“By the way, Jack, I’ve noticed that filthy mouth of yours was much more refined the first night I met you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
She nodded. “Yes. Now the way you talk to me is blunter. Rougher,” she said, and she’d seen the slight changes the more they were together. He seemed to let go more with that dirty mouth, using words he hadn’t used the night they’d met, asking rougher questions, demanding answers.
“Maybe it’s part of my plan to woo you,” he joked. “Is it working?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
He leaned closer, brushed her hair away from her shoulder, and whispered hotly in her ear, “I think you’re a very dirty girl beneath that good-girl exterior.”
His words sent a rush through her. He was right. He was so right.
She tilted her face to him, and answered with a curve of her lips. “And you like it that way.”
“I love it that way,” he said in a husky voice that gave away his desire.
She tensed, wondering if he’d been like this with Aubrey. If he’d thrown her down on his desk, if he’d demanded answers about her dirty fantasies. She wished terribly that the thought had not touched down in her head, but now that it was there, it worried away at her. There was no way she’d ask him if he’d been like that with other women. That was too personal. Besides, it was a rude question. Michelle Milo aspired not to be rude.
Instead, she simply sighed.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, as they turned the corner onto a quieter street lined with trees and a mix of pretty brownstones, some white, some brick, all beautiful.
“Nothing,” she said, putting her game face back on.
“I don’t believe that. And you’re too damn smart to think you can get away with that kind of answer.”
“What kind of answer?”
“The kind that’s a lie. There is something wrong, and I bet I know what it is.”
“Okay. Try me,” she said and they were treading in dangerous territory, but then this was her stock-in-trade. Surely, she could handle it with him.
“You wanted to know if I’m like this with other women I’ve been with, don’t you?”
She gasped in surprise, and they stopped walking. She backed up to stand near the brown stoop of a building with planters in the first floor windows.
“I’m like this with you,” he added, his eyes locked on hers as he held her hand tighter.
“You are?” she asked carefully.
He nodded. “Of course I like the way we fuck. I love the way we have sex. Does that mean every other woman wanted it this way?” he asked, and a part of her hoped and prayed he wouldn’t answer. He didn’t. Thankfully. “It means we fit.”
Her heart jumped at those words, and she wasn’t entirely sure why. She wanted to swat it back into place. Hell, they were talking about sex, not matters of the heart, so why on earth should that annoying organ be doing a pitter-patter? But as he gazed at her, his blue eyes never wavering, she saw a flash of something more in his expression. He wasn’t just talking about how they fit in the bedroom.
“I think so too,” she said quietly, as they delved into territory she usually only started to explore in a therapy session with a patient, but here they were on the streets of New York having a frank conversation about how they liked to fuck. And yet it was a conversation about more than sex too.
“It means you’re perfect for me. And I can be myself with you,” he said, grasping her hand tighter, as he moved in closer. Heat radiated off of him.
Oh God, her heart thumped hard now. And she couldn’t take it. She couldn’t take all this beating in her chest, this heat, this stretching and expanding inside. “So you can be the dirty guy who likes a good girl on the outside but with a filthy mind?” she countered, arching an eyebrow, and somehow successfully deflecting the deeper meaning of this conversation, even though she wanted to clasp it and hold it close.
He threw his head back and laughed. “Come on. Let’s get that stomach fed, so I can have more of that filthy mind and hot body later.”
* * *
“Do you miss her still?”
He crinkled his brow at the question she asked over dinner. “Hmm? What do you mean?”
“Aubrey.”
Oh. Right. The reason he’d gone to see Michelle in the first place. “Honestly?”
She nodded, and laughed once as she lifted her wine glass. “Yes,” she said emphatically. “Of course I’m asking you honestly. We talked about it at Gia’s. It must be hard for you. I mean, that’s why you came to see me. I don’t expect you to be over her in just a few sessions with Kana, and I’m not asking you to tell me about them. I’m just asking if you miss her.”
There was one answer. The truth. He could give her that right now. “No. I don’t miss her. Sorry if that makes me seem callous. But it’s the truth.”
“Hey. The truth is okay. It’s okay not to miss anymore. Or even just not today,” she said, then took a drink and set down the glass.
“And honestly, being with you helps. I like being with you.”
“I like that you’re with me.”
Later, he sent her home in a town car. Her choice. Not his. Someday, someday soon, he wanted her to stay the night. When he returned to his own bed, alone, he missed Michelle more than he’d ever expected to.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sooner or Later
The ball slammed the backboard and wobbled once on the rim before sinking through the net.
“I won!” Nate declared, thrusting his arms high in the air as the sun rose higher in the morning sky.
“Right,” Jack said, shaking his head as he laughed, since the two of them never really kept score. He grabbed the ball and tucked it under his arm as they headed out of the court and onto the street. New York was already bustling. Families were out pushing strollers and grabbing bagels, and twenty-somethings were spilled over small tables at cafes, nursing lattes and wearing sunglasses.
“I scored Yankees tickets from a client. Third baseline. Two rows up,” Nate said as a cab screeched to the curb to pick up a fare. “You up for it?”
Jack’s ears pricked. He was always up for the Yankees. “When?”
“Tonight. Game’s against Boston. It will be epic,” Nate said. The Yankees were down by two games in the division, and the pennant race was on. But none of that mattered.