Page 176 of The First Taste

She sucks in a breath. “If I say yes, can we leave? I don’t want to get caught.”

I flash her a smirk. “Yes, beauty. I feel the same way.”

Her eyes narrow on my face. Her lips quirk. But she doesn’t disagree. She just moves back, tugging her hand out of my grip.

“If I want to get home and shower and still meet you out at a reasonable hour, I guess I should take a cab.”

She starts to walk away. I reach out and snag her around the waist, pulling her body close to mine. “I’ll take you.”

“What?” she asks, startled. “No, I don’t need you to take me to my house.”

I shoot her a hard look. “I said I would take you. Now I’m going to go hit the showers. I’ll meet you out front in twenty minutes.”

Her delicate throat works as she pulls away from me. She tosses her hair, raising her chin. “Fine,” she says, not a little huffy.

Normally after charging up my batteries like that, I would’ve spent a little time letting the water run while I stroked my cock. But since I’m pressed for time, I race through my shower and dress in an immaculate bespoke tuxedo. Speeding out the door, I’m still fussing with my bowtie when I find Kaia waiting on the curb.

She’s fresh out of the shower too, her hair thrown up in a wet ponytail, her skin glowing. I flag my limousine down as I look her up and down.

There is a part of me that realizes that if I were a slightly different person, if life hadn’t fucked me up so badly so early on, I would want to be with a girl like Kaia. Fresh faced, no makeup, no fucking artifice. She’s stunning without a face full of make up or a wardrobe of designer clothes.

If I had met her here as a ballet dancer first, without knowing her secret life as Cerise, would I still feel the same?

“Calum,” she prompts.

I realize that the chauffeur has opened the back door and is waiting patiently for me to get in. I climb in after Kaia, smelling her honeyed fragrance. I lean closer to her as the door closes, getting another whiff.

It’s coming from her damp ponytail.

“That scent… what shampoo do you use?” I ask.

She looks embarrassed. “It’s something French. I might have splurged on shampoo and conditioner last week. You don’t hate it, do you?”

I let out a bark of laughter. “I love it. You smell just like a ripe honeycomb. I’m having a hard time not rubbing your scent all over my fucking body.”

She grins at that and rolls her eyes. “I’m glad that it meets with your approval.”

When we pull up outside of her apartment in Queens, I rake my gaze over her house. It’s nothing much to write home about, just a brown brick house that has three stories. Even though it’s taller than most of the surrounding buildings, it can’t have much square footage.

Kaia opens her car door and gets out. She almost closes the door on me and then looks at me with surprise. “Oh! Did you want to… come in?”

I get out of the back of the limo, buttoning my tux. “I planned on it.”

She looks nervously over her shoulder. “Oh. Ummm… all right.”

As she leads me up to a door around the side of the house, I look at the neighborhood. From the look of the little Hispanic grocery store on the corner and pedestrian traffic on the street, the neighborhood is mostly Latino. Kaia glances back at me as she unlocks her door, her expression uncertain.

She heads inside, trotting up the stairs. I close the door and lock it, then follow her up. Her space is at once very light and airy, and very small. Nestled up here in the eaves of the house, her bedroom is on the left and her tiny kitchen on the right. Her bedroom is basically a big white bed and a bedside table; I can see that she has a hanging rack of clothes near the wall and a laundry basket beside it. Between the rooms is a gap with shiny wooden floors, probably perfect for stretching.

There is a bathroom in the far corner, it’s heavy wooden door pulled shut. And the last thing I notice is a black cat poking it’s head out from behind the bed, staring at me with intense green-yellow eyes.

I take the whole room in with a jaundiced eye. I can see that she has a wall of photos pinned up over the bed and a bed for her cat in the corner. Obviously she cares for this space…

“So you live alone,” I guess.

She ducks her head, moving to the bed and dropping her duffel bag. “Yes.”

Somehow I had imagined her living somewhere more glamorous. I squint around at the room, putting my hands behind my back.