He thought, for one terrifying second, that his words had been too much. That he’d lost her. But then her little, pink tongue peeked out to wet her lip and she nodded.
“My coat is that one there,” she whispered, pointing.
Dante reached back and ripped it off the hanger. He held it up for her to slip into and for the first time in living memory, didn’t inwardly groan when she covered up her body in a coat. Because now that he knew he was going to see the rest of her, he wanted her to be zipped up throat to ankle. No other man got to look at her tonight. Tonight she was all his.
She quickly did the buttons on her coat and looked up at him. “Get your car. I’ll meet you outside.”
Something twisted in his stomach; she didn’t want to be seen leaving with him. For some reason, it annoyed the shit out of him. He was usually a very live-and-let-live sort of guy. Whatever made it work for a woman, he was game for. But it had been a long time since a woman straight up didn’t want to be seen with him. These days he was used to having the opposite problem. He was used to women wanting to be seen everywhere with him.
Considering he’d basically been begging for this for four years, Dante was not going to question or push her any further. Still… He couldn’t just leave like this either. The thin string that was pulling them both along tonight was liable to snap if he left her side.
So Dante stepped forward again and took her chin in his hand. He let his thumb grip her tightly while the rest of his fingers fanned out softly along her jaw. “Fine. But you are not going to talk to anyone else. You’re not going to look at your phone. You’re not going to do anything but imagine what it’ll feel like to have me ten inches deep. You understand?”
Her eyes widened and he could have sworn she was pressing her legs together beneath her dress. Time for the final nail in the coffin. “And if you’re not outside in four minutes, I will come back in here and drag you out over my shoulder. In front of anyone and everyone. Understood?”
Aurora nodded and she looked so sincere, so honest, so unbelievably turned on, that Dante felt his chest get tight again. He turned away from her, jogging out toward his car. He didn’t care if that looked overeager. He didn’t give a flying fuck. All he cared about was getting the hell away from this party and getting a second of time alone with her.
He pulled his Mercedes up to the curb in two minutes and he was deeply pleased when she immediately came walking out. If he wasn’t mistaken, she looked a little nervous, a little turned on, and a little sad. Funky combination. Dante wanted nothing more than to make this night a hell of a lot simpler for her. All he wanted was to make her feel good as hell.
The light spring breeze played with the ends of her golden hair and made Dante’s fingers itch to do the same thing. She slid into the passenger seat as he pulled smoothly from the curb.
“Rihanna?” she asked, a small smile playing on her full lips.
“Girl’s got pipes,” Dante said, cracking the windows just a bit. He wanted her hair to float around again.
She laughed, just a small, husky note. And it made Dante rock hard against his zipper. He’d made her laugh twice tonight and it was doing something to him. He’d never heard her laugh before. She was always so serious, so professional, so perfect. He was deeply looking forward to getting her messy.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Her eyes shuttered immediately. “Maybe.”
Dante cleared his throat and turned to look at her bathed in the red light of the intersection. He didn’t want to miss her reaction. “What’s a fuck boy?”
He was not disappointed. Aurora threw her head back and laughed with abandon. “Excuse me?”
He grinned at her. “You said you were a magnet for fuck boys. What did you mean?”
“It’s something us younger folks say.”
“Rude. I can’t be that much older than you, can I?”
“What’re you, forty?”
“Ouch. Thirty-eight.”
“You’ve got a decade on me.”
She was younger than he’d thought, but as he looked at her, a ghost of a smile on her lips, the swell of her breasts pushing against her thin coat, Dante didn’t give a flying fuck how old she was long as she was legal. He shrugged. “So what did you mean?”
Aurora tilted her head, thinking. “Well, it has a few meanings. But it’s somebody who only wants to fuck. Who’ll do whatever he can to make it happen. And then he disappears. But he kind of messes with your head in the process.”
Wow. Christ. “You said I was a fuck boy when you thought I’d called you ‘Jessica’.”
She shrugged. “Well, maybe you’re a fuck man.”
He eyed her, one hand on the wheel. “You think I’m being a fuck boy right now?”
Aurora studied him, turning in her seat to face him. He got the strange feeling that she was looking straight through him, at some part of him that even he didn’t know about, and it was pumping blood straight to his cock, even as he waited for her answer.