No Perfect Princess (17 page)

So much for getting rescued from the gutter of my own thoughts.

“You were thinking…?”

“That this should feel more awkward.”

I twisted my hand a little, rearranging it so our palms fit together, letting the warmth in my chest soak into my response. “I’m glad it doesn’t.”

She glanced up, though her gaze only climbed as high as my chin before she slipped her perusal across my small backyard. I seized the chance to drink in her profile as she looked down the gravel path that wound through the native bushes and wildflowers, out to the little waterfall and pond I’d put in for the bees, birds, and butterflies.

“You’re right,” she finally murmured. “It’s really peaceful.” As a hummingbird whizzed by, she added, “And pretty.”

“Thank you.” I meant it more than I let on. I felt like the geek who’d just won the science fair, getting noticed by the hottest girl in school because of it.

“It smells nice, too.”

“The herbs are all native,” I filled in to the question in her tone. “And they’re fond of the morning sun. Sage, lavender, and rosemary.”

“Mmmm. Bet if you add all those to a bath, you’d smell good enough to jump then hump.”

The birds—and the bees and hummingbirds—joined me in a moment of paralysis.

The line was textbook Margaux, normally something I’d slough off with a snort or a laugh. Nasty sexy was simply part of her MO. I’d known that in 3-D even before we became friends then in High Def after that—but now, thanks to last night, her words were painted on a new canvas. “Jumping” and “humping” had been jacked with new life…and holy fuck, had I enjoyed the reincarnation.

But how to show her that now…without turning into a mauling ape? When all my senses heard were ape grunts…

Huge breath. Then another. After the third, I felt strong enough to turn toward her again—

And waved goodbye to my resolve like a murderer fleeing a confessional.

It fit. Her beauty slayed me…and drew me in deeper. Closer. Fuck, how I wanted to get closer. Her face, freshly washed, pleaded for my fingers. Her lips, reddened by the fast flicks of her tongue, begged for a taste. Just one. Maybe two…

The moment was too ripe to resist. The words, slipped to the key of husky, too perfect not to speak. “Do you want me to run
you
a bath?” I released one of her hands and skimmed fingers up her forearm. “It’ll relax you. I can put some lavender and rosemary in the water…”

And wash your back for you. Then your shoulders. Then your breasts. Then I can slide the washcloth between your legs, and—

“Michael…”

“Hmmm?”

“I—I don’t think a bath is such a good idea right now.”

With a dozen rasped words, her ivory tower was erected again.

And fuck me for the decision, I actually nodded in agreement.

If she ended up in my bathtub, she’d end up in my bed, too. It was a foregone, hands down, conclusion, along with the certainty we’d be out here watching the twilight from my back porch instead of the morning. But was that what we needed right now? As much as we both craved it—one look into the emeralds of her eyes, even ensconced in the tower, confirmed that much—where would it leave us? Sure, fried Twinkies tasted great…at first bite. But what about all the other bites on the plate?

Point taken, dammit. Loud and clear.

Getting the point, and letting it stop me from continuing to stare my fill of her, were two different things. Wasn’t exactly a bad thing—especially with the direction I intended to turn with this exchange. And the skittish colt she was going to become once I did.

“Okay, no bath.” I let her relax by a fraction before plunging on with, “Just gives us more time to talk.”

Yep. Skittish colt. Like I’d just added water and stirred her into existence.

Margaux pulled backward and down, expecting to get the jump on me for her escape. She almost bared her teeth as I coiled my hold tighter, instead.

“Okay,
now
things are awkward.”

“They don’t have to be. Margaux…come on. It’s
me
.”

“And I ‘talked’ enough with you last night,” she snapped. “Don’t you think?”

“Funny you bring that up.”

Another little growl. “Annnnd, here we go.”

Buh-bye, tooth enamel. I ground off a few layers, refusing the temptation—and
fuck
, was I tempted—to just give her what she wanted: her freedom. But letting that happen felt like three giant steps back, right after the
forward
we’d finally had last night.

“Hmmm,” I finally murmured. “That’s an interesting way of putting it.
Are
we, Margaux?
Going
anywhere?”

