Reason … he kicked to the fucking curb.
Sometime after midnight, Cal exited that stuffy room and made his way to the foyer. The woman, the pale, blonde flapper, stood near the bottom of a long and winding staircase, its steps wide enough to hold a piano.
“You’re here awfully late.” He jingled the keys in his pocket.
“I live here.”
“You live here?” He hoped to keep his eyes from widening. But his throat caught. “Alone?”
Maybe Cal was behaving like a sexist prick. Having assumed all this excess belonged to a man, and only a man — the owner whom he’d been told wouldn’t be home. He glanced at her ring finger. The only jewelry she wore was the necklace.
Sure, he had to be wrong.
Because the invitation in those tits and the willingness he read in her eyes, were the only two things he concerned himself with at the moment. Reason … he kicked to the fucking curb.
“I live here,” she repeated, this time with a sudden nervousness in her tone.
Cal’s silence, for once, was due to shock. His usual dead-on perception had been dulled by what he’d initially thought had been an earthy charm. This woman had temporarily fooled him, pulled the wool over his eyes, appearing bohemian and lost but living large.
“I want you to stay.”
“Why are you trying to act like a man?”
“To get exactly what I want,” she replied, but her voice held no conviction.
Cal smirked, pushed her wrist into the fancy handrail, and blinked down at her. “I don’t stay.”
“Come upstairs.” Her pulse quickened beneath his touch, her exhalations growing more audible with each syllable. “Leave after … if you like.”
“You think you know what I would like?” Cal pulled pieces of hair off her neck with one hand while increasing the pressure over her wrist with the other.
“Yes.” She swallowed, shifted her gaze, and looked around the nearly empty house. “Come up now but use the kitchen stairs.”
Laughing a little under his breath, Cal released her and stepped back, shaking his head. “I don’t play that game.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t have to hide who I am or what I do.” Cal puffed up his chest. His eyes blazed. He desired to push her entire fucking body against the railing, to bruise her with his lips. “If you wish to get exactly what you want, I’ll come up these stairs now.”
A timid smile took shape on her face, and as it reached her flowery eyes, the blue flashed like lightning across a dark gray sky.
“Yes?”
“Yes,” she whispered and nodded.
Cal followed her up the enormous staircase, watching her hips and ass sway, continuing to deny the voice of reason while counting down the minutes until he would cure what ailed them.