Page 31 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
He pulled back after a moment. “Tell me you’re wet for me,” he murmured, panting. “Admit it. I wanna hear you say it.”
Fine, Nico, you win. You win the battle, but not the war.
“Drenched. Soaked. Yes, okay, yes!”
I pulled myself out of his arms, straightened my shirt, and ran a shaking hand over my hair. I looked at him. He was breathing hard, staring back at me with fire in his eyes. It gave me courage that he seemed just as affected by me as I was by him.
“But this is only date number one—”
“Two.”
Well, I could compromise. “One point five. So I’m going to have to ask that you keep your hands to yourself for the remainder of our time together today, Mr. Nyx. We have an agreement, remember?”
My smile was sweet. Or maybe it was the smile of a humongous bitch. Or a woman with no sense whatsoever. Who turned down the sexiest man alive?
Me, that’s who. Like I said before, I’ve never been known for good decision making under pressure.
“Okay. Date number one point five.” He repeated it as if it were a life sentence. Then he smiled a smile of such wicked sensuality I nearly melted into a pool at his feet. “But in another one and a half dates, you’re mine
, Kat. All mine. For good.”
Gulp.
I shrugged as if this were something gorgeous men said to me on a regular basis.
“All right, then, Chastity, gimme a tour of your place. Start with the bedroom.”
I quirked my brows. Did we not just establish the ground rules?
He saw my look. “Most personal space in a woman’s home is her bedroom. I can learn more from one look in a woman’s bedroom than from spendin’ a week in the rest of the house. So that’s what I wanna see first.”
I quashed the ugly impulse to ask him just how many women’s bedrooms he’d toured. Because a) I didn’t want to know the answer, and b) I didn’t want to know the answer.
What was that old cliché? Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt?
“Okay. Follow me.”
I led him through the house, acutely aware of every dust mote, streaked mirror, dirty patch of floor. I tried to calm myself with logic. Men didn’t care as much as women about cleanliness. And rock stars probably didn’t care at all about cleanliness. I forced myself to picture him living in a mess of a bachelor pad with dogs running in and out, empty frozen dinner boxes on the kitchen counter, crumpled beer cans behind the couch.
I failed to conjure it. Someone as beautiful as Nico most likely lived in a cloud palace.
My house is only fifteen hundred square feet, so we arrived at the bedroom in about four point two seconds. He did the Dracula thing at the threshold again, asking me to invite him in.
I suddenly felt shy. What would he think? “Um. Come on in.”
And then he was in my bedroom.
Squee!
He roved around the room like a big cat, restless in a new cage, sniffing things out. I had to admit he was onto something about a woman’s bedroom being her most personal space. I’d spent more money and time decorating this room than any other. The rest of the house had a casual California boho-beach vibe, with its distressed wood floors, ivory furniture, and gauzy curtains, but the bedroom was very Zen. Decorated in a cool palette of sage greens and charcoal grays, with a floor-to-ceiling window along one wall that looked over a tiny tranquility garden of stones and succulents, it was my little oasis.
Nico seemed to like it, too. “Nice. Restful.”
He examined the four prints that hung on the wall opposite the window, featuring black bamboo leaves against a background of white. He saw the sliding screen that separated the sleeping area from the master bath, and went in for a look. I stood near the doorway, leaning against the dresser, waiting for him to be done.
“Your bathtub seems a little big for one person.” He stuck his head around the edge of the screen. He smiled, eyes alight. “Did I mention how much I love baths?”
“Really?”
