Page 6 of She's Like the Wind

I waited by the register, which she’d set on an antique table that looked like it came straight out of a Parisian atelier.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed the craftsmanship—hand-carved cabriole legs, aged rosewood, the type of joinery you didn’t see outside the 1800s—but I did.

Hell, the thing might’ve been a genuine Louis XV piece. Naomi told me she bought it because it was beautiful, and she’d placed it because it felt like it belonged with her silks and feathers and the soft jazz playing in the background.

She put up theclosedsign on the door and leaned against it, watching me.

“Hey,” she murmured.

“Naomi.”

“So?”

I gritted my teeth. “I know it’s been a minute.”

No shit, Sherlock!

“Yes, it has.” She straightened and then walked to me. She looked tired, and there was a resignation in her eyes that I hated.

Naomi was one of the most positive people I knew. She always managed a smile, no matter what the situation was. She raised the warmth in the room by walking into it. She took care of people and cheered them up.

“I…I’ve been busy.” I stuffed my hands in my jeans pockets, feeling uneasy.

I’d done this before. Ended things with a woman who wanted more, and I’d felt absolutely nothing but relief.

But not this time.

My gut was in knots, telling me that this was the wrong move—that I needed to find another way to handle the situation.

My dick told me that it wanted her, just like it had told me it didn’t want Claudine or the woman last night at Bar Tonique who’d been hitting on me like men were going to become extinct within twenty-four hours.

Naomi stood in front of me and put a hand on my chest. She gave me a small smile.

“I’m sorry, Gage.”

Say what?

“I know…I know I crossed a line.” She dropped her hand at the same time as I yanked mine out of my pockets, feeling like I needed support to not fall through the cracks in the floor.

Was she kidding me? The women in my past would yell and scream at me, tell me I’d taken advantage of them, and Naomi was fucking apologizing to me?

“It’s forgotten,” I lied to her.

She tilted her head. “Is it?”

I shrugged. Maybe this was a good thing. I’d tell her it was all in the past, and we could continue as we were. I’d take her upstairs to her apartment and sink into her tight, wet heat—hear her moans and her cries as she came, let myself float in her warmth.

She gave me a measured look. “I guess this is it then.”

I arched an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

She took a step away from me. I immediately missed the smell that was all her.

Orange blossoms.

Fresh.

Clean.