Page 16 of Ruthless Sinner
“For a week!” Jewel shot over her shoulder. “Don’t think I didn’t hear from the other girls how quickly you moved through them!”
“That was me getting bored of them, not the other way around.” I followed her as she walked through the dark blue-and-gold color coded apartment. It was oddly nice, to watch her move around in her bare feet, at ease in my home.
“Oh, I’ll expect you to stop calling me on Saturday, then?” Jewel paused in front of the windows and stared out across the sea of warm lights and apartment buildings.
Even though that was the pattern, the idea that I was so predictable… it got to me. I didn’t want to be so easy to judge that this woman could write me off effortlessly. I didn’t want to be just some fling for her where she knew I had one foot out the door.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” I said, hoping I didn’t let it show that she’d gotten to me with that comment. “You could last a whole extra week.”
Jewel laughed. “I’m not sure I’m quite that fascinating. Or that good at sex.”
“Well on that last one I know you’redefinitelyselling yourself short.”
Jewel turned away from the window to look at me, her brows slightly furrowed. “You’re really not how I expected.”
“It’s the ice cream, isn’t it?” I teased.
“Yes,” she said, her tone serious.
That threw me for a loop. “Well, what did you expect?”
“Someone a lot less . . . courteous.” She let her arms fall to her side, vulnerable and brash in the same instant. “Someone who cared more about the notches in his bedpost than making sure his partner had a good time.”
I flashed her a grin. “Well, turns out I’m only half a cad.”
“Turns out.” Jewel grinned back at me, and my heart felt like it was melting a little.
I didn’t know why I so badly wanted this woman to respect me, but I did. I wanted her to have a good opinion of me. “If you like the view from the window, you should really see it from the balcony. I have a hot tub and everything.”
Jewel pretended to think about it for a moment. “Only if you get in, too.”
“Fair enough. I’ll even go first.”
I stripped off my shirt as I walked towards the balcony, just letting it drop to the floor. I wasn’t exactly shy about nudity. Why worry about getting naked with someone you’d already slept with and would sleep with again shortly?
I thought I heard a noise behind me, almost like a gasp, but I thought it was just Jewel seeing the hot tub and the balcony until I took off my pants and turned around—and saw her staring at my chest, then my arms.
More specifically, at my tattoos.
I’d forgotten until that moment that Jewel hadn’t seen me without my clothes on until now. She’d probably glimpsed the ink on my chest, but not everything. I tended to wear long sleeves when out and about, just because my tattoos were rather personal to me and Dad had given me plenty of lectures about not being ‘stereotypical’. Tattoos could also link you to particular gangs, and I didn’t want anyone who talked to me to immediately know who I was if they recognized, say, the ancestral family crest from Italy that was on my bicep, various thorned vines wrapped around it.
I was proud of my tattoos, though. I’d worked hard thinking about what each of them would look like and what they meant to me. I thought they were… beautiful, honestly, even if most people just saw them as another ‘gangster’ thing to do.
Jewel walked over to get a closer look. “Mind if I… um… wow. Just… wow. Those are really great.”
I grinned and backed into the hot tub. “C’mon in join me. I might even let you touch them.”
“You might?” Jewel replied, taking off her clothes. “Right, because you’re so hard to get.”
I winked at her. “That’s me.”
Jewel, nothing but smooth, creamy skin, stepped into the hot water to join me. My mouth went dry looking at her. Fuck, she was stunning.
I sat down on the concrete seat that ran around against the wall of the circular hot tub and spread my legs a little, curling my fingers for her to come to me.
Jewel smirked knowingly and walked over, straddling my lap.
Fuck. Having skin to skin like this was driving me insane, instantly. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to get my mouth on every inch of her and slide my cock into her again, forget tattoos or whatever else.
