“Oh, you’re so deep,” she murmured and he came with one last thrust, milking it as he felt her come as well.
Collapsing on top of her, he kissed her damp shoulder, moving her hair from her face. “You really are perfect.”
“I don’t like it when you say that.”
A little of the clipped tone had crept back into her voice and he rolled off her onto his back.
“Why not?”
“I’m not perfect. Nobody’s perfect.”
“Except Michael maybe,” he said with a laugh.
“You wouldn’t say that if you saw how he treated most of the women he’s ever been with.”
Evan had been worried maybe Andrea was a little in love with his brother. Her tone took care of that. Nobody was a hero to their own valet, or some shit like that. He didn’t like to think maybe Andrea didn’t even like Michael, though. His big brother was a pompous tight-ass most of the time, but at heart he was a good guy.
“The Reynolds men are notoriously hard on their women. It runs in the family.”
She stiffened. “Except when they’re in bed with them, I suppose.”
He knew when not to step into a minefield. “At least Michael seems to have found his match in this Vanny.”
“Yes, she’s a strong girl. She’ll be good for your brother.”
He got up to take a sip of his half-finished beer. “Why don’t you drink?” he asked casually.
“I don’t like what it does to people.”
“Relaxes them?”
“Makes them numb to things they should feel.”
When he looked back at her, he saw she had retrieved her phone and was playing with it, presumably switching the ringer back on. He peeled the condom off, though he was by no means done with Andrea Prentiss. “Do you want to order dinner?”
Her phone rang and without hesitation she picked it up and conversed, buck-naked. This time it was French and he did know a smattering of that thanks to his mother’s tendency to drag him along with her on shopping trips to France when he was a boy. She was always looking for that perfect little black dress, tantalizingly out of reach in some wildly expensive hole-in-the-wall shop off the Champs-Élysées.
Andrea seemed to be talking to one of the foreign offices of Reynolds Industries, not Paris since it was too early for it there, but someplace with a colonial legacy where they still spoke French. Indonesia maybe. Who the hell knew? She was assuring them that “Monsieur Reynolds n’est pas mort,” but instead would be just fine. It took a good five minutes but he supposed the entire Reynolds empire had to be assured that the crown prince was still hale and hearty and up to shepherding them all through their profitable throes.
He shouldn’t be so cavalier but he had never been a fan of the family business. He only got involved when Michael or his father wanted an environmental consultation, which was what he had studied at Yale. Even when they were ostensibly consulting him, he tried to keep his distance, sensing they were just trying to involve him for the sake of it rather than genuinely wanting his opinion anyway.
Andrea stood up when her call was done and looked around distractedly.
“Where did you learn to speak so many languages?”
“Languages come easily to me. If I’m exposed to them for any period of time, I tend to pick them up and don’t seem to lose them. Unlike my bra,” she muttered. She bent down to look under the bed and gave him a fetching view of her bare ass, and he pulled her up to lie beside him again, throwing one leg over hers to keep her there.
“Don’t get dressed yet. My vigor comes back pretty quickly. Give me a minute.”
She smiled slightly and he traced it with his forefinger on her very soft pink lips, kissed clean. “You are interesting, Andrea. Where are you from?”
She stiffened, then said casually, “Why? Did someone say I wasn’t interesting?”
“Not at all. My brother Chris just tried to warn me off you. Said you shot everybody down, even him.”
She laughed. “That sounds like that particular brother of yours, I must admit. None of the Reynolds brothers lack confidence, but I believe Christopher got an extra dose somewhere.”
Now that they’d had fantastic sex with him knowing who she was, Evan felt that must count for something, confidence or no confidence. “What are you doing working as a secretary?”
“Earning a living.”
“No, as a secretary, I mean. To hear Chris talk, you run Reynolds Industries.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Where were you educated?”
“Why all these questions about me, Evan?”
“I want to get to know you.”