Page 134 of The Chase
Clenching my teeth, I stared at the horn. “We’re alone.”
“Still.”
I turned to face him. “Yes, I love art. But what I also know is people are more important.”
“I agree.”
“Well, then.”
“Zara, we’ve only been seriously dating for forty-eight hours.”
The wordseriouslyslipped through my defenses and I weakened. And then pulled myself back from his deflection.
“Why are you so evasive?” I raised my hand in protest. “When I ask you a question, you kiss me. Or...”
We were moving way beyond the boundaries of friends and yet, if he didn’t let me in, how could there be an authenticus?
He arched a brow.
“What I do know about you is this—you’re a talented inventor, which you’ve turned into a successful business. You have an incredible building with your name on it in the Wharf—”
“It’s not a phallic representation. If that’s where you’re going with this.”
“Tobias.”
“Though it could be.” He peered through the glass to take a closer look.
“There you go again.” I peered in too. “Using humor to divert the truth.”
“I am what you see.”
“You’re closed off. You refuse to let me in.”
He stood straight and stared at me with those green eyes softening under the fluorescent light. “This might have been a mistake.”
I swallowed hard.
He wasn’t talking about the party.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. You’ve come into my life like a breath of fresh air. Your happiness is more important than my own. It’s just that I have certain commitments. It makes for a delicate balance.”
Yet another encrypted meaning for me to wrap my head around. Tobias was like one of those icebergs, where you realize you’re merely glimpsing the surface and yet beyond the depths there was so much more.
I broke his gaze.
“I’ve never been married. There, how was that?”
“I’m stronger than you think. You can lean on me.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets.
Silence lingered and I let it, hoping it would feed back and unsettle him. “Anything else you want to tell me?” I said.
He let out a sigh. “I can be intense in the bedroom. Dominating. Some would say punishing.”
“In what way?”
“I’m obsessive about how many orgasms I can give you over the course of a night.”
