He kissed the top of my head. “I’m content.”
“You’re hard as steel,” I said, because there was no ignoring his erection that tented his sweatpants and pressed insistently against my thigh.
“I like it,” he said. “You make me hard, Kat. I don’t see any reason to change that just yet.”
Considering how guys talked about blue balls, his words surprised me. Then again, I wasn’t a guy, but I could understand how delicious the sensation of simply being turned on could feel. Besides, at the moment all I wanted to do was lie there, my body against his, his fingers lazily stroking my back.
“I think I’ve died,” I said after a moment. “I think this must be heaven.”
He trailed his fingers from my sex up over my breasts and to my lips. “Feels like heaven to me.”
He brushed my hair back from my face. “I’m three for three,” he said, making me laugh. “I assume you won’t doubt me again.”
“There’s something magic about you, Cole August,” I said. “But I guess I always knew that.”
“Did you?”
“Sure,” I said playfully as I stood up to stretch. I moved to the couch and curled up against the soft leather cushions. “Why do you think I picked you? Certainly not for your money or the fact that you can speak Italian. But give a girl a good orgasm . . .”
“How did you know I speak Italian?” He’d stood and was heading toward the wet bar in the corner of the room.
I frowned, trying to remember as he opened a small fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine. “I’m not sure. Maybe Angie said something once. Or Jahn,” I added, referring to her uncle, and the man who had been a mentor to all three of the knights.
“Toss me my clothes, would you?” I added, after Cole brought over a bottle of Shiraz and two glasses. “Feel free not to bother with your shirt. I like the view.”
“As do I,” he said, eyeing me thoroughly before retrieving my shorts and top for me. “But this way I get to enjoy watching you take it all off again.”
“I always knew you were clever.” He grinned, then came over and poured us both some wine. He handed me a glass, then took a seat next to me.
“How come you never talk about it? Italy, I mean.”
He swirled the wine in his glass as if considering the question. “I don’t talk about a lot of things,” he finally said.
“No, I guess you don’t. Why not?”
“I like to look forward, not back. And that was just another time in my life that’s over and done.”
“Bad?”
“No. Good, actually.” The way he said it made me think that the realization surprised him. As if there were far too few good periods lurking in his past.
“I’ve always thought it would be exciting to live in another country. Italy’s not on my list, but I have a fantasy of living in Paris for a year. I want to see all the seasons change on the Champs-Elysées.”
“And are you alone in this fantasy?”
I took a long sip of my wine, my eyes on Cole. “No,” I said simply.
He leaned back on the couch, then patted his legs. I stretched out, my feet on his lap, a glass of wine in my hands. I glanced at the rug where he’d made me come, and couldn’t help but think how quickly things had shifted from scorching hot to sweet.
“You have to pay attention around here,” Cole said, apparently reading my mind. “Things move awfully fast.”
“They do indeed.”
“I’ll tell you about Italy someday.”
I peered at him. “I thought you didn’t look back.”
“I thought you wanted to know.”
“I do,” I said. What I didn’t add was, I want to know everything. But I think he heard that last part, anyway.
We sat that way for a moment, all soft and comfortable. He held his wine in one hand and stroked my calf with his other. It felt warm and sweet and I should have known it was too good to last.
It wasn’t obvious—I’m not even sure I could point to a particular thing. But the pressure of his touch changed, and the tenderness took on a hesitant quality. I got the feeling he was a man who believed that a storm was coming, and feared that it would rip the ground out from under him.
“Will you tell me what’s the matter?”
He’d been looking at his hand on my leg, the contrast of his dark skin and my too-pale legs. By the end of summer, I’d be the same golden brown as a waffle, but this early in the season I was still winter white. Now he lifted his head to look at me directly.
“This is nice,” he said.
“I can see why that would bother you.”
“I like seeing you this way, the contentment so thick around you I could paint it. And I like touching you, being close to you.”
“I like it, too.” I couldn’t manage to hide the wary note in my voice.
“You were right when you said you could handle it. Tonight—all this. Everything since you walked through my door. You’ve been everything I wanted and more than I could expect.”
I licked my lips. He was saying all the right things, and yet cold fingers of fear were creeping up my spine.
“You handled it,” he said again. “But what about the rest of it?”
“Don’t do that. Don’t assume you know things. You don’t.”
“Don’t I?”
My temper flared. “No, you don’t. You tried to scare me away earlier—talking about wanting the pain, wanting to hurt me.”
“I meant it,” he said, and his voice was low and dangerous and firm.
“I know,” I said as I set my wine aside. Then I tugged my legs off his lap and shifted on the couch so that I was on my knees in front of him. I took his wine and set it on the coffee table. “In case it escaped your notice, I liked it, too.”
“Vanilla,” he said. “Tonight was watery vanilla.”
“And you think I can’t handle mocha almond fudge?”
“I’m not joking, Kat.”
“Do you think I am? Dammit, Cole, I liked what we did. It made me wet when you spanked me, and when you tied my arms back . . .” I drew in a breath, shocked to realize that just talking about it made me aroused all over again. “Don’t you see? Being helpless to you—it turned me on. It was new and it was incredible. It was like you showed me some wonderful secret about myself.”