Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
I put a kiss on his lips, then keep my face right in front of his, grinning. “It’s my favorite pastime.”
“Keep doing that, and I’ll take your ass to my bed and punish you for it.”
“Promise?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Getting a rise out of you is always tempting.”
“You only want to get a rise out of my dick.” When he turns his eyes onto me, there’s hunger in them. “And it’s working.”
I bite my lip. “You sure about that?”
He grabs hold of me at once—I react with a loud and appropriately surprised yelp—and suddenly I’m just a bag of potatoes over my muscle man’s shoulder as he takes me inside, drops me onto his bed, then proceeds to peel off all of my clothes with record speed, exposing me.
I gotta say, if only all punishments in the world were as pleasurable as the ones Adrian delivers, no one would ever dare to behave again.
This man is so fucking good to me.
What he delivers later that night is nothing short of exceptional. We’re both dressed up as if we’re attending another of my art exhibits—maybe even nicer than that. He looks like a main course. I look like a decadent snack. And as we walk arm-in-arm down the Quicksilver Strand to the front of the Thalassa, I feel exactly the way he intended to make me feel: like an escorted prince—worshiped, content, and as precious as a bejeweled family heirloom.
What I didn’t expect, however, was for us to have the whole restaurant to ourselves. “How’d you score this?” I ask him, astonished.
“Worked it out with my boss. Mondays are the worst. All the tourists have gone home. So it wasn’t such a big thing to close the place an hour early to the public. Don’t think about it too much,” he insists as he pulls out my chair to seat me. I sit down. He even swipes the napkin off of the table and lays it in my lap. Then he takes a bottle, already set on the table for us, and pours us each a glass. “Maybe you will recognize this.”
I blink. “Is this the same wine we had when—?”
“—you spilled it all over my fine Elysian Resort robe? Why yes,” he confirms. “It’s that same bottom-dollar wine you loved so much. From the first night we met.” He sets down the bottle, sits in his chair across from me, and lifts his glass. “To new beginnings.”
I’m a bit astonished honestly. Adrian is really taking this whole pampering thing seriously. I lift my glass, still in a daze. “To new beginnings.”
Our glasses clink.
Bottoms up.
Our meal is already ordered and ready to go. After a quick salad, we’re brought out fresh and steaming bowls of buttery lobster fettuccini—again, the same meal we had at his apartment the first night we met. I’m nearly giddy as I take forkful after forkful past my lips, the flavors exploding on my tongue as if I have literally never tasted any of these things properly before—fettuccini, lobster, or garlic butter. “Seriously,” I groan after yet another heavenly bite, “this tastes a thousand times better than I remember. Maybe even a million times. Would I be terrible if I asked for a second bowl of this? Or a third?”
Adrian laughs endearingly at me. “Hey now,” he then warns me with a poking of his fork. “Better leave room for dessert. It’s the best part.”
“The best part? There’s nothing better than what I’m putting through my lips right now. You can’t convince me otherwise.”
He smirks, then leans over the table, leading with his full, kissable lips. “You sure about that?”
I consider him for a moment. “Better be careful before your tie catches on fire from these pretty candles.”
“You’ve already set me on fire,” he says. “From my heart to the depths of my soul, Quintin Ruiz.”
Despite my kneejerk urge to tease him for being all poetic and corny, I find myself struck instead at the look in his eyes and the sincerity in his voice.
Honestly, I think I’m the one who just got set aflame with his words.
Seeming satisfied with the way he pretty much leaves me speechless, Adrian sits back down in his seat, smirking proudly, then helps himself to another bite. His blue eyes sparkle in the soft candlelight as he savors the meal.
And he wasn’t lying. Dessert comes, and it’s a plate of chocolate flakes and strawberries with a beautiful slice of cake between them. The whole arrangement looks like a work of art, sewn together with drizzles of bright white icing, which I’ll probably have to taste to identify. My first guess is white chocolate.
But that’s not all. Sitting atop the thin slice of cake is a big chocolate orb, similarly drizzled with icing. I wonder if it’s hollow, or if when I break it, decadent, gooey fudge is going to ooze out. I’m stuffed from the lobster fettuccini, and yet I still plan to devour every last bite of this.