He felt the tightening of her sex, but he kept going until the spasms of pleasure finally calmed down and her heart rate began to return to normal.
She fell against him and sighed. “I always wondered what an orgasm would feel like. I’m so glad it was you who gave it to me.”
He felt less surprised and more honored by the distinction.
“I feel like we should seal this moment with a kiss.” Ash gently removed his hand from her panties and showed it to her.
She hesitated. “I don't know.”
“Do you trust your daddy?”
“Implicitly,” she said, her eyelids heavy with pleasure.
“You shouldn’t, you know. I might be the big bad wolf.”
“I like it when you boss me a little bit,” she said lazily, her finger tracing over his stubbled jawline.
“Then kiss my fingers.”
Rosemary looked at his eyes and then his hand. She closed her eyes and kissed first his pinky finger, slowly worked her way across, tasting each of his fingers with reverence. “I love this hand. Make sure you bring this hand to our wedding night.”
But Ash was in no mood for jokes. He was about to explode into his drawers. When she’d kissed each of his fingers on that hand, he then rubbed her scent all over his chest and down his abs.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He was dead serious. “Painting. Putting your mark on me. I’m going to wear you on me until you’re in my skin, in my blood. You’re already in my head and my heart.”
Chapter Five
Rosemary
“I have absolutely nothing to wear.”
Pen stared into the colossal dressing room that was Rosemary’s closet.
“At the risk of offending you as a client, I feel compelled to point out that you, Rosemary, have more clothes in this room than all of Canal Place.”
Rosemary accepted the comparison of her collection to that of her favorite upscale shopping mall.
Laughing, she replied, “No offense taken. I’m not just your client; we’re friends now, okay?”
Pen smiled and nodded appreciatively in agreement. “Then as your friend, I not only stand by the comparison, but I have to say I refuse to believe you have nothing to wear in this room.”
“I just mean I have nothing in here to set the appropriate tone at dinner,” Rosemary said. Mama and Daddy might think she was just posturing to piss them off, but she was making good on her promise to bring Ash to dinner. She was fully aware of the ramifications of bringing a Boudreaux into her daddy’s house. Despite her outward appearance, she was nervous.
“I need something modest. Virginal. Daddy will have a fit if he sees any of my love bites. And no scarves or turtlenecks. Mama is onto me with that rookie attempt.”
“Understood,” said Pen, who then asked Rosemary to give her an idea of how much coverage was needed. Rosemary removed her top and lifted her mane of hair.
The angry, purple, mouth-shaped bruises on Rosemary’s neck resembled the aftermath of an assault, not lovemaking. She gaped. “Good lord! What did he do to you? I’m gonna fuckin’ kill that kid.”
This was not helping Rosemary feel any less anxious. “Pen, I need you to be calm. I’m as jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”
“Did he bite you?”
The anxious edge was replaced by excitement at the thought of Ash’s mouth, his tongue, his teeth…focus, Rosie, focus.
“I asked him to do it.” Rosemary shrugged. “I hope this doesn’t gross you out as my brand new friend and a friend of Ash’s, but it’s kind of our thing. He likes to bite, and I like to be bitten. I’m surprised this never came to your attention with any of Ash’s previous girlfriends.”
Pen started digging through the sweater section of the closet. “He hasn’t had that many girlfriends. We’ve stuck close together since we were kids. We sort of share…a trauma, I guess you could call it. His most recent girlfriend didn’t last long. She cheated, so we don’t talk about her.”
Rosemary watched as Pen draped three different sweaters and two high-collar blouses over one arm and pulled out two skirts with the other. “I think one of these sweaters with a wool skirt. It’s cold out and it looks very schoolmarmish. And you should wear either boots or low heels, I think. That’ll sell it. The less skin you show, the less paranoid your parents will be about Ash taking their daughter away from them. Purely psychological, of course.”
Rosemary wanted to broach the next subject with some tact, but it just wasn’t in her blood. “Ash and I are getting married.”
“Huh?” Pen swirled around. “What?”
“In June. We’ve decided. We don't have a ring yet, but we talked about it. He wants to give me his grandmother’s ring.”
Pen turned white as a sheet. “Has he told you…anything about himself?”
“What do you mean? We’re aware that we just met. So, yeah, we have a lot of talking to do. He did say he specifically needs my mother’s approval to marry me, which is why we’re doing this dinner tonight. Other than that…” Rosemary trailed off, fearing the look on Pen’s face meant he had some incurable disease or that he was a secret assassin or something. Those would be the only things worse than her feline secret.
“Ash is…different.”
Rosemary nodded. “So am I.”
Pen chewed on her bottom lip. “It’s just that…it has a lot to do with this trauma that we all went through in high school.