She squirmed.

I didn’t relent my focus.

She yanked a knee up to her chest. Traced a circle over the top of it, making a groove in my sweats with the pressure.

I didn’t yield.

“Why don’t I push the Pass button and let you take this one, Professor Pearson? You seem to know the answer already.”

“Snark isn’t the key to this either, sugar.”

I used the endearment to soften my mandate. But only a little. She was fixating on the weak flank she’d unintentionally exposed to me last night—but I saw the whole picture, including the thing she’d
wanted
me to see—that sometimes she not only welcomed being led, but needed it.
Real
leadership, not the messed-up shit she’d endured in the Gucci Gestapo of her mother. Strict words tempered with genuine care, rules given with boundaries that made sense…and rewards that made compliance worth it. She’d likely not had anything of the sort since childhood, and the nanny who’d been more a mother to her than Andrea had. The theory made so much sense, I’d be willing to bet my left testicle on it, especially as she slanted her head and flashed a new gaze full of defiant green light. Pushing at boundaries again—but not because she wanted to bust them. Because she needed to know how safe they’d keep her.

“But snark is so much fun, Michael.”

I tilted my own head—enough to make her see the skeptical tic of my lips.

“And if I keep it up, at least we have someplace to go. Up
is
a direction, right?”

I let my expression grow to a full but slow smile. “Hmmm. Clever girl.”

She straightened. Make that preened. “Well, you keep me around for a reason.”

Part of me screamed to just jump on her banter-mobile and go. Mentally sparring was our specialty, and no one else on earth gave me a higher rush from it than her. But it was also another squirrel she knew—
knew
—I would eagerly follow, given half the chance.

So I didn’t let that chance through.

Not an inch’s worth.

I told her the same thing by swinging my chair around on its horizontal rail until I directly faced her. Yanked her knee down and pulled her forward until my thighs trapped hers—and my stare pinned hers. “I don’t ‘keep you around’, princess.” I deliberately used the word to prick her, soothing the wound the very next second. “I…
want
you around.” My throat constricted. “As a matter of fact, life was pretty fucking miserable without you around.”

Her legs shifted against mine. Not fighting me, but not flirting, either. They almost emulated the unnerving pitch of my gut.

“But dude…pie every day. Just how miserable
was
it?”

She had a lot of squirrels in that bag.

I had a lot of squirrel darts in mine.

“Keep dancing around the bush, Margaux. I’m not chopping it down. And I’ve got all day.”

Her fingers fidgeted. Her eyes darted across the yard again. “Well, how lovely for you,” she said, smile purposely pretentious. “Some of us aren’t so lucky. My boss starts her honeymoon today. That makes Yours Truly now the head lunatic at the asylum—”

“Margaux.”

“—and as we both know, asylums don’t run themselves, so—”

“
Margaux
.”

“
What
?”

Note to self: in the right circumstances, the take-no-prisoners approach really was the perfect spear into this woman. Okay yeah, she was irked. But she was also
here
about all of it, no longer figuring out what to show me and what to keep behind her veils. Her glare rivalled the northern lights for spectral intensity. Her nose pulled in hard breaths. And her body…oh hell, the beautiful lines of her body…she was still tense, but her energy was so different,
all
different. She didn’t hoard it any longer. It peeled out of her in a million threads, holding me down as much as I trapped her in…turning over an unseen power to me.

Fuck, it was good. Really good.

“We’re going to have a talk, sugar. Now.”

More fussing fingers. Well, more like coiling. Tight. Soon, her gown was nothing but a wrinkled satin ball. So much for the care I’d taken to hang the thing up for her. But what were the chances she didn’t know any better? I reckoned she was the kind of girl who left a trail of clothes across the bedroom every night on her way to the shower, leaving them for the maid to retrieve. My reaction to that should’ve been harried, not hard—but was there anything typical about what she did to me? About the way my cock swelled even bigger as I imagined a trail of underthings across my bedroom…leading to the silhouette of her naked form in my shower…

“Talk about
what
, Michael? I had too much to drink. End of story.” Her statement, edged with desperation, didn’t help my efforts to shake the fantasy off. Would that be how she sounded if I surprised her by joining her in the shower…? “I just hit the champagne too hard and did something stupid because of it.”

