Page 29 of A Murderous Crow
It was an old-fashioned, gentlemanly gesture that I let him perform, even though it felt as though it was just to keep me from pulling away or making a run for it.
We didn’t speak on our stroll, and I just followed his lead, hoping that at the end of our walk, I would be allowed to just get in my car and go… although that hope was barely a glimmer on the horizon.
“Are you always so…” I groped for the right word that wouldn’t come off too insulting, but he went ahead and said it for me.
“Depraved?” he asked, simply.
“Um,yes,” I said, and could feel the color creeping up on me as it had so many times since I’d set foot in that private dining room.
“Worse, typically,” he said nonchalantly with a one-shouldered shrug. “I would put your hands to any of these garden fences if I could, and bone you where we stood if I thought I could get away with it.”
I very nearly swallowed my tongue.
“I would very much so rathernotcatch a public indecency charge or wind up on some sex offender registry, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Oh, I understand completely,” he said. “Modern laws on such things do tend to take the fun out of just about everything.”
“You’re outrageous.” The accusation, or rather condemnation, was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
“Why, thank you,” he said with a wicked sort of grin that said he really did take that as a compliment.
Add insufferable, too, I thought to myself, but I didn’t exactly want to push my luck by saying it out loud.
“How much farther is it?” I asked quietly, just a little further down the sidewalk.
“Uh, just a block, maybe a block and a half,” he said. I used his arm to steady myself and kicked off my shoes, bending to scoop them up to hold in my hand along with my jewelry.
“Surely you don’t intend to walk the rest of the way barefoot,” he said with an incredulous chuckle.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’ve been in these heels all day and my feet are killing me,” I said. “It’s only a block to a block and a half. We’re going slow. I’ll watch where I step.”
He looked at me as though I had done or said something equally crazy, and I stared back at him, mollified.
“You’ll lay me out on a dining room table in the middle of a restaurant to eat my pussy, but me walking the rest of the way to your housebarefootis crazy?”
“On these streets? Yes,” he said.
“Then give me a piggyback ride,” I said boldly.
He laughed at that, and I do mean really laughed and said, “You have some surprises to you, Savannah Kittridge.” With zero preamble, he crouched down for me to get on his back.
I laughed and called his bluff, but he picked me up with ease in our nice clothes and just kept heading in that direction.
We were both giggling and laughing until we very nearly wheezed at the way some people smiled and pointed, laughing at our antics. It wasn’t much more than a block more, and we were stopping on Charlton Street in front of a fairly non-descript door set into the brick face of the building, a low-hanging porch with wrought ironwork over our heads.
He carefully set me on my feet on the mat out front and took out his keys.
“And they say chivalry is dead,” I joked. He smiled slightly and turned the key in the lock.
“Don’t expect me to put my jacket into a puddle for you,” he said. “My Italian suits are where I draw the line.”
“Noted,” I said, and he gestured that I should go before him.
I slipped inside, and he stepped in after me, shutting the door and throwing the lock. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I simply stood still and waited for some kind of indication of what he would like. It was awkward, but by the same token, it was his house.
“Dinner was wonderful,” I said. “Um, thank you again.”
I was trying like hell to say my goodbyes, but he wasn’t going to let me out of things that easily. He took my purse and bag from my hands, led me into the living room, switched on a lamp, and set them down on one end of the expensive leather couch.
