Page 15 of A Taste For Trouble
I set the brush down and glared at him.
“I meant Dom. What’s wrong with him? This isn’t normal,” I said, waving a hand around the room. “He’s lived in this apartment for years now, and it still looks untouched. He doesn’t listen to music. There’s no colour in his life.”
“Babe, that’s too much for ordinary mortals like us to unpack. He needs a therapist,” said Trevor, with a snort. “If you think this room is weird, you should see his bedroom. I’m convinced his big white bed opens up into a coffin after sunset. There’s no other explanation for it. The only colour in there comes from his bookshelf.”
Speaking of bookshelves, I remembered that I needed to retrieve my book before he got a chance to read it. When we’d walked into the apartment, I remembered Dom pulling it out of his jacket and tossing it onto the coffee table in the centre of the room. I stood up hastily and grabbed Trevor’s hands.
“I need to speak to Dom urgently. Can you stay here and watch Sweetpea?” I begged.
“Umm, why don’t I go and talk to the boss on your behalf, and you watch your little monster?” he countered.
“Don’t be such a chicken! You’ll be fine. Just don’t piss him off.”
“And how exactly am I supposed to manage that?” he yelped.
“You’ll figure it out,” I said as I tiptoed out of the room.
The book wasn’t on the coffee table. It wasn’t anywhere in the living room, and neither was Dom. Which meant he and the book were in his bedroom. Which further meant that I had to barge in there if I wanted my book back.
I knew I was being unforgivably rude, but I was desperate! I didn’t know what I was going to say to him or how I was going to justify entering his bedroom, but I knew there wasn’t a chance inhell I was going to let him discover he was my muse. That would be beyond embarrassing.
Maybe I could tell him I wanted to borrow the book to check some series details for my next book. And then maybe I could tell him Sweetpea chewed up the book before I could give it back to him. Yeah, that sounded plausible…ish.
I knocked on Dom’s bedroom door, but there was no reply. Where on earth could he be? He wouldn’t have left the apartment without telling us. Maybe he had, I thought, and even though I knew I should walk away, I couldn’t resist turning the knob on his door.
When the door slid open smoothly, I poked my head into the room and heaved a sigh of relief when I found it empty. My heart jumped when I caught sight of my book lying on Dom’s bedside table. Phew! This was going to be easier than I thought.
I snuck into the room and tiptoed towards the bed, and had just grabbed the book when a door on the far side of the room swung open, and Dom appeared. Dressed in nothing but a towel.
He was rubbing his hair dry with a hand towel and didn’t notice me frozen in place next to his bed. My throat went dry as I stared at the sheer perfection of him. His broad shoulders and the wide, muscular wall that was his chest took my breath away, and I felt a gush of wetness in my panties.
I knew the exact moment he noticed me because he went still as a statue for a few seconds before he slowly moved the hand towel off his head and looked straight into my eyes.
“What are you doing in my room?” he growled, his eyes roving over my body slow enough to trail a path of fire wherever they went.
“I…I…”
I stuttered to a halt when his eyes fell on the book in my hands, and I waved it at him wildly.
“I wanted my book back,” I stammered. “For research purposes.”
“Nice try,” he said with a grin that lit up his face and made my heart do a sudden cartwheel in my chest.
He sauntered up to me - that was the only word for it - and plucked it out of my lifeless fingers.
“You’re so desperate to have it back…I wonder why,” he murmured, and my breath hitched as his low, rumbly voice sent sparks down my spine.
Before I could stop him, the bastard flicked the book open at a random page and began to read. I crossed my fingers and prayed the book had fallen open at an emotional scene rather than a steamy one, but the growing flush on his cheekbones told me otherwise. He read in silence for a couple of minutes, and I felt the air growing thicker by the second.
To distract myself, I tried to track the little droplet of water that dripped from his chin down to his shoulder and made its way down his torso. Unfortunately, that only made me want to trail it with my tongue, and I found myself getting very hot and bothered at the thought.
When I raised my eyes, I found him staring down at me, and the heat in his eyes made me swallow hard over my dry throat. Why was I suddenly feeling so parched?
“See something you like?” he asked softly, and I gulped.
Before I could make a bigger fool of myself, I reached for my book, but he held it just out of my reach and gave me a diabolical little smile.
“So, Rosie Posie…care to explain why your six-foot something ruthless billionaire hero with the black hair and silver eyes sounds so familiar?” he asked, and I was tempted to smack that shit-eating grin off his face.
