Page 60 of Playing With Danger

When he was done, he didn’t let me return the favor. He’d scooted me out and told me to get ready. Which was pointless because I was donning last night’s clothes, sans already worn panties of course, and I had nothing I needed to get ready. So I’d dressed, pulled my tangled, wet hair into a bun that would take me approximately half a bottle of conditioner and two hours to work out the tangles when I got home, and headed to the kitchen in search of a coffee machine. I’d also done a bit of snooping since last night. I’d been more concerned about getting to Valentine’s bedroom than I was about looking around.

Unlike me, he lived in a house. A nice one at that. Not too big. Not too small. Welcoming with comfortable-looking furniture that said ‘sit and stay awhile.’ Like his bedroom, the rest of his home was decorated in masculine colors—tans, greens, creams, browns. No pops of bright color. No placemats on the oval dining room table. No candles. No lamps on the end tables. No clutter. The whole place looked like a bachelor pad. Not a frat house or place a young man would live, but it was glaringly obvious a woman didn’t live here. There wasn’t even a potted plant in sight. Not that I had a plant at my place, but I did have candles and color and my apartment looked live in.

Valentine didn’t have a home. He had a house.

I didn’t like this. I didn’t like what it said. I didn’t like the feel of it.

Actually, I hated it.

I’ll make it worth it, Sophie.

I’d hated that statement last night, too.

Actually, it wasn’t the words I hated. It was the look in Valentine’s eyes. The tone of his voice when he’d said it. It had been all wrong. Instead of rough from lust, his voice had been hollow. Raw. Tinged with pain and hued with isolation. I didn’t understand how a man so beautiful, so self-assured, could sound…broken. How his beautiful eyes could look so haunted.

I didn’t like it.

But I couldn’t ask. Not yet.

And now that I was dressed and alone in his kitchen I couldn’t stop thinking about his admission. He’d liked the pain of my nails. He liked dominating me in bed. I hadn’t missed his dominance. Just like he couldn’t have missed I’d gotten off on it in a big way. But he’d acted like it was a horrifying secret, like it made him weird or different and he was ashamed of it.

That, I needed to talk to him about. My problem was, I didn’t know how to start the conversation and I had precisely zero experience with a man like Valentine. My last boyfriend was Oakley and he would’ve been happy if I’d topped him. And not because he got off on kink. He was lazy when it came to sex, doing the bare minimum needed and most of the time failing in that department.

“Find everything okay?”

I turned to watch Valentine enter the kitchen. His long legs ate up the distance between us, stopping close enough to kiss my temple. But otherwise he didn’t touch me.

My nerves kicked up a notch. Not only had I been too busy snooping to hear him, I didn’t know what to do with the no-touching thing.

With a scan of his kitchen, his gaze landed on the empty coffee machine, then came to me.

“You wanna drive through Jitters on the way to your place?”

No. But he obviously wanted me out of his house sooner rather than later and I didn’t know what to do with that either.

“Everything okay?”

I wasn’t proud of the way my voice gave away my nerves but there was nothing I could do about that. If I’d read more into what had happened last night and this morning or I’d wrongly assumed he felt the same connection that had been simmering between us I needed to know now. I was already in deeper than I should’ve been.

He didn’t answer.

He stared.

My nerves kicked up a few more notches and I waited. In those seconds I felt more exposed than I had spread out naked for him. His study of me intense, his eyes guarded, his body stiff, none of his natural masculine grace was present. He looked as if he was holding himself back and having a hard time doing so.

When I could no longer stand the silence I broke it.

“What’s—”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Valentine interrupted. After another eye-sweep around the kitchen, his gaze fixed on me and he continued. “I just didn’t know how much I’d like seeing you in my kitchen.” His admission was almost sheepish. “I’ve lived in this house for three years.”

“Okay?” I prompted when he didn’t go on.

“Not a single woman has been in this house.”

For some reason that made me deliriously happy but I still didn’t understand.

“Before that, I lived in a condo for five years. The only woman who’d ever stepped foot in the door was my teammate, Sunny, and that was only because I was sick and she felt it was her duty to load me up on meds and soup.”

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