If the Shoe Fits (14 page)

Her body sang with relief. At last. Simple relief.

She did not even reach around his neck or body; she just leaned back—her arms hanging useless at her sides, her back arched slightly—and felt the wave of his desire (and her own) wash over them.

He was kissing her fiercely at first, then his lips moved away from her mouth and he kissed her cheek and her neck, then near her ear, and started whispering all sorts of nonsense about how she looked like a Russian princess and how he was going to get those naughty boots off (
how
had
he
already
noticed
those?
she wondered), all the while gripping her hair in a possessive, thrilling tug.

Then Devon stopped all of a sudden and put both of his hands on her cheeks. Sarah almost fell away from him, not realizing how much she had been leaning into his strong hand at her lower back.

She righted herself a bit drunkenly, then opened her eyes. He was really quite something to look at. Especially at this distance. Four inches looked very good on Devon Heyworth. She licked her lips and smiled from the pure pleasure of staring at his full lips and that inch-too-long hair and those piercing gray eyes that saw right into her fluttering, needy heart.

“Are you happy to see me?” he whispered.

She knew there were some rules about not showing your hand or not coming on too strong or some such foolishness, but all of that had flown out the door with that kiss. “Oh, Devon, you have no idea.” She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes, then nearly hummed, “I have been craving you.”

She felt him respond against her abdomen, and she pushed herself more firmly against him there and ducked her face into his neck. She wanted to eat him. She licked a tiny bit of skin just visible above the upturned collar of his winter coat.

He groaned, then laughed. “Shall we stay here in the doorway?” he asked, as if that might be a perfectly viable option.

She looked around and blinked and realized they were standing in the half-opened door of Sarah James Shoes. She made a valiant effort at coherence. “Food?” was all she could manage.

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

“Any kind.”

“What do you like? I don’t even know what food you like.”

“I love food. I adore food. Any food. I have no discretion whatsoever. I like wine too. And beer.”

She shuffled to move them both out onto the sidewalk, then turned to lock the front door of the store when Devon let his hands drop slowly away from her cheeks. She came back around and linked her arms around his waist and leaned her back against the door. “If you won’t tell me what kind of food, then what kind of atmosphere? What are you wearing?” She reached her hands into the opening of his navy-blue cashmere full-length coat (she heard his breath stop) and felt the crisp, soft cotton of an ironed Oxford shirt, then let her hands trail around his waist and felt a pair of jeans.

“Jeans and a collared shirt. Nice. All right. I have an idea. I’m thinking something spicy—”

He smiled at the pun.

“Very funny,” she added. “How about sushi?”

He was nodding mutely.

“Do you want a loud, funky scene or a more laid-back place? Both are excellent.”

He kissed her again, just to taste her and reassure himself that he was really here, standing on this ludicrously freezing, blustering American street, in her arms. “I am going to want my hands on you the whole time, so wherever that will cause the least trouble, that’s where I want to go.”

He was kissing her neck again and she wondered why he was staying at a hotel after all. It seemed so silly now that he was actually standing here in her doorway. “Let’s go to Wakamono, then. It’s loud and delicious, and we can grope each other all we want.”

They stood there for a few more minutes—necking, Sarah supposed was the word for it—then dove into a taxi and continued necking in the backseat until they arrived in the Lakeview neighborhood where the hip Japanese restaurant was located. The booming of the DJ’s bass beat was audible all the way out onto the street and through the closed window of the taxi. Sarah tried to get Devon’s attention and asked if he thought it was going to be too loud in there.

“I don’t care. Let’s just eat and get back to bed.” He kissed her again, then hopped out of the taxi, paying the driver through the passenger side window.

She was a bit slower getting out of the taxi, seeing as how her jeans were feeling a little warm and confining and her lungs were not taking in as much oxygen as her blood demanded. Sarah tried to take a few calming breaths, then moved carefully out onto the street. Her boots were despicably high on a good day, but given her present
tumult
, she almost toppled over when she stood up on the sidewalk.

