Page 37 of Falling for the Nanny

“It’s not like you make it hard,” Jason said, testing the waters. He touched my arm. “I mean, I find you pretty likable.”

In my periphery, I sensed that David was watching us through the doors. I took a half step back from Jason and said neutrally, “It was great seeing you again. I’m sure we’ll be back for another milkshake.”

Jason took the brush off well. He glanced toward the door, seeming to understand more than I’d told him, then gave me a one-armed side hug. “Sit in my section any time. I’ll hook you up.”

Then he disappeared back into the kitchen, and I headed out to join the others.

In the face of David’s glower, I couldn’t help but smile. It was bad enough that I was beginning to suspect that no one would ever measure up to him in my eyes.

He could never know.

CHAPTER 22

DAVID

I had never been the jealous type, but something about the way that scruffy waiter stared at Cat made me see red. Clearly, there had been something between them, though I couldn’t begin to fathom what the hell she’d seen in him. He looked like he skateboarded to work and played drums in a shitty garage band.

When we got home, my mom announced that she was taking Lily to get her nails done.

“Oh, okay,” Lily said, startled. “I thought we could go swimming–”

“We can go swimming after,” my mom said firmly. “Cat, you’re welcome to join us.”

I silently willed Cat to decline. It wasn’t often that we got a guaranteed hour in the house alone. In fact, I was pretty sure it had never happened.

“Thanks, but I have some work I need to get done. I’m applying for an MFA program,” she explained.

I wasn’t sure whether that was true or just a convenient excuse not to stay behind. Either way, it meant that once my mom bundled Lily out of the door, it was just Cat and I in the house. I shut the door behind them and went to find her.

She wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen, where I expected. I glanced outside to see if she was actually heading back to the pool house to do this alleged work, but there was no sign of her. I headed upstairs, wondering if she’d gone up to straighten Lily’s room. If so, I needed to remind her that wasn’t her job.

But instead, I found her standing in the doorway of my room, smiling teasingly at me. “Hi,” she said, holding onto the door handle like she might shut me out of my own room. Not fucking likely. Not if she was inside of it.

“Who was that jackass at the restaurant?” I asked, walking forward so that she had to step back and admit me. Once inside, I shut the door myself. I hadn’t had Cat in my room since the night I showed her the boxes of Chloe’s crap that I still had in the extra closet. We’d stuck to the pool house.

“Just some guy I used to date.” There was a teasing note in her voice, like she was enjoying my jealousy. She tilted her head and her long, golden-brown hair slid off her shoulder. “It was an on and off thing.”

I slid my hands up her arms, over her shoulders, until I was cupping her face between my palms. “It’s an off thing from now on.”

“I remember the rules. No one else as long as we’re doing…whatever this is.”

I wanted to tell her it was no one else ever again, but I didn’t have the right. One day, when this got too complicated and she moved on, I wouldn’t have any say over whether she hung out with that jerkoff again. The thought was a slow burn underneath my skin. A premonition of a furious jealousy that would take place in the future. Maybe it wouldn’t be him, but it would be someone, and I would fucking despise them for it.

“No one else,” I bit off, and captured her mouth in a hard kiss. She didn’t try to soften it but rather wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me closer. I’d wanted to touch her all day, and finally I could. I slid my hands under that teasingly flared skirt, ran them up her thighs, lifted her up and pinned her against the wall with my body.

Cat gasped in surprise, holding onto me tighter. My cock was pressed against the soft notch between her legs, and with her limited mobility, she pushed herself against it. I cursed the fabric between us that kept me from plunging into her. I could tell by her small moans in my ear as she gyrated against me that she was already wet. It was like the restaurant had been a twisted sort of foreplay where she’d dangled the possibility that she could flirt with someone else in front of me, and I’d silently vowed to make her forget anyone else existed as soon as I got her alone.

It was time to obliterate the memory of the on-and-off waiter.

I moved my mouth to her ear, nipping at her earlobe and sliding down to her throat. Reflexively, her fingers curled in my hair and she tilted her head to the side. I feasted on the sensitive skin, forgetting to be careful, forgetting that I couldn’t leave a mark. For once, I wasn’t thinking about being found out. I was thinking that I wanted to mark her–I wanted anyone who looked at her to know she was taken and that they couldn’t have her.

Only when her fingers tightened in my hair and she tugged insistently did I stop. She tried to slide her hands up to check her delicate skin, but I caught her wrist and pinned it to the wall beside her head. I wanted her to know that I was in control right now. She’d had her fun at the restaurant, and now it was my turn.

Cat opened her bright blue eyes and I saw a spark of defiance in their depths. It was like we both knew that this was a confrontation as much as it was sex. And she was always willing to fight back.

“You don’t have to be jealous,” she murmured, the thin straps of her dress sliding down her shoulders. “It’s just what happens when you’re in your early twenties in a restaurant. You date each other.”

A reminder that I was older than her.

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