Page 17 of Older Hotter Grumpier
“But right now,youneed dinner. Keep your strength up.” He pulls me out of the alcove, and I stumble after him into the ballroom filled with tables. He guides us to two empty places at a table near the front of the room. Pulling out a chair for me, he leans down, head level with mine, as I thank him breathlessly and sit.
I can’t believe my stern boss just said all those things about sex and babies andbreeding.
Tome.
I’m reeling. In shock. It was so. Hot.
He whispers in my ear, lips brushing my hair, “Everything. Think about that, fiancée.”
6
RAFE
Seeingmylittle assistant with Sev has done something to me. HR would have a fit if they knew I had pushed Ella—who is half my age—into a shadowed corner and whispered filthy words about breeding and fucking and covering her with my seed. Even with the deniability of saying, “my wife”, there wasn’t anything ambiguous about my hard-on.
Which still hasn’t gone down as we eat dinner and make polite conversation. Our companions are Laurent mafia bosses Sebastian and Jeanette, of whom Jeanette is the most dangerous by a considerable margin, the Westminster kingpin, Benedict Crosse, and his sweet wife, and the school’s head teacher, who is terrified of me. Without the teacher, I suppose it would disintegrate into mafia shoptalk, but instead we’re all being civil.
After dinner the head teacher gets up and begins what I know from years of experience will be a long-winded speech about art (important), the impact of these charitable donations on the school (stupendous), and how humbled she is (blah). I might teach the kids, bid on the art, and ensure the biggest names of the respectable parts of the London mafia attend, but that doesn’t mean I want to be bored to death. From Ella’s glazed expression, she shares my opinion.
I grab her chair and yank it, including her, towards me. Ella lets out a muffled squeak but manages to give Crosse’s wife a reassuring smile when she looks askance at us.
“Tell me about your book.” With studied casualness I lay my arm behind her shoulders and turn to regard the stage, pretending to pay attention.
“What,now?”
“Yes. Now.” Out of the corner of my eye I can see that her face is within kissing distance. It’s so, so tempting. Would she let me?
“Aren’t you supposed to be listening, given this is your charity?”
I shrug and I can’t help but turn just enough to look at her lips. Plush. Dusky pink, the colour of old-fashioned roses. I’d like to press my mouth to hers and plunder her with my tongue.
“I…” Darting her head from right to left, she establishes that mostly people are listening to this interminable speech.
As I observe her, my imagination brings up the vision—so familiar from frustrated moments in the shower when I need relief—of her mouth around my cock. So damn pretty. But with it is the reason I’ve held back. She’s too young for me, and too good and sweet. For all the sharp suits and legitimate businesses I hide behind now, I’ve done terrible things. She’s an innocent princess, and I’m an upstart ogre.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t take advantage of our one evening together.
“Miss Button,” I say sternly when she seems as though she’s run out of courage, noticing a woman at the next table watching her. There are eyes on us. Of course, there are. It’s part of being a London mafia boss.
“It’s science fiction about alien males,” she says, then winces and lowers her voice to a whisper as the woman eavesdropping raises her eyebrows. “They don’t have enough…”
“What?”
“Look, it’s about…” She casts around, and snags on the after-dinner hot drinks in the centre. “Let’s say that in this book, there are cafetieres of coffee.”
“Right.” This is unhinged. I have no idea where this is going, and I highly doubt she was reading about caffeinated beverages when I caught her with her fingers in her knickers, pleasuring herself.
I know people say they love coffee and are addicted to it, but there are kinks and then there are kinks.
“Endangeredcoffee cafetieres, because theevil teapotshaveremovedall the way the coffee produces…”
This is making no sense, but I’m amused nonetheless. “Caffeine highs…?”
“Sort of. They needcups…” She presses her lips together. “Topourtheir milk into, and then that will make…”
And suddenly, it’s all clear. I think I’m beginning to understand. “Spoons.”
“Yes, to make little spoons. And the teapots want the cups too, to pour their milk into, and make their spoons. But the cup in the story doesn’t want to be used by the teapots, she loves the coffee.”
