“I don’t have one either. Well, there is one in Paddington’s office. I read.” She gestured around the room at his never-ending bookshelves. “Obviously not as much as you do,” she added with a laugh. “I belong to a reading group online. I love seeing how a handful of readers can hold so many opposing views on a book.”
She was nervous. Funny. She hadn’t been the least bit jumpy in either the mailroom or the elevator. But now that they were here, now that he’d let her put what space she needed between them, she was nervous.
“Yeah. I like books.” It was about all he could think of to say.
The corner of her mouth quirked upward. “I noticed.”
She slowly walked toward the closest shelves, scanning the titles, mouthing the words she read, frowning, smiling, enjoying her discoveries which drew the ball in his gut even tighter. Appreciating her silent enthusiasm came a little too close to getting into her mind. And it wasn’t her mind into which he wanted to find himself buried an hour from now.
When she reached for a book to pull from the shelf, he pushed away from the door and made his way to her side. To her back, actually, hovering in a way he figured she’d respond to as threatening. His portrait on the back of his book jackets was shadowed and dim, but he didn’t want to take a chance on her pulling the copy of
The
Demon Takes a Lover
from its slot on the next shelf above.
For a moment she hesitated. Then she slid the book she’d removed back into its place. After that, she waited, her eyes drifting closed as she blew out a long breath that Sebastian took to mean she was ready. He lifted the strap of her backpack from her shoulder and set the heavy canvas tote on the floor. Then he settled his hands on her shoulders, replacing the weight of her backpack with the weight of his touch.
She smiled, a gentle expression he felt in places he wasn’t supposed to feel a thing. And her eyes were still closed when she raised her hands to cover his there where they rested. “Are you going to show me the rest of your place?” she asked, turning in his arms as she did.
He took a step away. Instinct told him she’d been but a moment from rising up for his kiss. The kiss in the mailroom had been calculated and of purpose. To gauge her intent and reaction, her willingness of body, her state of mind.
But he’d succeeded on one or two of the levels because he’d been the one caught off guard. So, no more kisses for now. Not until he had a better handle on where she was coming from. “There’s not much left to see. Nothing more than the kitchen, the bedroom and the bath. And the cat,” he added, as Redrum skulked passed.
Erin’s gaze followed the black cat until the arrogant fur ball disappeared into the kitchen. The she looked his direction again, a tiny smile tilting at the corner of her mouth.
“I know this is going to sound strange, but I would kill for a hot shower before we, uh, do what you’ve promised we’re going to do.” She gave a small shrug. “It’s the bar. The smoke. And, yes. I sweat while I’m working.”
He’d tasted her sweat there on her neck and caught the scent of smoke in hair that smelled of rich herbs. Both had been noticeable, but neither overpowering, appealing to his enjoyment of Erin as a woman.
But the thought of seeing her naked under his shower appealed even more. She could never know how much.
“That’s not a problem,” he said, gesturing toward the back of the loft. “And not even any killing involved.”
“Well, my bark is really much worse than my bite,” she said and fell into step beside him.
They avoided his dump of a kitchen and she didn’t say a word as she took in the state of his bedroom, the way he’d tossed his comforter up over his bottom sheet and called it making his bed. The pile of worn clothing he hadn’t yet taken to the laundry. The notebooks and papers and research texts scattered across his workstation that took up more room than the bed.
A quick glance reassured him nothing she could see would reveal his identity. No, she remained silent, pensive, at least until she got her first look at his bathroom.
Then her jaw totally dropped.
It took her at least a full minute of looking around to find her voice, or to decide what it was she wanted to say. Sebastian understood her awe. He’d felt much the same speechless amazement when he’d finally seen the finished design of his dream the first time.
She covered her mouth with both hands, shaking her head as she looked around the room of chrome and etched glass and black-flecked gray marble. The sleek, onyx floor had her toeing off her work shoes to indulge in the coolly sleek surface.
“And I thought my bathroom decadent.” She shook her head. “This is amazing. No, hedonistic. I may never want to leave.” She ran the tip of one finger over the deep curve of a chrome faucet. “I have a thing about bathrooms, you know.”
No. He didn’t know. He only knew that he did.
She moved into the shower space and he shut the door behind him. The click of the latch echoed as always in the cavernous room, a sound he associated with solitude and safety. Never before had he chosen to share the ritual of his shower. And he had to push away the sharp clutch of awareness of that fact demanding explanation, why this woman, why here and now.
An easy answer. Sex.
Nothing less than sex. Certainly nothing more than exploring this rabid obsession.
He moved away from the door, through the dressing room and past the vanity counters and into the shower’s main space. A sunken hot tub sat unused in one corner. For Sebastian, this room was all about pulsing jets of hot spray beating down from all sides.
And now it was about Erin Thatcher, to see how far he could take her, to see how far she would go. And, once shed of clothes and inhibitions, to see if they could fuck themselves free of the connection they shared—a hot, biting arc of shocking awareness getting in the way of his life.
