Page 69 of All for Love

“It was orchestrated to look that way. We were talking about me and you, not me and her. She offered to cover for us and then set my mind at ease that no one would realize what we were doing.”

“Wow.” Mercedes settled into me, turning in the circle of my arms and staring out the window. Then she stiffened. “Where are we going? My place is the other way.”

“Yeah, but we’re going to mine for a change.”

She didn’t say anything, but when we got there and walked in, I practically felt her examining every inch of it with her eyes. Trying to see it from her point of view, I wondered what she thought. It was modern and sprawling, masculine with poured concrete floors and not a decoration in sight.

I still kind of liked it, but I also didn’t love it as much as I used to. “Well, what do you think?”

We walked to my kitchen. I stripped off my jacket and tie and hung them both on a coat rack mounted between my front door and the kitchen. I’d put it there because this was exactly how far I usually got before I needed someplace to put them.

One of the things I still love about the place.

Mercedes shrugged, but her nose wrinkled a little bit. “It’s nice. Just, uh, why is it so cold?”

I looked around, knowing she didn’t mean the temperature. The heat had been on all winter and I’d ignited the fireplaces remotely. Flames flickered above the stones and the air itself was quite warm.

After hesitating for a beat, I turned and slid my arms around her waist. “That’s because I’m never here. I mean, I sleep here and I wake up here, but I don’t spend much time here otherwise.”

Unless I’d brought a woman home for a night that turned into a weekend or that kind of thing. But I wasn’t about to say that quite so bluntly. Mercedes seemed to know anyway, the knowledge sitting darkly in her eyes as she stared back at me, looped her arms around my neck, and toyed with the short hairs at the nape of my neck.

“It’s a very nice place, Kody,” she murmured as she pushed up on her toes to speak against my lips. “Maybe it needs a bit of warmth, though. Want to see what we can do to heat it right up?”

Without any hesitation whatsoever, I took her mouth in a hot, hard kiss and forgot all about the many reasons we’d put an end to this before. It was safe to say that neither of us was interested in calling it off, and I’d meant what I’d said to her earlier.

I was tired of fighting my feelings, and for now, I didn’t have to. Just for tonight, which wasn’t much, but it was something.

Something I intended to enjoying every second of while I still could.