Page 51 of Passion and Payback

“Hey!” he protested, grabbing for my phone. Sadly for him, I had already tucked it away before he could get to me. “Those had better not end up on some sleazy website, or I’m going to beat your ass.”

“Oh yeah, that’s a terrifying threat coming from you,” I said with a laugh. I grabbed him by the waist and pulled him close to kiss him. “God, this is something I could get used to.”

He stared at me for several moments, blinking rapidly before ducking his head with a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, this was…this was nice.”

“No regrets that we didn’t wait?”

“None.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“That’s considerably lacking in explanation, a first for you.”

He laughed, giving me another kiss, taking his time before pulling away. “Well, we have a whole dinner awaiting us. Maybe we can save that for then.”

“Ah yes, let’s talk about sex over a fancy meal,” I chuckled, backing toward the door to give him space. “That should get some heads turning.”

“So long as you don’t shout about glazing my face, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Now get out so I can actually get dressed so we’re not late.”

“Says the man who groped me until I couldn’t help but give in to his irresistible charms.”

“This from the guy who looks like sex in a suit.”

“Whatever you say, my little Krispy Kreme,” I said with a grin as I backed up.

“Out!”

HUNTER

To say my night was turning out to be magical would be underselling it to the point of it being criminal. True, it had been difficult keeping my sexual thoughts as…well, just thoughts for the past week. I still hadn’t expected them to get the better of me until I was trying to grope Kai and get him to grope me. And yet that’s precisely what happened, and only moments before he was to escort me to some restaurant he supposedly pulled strings at to get reservations.

I thought he had just been lucky, but that kind of luck came in handy, so I wasn’t going to complain.

The restaurant was beautiful in a subdued way that screamed expensive but tasteful. Soft white cloths covered the tables, golden flickering lanterns bathed the table with light, while more dangled on delicate chains from the ceiling. White and gold drapes separated tables, though you could still see the occasional glimpse of a face.

“I have to say,” I piped up after a moment of drawn-out silence. “These? Not really my thing.”

He chuckled as he eyed the nugget of meat I held up, butter glistening off its surface. “I’m surprised you never tried them before.”

I raised a brow. “And when the hell did you have escargot?”

“Believe it or not, I didn’t spend the entire time in the desert. We were occasionally given leave, and we went places.”

It surprised me he’d never brought it up. “Huh, I guess I never realized. You never really talked about it.”

He grinned. “Probably because that was an excuse for the younger guys to sample the local delicacies…which were booze and whatever woman would crawl into bed with them.”

“Uh, weren’t some of your guys married?”

“Mhmm.”

“And that…didn’t bother you?”

He paused, popping a snail into his mouth and chewing slowly, watching me. I knew right then he was deciding what to say and how to say it. It was something he’d always done right before touching on a subject he wasn’t sure how I would handle.

The brutal reality of our life growing up was that morality was…tricky to grasp.

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