Page 79 of Start With A Slap

“You are only into women who hate you and everything you stand for. What’s up with that?”

“I’m a passionate man,” he said with a wink, and got out of bed to turn on the TV to eject the flash drive. “I like a woman who can take me on.”

She turned her head to watch him. He really did have an amazing body. She was getting sleepy. What time was it?

As he opened the top drawer to return the drive to its place, this slipped out of her mouth: “Why are you still holding on to her? She’s...”

He froze for a second, then set the book down.

Ivy was just as stunned. “I don’t know why I said that.”

The drawer slid shut. “I do.”

And if he dared to enlighten her, she was prepared to cover her ears and singLalalalala.

“We all take our punishments in different ways,” he said, and she realized he was answering her query. “Some aren’t as gratifying as yours.”

Touché.

The feeling in her fingers had returned. She knew because she was compulsively thumbing her wedding band, a tic she’d developed not long after she’d met Sever.

Crunching on an ice cube, he switched off the light and got under the covers behind her.

Ivy was a little thrown. After all that, he wanted to spoon? He never ceased to confuse her.

But then he outlined her shoulder with a soft caress, and her eyelids fell closed.

“Still sting?”

She shrugged.

Sever pressed his ice-cooled lips to her shoulder, then kissed a tickly trail across her back as if they were a couple of lovebirds. Inappropriately ardent, yes, but it felt nice, and she was too tired to resist.

Ivy woke up coiled in Sever’s embrace, flying over the eastern maw of the Grand Canyon. Just enough time, she prayed, to clean herself up, eat a hearty lunch and work on her guilt-free face.

A solid plan that was very nearly accomplished — until he sat her on a dining table and sucked a handful of mango sorbet out of her pussy.

Guilt-free face, she found, is especially tough to practice after a butler has seen you with your thighs clamped on your father-in-law’s head, shrieking hallelujah.

Gazing at her flushed reflection in the bathroom mirror, ten minutes to landing, she said, “You’re fucked.”

CHAPTER 24

Innocent

“Imean it, Sever,”Ivy warned him as they emerged from his jet, “if you so much asgrazeme on the way home, I’m doing a jump and roll.”

“Onto my lap, or out of the car?”

She gave him a look. This was exactly why she should take a cab.

With a solemn nod, he pressed, “So that’s a no to whisking you back to my place, then?”

“If youdare?—”

“I’ll be good,” he interrupted, hands up, followed by an entirely too mischievous grin.

Ivy wagged a finger at him. “Jump and roll, Sever! Jump and—” His face fell, and she followed his uneasy gaze to the tarmac. “...Oh.”

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