Page 18 of Older Hotter Grumpier
I manage not to snort with laughter. Holding up the teaspoon from my cup of coffee, I add, “One might almost say,babyspoons.”
Ella blushes.
“Baby spoons,” she repeats, her lips twitching with mirth.
Blood surges to my cock. She was reading about baby making, was she? My girl was reading breeding erotica.
Maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t imagining her response to me when I told her my fantasies earlier. A single glass of champagne had given me the excuse to say what’s been in my heart all along: I want Ella to be my wife and bear my children.
The head teacher concludes her tedious monologue, and everyone claps. I don’t. I’m not moving my arm from its place around my girl’s shoulders for something as trivial as the teacher’s pride. I’ve sponsored this event and am about to make an exceptionally large donation. That is enough. Raising my champagne glass is plenty.
“And does the coffee win his cup’s affection?” I ask Ella under the cover of applause.
“Yep, they’re on the run from the tea, and he rescues the cup,” she replies, clapping enthusiastically for something I don’t think she heard any more than I did. “And they’re sheltered under a… Tablecloth, shall we say?”
“Are they indeed? And what happens after that?”
“The coffee…” She stops as the applause dies away and the first artwork is brought onto a hushed stage for auctioning.
“Tell me, Ella.” I lean in and growl into her ear as the bidding starts.
“I didn’t get very far after that. Reading, that is.” She turns and our faces are close enough I can feel her breath on my skin. “Not to the coffee and milkpouring, I mean.”
“But maybe there was honey involved. In the cup.”
She nods and her mouth opens. Her pupils are big, pushing those pretty yellow and green irises to being pure gold.
“There’s a cup full of honey, so sweet and ready for coffee, is that right?”
“Yes,” she breathes.
“But maybe he touched the honey first?”
“He…”
And I know that she can’t say this aloud, but for fuck’s sake, what is the point of being a billionaire mafia boss if you cannot talk dirty in inappropriate places to the woman you love?
I push my fingers into her hair and hold her head in place as I murmur into her ear. “I bet he licked that honey. Honey and coffee—white coffee with milk—is the perfect combination for making babies. Did he lick up every drop of that delicious honey and cause an earthquake for his little cup? The one he was going to use to bring new life into the world.”
She lets out a tiny noise.
Out of the corner of my eye I see a painting being brought onto the stage.
“The first item for auction,” the head teacher chirps.
“We’ll continue this conversation, later,” I murmur to Ella. “We have a painting to win.” And if I’m really lucky, my girl’s heart.
7
ELLA
If you’d told me this morning I’d be turned on by my boss discussing hot beverages, I’d have… Alright, that figures. Everything Rafe does makes me burn with desire. But that conversation was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before with Rafe or anyone else.
Hilarious, embarrassing, sweet. The heated look in my boss’ eyes when he realised what I was telling him. Ooof.
Even the embarrassment was delicious somehow, flitting over my skin and warming me from the inside out.
Then there was Mr Blackwood teasing me, playing with me. My serious boss made an actualjoke. I think. A joke-like object, anyway.
