His grin broadens. "I’ll let this one go."
"Wasn’t aware we were keeping score?"
"There’s no score, sugar, because you are no match for me."
"What?" I snap my lips together. "Say that again?"
He dips his spoon back into the mixture, then brings it up to his mouth, chews, swallows. Then trains his gaze on me, "You are not in my league, babe. Why don’t you just drop it."
I stare at him. "If by that you mean, I couldn’t possibly be as much of an ass as you, you’re right.”"
He shrugs.
"I don’t understand why you have to be this uncouth, so rude… so…"
"Impolite?" he helpfully supplies.
"That too. I was going more for plebeian."
He winces, "Not that word; anything but that." He places his spoon back in his bowl. "But the rest? It comes naturally to me."
"I think it’s all an act."
"Oh?"
I nod, then drop my spoon back in my bowl with a clatter, "I think you felt something when you were, uh…"
"Fucking your arse?" he offers.
"Exactly," I stab my finger at him, "and you said that just for effect, knowing it would sound filthy enough to make me blush."
"Whatever." He stretches, then yawns. "Your theories don’t interest me, babe."
"Stop that." I slap my palm on the table and the bowls jump. The sugar spills over the side of the container. I stare at the mess, then up at him, "Don’t hide what you’re feeling, Arpad."
He scratches his jaw, schools his features into that expression of lazy disinterest which is so much a part of him, and which I hate, and which I want to tear off to expose the man I’d sensed earlier, when he’d made love to me. And it had been that, no matter how much he wants to call it something else. There had been a depth of connection between us that I hadn’t expected "Why are you hellbent on reducing everything between us to something without emotion? Something contractual?"
"Because it is." He rises to his feet, then leans across the table until he looms over me. "That’s all this is, babe, an arrangement. Don’t you forget it. Don’t go looking for meaning in what was simply a fuck… An above-average fuck, I’ll give you that, but when this is over, we’ll both walk away, having gotten what we want."
"You sure?"
He jerks his chin.
"That’s all you want this to be, an exchange of what the other needs?"
That’s all it is," he affirms.
"Fine." I jump up to my feet.
"Fine." He straightens to his full height, so I have to tilt my head back, then further back, to meet that blazing blue gaze. In their depths, something flickers, then fades away.
"Make yourself comfortable, I’m going to get more wood for the fire." Turning, he stalks off.
23
Arpad
That’s me, walking away from a woman when I could have been inside of her, taking her, fucking her, loving her… Not loving her… What the hell am I thinking?
