Ruthless Creatures (Queens & Monsters, #1)(16)

“Why did you buy a house here if you’re not going to stay?”

“I already told you that.”

He reaches across the table. Slowly and gently, he skims his thumb over my cheekbone and down to my jaw, his heated gaze following the path of his finger.

Goose bumps break out all over my arms. My nipples tingle. I lick my lips, fighting dueling urges to lunge across the table and kiss him or run away screaming.

This is insane. You’re too sensible for this. Get up from the table and walk away.

I manage to ignore the voice of reason in my head. “How long will you be here?”

“A few days. I need to kiss you.”

“No.” It’s faint and not altogether convincing.

“Then come sit on my lap and let me finger fuck you while I feed you dinner.”

To manage the explosion of shock and lust that astonishing sentence caused in my body, I sit back abruptly in my chair and look away, choking out a disbelieving laugh.

“It must be all the champagne I’ve had. There’s no possible way you just said that.”

“I said it. And you liked it.” After a pause, he demands, “Look at me.”

“I can’t. This is crazy. I’ve known you for twenty-four hours. No one has ever spoken to me like that before in my life, not even my fiancé.”

He waits in silence for me to regroup, but I doubt if that’s possible. I think this conversation is going to leave me permanently scarred.

When I finally gather enough courage to glance at him, a tremor runs through my body at what I see in his eyes.

I clear my throat. “Also, that sounds like you’d need very good coordination to pull off. And maybe an extra set of hands.”

For the first time, he smiles at me.

It comes on slow and sensual, a gradual upward curve of his mouth that ends with a show of straight white teeth. It’s a beautiful smile, and also a frightening one.

Frightening because of how much I like it.

Flustered and sweating, I jolt to my feet. “Well, this has certainly been…interesting.” My laugh sounds deranged. “Have a nice night.”

Before he can reply, I whirl around and bolt toward the exit.

I’m so beside myself, I nearly fall down the stairs on the way out. Panting like a terrier, I burst through the glass doors of the casino and throw myself at the uniformed valet at the little stand under a wide black umbrella.

“I need a taxi, please.”

“Certainly, miss.”

He picks up a handheld two-way radio and requests a cab from whoever’s listening on the other side. Normally, casinos have a parking lot nearby where the cabs wait for customers, so hopefully I won’t have to stand here long.

I’m afraid I’ll shatter into a million jagged pieces if I don’t get as far away from Kage as soon as possible.

“Then come sit on my lap and let me finger fuck you while I feed you dinner.”

His words play over and over in my head. Pure torture.

Worse? I can picture it. So can my kitty, because she’s wet and aching between my legs, plaintively mewling for Kage’s big rough hand to pet her.

When I met David at twenty, I was naive. I didn’t have the wild high school experience, or the wild college experience, or any of the shenanigans Sloane enjoyed when she went away to Arizona State. I lived at home while I went to the modest and boring University of Nevada, over the hill in Reno.

I was a good girl. A small-town girl. A virgin.

Except for that one time with my high school math tutor, but ten seconds probably doesn’t count.

The point is that I don’t have the kind of experience to deal with a handsome, dangerous, virile male in his prime saying such things to me.

I’d better stop at the convenience store on the way home and pick up an extra set of batteries. I’m going to really need to work this one out.

“I apologize if I offended you.”

I stiffen, sucking in a startled breath.

Speaking low, Kage stands behind me, close enough that I can smell him and feel his body heat. He’s not touching me, but he’s got to be mere inches away. I feel as if I’m getting burned right through my dress.

I answer without turning my body or head. “It wasn’t so much offended as stunned.”

His exhalation stirs a tendril of hair on my neck. “It’s not often I…”

He rethinks whatever he was going to say and starts over. “I’m not a patient man. But that’s not your problem. If you ask me to leave you alone, I’ll honor that request.”

I don’t know how to answer that. At least not honestly. Because if I were to tell him the truth, we’d already be naked somewhere.

I settle on, “I’m not the girl who jumps into bed with strangers. Especially not ones who are leaving town in a few days.”

Still behind me, he moves closer and puts his mouth near my ear. In a voice like velvet, he says, “I want to taste every inch of you. I want to hear you scream my name. I want to make you come so hard, you forget your own. I don’t have time to fuck around—excuse the pun—with the kind of wooing I’d usually do to win you, so that’s why I’m being so blunt.

“Ask me to leave you alone, and you have my word I will. But until I hear that, I have to tell you, Natalie, that I want to fuck your sweet cunt and your perfect ass and your luscious mouth and anything else you’ll let me fuck, because you are the single most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”