Dair (The Wild Side #3)(12)

They were arguing, voices tense but too quiet for me to make out any actual words.

It didn’t last long, and as soon as they grew quiet, I heard the other door open and then shut.

I came out.

Iris was closing the top drawer of the nightstand closest to the outside door.  She straightened and whirled as she heard me enter, slamming it shut tight with her knee.

I didn’t give it a second thought.  It was one of those things that I’d remember later and have a sort of aha moment, but at that moment, all I cared about was being alone again with her.

“Heath told me that we have four more hours before you have to leave,” she said, sounding forlorn.

I was done arguing about it.  I figured I’d do what I needed to when the time came.

And then I remembered what we’d been talking about before our strange impromptu dinner date.  “Eighteen,” I sighed out, recalling it all again.  “Barely f**king legal.”

This information put a damper on things, to say the least.  I wasn’t sure I could ever reconcile with the notion.

Men my age with girls her age were creeps.  Period.

Twenty-four had been pushing it.  Eighteen was out of line.

She folded her arms across her chest, setting her jaw.  “So what?  I’m no different than I was before you knew that.”

She didn’t get it.  But then, she was eighteen.  I recalled my eighteen-year-old self and all of the things I hadn’t gotten.

She seemed to read my mind.  “Oh no.  You’re not going to do that.  You don’t get to start treating me like a child just because your perception has changed.”

I sat down on the bed, pushing my shoulders back against the headboard.  I folded my arms across my chest, wondering what the hell I was going to do with her.  With myself.

She was still wearing her sweats, and I’d been in my dress shirt and slacks since I was ordered to put them back on.

She was staring at me like I was the only piece of food on the planet and she was STARVING.

“This thing between us can never work,” I told her, hating the words.

Hating the truth.

She shook her head, her long, mussed hair shifting back and forth across her shoulders.  “You’re wrong.  I know you are.  I’m more than an age, Dair.  I’m a person, a woman, and I’m in love with you.”

I swallowed hard at the glint in her eye.

I had exactly a zero percent success rate at denying her, and I doubted today was going to be the day that changed.

In fact, if I were a betting man, I’d have put odds that I wouldn’t even want to in about five more minutes.

“Tell me what you meant when you said our first meeting wasn’t random.  You said you knew I’d be there, and you sought me out.  Explain that to me.”

She was shaking her head before I’d finished.  “No,” said Iris firmly.  “I’m not explaining that to you, not with how you’re reacting to the last thing I told you.”

I shut my eyes, frustrated beyond all reason.  “But you could tell me that?  That’s one of the things you’re able to tell me, if you so desired?”

“I shouldn’t.  It’s for the best if I don’t, but I’d been considering it.  Before.”

“Before?”

“Before I saw your reaction to my age.  If that bothered you this much, you will totally wig out about the other.”

I took a few deep, calming breaths, wondering if she was just messing with me now.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

I still wasn’t looking at her, eyes still closed, but I felt her mood change.

Suddenly and drastically.

“We’re wasting precious time here, baby,” she said, soft voice breathless.

I opened my eyes and knew I wasn’t going to be able to resist her.

Twenty-four or eighteen, hostage or hustler, sinner or saint, whatever she was or wasn’t, whether she lied to my face or taunted me with hints of the truth, all of this seemed always to defer to the more pertinent fact at hand.

She was mine.

Inconceivably.

Undeniably.

Mine.

It was that devastating and that simple.

In a last ditch, desperate effort, I put my arms out, warding off that look of hers from several feet away.  “Iris, please.”

“Yes, okay, but only because you said please.”

She smiled and shrugged off her sweatshirt.  Gloriously topless, her heavy br**sts quivering with every shift, she reached back and gathered her hair, twisting it into a flimsy bun on top of her head.

My eyes didn’t know where to look, darting from her low slung sweats (that looked in danger of falling off) and her out of this world mesmerizing tits.  She’d lost weight everywhere but there, it seemed.  She was as top heavy as ever.

She took a few steps back, pushing down and out of her sweats and panties as she went.

Naked, she perched herself on the hotel room’s flimsy, old desk.

She took her hands, gripped both of her knees and parted her legs wide.

Put a fork in me.  Done.

I was up, dick out of my pants, dressed body pressed to her na**d one, before you could say—‘jailbait.’