Chapter Sixteen
Cage
I hadn’t said much on the drive back to my apartment. Eva was cautious. I knew this. I’d known it from day one when she’d basically called me a man whore. It was one of the things I liked about her. Up until tonight I had been making progress. She’d told me about Josh. I’d been able to hold her while she cried. I thought that had formed a bond of trust between us.
Taking her into my world had undone everything I’d worked damn hard to prove to her. If I didn’t have girls throwing themselves at me and talking about our threesomes, I had my friends acting like I used girls like disposable objects. I’d wanted my friends to meet her. I’d wanted her to know me until she got a real taste of my life. Now, I wanted to get her back to the country so we could live in our little cocoon where my past wasn’t there to haunt me.
“Are you mad at me?” Eva’s question snapped me out of my thoughts. I lifted my eyes from the spot in the floor I’d been staring at to see Eva standing in the doorway wearing a pair of tiny pink polka dot pajama bottoms and a matching tank top. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
“Huh?” I managed to ask through the lust haze that had settled over me. She wasn’t wearing a bra. I swallowed hard as her nipples pebbled under my gaze and pressed against the thin silky fabric.
“You didn’t talk the whole way back from the bar. I thought maybe you were mad at me about something.”
Mad at her? What?
I tore my eyes off her tits and focused on her worried face. “No, I’m not mad at you. I just had some stuff on my mind.”
She shifted her feet and chewed on the inside of her cheek nervously.
“Come here.” I invited, patting the spot on the end of the bed beside me.
She came willingly. I tried to focus on her face and making her less nervous. But damned if the fact those shorts barely covered up her ass wasn’t distracting. She sat down beside me fisting her hands together in her lap. I reached over and covered her hands with mine.
“Relax, Eva. I’m not mad at you. I’m frustrated with myself.”
She tilted her head to the side and looked up at me. Her silky brown locks slid over her bare shoulder. Had I ever noticed how sexy something as simple as a bare shoulder could be?
“Why are you frustrated with yourself?”
Because I’m a fuck-up and now you know it.
“Tonight didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. I don’t have a very stellar reputation and it seemed like everyone who knew me wanted to make sure you knew just what a sordid past I had.”
Her shoulders relaxed and she leaned over and bumped my arm with her shoulder. “You do realize that I never thought you had a stellar reputation.” Her teasing tone made me smile.
“What? You didn’t think I was next in line for Pope? Damn, I thought I had you fooled.”
Eva laughed and pulled her legs underneath her and turned her body so she was facing me. “Yeah, the whole DUI thing kind of clued me in.”
“You think you’re a funny one, don’t you?” I leaned back on my elbows so I could look up at her. Also because I had a real good view of her ass now that her shorts were inched up enough to show me the bottom curve of her perfectly rounded cheeks.
“I had fun tonight. Your friends are very entertaining.”
The one friend she’d had there I’d threatened.
“I’m really sorry about the thing with your friend. I snapped.”
A small frown puckered her brown then she shrugged. “You apologized for that already and I forgave you but, in the future, if you could refrain from threatening people because of me that would be nice.”
I didn’t respond because that probably wouldn’t happen. If she was with another guy I would be seeing red. No use in making any promises I couldn’t keep.
“I really like those pjs,” I changed the subject and reached over to run my finger along the edge of the shorts. I couldn’t look at her ass any longer and not at least touch it.
She shivered and pressed her lips together tightly. How innocent was she? She’d been with Josh forever. They’d been engaged. Surely she wasn’t a virgin. No guy would be able to make it through high school without getting him some. I didn’t want to know what all she’d done with him. Even if the guy was dead I couldn’t handle images of some other guy touching her. Considering I couldn’t even count the number of girls I’d been with it was fucked up that I cared about her being with just one guy. But I hadn’t loved one of those girls. She’d loved Josh. It made a difference. At least in my head it did.
“I want… I want to do things, tonight. I mean, I want to do more than we have,” she stammered and her face flushed a bright pink. “But I’m not sure if I’m ready for, you know… sex.”
I sat up and closed the space between us. The truth was I wasn’t sure I was ready for sex. It would be different for me this time. It scared the shit out of me. Sex and emotion never went together before but it had been so long since I’d been with anyone that I wasn’t sure I could stop myself if we got too carried away. I wasn’t used to stopping and I sure as hell had never been told no.
But this was Eva. I could do this for Eva.
I slid one hand around her waist and slid my other hand into her headful of hair. “We will only do what you want to do. We stop when you say stop,” I whispered as I lowered my mouth to hers. She tilted her head back and met my mouth eagerly.
Eva
Even though I’d kissed Cage several times now, I still briefy lost all thought when his soft full lips touched mine. His kisses always glided smoothly over my mouth and he never just did the same thing. He kissed and sucked and left little licks with a flick of his tongue. He really liked sucking on my bottom lip and he spent a lot of time tasting me. Or at least that’s what it felt like. He kissed a trail across my jaw and down my neck. I wanted him to go further. As he stopped to tease the curve of my neck I had to clench my teeth to keep from begging him to keep going down. A whimper escaped me and I probably should have been embarrassed but he began traveling closer to the tops of my breasts so instead I was thankful. Anything to get him moving. My breasts already knew what was coming. They were tingling.
His hands grazed my stomach startling me. He lifted his head to look up at me when I gasped. He didn’t ask but I could see the question in his eyes. I nodded and he eased the pajama top up and over my chest and I lifted my arms so he could take it the rest of the way off.