“Easy there, tiger.” Devon had grabbed her, quickly and firmly, around her waist, and held her until he was sure she had regained her balance. He somehow made her feel much lighter than she normally did. That extra twenty pounds (The Jane Twenty) did not seem to present the slightest impediment to his interest. How was that possible?

Sarah leaned in to take all the steady comfort she could get. “You feel good,” she murmured gratefully into his ear. “I feel drunk and I haven’t had anything to drink in days.”

They stood there as the taxi drove away, the two of them reveling in the mere pleasure of one another. “I suppose we should go in out of the cold, love,” he whispered, his hot breath coming through her jumbled hair and tickling her ear.

She squirmed against his shoulder, then pulled away and grabbed his hand, leading the way into the crowded restaurant.

It was only eight o’clock on a Friday night, but the place was already packed: the after-work crowd was still three thick at the bar; the hip college crowd was lounging along the banquette that ran halfway down the exposed brick east wall; the sushi bar was buzzing with customers in low-backed barstools facing busy chefs sporting white coats and efficient expressions, interspersed with bottles of sake, little bowls of soy sauce, wasabi, and ginger, and a hum of jovial conversation. Waiters and waitresses were cutting their way through the thick crowd with trays of drinks and what looked like an endless supply of perfectly presented sushi. And above and around and through it all cranked the aforementioned techno-jazz bass beat, giving the whole room a throbbing vitality.

Two seats opened up at the sushi bar at the far end of the room. Devon gestured in that direction and Sarah followed single file because of the crush of people. Since they were no longer standing next to each other, Sarah started to let her hand fall out of Devon’s grasp, but he kept his hand behind his back, loosely but possessively holding hers, unwilling to let go of her even for the short walk to the end of the sushi bar.

“This is going to be fun,” Sarah thought, then realized she had said it aloud. Devon must have heard her, because he turned his profile over one shoulder and gave her a ruinous wink.

When they finally got to the two free barstools, Sarah realized that Devon was waiting to help her with her coat. She started to undo the fur tie at the collar, then slowly undid the beautiful, hand-embroidered buttons that were tight as they passed through the hand-sewn buttonholes.

“You and buttons,” Devon complained.

“Oh, admit it, you love it.”

He looked up and away from her fingers, where he had been enjoying every movement of her hands as she worked the well-made fastenings through the fabric, skimming her fingertips mindlessly across her breasts. He held her look for a moment too long, he supposed, but he couldn’t help himself.

“I admit it.” He spoke so quietly that she thought she must have misheard, the din of the music making even a shout hard to process.

Sarah turned her back to allow him access to remove the tightly tailored coat. He managed to slide off the jacket while grazing his fingertips along the length of her arms. As if on cue, a helpful waitress came by and offered to take their two coats to the coat check upstairs. Devon handed them over, then gave Sarah a full head-to-toe perusal before offering his hand to assist her on the small climb up onto the barstool. She figured he was going to get into his own chair immediately, but instead he remained standing behind her chair, lifted up her hair with one hand, pulled down the fold of her turtleneck with the other, then kissed her bared neck with a long, slow, patient caress of his tongue along the tender skin near her nape.

She felt her legs begin to tense and worried she might explode right there at the sushi bar. “Please stop, Devon. Seriously,” she whispered.

“Only because you said
please
.” He released her hair and the fold of cashmere, but let his right hand rest where his lips had just been, his fingers blatantly reenacting what he had been doing with his tongue. After a few endless seconds, Devon let his hand come away from her neck, and he slid into his own chair. He shifted the barstool as close to Sarah’s as he could without sitting on her, his right hand coming to rest lightly across her shoulder.

The manager came over and smiled warmly at Sarah. “Sarah! What a pleasure to see you. It’s been a few months, no?”

“Hi, Steve!” She smiled. “This is Devon Heyworth. He’s visiting from London.”

Devon smiled and said hello to the trendy, thirtysomething Japanese man who sported the obligatory black mock turtleneck that served as the unspoken uniform of stylish restaurateurs the world over.

