Sweet Filthy Boy(72)
“Non,” he says quickly, more quickly than I expected. His eyes are wide, lips wet where he’s just licked them, trying to clean his skin of my taste. “Tease me.”
Pushing off his lap, I stand, giving a crisp “Very well then,” and bend over the coffee table to retrieve the clipboard and pen. I give him a long view of my backside, my thighs, and the red silk thong. Behind me, he exhales a deep, shaking breath.
I return to him, looking over my short list. I’ve written a few things just to remind myself what I want to ask him because in the heat of the moment, over his lap with him naked and looking at me like he’s barely keeping his hands tied up, I’m prone to forget.
Settling back down, I run my pen down the smooth skin of his chest and rock slightly over the tight bunching muscles of his thighs. “We can start with an easy one.”
He nods, staring openly at my breasts. “D’accord.” Okay.
“If you’ve ever killed anyone, you’re really not worth very much to me because we’ll be getting your soul eventually anyway.”
He smiles, relaxing a little as the game reveals itself. “I’ve never killed anyone.”
“Tortured?”
He laughs. “I fear I’m on the receiving end at the moment, but no.”
Blinking back down to my list, I say, “We can reel through the cardinal sins pretty quickly.” I look up at him and lick my lips. “This is where men usually lose the most value.”
He nods, staring intently at me, as if I really do hold the power to change his fate tonight.
“Greed?” I ask.
Ansel lets out a quiet laugh. “I’m an attorney.”
Nodding, I pretend to make note of this. “For a firm you hate, but who pays you ridiculous sums of money to represent one huge corporation suing another. I suppose that means I can also put you down for a bit of gluttony, too?”
His dimple flashes suggestively as he laughs. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Pride?”
“Me?” he says with a winning smile. “I’m as humble as they come.”
“Right.” Fighting my own smile, I look back down at my list. “Lust?”
He pushes his hips up, his cock a heavy presence between us as I gaze at his face, waiting for him to speak. But he doesn’t answer aloud.
Heat ripples along my skin and his gaze is so penetrating, I finally have to look away from his face. “Envy?”
It takes him long enough to answer that I look back up at him, searching his expression. He’s grown oddly contemplative, as if this is a serious exercise. And for the first time I realize maybe it is. I couldn’t simply ask him these things as Mia, sitting across the dining room table from Ansel, though I’d want to. No one can be as perfect as he seems, and part of me needs to understand where he’s damaged, where he’s ugliest. Somehow it’s easier to dress up as a servant of Satan to find out.
“I feel envy, yes,” he says quietly.
“I need you to give me more than that.” I lean forward, kiss his jaw. “Envious of what.”
“I never used to. If anything, I tend to see the positive everywhere. Finn and Oliver . . . they will grow exasperated with me sometimes, telling me I’m impulsive, or I’m fickle.” He tears his eyes from mine, looking past my shoulder at the room behind me. “But now I look at my best friends and see a certain freedom they have . . . I want that. I think that must be envy.”
This one stings. The sting turns into a burn and it crawls up my throat, coating my windpipe. I swallow a few times before I’m able to manage, “I see.”
Immediately, Ansel realizes what he’s said, and ducks his head so I’ll look at him. “Not because I’m married and they aren’t,” he says quickly. His eyes move back and forth, searching mine for understanding. “This isn’t about the annulment; I didn’t want it, either. It wasn’t just that I promised you.”
“Okay.”
“I envy their situation in a different way from what you’re thinking.” Pausing, he seems to wait for my expression to soften before he quietly admits, “I didn’t want to move back to Paris. Not for this job.”
My eyes narrow. “You didn’t?”
“I love the city—it’s the center of my heart—but I didn’t want to return the way I did. Finn loves his hometown; he never wants to leave. Oliver is opening a store in San Diego. I envy how happy they are being exactly where they want to be.”
Too many questions perch on my tongue, fighting to come out. Finally, I ask the same one I asked last night: “Then why did you come back here?”