Page 17 of Sugar Baby Mine

“What?” he asks.

“Just wondering if I’m going to get stabbed or something by your children for seeing you.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Don’t have any.”

“Really?” I can’t help how my tone is filled with disbelief.

His mouth dips down into a frown as he swirls some of the wide pasta noodles around on his plate, his gaze lowering from me for a fraction of a second as his shoulders tense. “My ex-wife didn’t want to have kids.”

The look on his face tells me so much. And there’s my heart breaking just a little bit, falling out of my chest and onto the floor. Clean up on aisle three, please.

“Well—” There’s not much I can say to that without being really awkward. More awkward than I already am. “At least I’m not in any danger of being murdered by your nonexistent children. Is the ex-wife going to be angry?” I stab a piece of my own pasta and pop it in my mouth. Flavor bursts across my tongue and I hum, delighted.

“Perhaps. But she’s the one who cheated and then got mad atme,so I’d say irrationally angry if anything.”

“What a bitch,” I blurt out. “I had a guy cheat on me once then try to deny it. When I caught him in the act the next time, he blamed it on me not breaking up with him the first time.”

I’m fucking sweating now, because why would I say that?

“That’s crazy,” he says, taking a bite of his food and chewing carefully. “Why didn’t you break up with him the first time?”

“Young and dumb?”

“And now?”

I make a face. Because I’m sure that I’m still both. “I’m fuckingbrilliant, thank you.”

He chuckles, offering a bite of his food to me on his fork. “I mean, did you learn from it?”

I lean in and bite into the scallop and noodle, licking my lips. I savor the sauce which tastes like mine, but turned up three notches in flavor. “I learned that boys are dumber than I’ll ever be. And once a cheater, always a cheater.”

Ben nods, a sullen look streaking across his features. I wonder for the first time if he practices what he preaches. If he didn’t also stay with his wife after the first time she cheated because it was a marriage, and that’s something on a scale far grander than some summer boyfriend between my freshman and sophomore years of college.

“And you’re fine with someone… older?”

He says it like it’s a bad thing. Maybe this is the part he’s self-conscious of, even though he’s going to be paying me. Gifting me things. Entering in an unconventional relationship, but he’s worried about his age?

“I could be rocking up to a date with an eighty-year-old right now if I went about things without Cora’s help. Your age is not a problem. You’re, like, on the same level of hot as Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and he’s even older than you.”

“I’m not sure I know who that is, so I can’t be flattered or offended.”

“Flattered. You should be very flattered.”

His eyebrows raise, and his gaze sweeps over my pink cheeks as I make all the comparisons in my head about how similar they look. Suddenly, I’m fucking dying at this table.

I take a big bite of my pasta, scooping up the last two tortellini and shoving them both in my mouth at once.

“Hmm.” He leans back in his seat. The way he assesses me is like I’m laid out for him to peruse at his leisure. I tip my head back just a little, pointing my nose to the ceiling, and his eyes dipdown the length of my body. “What if I asked you to take your panties off and hand them over to me?”

“Areyou asking?”

He ignores my jibe, folding his napkin from his lap and pushing his plate forward enough so he can rest his palm on the table.

“Take your panties off and hand them over, Emmeline.”

Not a question anymore.

Except the brat in me is real, jumping to the surface for him faster and more forceful than for any other partner I’ve ever had. I like the games he plays.

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