Every Part of You: Denies Me (#4) Read online

After a moment, he did, too. Should he have kissed her already? After their last official “date,” when she’d given him the brush-off at her front door, Elliott hadn’t been sure what to expect. Their phone and text conversations hadn’t changed. It wasn’t like she’d stopped answering him. And she had agreed to go out with him again.

  “Do you want me to kiss you, Simone?”

  She hesitated. “Umm, only if you want to. I mean…”

  He kissed her, bending to reach her mouth while she didn’t move from the chair. She parted her lips at the touch of his, and one of his hands went naturally to cup the back of her head. He kept his other hand from going where it wanted to go, though.

  She still had her eyes closed when he pulled away from her, but she was smiling. “Mmm. That’s nice.”

  “It’ll still be nice when you taste like garlic.”

  She opened her eyes, then. “Elliott. You … are … so surprising.”

  “Is that a good thing?” He went to the stove to add some olive oil to the pan, along with some chopped scallions, mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, and yes, a lot of garlic.

  “It can be. Are you sure I can’t help you?”

  “I got it. You sit.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “I wish it were more impressive.”

  Simone laughed. “Listen. Anything you make for me is going to be impressive because you took the time to do it for me.”

  “What if I’d made you a tuna sandwich and macaroni and cheese?”

  “I’d love it,” she told him.

  He believed her.

  With the meal on the table, they both dug in. Simone oohed and ahhed over the pasta and homemade sauce, and even though the garlic bread had come out of a foil packet from the freezer, she praised that, too. The simple salad he’d tossed together with Molly’s recipe for homemade vinaigrette dressing made her sigh with delight.

  “This is amazing, Elliott. Really.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin, leaving behind a crimson smear.

  He liked her mouth better naked. Soft and lush, ready for kissing. He knew he was staring, but couldn’t stop himself, or maybe didn’t want to badly enough.

  “It was my father’s wife’s favorite.” He stabbed some greens, dragging them through the dressing. “She taught me how to make it. Said that if I could learn how to make a good salad dressing, a marinade, and a pasta sauce, I was fit to live on my own.”

  “She was right.” Simone dunked a piece of garlic bread in the sauce and nibbled it with another appreciative, ecstatic little sigh.

  It was so close to the noises she made when she was making love that he had to shift in his seat to cover the sudden throb in his cock. “I thought we could watch a movie after dinner. If you want to.”

  “Hmm.” She gave him a mischievous grin. “Is that your way of trying to get me to make out with you?”

  “Will you? If I slide my arm along the back of the couch real subtle-like, maybe pretend I’m yawning?”

  She laughed, covering her mouth with her hand. She had a great laugh. A great smile. And, because he wasn’t used to making women laugh, Elliott discovered that he wanted to keep doing and saying things that urged Simone to giggle.

  He mimed a huge yawn and stretch. “Like that?”

  She giggled again. “Oh. Very good. I’d never fall for something like that, though. No way.”

  “I can be pretty persuasive.”

  “Oh. No doubt.” She helped herself to more salad. “You are a panty dampener for sure. A player.”

  He paused at that. “That’s what you think about me, huh?”

  She looked up from the bowl of salad, then set it down carefully. “Am I wrong? I thought we’d sort of established that already.”

  “You mean because I date a lot of women.”

  She shrugged.

  Elliott frowned. “Simone. Does that bother you?”

  “It didn’t used to,” she said slowly. “Before.”

  They stared at each other across the table. If he told her that he hadn’t been out with any other women since the night he’d taken her to Barry’s party, it might give her the wrong idea. Except, he thought, was it wrong?

  “I’m not a player.”

  She laughed at that. Loudly. Tipping her head back, then shaking it as she stared at him with shining eyes. “You are so full of shit.”

  “I’m not!” He protested. “Dating a lot of women doesn’t make me a player, Simone. I never lied to any of them. I never made the promises. I never led them on.”

  Her smile faded a little as she stared at him. “I don’t expect you to make me any promises.”

  Shit. That wasn’t what he’d meant. He got up to serve himself another portion of pasta and sauce, to give himself something to do so he wouldn’t have to look at her.

  “I like you, Elliott.”

  He turned, glad for the distance between them that made this conversation seem a little more casual than it actually was. “I like you, too, Simone.”

  She smiled. “Good.”

  “Good,” he added.

  “I haven’t liked a guy this way for a really long time.” She took a deep breath. “And I don’t want to fuck it up. That’s all.”

  “What makes you think you’re the one who’s going to fuck it up?”

  She eyed him. “Well. It could be you. I mean, either one of us could. Neither of us are the best relationship material.”

  “What a vote of confidence.” He burst into low laughter, shaking his head. She was like no woman he’d ever met. He couldn’t get enough.

  “I’m not really the kind of girl who gets all caught up in stuff just because of sex, I promise you I don’t. I’ve had lots of sex without dating.”

  He frowned, not wanting to think about her with any other men, which told him more than anything else how she made him feel.

  “But then you wanted to go on dates.” She took a deep breath. “And I thought, well, we could try it a little bit, it doesn’t have to mean anything. But the truth is, Elliott, that I like you so fucking much, and I want to fuck you again, because it was amazing and fantastic and oh my god, the thought of never having you naked inside me again is enough to make me crazy, so then I overthink it, and I didn’t want this to end up out of control, so I just thought if we were going to date, that we should you know, take our time.”

  “And not fuck?” he said slowly, wondering how in the world the conversation had ended up here.

  “Oh … god, no,” Simone said. “To tell you the truth, I want you so much right now, it’s all I can do not to jump across the table right now and fuck you right here.”

  * * *

  Elliott fixed her with a slow, broad grin that was so sexy it made her squirm. “I’m not sure I’m seeing the problem with this.”

  Simone groaned. He laughed. She lifted a brow.

  “I make you laugh.”

  “I’m not laughing at you,” he offered. “I’m laughing with you.”

  Simone fixed him with a look, but didn’t say anything. She sipped wine to give her mouth something to do while her brain tried to think of the right words. There were too many, and all of them jumbled.

  “I like you, too,” he said in a low voice, finally. “And I haven’t liked a woman this much in a really long time. Maybe really never.”

  “Oh, no,” she groaned and covered her eyes again. “Oh, ugh.”

  “What? What’s the problem with that?” He sounded exasperated, and she couldn’t blame him.

  She was being a nutcase. She peeked at him through her fingers. “It was different when I thought we were just gonna, you know, screw.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I thought that’s all it would be, too. But then when you came home from that other guy’s house—”

  “Aidan and I haven’t slept with each other since before I met you in that elevator,” Simone said.

  “So you didn’t…”

  She shook her head.

  “But you said … “ he trailed off again, frowni