Marriage of Inconvenience(Knitting in the City Book #7)(136)

“My day was fine.” Her attention dropped to the T-shirt I was wearing and she took a deep breath. “How was your day?”

“Boring.” Impatient, I closed the space between us in four steps and bent to kiss her neck.

Kat tilted her head to the side, giving me more access. Fuck, she smelled good, felt amazing, and tasted even better.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“With my hands.” I slid them down her back to her ass, rubbing her backside over the silky fabric of her midnight-colored dress, lifting the skirt slowly.

She huffed a laugh and I felt her smile against my cheek. “I mean, how is your head? And your ribs? Are you still sore?”

“A little.” I lifted my fingers to her dress’s buttons and unfastened the first, then the second, then the third, watching my progress and seeing she was wearing another bra that clasped in the front.

Fuck, I love this woman.

Automatically, I tensed at the thought and quickly rejected it.

I mean, I did love her. Just like I loved my fellow man and woman. I cared about her a lot. But I didn’t love her. It was too soon, way too soon, for any of those kinds of thoughts. Maybe next year, or the year after, when things between us had settled to a predictable routine, then we could look at each other, set some time aside, and have the discussion.

But not now. Things were too good to muddy the waters with that kind of pressure.

Meanwhile, her hands lifted like she was going to wrap her arms around my neck, but flinched them away at the last minute. Then they lifted like she was going to place her fingers on my chest, but—again—stopped. Her hands fell back to her sides.

I bent to kiss the swell of her breast, wrapping an arm around her waist and groaning as I pulled down the cup of a lacy bra, exposing her sweet nipple.

I sucked on it.

Tongued it.

Licked it.

But then, I stopped.

Because her body was tense. She was tense. And when I glanced at her hands, they were once more balled into fists at her sides.

Fuck a duck.

I sighed, louder than I’d intended, and shook my head. She was not turned on and she was not relaxed. Straightening slowly, I righted her bra and brought together the edges of her dress. The wind had left my sails. Because I was an asshole.

I wasn’t in the mood to take things slow and be careful with her. I didn’t want to do the work necessary to seduce her, keep her preoccupied so she wouldn’t tense up or freak out. My brain hurt. Thinking hurt. I didn’t want to—I couldn’t—think that hard, stay one step ahead, make sure with every touch she was enjoying herself.

I wanted her to relax, but, in summary, I didn’t want this to be work.

Leaning away, I let my hands drop and gave her a tight smile. “So . . . Want to play Monopoly?”

She blinked up at me, bewildered. “What?”

“Or checkers?”

Kat, looking absolutely gorgeous, stared at me, giving me the sense she couldn’t figure out if I was joking or not. “Right now?”

“Look,” I shook my head, suddenly feeling like maybe the doctors were right, maybe I did need a rest. “You know how I feel about you, how badly I want you, right?”

She didn’t nod, or speak, or give me any outward sign of her thoughts. She just continued staring at me like I was confusing her, or she was having trouble making sense of my words.

So I kept talking. “You’re tense. Really, really tense. I want you, obviously, so much I can’t think straight. Which means I need to help you relax and enjoy yourself. I want to make your pleasure my priority. Believe me, it’s super high on my priority list. But right now, I’m irritable. Everything irritates me. The color of this carpet irritates me. So, maybe . . .” I can’t fucking believe I’m saying this, “Maybe we should hold off on doing anything until I’m more myself.”

She stared at me for a long moment, then her gaze fell away to the irritatingly colored carpet as she took a step back. Then she breathed out, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head, her eyes still closed. Rubbing her forehead, she took another step back. “You’re right, I’m tense. I—I couldn’t stop thinking about your concussion, and your bruised ribs. I was worried I would hurt you.”

“Oh.” I frowned at that and felt like a royal dickwad. Sir Dan, his majestic highness of dickery.

Here I was thinking about myself, and here she was worried about me. Maybe I did need to send a prayer to Saint Jude, that I get my head out of my ass.

“Oh. Well—”

She cut me off, “But you’re right. I’m being selfish.”

“No, no—”