Folk Around and Find Out (Good Folk: Modern Folktales #2)(64)

Obviously, she wanted me. Good. But making love in my club wasn’t an option. I wanted something . . . something else for our first time. Perhaps . . . I’d make her orgasm now, then explain how things would be moving forward. We’d cement this thing between us, and everything would be settled.

Which left only one question: fingers or mouth?

Decisions, decisions.

We could do both?

Something that sounded like a strangled groan tumbled from her lips while I mentally debated and she bowed away, taking her mouth from mine. I blinked her into focus again. The red of her cheeks flushed a deeper shade, and she leaned back.

Frustrated, I watched as she curled her shoulders and withdrew her fingers from mine to clutch her forehead. “No. God. I am sorry. I don’t—we have to stop.” She released a harsh breath. “What the hell was I thinking? Of course we’re not about to have—have—”

I caught her cheeks between my palms and lifted her chin, kissing her. I needed to, but also to shut her up. I didn’t know what was going on in her head, but apparently, I needed to think of the right words and quick. She was withdrawing.

Charlotte kissed me back, but not with her earlier surrender. A new tension in her body kept her shoulders pulled forward. She still tasted like heaven, but also like hesitation.

Unwilling to let her go far, I leaned my forehead against hers and separated our mouths, my breathing labored. “Charlotte—"

“Hank—”

“Let me say something.” Lifting my chin, I ensnared her eyes and narrowed mine to show I meant business.

“Wait. I—I shouldn’t have—”

I stepped more completely between her legs. “Angel, please. Let me speak.”

At my use of the endearment, or it was the please, her gaze softened and some of her tension visibly eased. Charlotte swallowed, nodded, and her hands rose to my wrists. I felt unease there too, like she didn’t know whether to hold on or remove my palms from her face.

Tucking a honeyed strand of hair behind her ear, I let my fingertips trail softly against her earlobe down to the silky skin of her neck, a spike of pleasurable warmth shooting down my spine as she shivered. “If you let me,” I whispered, “I will make you come on this table, right now. I will kneel and eat your pussy until you see stars. And I will fuck and make love to you literally anywhere else, as many times as you want, in whatever positions you prefer. But not here, not in my club. And not ’til we settle a few things between us.”

Her lashes fluttered. “What kinds of things?”

“You and me and the future kind of things.” I smoothed my hand from her shoulder to her forearm, twisting my wrist to lace our fingers together. Perhaps it was temporary madness, but I added, “Specifically, what I need to do in order to make this happen for us, to make things right for you. Just so you know, nothing is off the table. I’ll do anything.” And I meant every word.

Despite the omnipresent heat of the club, her cheeks lost some of their color. “I . . . see.”

“Do you?” I tugged her closer, nipping at her lips, unable to help myself. Jesus, fuck. She was so delicious. I couldn’t wait to put my mouth on her cunt. My mouth watered at the thought. “Then name a time and place so I can get started.”

A new sort of laugh burst out of her, a nervous-sounding one, and it chilled the satisfied buzzing in my brain. I was the one who pulled away this time, needing to see her eyes. They were assessing, as always, but also cagey. Her lovely mouth pressed into a grim-looking line and she seemed to swallow with some trouble.

“Hank.” She said my name softly, gently, and with a quiet kind of desperation that sounded like the wrong kind of pleading.

I said nothing, but my hands tightened of their own accord, my heart beating louder between my ears. We stared at each other, and the riddle of her features—this look she was giving me—had me standing straighter.

Her chin wobbled. She firmed it and cleared her throat. “I honestly can’t believe I’m doing this, and my teenage self would never forgive me,” she said, words tumbling out of her, her voice scratchy, “but—uh—I think—I think we just, um—” She took a deep breath, her eyebrows pulling together in a pacifying kind of entreaty. “It’s just that I got carried away. I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have and I can’t do this. And I’m sorry.”

The chill slid down the back of my neck and twisted around my chest. “Carried away,” I repeated, a cold heaviness landing in my stomach.

Charlotte shook her head. “I can’t do this.” Abruptly, she leaned away, extracting herself, removing her hands from mine. “This isn’t—I’m not—”

“Whoa. Slow down.”

I made to take her hand again and she balled it into a fist, twisting to the side. Flinching, I automatically stepped back, wanting to give her space if she needed it while also hating the increased distance between us. Which might’ve been why words vacated my mouth unchecked.

Desperate words.

Stream of consciousness, total fucking lunacy.

“I don’t have to eat you out if you don’t want. We’ll do whatever you want. I just need to make you feel good. Whatever that means for you. I want us to be—to be together, however I fit in your life. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. We could—”