Page 43 of Cherry Beats

“I’ve already told you: I’m selfish as fuck.”He turned his smile down, looking away from me for the first time and choosing, instead, to stare straight into the fire. “It’s a side of life I get from Mum. Dad dying a few years ago made me realise life’s too short to care about anyone else but yourself. If I want something now, I go out there and get it.” His eyes travelled back to mine. “Sometimes people are just the way they are, you know?”

“I know.” I agreed quietly, thinking about my screw-up of a family that I couldn’t help but love anyway. “And I’m sorry about your dad.”

“So am I.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“No.” He huffed out a laugh. “Let’s talk about you and your issues instead.”

“I thought we weren’t doing the psychoanalysing tonight.”

“Fuck.” Presley laughed, and when he took another drink of his whiskey, he kept his eyes on mine. The atmosphere was thick and heavy, but the good kind. The kind that made me want to pounce on him again and have my wicked way just because I could. Because I only had one night of excess. I had one night with him.

I had this one chance to live like this.

“You hungry?” I asked.

“Starving.”

“Me, too.”

I stood slowly, letting the blanket fall and pool around my feet before I stepped out of it and strutted past Presley West likehewas lucky to haveme. I felt his eyes on my body the entire time as I walked into the kitchen area of his open-plan room and began to look through his cupboards.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice tainted with whiskey, sex, and confusion.

“Looking for something to eat.” I opened the high cupboards first, stretched up on tiptoes.

“I see something I’d love to eat.”

“Presley, you literally have no food in.”

“I have you,” he said, suddenly a lot closer than he had been seconds before. His large hands gripped my waist, and his mouth fell to the lobe of my ear. My soul sang from just two touches. That’s all it took for my nipples to tighten, my legs to twist together, my stomach to flutter, and my mind to explode.

“You’re a distraction, rock star.” I reached for a bag of dry pasta.

“Says the naked woman in my kitchen, stretching like this.”

I spun in his grip, still clutching a bag of pasta, and I pushed his chest away with my free hand. Presley’s eyes travelled the entire way down my body, then back up again, but all I could focus on was the erection now standing proudly in front of me.

“You’re doing well so far,” he said in a raspy breath.

“With what?”

“With me.” He grinned. “The more you’re here, the more I want you to stay. Seems you might leave a mark on me after all.”

“I’ll leave a mark on you, all right. If you don’t let me make you some food, there’ll be teeth marks in those ridiculously firm abs of yours because I am starving.”

“Feel free to sink your teeth into anything you see.” He glanced down at his dick.

I had to close my eyes and spin away from him, otherwise there was a good chance I’d be falling back onto his kitchen island and offering myself up as a middle of the night snack.

“I’m making pasta. You got any cheese?” I called over my shoulder.

“I have beer,” he said, walking away. I turned to see him opening the fridge and peering inside. “Oh. Wait. Yeah. I have cheese. Grated?”

“That’ll do.” I held my hand out for it and turned back to my task, not daring to look at him again as I searched for a pan. If I looked at him, I became lost to him, and there was a stirring in my heart. A warning. Something that told me I’d started playing a game I couldn’t win.

We both knew how good I was at losing.

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