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I shouldn’t be turned on, but who wouldn’t be at that sight? It’s orgasmic, the pleasure of my touch an electric beacon in her and that turns me on. The fact I’m doing that to her, just by touching her feet is hot.
And maybe part of it is her seeming lack of interest in me. I say seeming because, damn it, she kissed me the other night.
Then she ran away.
Still, it’s a little disconcerting to have her rebuff me every time I try and compliment her. It doesn’t help I keep getting things wrong when I do that.
I shove it all away. I like women. End of story.
“Well?”
She opens an eye. “Well what?”
“Your day? Your evening?”
“Work. For you. And don’t worry, no splashy articles or interviews or declarations of love or the new your kinda deal. It’s just all the boring mechanics of making sure what is out there or will be is tweaked our way. And you’ve been behaving.”
“I mostly do,” I say, ignoring all the times I don’t. “Also I’ve been busy.”
“And I haven’t let you spend the night alone.” She opens her other eye and takes a sip of her drink, making no move to pull her feet free.
“I’m not a total lost cause.”
“The jury is still out.”
“It’s a bogus jury.”
She laughs. “The evening wasn’t exciting. Just being the dutiful daughter for my great aunt’s eighty-sixth birthday. I forgot.” Elliot glances down into her glass, the light from the lamps making her hair gleam. “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
“Me.”
“Don’t make yourself more important than you are.”
I rest my hand on top of her feet and pick up my glass. “Perry, that was cold.”
“That’s me. I’m like ice.”
“I’m thinking more like there’s a river of lava in there, not ice.”
She shifts and pulls her feet off me, but rests them against my thigh. I like the heat and the pressure. “What are you going to do if we can’t pull this off?”
“By that, you mean me.”
I take a swallow of the drink.
She sighs. “Ryder, I only meant—”
“I know what you meant.” I say this quietly. “If I fuck up by fucking someone inappropriate. By doing something they don’t like. By being me.”
“Ryder—”
“I like me,” I say. “I’ve told you this shit shouldn’t matter.”
“But it does, because you deemed it so.”
I take another swallow of the amber liquid. “Because it’s a connection to my past, my heritage, like I told you. And the company means something. I fucking hate the fact the stakes keep growing since this all started, and I don’t want to lose it.”
I stop and meet her gaze.
