me to want that. We were still so new, and I’d already been with him longer than most women were. But I did. I wanted him to love me because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was in love with him.
For the first time in my life, I was head over heels, swim the Atlantic, bathe in happiness, in love. It was fast, but who cared, it was real. And it couldn’t be me feeling this way all alone. He had to be falling, too. Maybe he did it differently, but we connected. On almost everything. We laughed. We seemed to understand each other. He cared about what happened to me. I took care of him, feeding him whenever I knew he hadn’t eaten, listening because what he said mattered.
This didn’t just happen all the time. He was older than me, but even I knew it—feeling like this was a rare, unique experience, and I wanted it to last forever. I was in love with him. Hands down. Maybe somehow, I’d known when I was thirteen that he was the one. Who cared? The only thing that mattered was now.
“Bridget called me earlier.”
My ecstatic happiness didn’t flee. “Oh?”
“She’d talked to Hope and didn’t think you could answer her questions because they were very intricate. She’s going to quit her job.”
I’d even managed not to fall down a jealous spiral that he’d talked to my sister. “That’s good. Hope was reluctant.”
He nodded. “Do you want dessert?”
Why did I need any when life was so sweet right now? “No, thank you.”
Chapter Nineteen
I’d never taken a bath with anyone before, and Zeke’s delicious tub was like medicine for my soul. I leaned against him, my back to his chest, with the added benefit of being able to feel his hard cock pressed against me anytime I moved just a little. Still, he made no moves to press this forward to sex just yet.
Maybe he liked just lying here, too. His bathroom was everything I imagine it would be and more. Luxurious. Marble clad, with a huge window that looked out over Paris, I’d never been in a tub as big. The shower was huge, too.
Steam dripped around us from the water we’d filled the bath with, and the bath was scented with what I thought was sandalwood that he’d added when we’d been filling it. He’d smell like me, I was going to smell like him. I smiled.
“What are you thinking about?” I spoke in a low voice.
“How I love your breasts.” He squeezed one, and I giggled.
“Really? That’s what you’re thinking?” I turned in his arms until I faced him chest to chest. “About my breasts.”
He smirked at me. That adorable thing that he did. I touched my finger to his lips, and he bit down on the top of my pointer finger, lightly. “No. Now I’m thinking about how pretty your face is. The shape of your lips. The way that you pout when you’re thinking about something bothering you and don’t even know it. Your expressive eyes. Cute little nose. Yep, I’m thinking about all of that.” He paused. “And your breasts.”
I laughed, taking him in my hand. “Any chance you have a condom in the bathroom?”
He shook his head. “No, princess. I don’t. But that’s okay. We can make each other come other ways.”
Zeke pushed his finger inside of me. I moaned. Sex with Zeke was sweeter each time we did it, oral or intercourse. It didn’t matter. I always got immediately turned on, and now that I knew what would come, the anticipation was even better. I kissed him.
And he gently kissed me back. So sweetly. “Touch me, Layla.”
He almost never asked for specific things. To hear the slight plea in his voice was almost my undoing. I nodded, taking him in my hand. He was thick, and in the hot water, felt even bigger.
I pulled my head back to hold his eye contact. Face to face, we watched each other as we stroked and played. I would gasp, and he would moan. It was so personal like this. Holding our gazes brought out every bit of intimacy that could be lost when we didn’t do this. Every thought, every jolt, every pleasure was on display. His face and my own. Then I noticed the mirrors. If I wanted to, I could even watch myself.
No, that wasn’t what I wanted. Just him. The way we connected like this. Minutes passed, and water splashed. The steam dissipated, but still, the pleasure came close but didn’t finish.
His cock pulsed in my hand. I squeezed tighter. He flared his nostrils and pressed my clit between two fingers. That was it. I came, suddenly, and he did, too. Together. Like we’d been joined inside, connected. It didn’t matter. There had never been a more precious moment than this one.