Page 123 of Legally Yours
I shrugged. “It looked like the most comfortable thing up there. I didn’t want to ruin any of your nice new shirts.”
Brandon gave me a funny little half smile and gazed at me with a raised eyebrow. “Is there really something so wrong with the finer things in life?”
“Nothing at all,” I lied. “I’m just not sure why you need so many of them. Most of your t-shirts still have tags on them.”
His face turned grim. “Yeah. Well. I guess when you know what it’s like to go without, you don’t ever want to have to do it again.”
“Bubbe says that. She was born during the Depression.”
“She’s a smart woman.”
I took another sip. “Yeah, well, she also hoards cans of food that are ten years expired. Sometimes we even find them in her closet.”
“Hey, she knows how to prepare for the worst.”
“By getting too much of everything?”
“It works, doesn’t it?”
We sipped silently, the slurps echoing through the kitchen. It only emphasized just how enormous this place really was. Four floors, plus the servants’ apartments; thousands of square feet. For one man to live here…it was beyond decadent, really. It was obscene.
“You don’t even use half the rooms in this place,” I pointed out. “It’s so huge. Doesn’t it feel empty?”
Brandon shrugged from the lounge, where he was lying back against the backrest, his feet kicked up on a pillow.
“I keep it full of interesting people,” he said, echoing the famous line fromThe Great Gatsby, although I wasn’t certain it was intentional. “It’s the best.”
I considered his defense. “And you like the best?”
He shot me a sharkish grin. “Always, Red. You know that.”
I gulped. Something kept nagging at me, something that kept telling me how very out of place I was in a house like this. With someone like this. I needed to ask again.
“Then why settle for me?”
Brandon blinked at the question as the grin disappeared. After pondering the question for what seemed like forever, he sat up, crooked a very sexy finger, and beckoned me to where he was. I sat down, and he leaned us back together. His palm slid up my thigh while the other pulled my head onto his chest. He was so warm, so large. I couldn’t help but feel safe tucked into him this way.
“I think that question says more about you than it’s asking of me,” he said, stroking my hair. He pulled it lightly at the end of each stroke in a way that rendered me putty. “But I’ll answer it anyway. Aside from how beautiful you are, Red, you’re above all genuine. You’re genuinely intelligent. You’re genuinely kind. And even though you obviously have a low threshold for bullshit, you’re genuinely a loyal, dedicated person. But most of all, you’re honest. It may not be the most valuable quality for a lawyer, but I love that I can see every emotion on that glass face of yours. I see you, Red. Just like you see me.”
I was glad that my face was currently buried in his chest so he couldn’t see the emotions that were certainly flying across it.
“More like a freckle face,” I muttered, trying to distract from what was probably the best compliment I had ever been given. I had always hated the smattering of freckles that decorated my cheeks and nose, thinking they made me look like a little kid.
“It’s a unique, fucking gorgeous face,” he insisted, sitting me up so I straddled his waist and he could clasp my cheeks between his hands. His eyes burned with such obvious intensity. I couldn’t have looked away if I wanted to.
“You’re a classic ginger,” he said, stroking my cheekbones with his thumbs. “Hair like a sunset, green eyes, high cheekbones, those full, insanely kissable lips. But instead of the pasty skin most redheads have, yours is olive-toned under your freckles, like an Italian’s. Why is that, by the way? Is your mom dark?”
“No, you can thank Bubbe for that,” I said with a shrug. “Jewish.”
“Ah. And your freckles are from the Irish side, right?” When I nodded, he smiled. “I could get lost in this face, Skylar.” He drifted his lips over my cheeks and eyelids. “I think I already have.”
Before I could tell him that his own face, with its straight, geometric lines, wide blue eyes, and deceptively full lips, drew me like a moth to a flame, he closed those lips over mine and showed me just how lost we could get together.
“Please,” I whimpered when he finally let me come up for air.
“Please what?” He dragged his teeth lightly over the edge of my shoulder blade as his hands tugged his shirt off me, leaving me naked again in the morning light.
“Won’t Ana or one of your other…ah…people see us?” I asked, although I was already too distracted by the feel of his mouth to care much.