Page 31 of The Carver

She gave a slight chuckle. “Have you ever had McDonald’s?”

“No.”

“Never?” she asked incredulously. “So, you were just born a snob?”

I chuckled. “Pretty much.”

“We’re going there one of these days.”

“Not a chance.”

“You can’t criticize something you’ve never had.”

“Yes, I can. American garbage.”

She smirked like she found all of this amusing. “You’ll change your mind once you’ve tried it. Mark my words.”

My mind had already left the subject as my fingers explored her body, loving the curve of her waist, the meat on her hip and ass, the muscles in her thigh. She was all woman, from head to toe, voluptuous tits and dark hair.

Her eyes flicked back and forth between mine. “You’ve already tuned me out, haven’t you?” A smile was on her lips like she wasn’t the least bit offended that I was more interested in her body than McDonald’s.

Her eye makeup was smeared from the sweat and the sheets pressed to her face earlier, but that somehow made her hotter, sexed-up from the way I’d taken her. Her hair was soft in most places but still knotted in others from being fisted by me. I wrapped my arm around the small of her back and dragged her to me as my mouth caught her lips. I kissed her hard because I hadn’t kissed her that evening, and I felt a fire so hot it burned me. I rolled on top of her, and her thighs immediately opened to me so I could have her again. I knew her body like my own, and I hooked her knee over my wrist and let my dick head toward her entrance like he knew exactly where it was. Without a break in our kiss, I sank inside her, felt the same warmth and slickness from before, and I filled her until she moaned into my mouth.

I rocked into her, the sheets at my waist, rocking into her slow and steady as I continued to kiss her, loving the way she would bend in every direction I folded her. I loved pussy as much as a man as I had as a teenager, but hers was something else. I’d defeated my addictions years ago, but now I’d picked up a new one.

She cupped my face and then dug her hand into my hair as she breathed into my mouth between kisses. She hooked her arms under my shoulder and clawed at my back with her sharp nails, panting and scratching, her sex gripping me and coating me in the desire she felt for me. “Bastien…I’m falling for you.”

Her words didn’t halt my movements, didn’t interrupt the moment. Only when we were locked together in passion so hot it burned us like a pyre and sent our souls to the heavens did she show who she really was, show how she really felt about me. It was like a safe I had to crack over and over again, a code she changed every few hours. But when that door unlocked, itwas worth all the effort—to take another piece of her treasure. “I already fell for you, sweetheart.”

We sat at the table together, the fire burning in the hearth because Gerard had started it before he left. She had her dinner, a homemade margherita pizza with a salad and a side of bread from Chez Georges—my favorite bread.

I didn’t have an appetite after that steak, so I drank the wine Gerard had brought.

She was in my t-shirt and her panties, eating her dinner like nothing had happened during our lovemaking. That was her playbook, a step forward and then five back, but I let it go because as much as she wanted to pretend it didn’t happen,it did happen.

But I let her have her way, played along with her game, didn’t give that arrogant smirk I was so desperate to show. There’d never been a woman I couldn’t have, and I usually had the opposite problem, where they wanted me and I wanted them to leave. This was new territory, and I treated it like a chess game, moving my pawns across the board as I protected my queen—and tried to take her king.

I sat there in my sweatpants and answered a few texts that had come through. My messages went off all hours of the day. The only time it was quiet was between seven and nine in the morning. “Luca wants to meet up for breakfast tomorrow.”

“At Holybelly?” she asked.

“Yeah. You in?”

“It’s fine if it’s just a guys’ thing.”

“You’re my girl, so you’re one of the guys.”

“Well, I know Luca doesn’t care for me.”

“I don’t care whether he likes you or not.”

She looked down at her food and took another bite of her salad, hopping back and forth between the pizza and the salad, clearly enjoying the food because she ate more than I’d ever seen her eat before.

“He’ll come around. Give him a chance, and he’ll give you a chance.”

She continued to eat, her eyes down. “They do have really good pancakes, and I’m not gonna pass that up.”

I felt the smile lift the corners of my mouth. “Attagirl.”

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