Erin knew what Cali made in tips. Half of the money would pay for more than a few black and white cookies. But the wager was hardly fair. She’d seen Will walk through the front door while on her way to the office.
Still…
“You’re on, sister. But I’ll stash the money in a safe place and add it to your honeymoon fund. I’m thinking Tahiti or Fiji. Sand and surf and sun and very little clothing. You could get by with a carry-on bag as long as it would hold all your condoms.”
“Oh, very funny,” Cali said but her smile was firmly settled in place and the idea one Erin knew wouldn’t be easily dislodged.
And wasn’t that what best friends were for.
7
ERIN SET TWO FLUTES AND the ice bucket into which, thirty minutes ago, she’d placed a bottle of Perrier-Jouet on the table—the very table—occupied by The Daring Duo earlier tonight. Paddington’s was closed, the room dark but for two brass lanterns that remained burning night and day, flanking the bar’s heavy oak door and glinting off the stained glass inset.
She’d hurried the staff through the routine of close, keeping Robin and Laurie both longer than usual to help Cali set the bar room to rights. Will had helped as well, having been more than happy to accept Erin’s offer of employment. He really was a good guy. Cali was a very lucky girl. Erin was thrilled the two had finally gotten together.
She herself had rushed through the register tapes and the cash drawers, the deposit of the evening’s take and the accounting she had to make each night of stock to be reordered and the labor percentage costs versus the total receipts. The analysis of those numbers, however, would have to wait until tomorrow.
Whether or not she rushed or lingered now, she’d have to go over the books again in the morning. Because, no matter how much time she took tonight, her mind was elsewhere and even Rory looking over her shoulder couldn’t guilt her into forgetting about the man waiting for her in the bar.
Forget about Sebastian Gallo. As if.
Tonight, in fact, she’d gone so far as to bring to work a change of clothes, a washcloth and a bottle of her favorite chamomile shower gel. Once she’d finished with the books, she’d taken full advantage of the private office bathroom to pull off her monogrammed polo and gabardine pants. She’d washed away the sweat of the last few hours then changed into the sexy lace bra she wished she’d been wearing yesterday.
Donning her long black skirt and soft cashmere sweater, she did what she could to check herself out using the warped dressing room mirror hanging on the back of the door. After twisting and turning in the restrictive space, she decided that, as long as she didn’t really look as distorted as her funhouse reflection, the emerald green was a very good choice judging by the sparkle in her eyes.
So, by the time she locked up after the others, made with the quick sponge bath and retrieved the champagne, she was frantic Sebastian would’ve given up on her and left.
Finding him should’ve set her mind at ease.
What it did was make her wet.
She slid into the small circular booth, sitting beside him though she left several inches of space between their bodies. She wanted to share the champagne and the celebration. She wanted to be far enough from him to be able to look into his eyes. She wanted the distance because she wanted the temptation of closing it.
Never before had she known a sweeter taboo than Sebastian Gallo. A taboo because he should’ve been off-limits and out of her reach, physically, emotionally, definitely sexually. Yet a taboo she couldn’t resist because he fit so perfectly into her plans. Yes. That was the reason. He was her Man To Do. That was the source of this incredible fascination. It was all about the forbidden, the unexpected, the thrill of the unknown.
Or so she repeatedly told herself.
“So, this is The Daring Duo’s table?” He opened the champagne, smoothly managing the pop of the cork, equally smoothly filling both flutes.
Tiny bubbles danced in the cold, tempting Erin to drink and savor the crisp tingle.
“The very one. But it should be safe. Will wiped down all the benches, Laurie mopped, and Robin replaced the tablecloth.”
The dark indigo and wine fabric brushed Erin’s knees when she crossed her legs, legs left bare beneath the long skirt. As bare as her bottom
sans
panties or thong. She wanted to be ready for whatever Sebastian had in mind and had dressed appropriately—
or undressed, as it were.
Besides, she had her own mind wrapped around a few fantasies where clothing would only be in the way. “Do you really think they’re married? Putting on a show for our benefit?”