“I have a wonderful hot sake I just got in. Would you both like to try some?”

“That sounds perfect. Thank you.” Sarah gave the man another broad, open smile that made her eyes sparkle and Devon was fleetingly miffed.

That was
his
smile. For
him
.

He had no interest in pursuing
that
line of thinking, so he forced himself to unwrap his chopsticks, making a tidy, little architectural tent out of the paper on which to rest the sticks, then put his napkin on his lap and started to look at the menu.

“Would you rather I didn’t speak to anyone but you?” she whispered hotly into his ear, letting her left hand settle with delicate pressure on his right thigh.

He smiled but did not look up from the menu. He drew his eyebrows together in mock consternation and set his jaw with a fairly good approximation of a disgruntled child. “Yes. I would.
Rather
. And while you’re not speaking to anyone, you’d best not look at anyone either. Or wave. Or smile. Or really acknowledge anyone but me.” He kept his eyes on the menu, smiling, as if this were a perfectly natural conversation, akin to telling her about his flight or the delay in customs or the paperback he’d read on the plane. As usual, he thought his blatant honesty would be misconstrued for humor, so he looked up expecting Sarah to join in on the joke.

Instead, she reached her right hand up to his face and slowly traced the smile away from his beautiful mouth with the pad of her thumb. “Okay,” she said, so only he could hear. “Ask and you shall receive.”

He put his mouth next to her ear, so his words could be heard over the reverberating sound system. “I don’t like to ask for things,” he said, but what he really meant was that he’d never had to.

She smiled as he spoke, both of them enjoying the easy excuse of the loud music, which forced them to more or less kiss one another’s ears every time they spoke. She put her lips near his ear next and replied, “But if you don’t tell me what you like, how else will I know…”—she paused for bravery—“how to please you?” She pulled away enough for him to see the mischief in her eyes, but also the truth of it. She wanted to please him. Without guile or manipulation, she simply trembled at the pleasure it would be to send him into raptures as he had done to (for? with?) her.

Devon’s thigh tightened under her hand for a moment, and the muscle in his jaw tensed in response to her words. His eyes clouded with something so much more than desire. Sarah might have been frightened if she weren’t so thrilled by the prospect of peeling it all away: the clothes, the veneer of jollity. He was a beast. She wanted to see his raw insides. She was going to hammer and scrape at that facade of jovial, superficial levity. She wanted him to attack her. She wanted to taunt him.

Sarah let her hand wander a few inches up his thigh, and he slammed his own hand over hers, preventing her from feeling the hard proof that he was already quite well pleased.

Devon had spent much of his adult life controlling the world around him—how he wanted to be perceived in society, how he wanted to succeed (or not) in business, how he would fit into his family, how he would pleasure a woman—yet this woman next to him (around him) was impervious. She wasn’t seeing what he wanted her to see or hearing what he wanted her to hear. She pierced his perimeter.

Years (a lifetime) of building walls and moats around himself were nothing to her. She wasn’t laughing at him exactly, but she
was
laughing at his delusional idea that she couldn’t see right through him to the barely contained lust and carnality. Fine. Let her see that. It wasn’t much of a revelation after all. What man would not be brought to his knees by her?

She was mouthing along the words to a French rap song that had started pulsing out of the sound system. Her lips were even more full and petulant when she wrapped them around that language. He was going to make her speak French to him later. He was going to make her do all sorts of things.

He gave up trying to decipher the menu, which might as well have been written in hieroglyphics, for all he could give it his attention. He put the stiff, laminated card back into its little stand in front of him, then leaned into Sarah’s hair and said, “You choose. Whatever you want to order. I’m too distracted.”

She smiled and gave her head a little shake of pleasure. Then turned back to his ear. “I like you distracted. I want to see you really,
really
distracted. Agitated, even.” She nipped at his earlobe and he told her he might have to forego dinner altogether if she kept it up, and that wasn’t a good idea because he needed fuel. He swatted her away with an affectionate, firm hand.