Page 33 of Misadventures in Blue
She sets her purse down on the counter and presses her fingertips against her forehead for a minute. “No, I—I should have remembered you might get here before me. I was just distracted.”
By Kenneth? I want to ask, but I’m not going to. If I’m brutally honest with myself, we’ve never talked about being exclusive. We’ve never set any parameters around our relationship. Yes, fine, I’m still jealous as fuck, but I know I don’t really have the right to be.
But I’ve underestimated Cat and her powers of observation. She gives me a once-over with those sea-blue eyes, with one delicate eyebrow arched and her lips pursed, and then she says, “You know I was with Kenneth.”
God help any suspect who tries to lie to her.
“Yes,” I say. “I know.”
She looks at me almost like…like I don’t know. Like she’s disappointed. But disappointed in what? That I know? That I admitted it? Am I not being as calm as I think I am?
I take another step back, trying to reassure her that I’m not going to give her a hard time. That I’m not going to try to use my body to intimidate her. Her gorgeous, pressed-together lips grow more disapproving.
Does she want me to talk more? I don’t trust myself to talk more. I don’t trust myself not to blurt out you’re mine, you’re fucking mine, drop to my knees, shove up her skirt, and prove it with my mouth. Prove that her body already knows who it needs, and it’s not Mr. Men’s Wearhouse. It’s me.
“I thought you’d be jealous,” she murmurs, still studying me.
“I am fucking jealous,” I say tightly and then snap my mouth closed so fast my teeth click. Don’t be a dick, don’t be a dick, don’t be a dick.
She takes a step forward. Another and then another while I stay completely still, unsure of what she’s thinking.
“Prove it,” she says, folding her arms across her chest.
“Excuse me?”
“Prove you’re jealous.”
It’s like I’m in some alternate dimension—one where my primal, Freudian id makes all the rules. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
She sighs, suddenly looking very much like an impatient schoolteacher, which is not helping the angry lust roiling in my belly in the least. “What do you want to do to me right now, Jace?”
“I don’t—”
Another step forward. “You want to screw me in the heels I wore to dinner with him? You want to handcuff me to the bed so I can’t leave until you say I can?” She presses a hand against my chest. “You want to see your come on my stomach? Or my tits?” Her hand drops down to my belt, and I catch her wrist before it can go somewhere farther down.
I can’t tell if she’s in earnest or she’s goading me. “Stop it.”
“Why are you asking me to stop?” she asks. “Is it because you actually don’t want this? Or is it because you doubt I’m really asking you for it?”
“Of course I doubt it,” I say through clenched teeth. “What I really want would terrify you.”
She gives a beautiful, rich-girl scoff. “Try me.”
I lift a hand and slide it though her silky hair, fisting it at the base of her neck and holding her head back just enough that she won’t be able to move without disrupting her balance. And then I lean in so my lips brush the shell of her ear as I speak. “I do want to fuck you in these heels. And in handcuffs. I want to fuck your mouth, and then I want to bend you over my knee and redden your ass until you think of me every time you sit down. I want you to take me everywhere in your body—and I mean everywhere, Cat—until you feel as owned by me as I’m owned by you.”
Confident my little speech has frightened some sense into her, I let go of her hair and pull back. But instead of seeing her face tight with fear, I meet eyes with pupils blown wide with lust and blushing cheeks and her tongue working at her lower lip in a kind of fervent anticipation.
“You feel like I own you?” she whispers, searching my face.
“Isn’t it obvious?” I ask.
She just keeps blinking up at me, like she can’t believe it. Like she can’t believe I feel it, and I trace that doubtful mouth with my fingertip as I speak.
“And I may be young, but I know what I want, Cat. I want you. I want to make you mine.”
Her hand goes back to my belt, toying with it, but her eyes stay glued to mine. “Then make me yours, Jace. Right now. I won’t break, I’m not”—a small smile here, as if at some priv
ate joke—“I’m not a china doll.”