Sebastian sipped, paused, sipped again then downed nearly half the contents of his flute. He didn’t answer Erin’s question directly, but poured himself another drink, turning on one hip to better face her.
“Their show isn’t for our benefit, Erin.” He ran his finger around the flute’s fragile rim. Around and around, hypnotically. “It’s for their own. It’s what turns them on, knowing people are watching. It gets him hard. It makes her wet. They use the knowledge of being watched the same way you might use a vibrator.” He looked up then, his gaze heated and compelling. “Or the same way I might use a hot shower.”
Erin didn’t even know what to say. She wasn’t sure she could breathe. She remembered too well his hot shower and the memory of the way she’d watched, the way he’d taken himself in his hand and stroked to completion, the way she’d wanted to wrap her mouth around the plum-ripe and plump head and enjoy his taste as much as give him pleasure.
But she wasn’t going to talk about her vibrator because more often than not her fantasies were lived with only her hands. And, lately, she’d imagined her hands to be his. But she did want to understand about his shower. The decadence of space and design, the potential for hedonistic indulgence, had not been lost on her. Had, in fact, been demonstrated quite clearly.
So…why?
“Tell me about your hot showers. About that space. The benches. The showerheads. That’s not…” She fluttered one hand, reaching for her flute. “That’s not the bathroom of a man who only showers to wash his body. It intrigues me.” She lifted the flute to her lips and, before she sipped she added, “You intrigue me.”
She watched as emotion flickered through his eyes, truth battling fiction, real involvement fighting the tempting attraction of a casual affair.
And she knew whatever he told her, if he told her anything at all, that she would never know with any certainty if he’d chosen to let honesty win the war with the fantasy of a provocatively spun yarn.
Or if he’d only told her what he wanted her to believe in order to keep them wrapped up in this sensual spell.
He inched his way closer, his thigh and hip brushing hers. He draped an arm on the curve of the seat back and toyed with strands of her hair. His gaze was wickedly sharp as it snagged hers and held. “I shower to think.”
Erin’s pulse jumped at the contact. If he moved any closer, if his touch grew more intimate… She might as well give up now on any sort of coherent thought. “You told me you walked to think.”
“I do both.”
“Depending on what you need to think about?” she asked and sipped at her champagne.
He nodded, fingering the fragile stem of his own half-filled flute. “Depending on what I need to work out in my mind. Walking is about fresh thinking. Getting the blood to flow to my brain.”
“And the hot showers? That amazing piece of real estate you call a bathroom?”
She
would
get to the bottom of this if it killed her. Or if it took her all night—even though she was quite certain all that heat and water was about blood flowing to other parts of his body.
He took the flute from her hand and set it on the table. “The showers should be obvious. The steam straightens out the wrinkles the walking puts in my brain.”
That caught her off guard and she chuckled, then reached for her flute again but he took hold of her hand and stopped her. She stared at his much larger hand covering hers that was so much smaller. “I never realized certain thinking was done better under certain conditions.”
“But you do it all the same.” He laced their fingers together, studied her short, practical nails.
“No. I don’t have that luxury.” Though even as she refuted his claim she realized she thought more about her issues with Paddington’s while at the bar, thought more about the missing needs of her personal life while at home.
“It’s not a luxury. It’s what I do.” He reached for her other hand, holding both of hers in both of his, and she shifted on the bench to better face him. “You do it more than you realize. I’m just more conscious of where I need to be, what I need to be doing in order to get my head on straight.”
Her head would never be on straight. Not when he was making love to her hands, massaging her fingers and the base of her thumbs, her palms, her knuckles, the pads at the tips of her fingers. His touch seduced her and made concentrating on this strange conversation more than difficult.
Nearer to impossible. As was any cognizant reply. “You think too much about thinking.”
“Thinking’s what I do.”
That was the second time he’d said that and she knew the remark was worth pursuing. But, at the moment, she wasn’t able to pursue anything at all. She was relaxed and hypnotized by what he was doing to her hands.
