Page 45 of The Perfect Heir

“Oh my God, so not the same thing,” she retorted. “Yours are huge, tall pieces of embroidery. Sure, they’re geometric, but not in any of the old styles, and I should know. I’m from the mountains. Never saw any patterns like that before.”

“Semantics. Anyway, the artist in question was riffing off those styles. It’s like freestyling on a hip-hop track,” I explained as we drove down toward Manhattan, the East River spanned underneath us. The bright winter sunlight hit off the spread of geometric skyscrapers in front of us. There was the dignified United Nations on the waterfront, it’s turquoise-tinted windows reflecting the water below. I could pick out the long oblong structure of the Citicorp building in Midtown with its slanted diagonal roof, shining a brilliant silver color.

We were ten minutes away from my place in this traffic and already our little tiff was getting me antsy to get her underneath me.

“Okay, I don’t know what you just said,” she replied with a laugh. “But I can tell you that the woman who embroidered those…those…thingies—”

“I prefer the term art pieces,” I interjected. “But go on, don’t want to interrupt your flow.”

“Fine. Art pieces, whatever. She’s trying to be conceptual or something, but they don’t make your place feel homey or comfy like your mom’s house or my home in LA.”

“Your home in LA is filled to the gills with stuff. It looks like the leftovers from a Dracula-slash-haunted house movie set got dumped in your house. Every piece of furniture is antique-y and made from heavy, dark wood. On top of that, not one surface is free from clutter and tchotchkes,” I elaborated.

“Your place looks empty,” she fired back. “Like one of those modern art galleries in Chelsea. It doesn’t feel lived in. It could be an avant-garde dance studio in Bushwick, it has so much space in it.”

“Then change it,” I challenged her.

Pretty blue eyes widened like bursts of sky and her brows shot up.

“I’m serious. Change it. Change anything you want,” I clarified. “I want you to be comfortable in my space.”

“But I’ll be going back to Cali in a couple of months. It doesn’t make sense for me to change anything in your apartment,” she argued.

“It does to me,” I grumbled, despising the reminder that there was a risk of her returning to Cali before I could claim her as mine. Unease rippled down my spine. My shoulders tensed, my hand spasmed around hers. “I want you to feel at home.”

“I’ll be going back to your mom’s house once the internet is back on,” she said, by way of an excuse.

I didn’t want to hear excuses, I just wanted her to fix my apartment—make it feel like home to her. As for what she said, I didn’t respond because we hadn’t talked about what would happen after the internet was back on at my mother’s house. I’d just gotten her alone, and I wasn’t about to let her go. Even if I had to explain to Alex why Clara remained with me.

Clara was someone who could move back and forth on things with surprising ease, but I only moved forward. I didn’t backtrack. Ever. It was what kept the sinking feeling that my life was stagnant at bay. Stagnant because my secret always held me back. I didn’t dare conceive what my life would’ve been like if I’d had the freedom to forge my own path from the beginning.

We’d arrived at my building, so I didn’t bother arguing with her. If my intended seduction went according to plan, any dispute on the matter would be moot.

* * *

I was on edge.

After Grigore’s phone call and his reminder to stay vigilant around the Lupu clan, I tried to pull back from Tatum. Instead, he ended up sleeping in my bed that very evening. Our bedroom activities were fun and sexy and satisfying, but it was no longer enough.

I ached to be filled by him. Even sitting beside him in the car, my pussy was wet, clenching and releasing, yearning to be stretched wide by his shaft the way he stretched my mouth when I gave him oral. I knew how thick his cock was, so my imagination ran rampant with fantasies of him finally finally taking me.

If, as I suspected, his plan was to get me addicted to his touch and make me yearn for more, then it was a resounding success. To be fair, it was in my nature to want more, and I was driving straight into obsession. Last night, while we were messing around in bed, I sneakily shifted around so that the crown of his shaft slid into the slippery cove between my thighs. It was a test. Would he circle around my opening, maybe push in a little bit? I was hoping he’d pretend to not know how his cock had ended up there, take advantage of the situation, and thrust into me.

But not Tatum, dammit. The man’s leash on his own self-control was twisted.

He only made a sexy grunt and pulled away just as my clenching pussy was weeping to be filled, apologizing as if it’d been accidental. That was no accident, buddy!

Fuck, simply thinking about last night got me even more hot and bothered. He pulled into his parking space beneath his building, and the instant he stopped, I swung the door of his Mercedes G Wagon open roughly and hopped out. Shutting off the engine, he got out and followed me with his gaze, eyebrows gathered in confusion at my aggressive handling of his car.

Ugh. I didn’t know how much longer I’d last.

Even walking alongside him, his size made me feel small, and that drove me crazy, too. I just wanted him to take me, ravish me.

Ever solicitous, he took hold of my nape and squeezed. “You okay, baby? You look tense.”

I huffed. What an understatement.

He massaged the back of my neck and I softened against his hard body with a moan. Oh, God. This was only making it infinitely worse. I was like molten fire. My muscles, sinews, and joints…all melted under his magical fingers. Things got exponentially worse when he pulled me into his chest because then I was enveloped in a haze of his woodsy scent. Faint smoky notes reminded me of bonfires on the beach. The scent was achingly evocative of my life back home. Adrian liked bonfires. Many nights my father and I found a secluded strip of beach, lit one for him, and enjoyed an evening by the ocean.

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