Page 48 of Personal Disaster

“Don’t past tense me. I know what that means.”

“Stay nimble, Ranger Boy,” she whispers as I lean in to kiss her. “You never know when I’m going to getyou.”

Oh, she’s got me all right. She’s got megood.

* * *

“She’s not exactly I pictured,”Poppy says as we’re drivinghome.

“Who? Brianne?”

“Yep. She’s sweet. And young. She’s really a rogue tweeter?”

“She’s tougher than she looks.” I pick up Poppy’s hand and kiss her knuckles. “A lot likeyou.”

“I look tough,” she protests.

I grin. “Of course.”

“You thought you could eat me alive, and you didn’t.”

“I sort of did.” A lazy, pleased smile spreads across my face and her cheeks pinkup.

“That’s filthy,” she whispers.

We’re both thinking of my tongue between her legs. I want to go down on her again right fucking now. Slow and deliberate and hungry.

“I’m filthy,” I murmur instead. “Haven’t you figured that outyet?”

“I know.” The hitch in her voice is my undoing.

I step on the gas. “Ten minutes to my place, Poppy.”

“Is that a promise or a threat?”

I throw my head back and laugh. This woman is everything. “Both.”

But when we get home, I find myself wanting to confess something other than dirty thoughts.

She gets to the door first. I catch her around the waist and squeeze her tight as I kiss her neck. “So…just in case you were ever in the neighborhood…” I trail my fingers down her arm and circle them around her wrist. “I was thinking you might want to be able to get into my house even if I weren’there.”

“In case I was in the neighborhood?” She twists her head to look at me with a smile on herface.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” She laughs gently as I lift her arm and press it to the security scanner. “Likethis?”

“Twenty-first century version of giving you akey.”

“Most people still just do the key thing.”

“I’m not most people. Hold still.”

I log in to my security system on my phone and add her as a user, then tell it to scan her hand to record the print.

“This is a complicated way to get my finger prints,” she whispers. “You could have taken them while I was sleeping.”

“What makes you think I didn’t?”

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