Rogue (Real #4)(21)
I’m fully sober. Something I might regret. He’s no longer blurred by the rain, by vodka, or by my stupid illusions of Prince Charming.
The man standing at my door is very real, very big, very tan, and his smile is very, very charming. There is no word for the way he stands there, his eyes dark and glimmering, his cheekbones hard and his jaw smoothly shaven, his mouth so beautiful, tipped up mischievously at the corners. His suit is perfect, playboy perfect, and his tousled hair run with wayward streaks of copper that makes me want to rake my fingers straight through. And he’s here, looking at me as if waiting for me to let him in. A memory of the night he brought me home flashes through me. Where I felt sore because of the way he’d loved me all night. The little mark behind my ear that I found the next morning.
Hanging on to my every instinct of self-preservation, I hold the door only halfway open when he catches it in one big, powerful hand.
“Invite me in,” he says softly, holding the door in his firm grip.
“My car doesn’t need a tune-up, it’s fine, but thanks for checking in on it,” I say, pushing it closed with more effort.
He shoves the door open and strides inside, and I’m frustrated over my inability to keep him out. Now he’s on the wrong side of the door, shutting it behind him like he owns my place. “This building has a laundry chute?”
“That’s your line?”
He crosses the room and pulls all the blinds shut, then he sweeps his gaze across my space with such thorough intensity my insides quiver.
It’s almost like he’s making sure there is no other man here.
He can’t possibly be jealous, can he?
And now . . . now that he seems assured no one is here but me, he starts walking over to me and looking at my mouth, and I’m walking away because every instinct of self-preservation in me tells me to walk away.
“You’re here. Why are you here all of a sudden? Some other date canceled on you last minute?” I demand.
“I have a date I’d like to schedule with you.” His eyebrows pull low over those brilliant, hawklike eyes. “You’re not nearly as excited to see me as I’d hoped.”
“Maybe I thought you were a drunken hallucination. Maybe I hoped you were.”
I back into my kitchen island and he locks me in with his arms, his eyes hungry and almost desperate. Then he cups my face and sets his mouth to mine like he thinks—mistakenly—I belong to him.
“I’m not,” he says softly, then he kisses me again, so deeply I lose my train of thought until he speaks against my mouth again. “A hallucination. And if you need me to, I’ll spend all night reminding you of what it feels like to have my tongue and my cock buried deep in you and how much you liked it.”
He leans over as if to kiss me again. My voice trembles as I turn my head. “Don’t, Greyson.”
“I don’t like that word, ‘don’t,’?” he rasps against my cheek. “But I do like you saying ‘Greyson.’?”
He tilts my head around with the tip of one finger and stares at me like he loves the look of me. I lift one of his arms and he lets me, and I start easing away again, free of him, but not free of his stare. The first night he just kept staring at my eyes like he couldn’t tear his gaze free, but now, now he’s seeing all of me. I’m wearing shorts and a camisole yet my body starts heating as his eyes rake me up and down.
“I gave you a chance and you blew it,” I breathe.
“I want another one.”
I shake my head, but I can’t stop the stupid wings of some huge living thing batting around in my stomach. Suddenly my place smells like leather, like forest, and Greyson freaking King stands there looking like he does, confident, self-contained, his presence somehow demanding all my attention.
“Why are you here?”
He signals to the TV as I watch my dear, perfect Westley whisper to Buttercup, “As you wish,” then he looks at me, smiles as if at himself. “Are you watching a movie?”
“Not now, right now I’m watching you.”
He just smiles that rather sexy, rather annoying almost grin of his and sits on a side chair like some mighty king. I can feel myself frown because he just managed to shrink my place with his presence. Feeling little pinches in my stomach, I sit down on the couch, Westley forgotten, Buttercup forgotten, everything but HIM forgotten. I wait.
“How are you?” he asks softly, signaling at me.
“How do you think?” I sullenly ask.
“Looking pretty damn good from where I sit.”
“Do you always make yourself at home in places you’re not wanted?”
His soft laugh runs across my skin like a feather, pricking the little hairs on my arms. He leans back and crosses his arms behind his head, watching me with cool, knowing eyes. “I’m here to prove to you that, no, Melanie, you didn’t imagine me.”
The way his sensual tone combines with that brilliant narrowed gaze tells me we both know that I am definitely wanted here—and makes my toes curl. Fuck, he turns me on.
“I was about to eat a thousand pounds of chocolate because of you,” I accuse.
He stands and then comes to drop his body right next to me on the couch. “Well now, two hundred twenty pounds of me are right here. With you.”
“We’re not sleeping together again.”