Page 50 of Guarding My Love

He snorted. “What did she say?”

“Not a lot. I joked I didn’t even know your last name, but you didn’t know mine. Then she said it sounds like I know what I need to.”

“Do you?” he asked.

“I think I do or I wouldn’t have just asked you to take me against the wall.”

“I don’t think you asked that exactly,” he said.

He kissed her on the forehead and she inched closer to his side, one of her legs over his. One breast was bare and his finger traced the globe and around her nipple, watching it pucker up.

He’d have to play with them a bit more when they were done talking.

“But I enjoyed it. Would you be surprised to know that I’ve never had someone take control like that before? I felt vulnerable but safe at the same time. It’s hard to explain.”

“I understand,” he said. “Could be you’re with the wrong men.”

“We know that,” she said. “I was waiting for you to come home and working myself up over what I was going to say. Then I remembered that before you, I always had everything planned out and it never worked. I said I liked that things were spontaneous with us, but I have to admit having Marco run out and me looking like a lunatic chasing him down your driveway wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“It got you in my bed though,” he said, laughing.

She turned her head and glanced at him. “Look at you all relaxed and cracking jokes.”

“Am I that hard to be around?” he asked. “My family is used to it, but even then they said I was in a better mood. I just thought I was being me.”

“I only know what you tell or show me,” she said. “Which isn’t much. But I like that person.”

Maybe he could give her a bit more. “My mother named me after one of my father’s closest friends. He’d died in the service right before I was born. My mother liked different names or using surnames. They reversed it and I’m Foster Mitchell.”

“Nice to meet you, Foster Mitchell. I’m Charlotte Moore. I realized you didn’t know my last name either.”

He wouldn’t correct her that Mitchell was his middle name. He’d said his parents reversed it. He all but gave her those facts without coming right out with it.

“As you said, we know what we need to,” he said.

“Which is funny for me,” she said. “I always felt like I needed to know everything about a person before I dated them. Like I had to form this judgment if they would be a good fit. Wrong on my part. I know that. Could be why everything failed with me and I was picking losers.”

“Speaking of losers,” he said. “Your ex was at your house on Sunday.”

“What?” she asked, leaning up and looking at him. His eyes dropped to her breasts both on display.

“I was leaving and noticed a Porsche in your driveway. I knew you weren’t home. He was on your porch looking in the front window. I stopped to see if I could help him. He gave me the cold shoulder and mumbled before he left.”

He’d asked Henry to run the plates this morning and it came back as her ex Landon Buccini. He’d never heard of him, but he didn’t listen to much that other people said either.

West knew the family. Said it was old money of the stuffy snooty kind.

If that was the type of person Charlotte dated, he was trying to figure out where he fit into this.

Then he had to remind himself she said she wasn’t looking for a man and sure the hell not like the ones she’d dated in the past.

“I can’t believe Landon found out where I lived,” she said. She flopped back down on his bed, her head bouncing off his chest.

He pushed her hair away from her face. “I want to know if he bothers you again,” he said.

“He won’t,” she said. “He doesn’t have the guts to do anything. Too afraid to get his clothes dirty.”

“Then he shouldn’t wear white,” he said.

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