Since I Saw You (Because You Are Mine #4)(45)

“That feels good,” she murmured as he gently moved the warm, damp cloth over her skin.

“You’re not mad at me?” he asked, his brow quirked upward as he attended to his task of carefully cleaning her right breast.

“Mad at you?” she asked, confused.

“For this,” he clarified under his breath, nodding to his task of washing her.

“I’m not as much of a neat freak and perfectionist as everyone seems to think I am.”

He glanced up and met her stare. “Funny.”

“What?”

“I told Ian much the same thing.”

For once, his reference to his brother didn’t fracture her complete attention on him. “It was very erotic,” she said in a hushed tone. “And I did tell you I wanted to watch you come.”

Her core clenched yet again in desire when she saw his sheepish smile. She smiled back. The moment struck her as sublimely sweet, even more so because it was in direct contrast to Kam’s typical raw, primal intensity.

After he’d cleaned her, he dried her with a few tissues. Then he came down next to her on the bed. The air against her damp, naked skin had chilled her, but Kam was like a cozy fire. She sighed in satisfaction when he rolled her into his arms and her cheek pressed against a dense pectoral muscle. She nestled her nose and lips in the crook of his shoulder and neck, thinking of how good it felt, how right the fit. He smoothed her hair back off her face and continued to stroke it.

“It’s straight tonight. Your hair,” she heard him say.

“It’s dry outside.”

“I can’t decide how I like it better. Curly or straight.”

She pressed her face to his chest and planted a kiss. She liked the sensation of crisp male hair and thick, smooth male skin against her lips. “I hate when it goes wild.”

“Why? You look pretty with it curling around your face.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, stroking his biceps, wondrous at the density of the muscle, the curving shape. “I can hear your heart beat,” she said after a moment of silence.

“What’s it telling you?”

She listened carefully, taking his idle question seriously. She absorbed the strong, steady beat. “That you’re a very healthy man who is quite content at the moment?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” he asked, and she heard the smile in his voice.

“Telling you,” she whispered, her mouth moving against his skin. She closed her eyes and purred when he kneaded the nape of her neck with his fingertips. “Who will you use for a test subject when you do a test of your biofeedback mechanism?”

“I don’t know. What about you?”

Her eyes blinked open. “Do you think that would be a good idea?”

“Yes,” he stated unequivocally.

“Well . . . if you need me . . .”

His low grunt as he leaned down to kiss the top of her head seemed to say, Isn’t that obvious? She smiled. It was a nice, having him tell her he needed her even in such an indirect way.

“Did Ian tell you that I’m going to move into an apartment in his building?” Kam rumbled.

“Yes. We have things arranged so that you can move in tomorrow morning, if you like.”

“I know, he told me. Will you come by in the afternoon?”

“I’ll be working on a project that I have to get done before leaving town on Monday for a couple of nights in San Francisco,” she murmured.

“Tomorrow is Saturday,” he said disapprovingly. “Don’t you ever take time off?”

“It’s a special circumstance,” she lied. She often worked on the weekend, although this really was an emergency situation. “I even had to ask some of the support staff to come in to help me finish. And then we have the dinner tomorrow night with Jason Klinf,” she reminded him.

For some reason, it made her feel guilty when Kam chastised her for working too much, which was ridiculous. Somehow, her work had gotten all mixed up in her head with her feelings for Ian. Maybe that’s why she was so sensitive talking about it to Kam. Maybe she should be ashamed of how dedicated she’d been in the past years to her work; how dedicated she’d been to a man who didn’t return her feelings.

It really was pretty pitiful on her part, she realized irritably.

“It’ll only take an hour or two to program the device for your body,” he said. She lifted her head and gave him a doubtful glance. “If I tell you it’s a work task, will that convince you?” he added dryly. “The Gersbach demonstration is on Wednesday, and you’ll be out of town on Tuesday.”

She thought there was a good chance Angus would arrive tomorrow afternoon and wanted to see his reaction to seeing the dog firsthand, so maybe Kam’s proposition was a good thing.

“Okay, I suppose I could fit it in . . .”

She was distracted by the sound of Kam’s stomach growling. She gave him an amused glance. He looked very appealing lying naked on her bed, his head on her pillow, his dark hair mussed and falling onto his forehead.

“You haven’t eaten?” she asked him.

He shook his head, his sexy lips tilted in amusement. “You?”

“No. I was going to when I got home, but then . . .”

“You made a meal out of me instead,” he muttered dryly. A flash of heat went through her at his reference and the erotic memory it evoked. “Can I take you to dinner somewhere?” he asked.