“I didn’t.”
“Yeah, I worked that out.” Laurent held up a hand, his thumb and forefinger only a few millimeters apart. “But not before I was that close to making an absolute fool of myself and making a pass at you.”
A smile crept across my face. “What stopped you?”
“You started talking about your ex-girlfriend, and I realized my drunk brain was seeing things that weren’t there. Although”—he turned his head to the side on the pillow, his dark gaze snagging mine?”given current events, I’m now wondering if it was there, after all.”
I thought back to that night, forensically examining it before offering a response. “It wasn’t. Not then.”
“So when did it creep up on you?”
“It didn’t creep up on me,” I answered honestly. “It hit me like a battering ram when I kissed you. I thought this is nice. I’d like more of this. And we get on, right?” When all Laurent did was smirk at that, I reached over and slapped him hard enough on the chest that I left a handprint. “Right?”
“Ow!” He rubbed at the offending spot. “I suppose.”
“You suppose,” I drawled. “Who have you spent the most time with recently?”
“You. But I don’t remember having much choice about it. You put your number in my phone by underhand means. You invited yourself to dinner with my friends. You virtually blackmailed me into giving my address to you. And now you’ve forced your way into my bed.”
I rolled my eyes, making sure he saw. “You’re being a drama queen. All of that is exaggerated.”
“All of it?” Laurent questioned.
“Most of it,” I admitted. “Maybe not the phone and the dinner part.” I pulled myself up so I could rest my head against the headboard. “If I hadn’t, you would have disappeared withouta word, leaving me alone in Paris to fend for myself. And we wouldn’t be here now.”
“No, we wouldn’t.”
Laurent said it so quietly that there was no missing the thread of fatalistic gloom that ran through it. “Regrets? Already?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. You? You’re supposed to be running for the door by now.”
“I can’t,” I said, the effort to keep a straight face requiring immense willpower. “I have no clean underwear, so you’re stuck with me.”
Laurent laughed. “Thank God for the invention of the washing machine. On a quick wash, it’ll be done by…” He pulled his wrist to his face, grimaced when he realized there was no watch to tell him what he wanted to know, and gave up on what he’d been going to say.
“What happened to your watch? Did you lose it? I know you had one when we first met.”
“I gave it to my father to replace the one he either lost or had stolen. I also gave him that watch. It’s a running theme.”
A stillness had crept into Laurent’s posture, lying on a bed failing to disguise it. The same thing happened every time his father came up in conversation. “Do you want to talk about it?” I took Laurent actually considering the proposal before he answered in the negative as a compliment. “Then we don’t have to.” I rolled over on top of him, damp fabric meeting damp fabric. “Maybe you could teach me a few more things before we tackle the problem of my underwear.”
Chapter Fifteen
I ended up staying the night. Not because either of us had made a carefully thought out decision based on practicality, but due to us going at it again—frotting this time with underwear off?exhaustion, and two fantastic orgasms carrying me off to sleep and making it for me.
The next morning, I woke first. Leaving Laurent to sleep for longer, I took a quick shower and pulled on my clothes, sans underwear. It had been tempting to raid Laurent’s underwear drawer, but I didn’t think we were quite at the underwear sharing stage yet. Which raised the question of what stage we were at.
In the cold light of day, it was easy to look back on the events of the previous night and see there should have been more conversation before we ended up in bed together. Which left me with some backtracking to do if I didn’t want Laurent getting the wrong idea.
I was on my second coffee of the morning when the shower started up.
Laurent appeared ten minutes later. He’d pulled on a pair of jeans, but left his feet and chest bare. He took the seat across from me at the breakfast bar and treated me to an intense perusal the likes of which would have made me blush, if I’d been prone to such a thing. As I wasn’t, I simply soaked it up and waited him out. “Well…” he finally said. “So last night happened.”
“It did,” I agreed.
He stole my mug of coffee and took a drink, wrinkling his nose at how I took it. He pushed the mug back and stood to make his own. I seized on the opportunity while I wasn’t the focus of that all-seeing gaze to bring up the subject that had dominated my thoughts since waking. “I need to talk to you.”
Laurent spooned sugar into his coffee. Quite a lot of sugar. No wonder he hadn’t been a fan of how I made mine. “Sounds serious.”
