Stripped Down (22 page)

“You can.” My voice had been quiet, like his. Even if my internal screams from self-preservation and vulnerability were deafeningly loud as they told me I was a fool, that he had to go, that this would never be enough for him.

“Do you want me to?” His question was...honest.

Raw.

Hesitant.

Like he didn’t want me to answer.

“Do I want you to stay here in my tiny house so my daughter can fall more in love with you than she already has? Not really. But...” Don’t be a fool, Cassie. Don’t admit you want him to stay. He’s just going to hurt you. “I don’t exactly want you to go, either.”

“For her, or for you?”

“I don’t want to answer that question.”

“If I kissed you right now, would you ram your knee into my cock?”

“I’d briefly consider it, but I probably wouldn’t do it.”

His lips twitched to the side. “You just answered the question.”

Then, of course, he cupped the back of my head, and he kissed me. It was slow, sweet, gentle. And I didn’t consider kneeing him in the balls for a single second.

Beck pulled back and trailed his hand down my arm before he finally let me go. “I’m going home to get changed and then come back. Do you need anything while I’m gone? For CiCi? You?”

“I don’t...” I sighed and chewed my pride back. “I wanted to go to the store today after work to get some stuff, like bread, milk... Important stuff. But now I can’t.”

“I can get it. Just tell me what you need.”

I bit the inside of my lip then nodded. “Okay. Let me write it down.”

I walked through into the front room with him hot on my heels and grabbed the notebook and the pen from under the coffee table. A few things were already scrawled down, so I added a couple more things, including more medicine. I tore the sheet off the notebook, stood, then gave it to Beck.

“Let me get my wallet.”

He grabbed my wrist, stopping me. “I’m not taking your money, Blondie.”

I lifted my gaze to his. “You can’t pay for my groceries.”

“I can and I will.”

“You can’t and you won’t.”

“I can and I will.”

“You can’t and you won’t.”

“I can do this all day, baby. I’m stubborn as fuck.” His eyes told me he wasn’t lying. “And we all know I’m a brat about the word no. So I can, I will, and I’m going to. If I can’t help you by buying a measly eight items, I’m an asshole who shouldn’t be allowed around other people.”

“You can’t buy my groceries,” I repeated. It was a lame argument. I was going to lose, but I’d fight until I went down.

Beck’s eyes twinkled as he leaned in. “Don’t worry. If you really want to pay me back, I’ll take a blow job. I imagine your lips around my cock will be a pretty good thank-you.”

My jaw dropped as he backed off with a wink.

“Mouth open already, baby? Enthusiasm. I like that.”

I snapped my jaw shut and glared at him. “You’re a dirty pig.”

“I know. But I’ve got fifty bucks that says you’ll be sucking my dick by bedtime. If you don’t agree...” He shrugged one shoulder, his lips curved in that dangerous smirk.

“If you’re lucky, I’ll bite it.”

“I’ll take that as I’m in for a good time.”

One more wink, complete with an expanding grin, and he was gone.

Motherfucking asshole.

“T
hat’s more than eight items.”

Beck heaved the bags onto the kitchen side. I was trying incredibly hard not to be distracted by his slim-fit, black T-shirt and his jeans, which were slung low on his hips. The waistband of his boxers just peeked out from beneath the T-shirt as he leaned forward and pushed the groceries right to the back of the counter.

“I know.” He flashed me a grin right before he turned around and walked back through the open front door.

“What are you doing?” came out as a demand as I followed him.

He pulled three more bags from the trunk of his car and then shut it. “Getting the rest.”

“Rest of what? Do you have a slice of bread per bag or something? Open the multipack of chips and put a package in each bag?”

“Yes, Blondie.” He put the rest of the bags next to the others on the counter, grabbed the edge of it, and met my eyes. “That’s exactly what I did. When I was loading the trunk outside Target, I decided it would be more fun to take everything out of their packaging and split it all up. I thought you might enjoy putting it all back together.”

I pursed my lips. “I don’t appreciate your sass.”

“You give sass, you get sass.” His grin was its usual infectious hotness. “I actually decided that your shopping list was highly pathetic and needed expansion.”

“You didn’t buy tampons...did you?”

“No. I looked down the aisle and one box fell off, so I thought it was coming for me. Turns out some young guy had to buy his girlfriend some tampons and he’d knocked it off, so I gave the poor little bastard some help.”

“You...helped another man buy tampons?” That thought was terrifying. “What did you say to him?”

“I told him to look at the sizes and get the one closest to his dick.”

I had no idea how to respond to that.

“Then I felt doubly sorry for him because he definitely didn’t get the biggest ones there. Not even close.”

“You’re just an overgrown teenage boy, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m rich, handsome, and charismatic, so I get away with it.” He grinned, that charisma undeniably out in force, and grabbed the first bag. “Then, for my next trick, I went to the pharmacy section and asked what to get my accidental wife’s sick six-year-old.”

“You did
what
?”

He laughed, unpacking the bag. “I’m kidding. Well, I didn’t say accidental wife. I said girlfriend. The chick working there stared at me for a minute until she realized I was speaking.”

“Let me guess—your smile made her come on the spot?”

“If I’d stayed much longer...” He trailed off with another smirk. “Seriously, they gave me this blackcurrant stuff you mix with water. Apparently, it’s full of nutrients and stuff.”

“Pedialyte?”

“Yes! That. So I bought some.”

I looked at the things he was pulling out the bags. He’d also bought ice cream, candy, enough chips to feed CiCi’s entire grade, and oranges. One of those things was definitely not like the other. At least he’d bought everything that had been on my list... I mean, sure, he’d bought half the store, apparently, but he’d gotten what had been on my list.

