I laugh into my wine glass, but then I look up to find him studying me, and realize he’s serious. I set the glass back down, thoughtful. “Depends what you mean by tick, I guess,” I reply after a while. “I mean, I love my children, I enjoy my new job…”
“I’m not talking about the present.” His foot hooks around my ankle, tugs on my leg. I foot-wrestle him under the table, grinning at him the whole while. “You know, what are your sore spots, how did your childhood screw you up, all that jazz.”
I burst out laughing. Our eyes meet over the rims of our wine glasses as we toast. “Mm, well… Childhood-wise, growing up with my mom was pretty… tough.” Unwillingly, my gaze drifts toward my cell phone, face-up on the table just in case Lisa calls about the twins. “I guess that’s why I wanted to have kids of my own so badly.”
He tilts his head, questioning. “Because things were hard growing up?”
I sigh. “Because Mom was hard, honestly.” He waits patiently for me to elaborate, holding eye contact. I can’t lie to that clear steel-gray gaze of his. “She left me alone a lot… She was a single mom too, which I know is hard, but like… She’d leave me to cook my own dinner by age 5. I already knew how to operate the stove by then, and how to make pasta, hot dogs…”
His eyes widen, his lips clamping into a tight line of disapproval. But he doesn’t interrupt. He lets me talk, getting this off my chest.
“When I got older and started going to school, she’d never come to any events. She skipped parent-teacher conferences, wouldn’t pick me up from any extracurriculars… My friends’ parents fed me more often than not, driving me to their houses from soccer and letting me stay over, especially when Mom would go on a bender. They didn’t want me coming home finding her passed out in a pile of her own vomit.” I grimace and close my eyes. Why am I telling him all this? He’ll judge me. Think I’m just like her.
But then I feel his warm hand close over mine on top of the table. When I open my eyes again, he’s watching me carefully, concerned and sympathetic all at once.
“I know how that feels,” he murmurs, and my heart aches in my chest, seeing my pain mirrored on his face. “My parents weren’t around much either. Dad was always working, and Mom was sick when I was younger… She passed away when I was only twelve.”
I lift my free hand to fold his hand in mine, squeezing gently. Like he did, I don’t interrupt, just wait for him to get this off his chest, the way he let me have space to talk.
He shakes his head. “I guess that’s why I always wanted kids, too. I wanted to do a better job than they did. To raise a generation better than ours, to show my kids that parents can be a great thing to have.”
By the time he finishes, we’re squeezing one another’s hands so tightly it hurts.
Too soon, the meal is ending, and we’re still finishing an after-dinner glass of wine when Cassius leans close to me around the table. The restaurant is packed with other diners, but he makes sure to pitch his voice so that only I can hear.
“I hope you saved some room for dessert.”
I bat my eyes at him, grinning. “As long as you’re on the menu, I’ve always got room for more.”
He leans in to nip at my ear lightly, and I gasp as his teeth graze my sensitive skin. “Don’t worry, Manila. My appetite for you is utterly insatiable.”
After that, despite how delicious dessert was, I couldn’t wait to get the check. The limo, which met us outside the restaurant, having waited for us all throughout the meal, didn’t take us home. Instead, it drove us farther downtown, to the entrance of one of the most expensive hotels in the city.
“You didn’t,” I murmur, eyebrows rising, as he leads me through the front door.
“Checking in,” he tells the front desk without responding to me, though his hand tightens around mine, and his fingers caress the back of my palm. When he glances back at me, his eyes sparkle with mischief. “We have fun at my house,” he says once we enter the elevator, luckily alone, “But you haven’t lived until you’ve absolutely destroyed a hotel room by having hours of sex in it. Not to mention, I want you screaming loud enough to disrupt all of our neighbors…”
I swat his arm, but I’m also shivering with desire at the thought. Mm, hell yes. Make me scream, you naughty man…
9
We reach the top floor, our floor, in no time. The room is gorgeous, of course, and well decorated. But I barely have time to register anything before he’s throwing me against the wall, pinning me to it while his hands rake over my sides, pressing hard through the thin fabric of my dress.