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The relief on her face was obvious. It flooded her eyes as she nodded.
Fuck, she was beautiful, staring up at me like she was. I wanted to pull her onto my lap and wrap my arms around her tight. Trail my hands up and down her spine and run my fingers into her hair.
I dropped my gaze to her lips and was rewarded with her pink tongue poking out to wet them.
Fuck. I’d just sworn to her that I wasn’t ever going to make the same mistake twice. Yet all I wanted to do in the moment was tilt her face up and claim her mouth.
Distract her from the fact I hadn’t actually answered her when she’d asked if there was anything going on with her mom.
There hadn’t been an affair. Being the other man wasn’t something I wished to repeat. Being Vaughn’s dirty little secret had been enough to last me a lifetime.
But things had gone on. Things that would send the cops in my direction if they realized I had a perfect motive for murder… I liked Rebel a lot. I didn’t believe for a second she had anything to do with her mother’s death. I would help her find another suspect.
But I didn’t want that person to be me. We needed to find the real murderer.
“Last question,” I managed to get out, even though she’d already had her three.
She nodded.
She looked over at my porn collection. Then at my bare chest, then lower, at the blankets barely covering me. In the wake of her questions, I’d forgotten I was naked.
Slowly, her mouth lifted in a half smile. “Were you spanking the monkey just now?”
I was grateful for the easier line of questioning. We’d slipped straight back into our usual friendly vibe.
I grinned at her. “Actually, I was just searching for an article to read. There’s informative stuff in these, I’ll have you know.”
She raised an eyebrow in challenge and reached across the bed for the nearest magazine. She flipped it open to a random page and read the heading. “Sixty-nine ways to make her come.”
“See?” I chuckled. “Informative.”
“Number One. Put your finger in her ass.” She tossed the magazine straight back at me with an eye roll. “Oh, come on. This was written by a man who still lives in his mother’s basement and only touches blow-up women. Good Lord. How is that number one?”
This felt like much safer ground, and she was cute as hell when she was all scowly and pissed off. But more than that, her reaction made me curious. “You don’t like anal? Damn, girl. You don’t know what you’re missing. And I say that as a man who has been in that position.”
She glanced up at me. “Never said that.”
My dick gave a kick of excitement.
Enough for her to notice. She rolled her eyes. “Clearly, you like anal.”
“Probably wouldn’t fuck men if I didn’t.”
She cocked her head to one side. “You prefer that? Men over women, I mean?”
“Didn’t say that,” I echoed back her earlier statement with a wink.
She glanced down at her hands with a smile. I couldn’t help reaching over and tracing it with my thumb. It was nice to see after the worry she’d had there when she thought I was banging her mom. “What’s the smile for?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. You like that I’m bi.”
My thumb trailed to her lips, and she sucked in a breath. “I want you to like whoever you want, Kian.”
She was so close. Her vanilla-and-peaches scent all up in my nose and making my head spin. If she’d started this little conversation as a distraction from the bigger secrets between us, it was now becoming a problem of its own. My dick strained in her direction. I was still covered by a blanket, but it left little to the imagination.
I did nothing to cover it up. But for the sake of not making the same mistake twice, I needed to end this now. I liked Rebel. I didn’t want to ruin the friendship we’d started building.