“You’re insane, Beck,” I said, staring at all the things lying across my counter. “I thought women had problems shopping.”

He shrugged, balling all the bags up into one. “I was there.”

I slid my gaze toward him. “‘I was there.’ Is that your reason? You were just there?”

“What else do you want me to say?”

“A better freaking excuse than that.”

“I wanted you not to worry for once, all right?” He ran his fingers through his hair and met my eyes.

I stilled.
What?

“I see it in your eyes. Constantly. You’re always worried about something, and I wanted to give you one less thing to be worried about.” He awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck.

“But this must have a cost a fortune.” I scanned it all.

It would last at least ten days. He was crazy.

“Yeah, well, I have a fortune, Cassie, and it’s not doing much fucking good sitting in my bank account, is it? It’s just money. This stuff might all have a price, but your happiness shouldn’t. And, if the price of your happiness is this”—he waved his arm at the stuff—“then I’ll buy your damn groceries every fucking week if it makes you smile the way you are right now.”

I touched my fingers to my cheeks. He was right. I was smiling, and I hadn’t even known it. I hadn’t even realized because I’d looked at it all and seen... I didn’t know. But it wasn’t what he’d meant it to be.

I flung my arms around his neck and hugged him tight. It must have thrown him, because he hesitated before he wrapped his around my waist and held me against him. I couldn’t help but bury my face in his neck. It could have been because he smelled really, really good, like hot coffee and chocolate chip cookies, or it could have simply been because I’d wanted to feel a small part of his skin against mine.

Actually, it was both.

“Cassie?” he said quietly into my ear, turning his head. “Does this mean I get that blow job?”

I slapped his shoulder and pulled back. “You’re an idiot.”

“No...I’m serious.”

“I never doubted it for a second. That doesn’t mean you’re getting one.” I grabbed the milk from the count and swung around, out of his arms, to put it into the fridge.

He grabbed the other fridge stuff and handed it to me item by item. “There should be a law that, every time a guy does something amazingly unexpected and nice for a woman, she should give him a blow job.”

I took the strawberries with a raised eyebrow. “Then you should contact Hugh Hefner about running for president.”

“Don’t joke about that. He’d hire bunnies for every male voter and he’d be in power until he died.”

“If he ever ran for president and promised such misogynistic bullshit, the women would riot.”

“With what? Your high heels and lipstick?”

“I’m considering kneeing you in the balls, Beckett.”

“It’s been a while since you used my full name. It’s a bit of a turn-on.”

“Can I revoke my offer of you staying and kick you out?”

He grinned and reached for me. Despite my best efforts, he circled one strong arm around my waist and pulled me against him. My hands lay flat on his chest as I leaned back and my gaze found his. His smile was written all over his face, from his mouth, to the lines in the corners of his eyes, to the way his eyes themselves twinkled back at me.

He could be a hypnotist, just from his smile alone.

No wonder I couldn’t keep my word to myself and stay away from him.

No wonder I always ended up there, pressed against his body, with his arms around me.

He pulled that smile out like it was a trump card and I lost all common sense. His smile was so dangerous to me that it might as well have been a weapon of mass destruction. God only knew it blew up my ovaries each time I saw it.

“No,” he said in a low voice, tightening his arm around me. “Because you and I both know you don’t really want me to go.”

“That was before you started being a sexist little shit.”

“How can I be sexist? I just went grocery shopping.”

“And your biggest achievement was advising a teenage boy to buy tampons equivalent to his penis size.”

“Hey. If his goes up, the tampon will go up. Sound logic. I should be knighted for that.”

“I can’t decide if you’re being serious or not.”

“I’m always serious. Even when I’m joking. I’m not the brains, beauty, brawn, and balls of Rykman and Cruz Enterprises for nothing, you know.” He dropped a kiss on the end of my nose, let me go, then grabbed the chips from the counter.

“In there,” I said, pointing at the cabinet right behind him. I picked the ice cream up. “Okay, so answer this. If you’re the brains, beauty, brawn, and balls of Rykman and Cruz Enterprises, why doesn’t your last name come first?”

He stuffed the chips into the cabinet then froze once he’d stood up. “It’s kind of dumb.”

“Given what you’ve already done today, I was counting on it.”

“We couldn’t decide whose name went first, so after a week of trying to figure it out, we decided we needed another method.” He scratched at the side of his neck. “So we asked his grandfather to hand us straws.”

“Wait.” I shut the freezer and looked at him. “Are you telling me that two grown men named their business by drawing straws?”

He held his hands out with a grimace. “I drew the short one.”

They named their business by drawing straws.

Straws.

“I always thought it was because he owned more.” I hadn’t wanted to admit it, but yeah. It was the logical thought process.

Beck shook his head. “We’re equal-parts ownership. We have a few other things outside of the strip clubs, but we’re working on selling them on and consolidating.”

“Everything but the clubs?”

“Everything but,” he confirmed as I put the last of the groceries away. “What we really want now is a hotel.”

“There are a ton of those on the Strip. Don’t you think it’ll be hard?”

“Cassie, baby... We own strip clubs.”

“Touché.” I laughed.

He totally had me there. If they could make strip clubs work successfully, I had no doubt they’d make a hotel work just the same. Chances are, they’d add a strip club to the basement or something.

Beck tilted his head to the side. “What are you thinking about?”

“You guys probably putting a basement strip club in your hotel.”

“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

“Really?”

“Male or female?”

“Both. One on each side of the club.”

“I like that. Remember it.” His grin was back, and so were his grabby hands. Once again, I found myself against his body, his arms tight around me.

“You’re grabby today,” I noted.

“You’re nice to grab.”

“I’ve had worse compliments.”

He laughed quietly. “I’m trying to make up for the blow job thing.”