Sayonara,
shower fantasy. “Something stupid,” I echoed from tight teeth. “Like order Andre to drive you here?”

“No,” she rushed out. “
No
. I’m
not
sorry for that.” Her free hand slipped around the outside of my knee. “The way we ended things at the wedding…well, it sucked. I didn’t want you to think I’m not happy you’re back.” My tight silence had her stammering on, “I even liked… a lot of what happened…after I got here.” She peeked up through her lashes. “
A lot
of it.”

Maybe the buh-bye to the fantasy
was
a good move. Between her sexy little glance and then those last few words, issued in a voice low and smoky enough to ensure there was very little blood left in my head to focus on them. Clarification: my
big
head.

Damn good thing I still had no shoes on. Digging my toes against the flagstones provided at least a little traction to fight the mother of all hard-ons.

Irony of ironies, very little of this was due to her premeditation. Un-fucking-believable. A thousand and one times, I’d weathered the oh-so-practiced skill this woman could use to derail a subject she didn’t want to touch—only to now discover she’d been hoarding her most effective method of all: stripping the snark and baring the honesty. She’d peeled away more than makeup for me, giving me layers of herself that were so damn invigorating, inviting—and goddamn distracting.

Timing. When it was right, nobody noticed. But when it was wrong—

You ended up insisting on a “talk” with the only woman you now craved beneath you, around you…climaxing with you.

Without a doubt, that thought made its way to my face. Margaux’s sharp little breath, along with her pursed lips, bore out the confirmation. I pulled in air deeply myself, before murmuring, “A lot of it…”

“Yes,” she answered quickly. Frantically?

“But not all of it.”

The words themselves weren’t great. I wasn’t as good as she was at taking subjects by subterfuge. When a guy grew up on a farm, a tree was a tree and a spade, a spade. Despite all its big words, corporate law was a lot of the same thing: black words, white paper, sign-on-the-dotted-line-and-now-we’re-done. But what I’d lacked in syntax, I’d made up in a neutral tone—

Big, hairy, wroooonnng conclusion.

She huffed. Snatched her knee back up, using it as a prop for her anxious glower. Did she actually take a bite at her thumbnail, too? “Dammit, Michael. You know what I mean.”

“Only if I’ve become a mind reader.” I dared pressing in on her by another inch, covering that fortress of a knee with my free hand. “In which case, I wouldn’t still be dying to know if you’re wearing that corset or not.”

“Who’s trying to boogie around the bush
now
?”

“No dancing here. Just my own honesty.” I rested my chin on my hand, unwilling to give up the privilege of gazing at her some more. “We crossed some significant bridges last night, Margaux—and I still have no idea which ones you’d like to keep and paint, or which ones to trash and burn.”

A discernible stillness fell over her. And once again, across the whole yard. “Which ones do
you
want to paint?”

All of them.

“That’s not important right now.”

“Bullshit.”

“Answer the question.”

A hard swallow vibrated in her throat. She pulled in air then released it in jagged spurts. Her conflict split me in half, too. Her darts-and-beer buddy was a damn wreck, begging me to crack a couple of jokes and just flip everything back to the way things were before Christmas: the easy, clear boundaries of the friend zone. But the man who’d kissed her, undressed her, commanded her, caressed her? He wasn’t about to give up. He’d finally shown up last night, refusing to let six months of my pathetic wallowing stop him—and dammit, I liked him. No. More than that. I needed him. He was good for Margaux. He was good
with
her. So things were a little messy right now. But sometimes—and yeah,
this
time—messes were worth fighting for.

“What if…I can’t?”

She finally stopped fidgeting enough to utter it—though it was a good thing I was still close enough to hear. The wind kicked up, bringing ocean brine along with the lingering florals of her perfume. I threaded a couple of fingers through the hair that blew into her face and tucked them behind her ear. Perfect excuse to let my touch spread to the line where her hair met her nape, caressing the sweet spot that always relaxed her most—at least on most days. Right now, she remained a coil of tension.