“No one can know,” I told her.
Her breath hitched.
“If we do this,” I continued, “if I fuck you like you want me to, it has to stay between us.”
“A secret?”
“Yeah. Between you and me.”
She opened her mouth, and I added firmly, “Just me and you. Not me and you and a couple million followers.”
She looked surprised that I had anticipated this, then her cheeks flamed and she quickly shut her mouth. Lyssa shared a lot of her life on her social media. I knew she had wanted to use me as some kind of revenge thing for that fashionable prick at her old workplace. But I was an offline guy, and I needed discretion in my private life now more than ever. If she wanted this, she could have it on my terms or not at all.
“Caroline especially can’t know,” I added.
When she hesitated, I kissed her. Her face was delicate between my hands, but I didn’t make allowances. As our lips met, I devoured her, taking her lips, her mouth, her breath like I’d wanted to since I’d first seen her wearing one of her little tartan skirts. I was trying to stop her heart and rewrite it with a new pattern, one that followed the syllables of my name.
Her small hands clutched at the mass of me, trying to pull me closer. I resisted her tug. If she wanted me, she could come my way. I was done letting her think I was easy, biddable. I fucked like a train, and she was about to love it.
When I pulled back, her expression was heavy-lidded and dazed. Satisfaction roared in my chest.
“I—I’m sorry,” she whispered when she could catch her breath. It wasn’t what I was expecting her to say. Holy fuck, Mike or You’re a sex god, Mike was what I was thinking. But I should have known her mind would always be running along a hundred rails at once.
“For not saying this after the bath thing,” she explained. “You weren’t just a coaching voice. Or a man’s gaze. You were a significant participant.”
I’d never been called such a nice word. Significant. Not hot, not a good lay, not funny or charming or useful or entertaining. Significant.
I couldn’t fucking help my chest puffing up. “You think I’m significant?”
She nodded.
I couldn’t leave it. “I’m significant to you, Princess?”
“Yes.”
When I grinned, Lyssa took my shoulders in her hands and stretched up on her tiptoes to press her lips against mine. Unlike her earlier kiss, this was soft, tentative. With each little press of her lips, I felt a syllable in my chest. Sig-nif-i-kint. In her accent: siiig-niff-ih-kahnt. Over and over. When she pulled back, I couldn’t help but look at her like the sun shone the fuck out of her. I kissed her again, once, twice, just to be sure.
“Are we doing this, Lyssa?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
Thank god.
I gestured for her to go first to walk out from behind the trailer. When we emerged, Maya and Tom quickly busied themselves, deliberately not looking at us.
“Lyss lost her contact,” I lied.
Lyssa oversold it by bumping into the table and fumbling for her bag and balloons.
I didn’t care anymore that it wasn’t yet five: I packed up the stall and loaded Mini Mike in record time. I couldn’t wait to take her home. I knew I couldn’t keep her forever, and maybe this attraction would ruin my life, but I could at least give her a good time while she was here. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t here long or she never thought about me the way I thought about her. She thought I was significant. And she wanted to have sex with me. Significant, significant sex.
That I could do.
CHAPTER 20
LYSSA
I wanted Mike to break traffic laws to get us home faster, but he would never.