Maybe he was a street magician, a magic man like David Blaine, the legal pad filled with notes on the tricks of the trade, all that thinking he did part of the process of working out the subtleties of deception.
It all made sense, she supposed, except she wasn’t supposed to be wondering about who he was and what he did because she was only here for his body, not his mind. Or so she continually worked to convince herself wondering if she’d ever succeed.
So when he took her hands he was holding, cupped her palms and covered her breasts with their joined hands, she forgot all about his shower and his thinking because the lantern light had turned his eyes to a compelling contrast of light green and dark desire from which she couldn’t pull her gaze.
He pressed his forefingers and thumbs to her forefingers and thumbs and worked her hands over her nipples. She gasped, unable to hold back her response because it was the response of her fantasy. This was her fantasy. Her hands that were his hands arousing her darkest desire.
“When I was a boy,” he began, his hands leaving hers and moving to the tiny pearl buttons of her sweater, “I lived on the streets. I never knew anything about my father. All I remember of my mother could be called selective. Only the things I want to recall.”
“Is this true?” she asked, her hands growing still on her breasts as her focus switched from his touch on her body to the touch of his words on her mind.
“Don’t ask questions. Just listen.”
He continued to release her buttons, each tiny seed pearl slipping easily through the grosgrain ribbon facing the cashmere placket. One button, then another, air kissing her skin as the two sides began to part.
Yet, she remained silent, wanting to hear and to feel. Her hands fell to her lap as she concentrated her focus on his voice and his hands.
“I had a toy truck. One wheel was missing, but I didn’t care. I sort of liked that it had to fight against the odds, bumping along the way it did.” He reached the bottom of the unending row of buttons, his knuckles brushing the fabric of her skirt where it covered her belly.
“I rolled it across every inch of the concrete floor in the building where I lived. A building with no glass in the windows. Cardboard didn’t do much against the wind, but that’s all that was left with the plywood having been burned for heat. The ashes made for a great construction site.”
Erin listened to his story, wishing he was doing no more than entertaining her, lulling her with the magic of his words, seducing her with the magic of his hands. But she knew that wasn’t the case, that he was doing much more than that. That what he was telling her wasn’t any sort of tale at all, but the truth she’d been hoping to find.
His timing totally sucked, she grumbled, because how was she supposed to concentrate on what he was saying when he had opened the front of her sweater and was, even now, pushing it back off her shoulders?
His gaze devoured the ecru lace that made up the cups of her bra, lace through which her nipples strained and pouted. He reached for her champagne flute and sipped, then rubbed the wet rim beneath her nipple, over and around before he poured champagne over her breast and leaned his head down to drink.
The sensation caught her struggling to breathe. The air on the damp lace was cool, his mouth was hot, his tongue swirling and circling, his lips sucking the peak into an unbearable tightness rivaling that in her chest, making it hard for her to catch her breath.
Harder still for her trembling heart to beat.
When he finally lifted his head, Erin wondered, what next? What now? How would she ever get enough of what he did to her body? And how long was she going to manage to keep her emotions uninvolved when he told her stories of little boys and their trucks?
“I don’t know how old I was when I was finally picked up. My mother had long been gone. When I wanted to try and get a handle on the timing of things, I remembered the birthday cupcake she must have begged from a bakery. I used that and counted forward. She told me we were celebrating the first day of spring and making it through the last five years. So, I must’ve been eleven—or close to it—when the authorities managed to get their hands on me.”
All the while he’d been speaking, he’d worked the straps of her bra off her shoulders, trapping her in sleeves of cashmere and the bra’s ecru lace. Yet it was the bondage of his gaze that kept her still.
He studied her quandary then reached around to free her arms and release the clasp holding her bra in place. The sweater dropped to the seat behind her. The bra fell to her lap, baring her full breasts that ached for his attention.
“Come here,” he ordered and pulled her onto his lap.
The edge of the table gouged into her back but she hardly noticed. She was too aware of his erection solidly pressed between her thighs and his hands and mouth that were everywhere at once. Kneading flesh so incredibly sensitive and dying for his touch.