Page 64 of Call Me Mrs. Taylor

She shifts onto her side so she can look at me. Her elbow props her up, her body angled toward me, smooth brown skin and soft curves. It’s real hard not to get distracted, but if anything will do it, it’s thinking about what I lost.

She reaches out, grazing my bare chest with her fingers before trailing a path down my stomach. “You didn’t answer the question,” she says softly.

“Maybe because I don’t owe you an answer.”

It comes out sharper than I meant it to, but she’s not even fazed. She just smiles.

“It’s not a big deal, Ace. I was just thinking about our conversation in the car when we were talking about legacies. You strike me as a legacy guy.”

“What’s that?”

Her hand comes to rest on my bare thigh. “You know…good head on your shoulders. Brilliant. Solid career. Feels like the kind of life you’d want to pass down.”

I don’t answer.

Because Ididwant that.

It was right there within my grasp.

And then I lost it all.

I reach for my old fashioned, calmed by the sound of the ice clinking against the glass as I take a slow sip. She watches me, expressionless, as I try to medicate myself.

“Never really thought about it,” I lie.

She taps my thigh with her fingers. “Never? Not even once? You never imagine a littleyourunning around? Calling you Daddy?”

My jaw clenches so hard, a stab of pain shoots through my head. She’s poking at a scab she doesn’t know is there. I don’t wanna talk about this shit. Not now, not ever. But I guess it’s not an unreasonable topic of discussion for normal people.

I wet my lips, forcing my voice even. “Not everybody wants kids.”

Her fingers trace lazy circles on my skin. “I thinkyoudo.”

I don’t like the way she’s looking at me. I don’t like any of this shit, to be clear, but the look on her face makes me think she’s enjoying this. I know it’s not possible, because she doesn’t know about Elijah, and if she did, that would mean she enjoys peeling my layers back to poke at the raw tissue inside, which would lead me to believe something is seriously wrong with her.

But I can’t shake the feeling.

“Think what you want,” I say, shifting under her touch. “Just know I don’t like being pushed.”

What Idon’tsay is that I push back.

Her lashes lower, but she holds my gaze.

“So for future reference,” she says smoothly, “you shut down when you don’t like where a conversation is going.”

I set my empty glass on the side table, shifting my weight so I’m leaning into her space. My thigh brushes against hers, warm and bare.

“What about you?” I say. “You wanna be a mother?”

She exhales sharply. “Well—“

“Cuz seeing as how your parents split up, it makes me wonder how that affected your feelings about that.”

It’s subtle, but I don’t miss the way her eyes go cold.

She’s quiet. For a long time. We sit there, staring at each other, neither one of us wanting or willing to break first. She’s testing me, and I’m testing her ass right back.

Just because she led me around by my dick in the beginning doesn’t mean I’ma let her run me now.

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