Free Sinful Reunion by Crystal Cierlak Page A

and brought her knees up to her chest, not caring for modesty as the shirt slid down and exposed her to the room.
    "Can I ask you a personal question?" she thoughtfully inquired.
    "I don't know, can you?"
    Natalie rolled her eyes. "How old are you?"
    He gave her a pointed look. "Google didn't tell you?"
    "Actually, no . It didn't. But you look pretty young."
    "So do you," he quipped. "But I know you recently finished grad school so unless you're some kind of baby genius, Doogie Howser-type I figure you have to be at least in your early-to-mid-twenties."
    "Okay, with that reference you must be forty," she mocked him with wide eyes and a faux-horrified grimace. She side-eyed him as she took a slow bite of her meal. He looked mildly offended, though whether it was a put-on or for real, she had no idea.
    "Christ, Natalie, I'm 34 !" he laughed. "Why do young people always think thirty is so damn old?"
    "Because we're too busy thinking that we are invincible, can do whatever the hell we want and lack any personal responsibility. At least that's what old people think about us."
    "Touché. But for the record I don't think any of those things about you."
    "Good. Then we can be friends. Even though you're, you know, old ."
    "That's it!" James grabbed for her sandwich and threw both it and his down on the platter before tackling her back to the couch, straddling her waist as he tickled at her sides and beneath her arms. Natalie screamed through a laughing protest, trying helplessly to push him off her body with no success. "Call me old again, Natalie. See what happens when you do."
    "No! No, no!" she laughed hysterically, her eyes watering instantly. "I take it back! You're not old!" she squealed.
    The tickling stopped but his hands remained. "Good girl."
    Natalie stared up into his blue-green eyes as she caught her breath. "So when I was graduating from elementary school you were graduating from college?" A sly smile split her face and she grinned at him like an idiot.
    "Geez," he sighed, but smiled in spite of himself. Still straddling her waist he leaned forward and balanced his weight on his arms at either side of her head. "You really aren't very polite anymore, are you Natalie?"
    "Sorry, I get a little frisky when I've had really good cheese ." She drew the word out and smiled again, biting her bottom lip in victorious pleasure at her own joke. When the moment passed and her humor subsided, she braved asking him another question. "Where exactly do you live?"
    James absentmindedly ran a thumb along her cheek as he considered the question. "Here at Eden when I'm in Vegas. Various hotels when I'm traveling, some of which I own, some which I don't."
    "Right, but where do you live ?" She emphasized the word. "Where do you call home?"
    "I have a home in New York but that's where..." he drifted off.
    "Your wif- I mean Celine and Frankie? They live there?"
    James' smile faded a touch. "They do. So did I."
    "So now you just flit around to your various hotels like you're playing Monopoly?"
    His eyebrow screwed as he viewed her shrewdly. "Something like that. Why? Where do you live, Miss Harlow?"
    "In a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles that is almost quite literally the size of this living room alone."
    "Sounds nice," he smiled.
    It was her turn to eye him shrewdly. "How so?"
    He ran an index finger down the length of her nose, his face softening into the smile he wore. "Because it's yours."
    Natalie smiled and then yawned, turning to cover her open mouth with a couch cushion. "Sorry. I'm not used to staying up this late."
    "Want to go to bed?"
    There was that atmospheric shift again, as though he wasn't asking her something as innocuous as whether or not she'd like to go to sleep but if she'd like to move in. For a question so simple the emotion behind it seemed loaded. She wondered if he even knew his own thoughts, or if he did, if he had any intention on sharing them. The hour was far too late and their lovemaking far too consuming for