Page 69 of Sinfully Shameless Chef

He presses me into the door, keeping us both up with the weight of his body. His face buried against my neck brings hot pants of breath across my skin. As much as I’d love to bask in this for a few moments, my entire body tenses at what’s coming.

Jameson told me we were going to talk. And he always follows through on his promises. He pulls back his head, and his lips find mine again in a slow, languid kiss, one that sends a little aftershock through me.

When he finally drags his mouth from mine, he grins and grasps my thighs in a bruising grip. “Hold on tight. We’re going to the bedroom.”

A giggle I haven’t heard come from me in years bubbles up, and I press my face against his neck and cling to him as he walks us down a short hallway.

He pauses at the edge of the bed and urges me to raise my head to meet his gaze. One hand rises to brush my hair back from my face, and he tilts my chin, forcing me to keep my eyes locked on him. “I’m so damn glad you said yes.”

“So am I.”

Though now that we’re in here, I know I’m about to face some hard questions I may not be willing or able to answer, and I hope that doesn’t undo everything we just did here and send us back to where we were.

Because despite everything…I like here. I like it a lot.

17

IZZY

The mattress is far more comfortable than being pressed up against the hard door, but moving in here only ratchets up the tension building inside me and between us.

Jameson said he wants to talk. And that will definitely include him wanting to know why I stop his wandering hands during sex when all I really want is his touch over every damn inch of my body.

I don’t think I can…

I’m not ready to burst this pleasant little bubble with my own bullshit quite yet. Not when lying here next to him feels more like home than my own bed does.

Will it still when I tell him?

We lie panting next to each other for a moment, both of us still coming down from the high of what happened when I arrived. The peace won’t last, though. Not unless I manage to find a way to distract him from his intended goal.

I roll toward him and straddle his waist, pushing up his shirt until he leans up to let me pull it free and toss it onto the floor.

God, he’s beautiful.

All the sharp angles and lines of hard, honed muscle. But my fingertips automatically go to the bruises at his side and across part of his ribcage. “What are these from? Same place you got the shiner?”

He winces slightly. “Shit. I had hoped you’d forgotten about that.”

I laugh and drop my head down to place a kiss against one of the bruises. “Kind of hard to forget about it on a man who always looks so dashing and perfect.”

His dark eyebrows rise. “Dashing and perfect, huh?”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

Though I fear it’s far too late for that.

He chuckles and drags me down against him, until our entire bodies align, his semi-hard cock now nestled right between my legs. “Don’t worry about the bruises. Just a little extracurricular activity to relieve a little stress.”

“You aren’t doing underground fighting or something stupid like that, are you? Is that why you disappear on Wednesday nights?”

Jameson has never struck me as the kind to get into a physical altercation, but he sure never backs down from any verbal sparring, so my mind immediately goes to some sort of cage match where Jameson and some other barbaric monster throw punches at each other, out for blood.

Damn, that shouldn’t be so hot.

Laughing, he reaches down between us to rub his thumb over my clit. “I’m a lover, not a fighter. At least, not that kind of fighting.”

His distraction won’t work on me, even with his ministrations making me squirm. “Those are some nasty bruises, though.” I brush my fingers over the darkening around his eye. “And this one definitely looks like it came from a fist.”

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