ERIN TOOK A DEEP BREATH and, hands clenched, turned to face him. She watched while he pulled off boots and socks, tossing the lot halfway across the room. She watched while he reached for the hem of his navy blue Henley pullover and tugged it off. She watched while he freed the button fly of his jeans and skinned the denim down his legs.
Finally, he stood wearing boxer briefs, black, with a pouch that cupped the soft sac of his balls yet barely held the swollen length of his cock.
She wondered how hard a human heart could actually beat in response to arousal. How fast blood could rush to the parts of her body responding to the gorgeous vision of this near naked man standing not four feet away.
His arms were long, roped with tendons and muscles; the round of his shoulders defined their breadth. His legs were those of a runner, his calves firmly developed, his thighs strong, his feet sporting the barest tufts of dark hair. The same dark hair that grew low in soft swirls on his abdomen.
His stomach and chest were smooth, lightly sculpted and a temptation to touch. She curled her hands into fists and struggled to evenly breathe. And then he moved toward her. That body she’d only seen in head-to-toe dark clothing was now so real and so bare and so incredibly, beautifully hers to explore.
His hands went to the front of her shirt and he pulled the hem from where it had been tucked back into her pants. She let him strip if off, wishing she’d worn lacier underwear, knowing the plain black stretch cups of her bra molded nicely to her curves but weren’t particularly sexy. She decided Sebastian didn’t care, as he took the weight of her breasts in his hands and tugged the peaks to attention.
She reached for the clasp at her back, wanting to feel his skin and his mouth, his lips, his teeth, his tongue, but he shook his head to stop her. She let him, hating that she had to wait, loving that she had to wait.
He reached for the button at her waistband, his fingers warm against the skin of her torso, his breath even hotter when he leaned down to blow a stream of air across her taut nipples. The distraction failed to pull her attention from his hands moving into her pants.
When her zipper went down and the heat of his skin warmed her bared belly, shivers set in. She held on to his shoulder as he leaned toward her to pull off her pants, one hand working its way over her backside, the other teasing her front while sliding down the boring black gabardine.
She wasn’t sure how she was going to survive sex with this man when having him take off her clothes nearly brought her to her knees. And this bathroom. It was as if showering in and of itself was an afterthought. The room was built for sex. She wondered how many women had been here before her. She wondered if she really wanted to know.
And, now that she stood here in her plain black bra and black athletic panties cut high on the thigh, she wondered why she was wasting time wondering anything at all.
Sebastian straightened. Erin dropped her hand from his shoulder and caught a glimpse of their reflection in the mirror behind. A smile touched her mouth and Sebastian turned to follow the direction of her gaze.
The lift of his lips was less appreciative than suggestive and gave him the hungry look belonging to a bird of prey. She couldn’t help herself. She stepped back into his body. “What do you think? Perfect as models for Calvin Klein?”
He shook his head, moved his hands to rest on her shoulders. “I don’t think we’re looking at the same thing.”
She was looking at the contrast of black on white, cotton on flesh, the darker skin of his hands on her fair shoulders. Good and bad in a moment worthy of Kodak. Or, better yet, Zalman King’s
Red Shoe Diaries.
This was the moment before the thrill.
She shuddered to think of being stared at, even while she couldn’t tear her gaze away. “Tell me what you see. Then I’ll tell you mine.”
“You’ll tell me your what? Your fantasies, maybe?” A dark brow arched. “The ones you have of you and me?”
Arrogant beast. “You think you star in my fantasies?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
She remembered why she was here and wit escaped her. All she could think of was that he had to know that she dreamed of him, that she’d taken him to bed dozens of times in her mind.
“Am I here for the fantasy?” She met his reflected gaze squarely. “This certainly isn’t reality, is it?”
“Depends on how real you want it to be.”
They were talking in circles. But, fantasy or reality, she needed ground rules—
though better late than never seemed a backward way to work. “Honestly? I want this to be mind-blowing. But I want to know I can walk out of here whenever I’m ready to go. Even if I want to go now.”
Sebastian’s eyes glittered. His hands slipped over her shoulders and down her arms to her wrists. Then he stepped back and away, leaving her body bereft of his warmth. The upward tilt of his mouth wasn’t humorous or cynical, but seemed to signal his acceptance of the reality she’d defined.
Still, she couldn’t help but look when he moved his hands to the waistband of his briefs. She caught the barest glimpse of the slitted tip of his erection before he shucked the shorts down his legs and opened her eyes to the amazing dimensions a man’s body could take.
Her sex opened and swelled and she had to stop herself from reaching back and copping the feel she so wanted to take. She didn’t have time to do more than ogle, however, because he stepped around her, brushing her hip with the edge of his, and pulled the top from a black lacquer box on the vanity.
“I’m going to shower,” he said to her reflection in the mirror. “You’re welcome to join me.”
And that was it. He stepped up into the shower enclosure that wasn’t enclosed at all. She counted as, one, two, three, the shower heads blasted on and, in seconds, steam began to rise.
Hot. That’s all she could think of. Hot water, hot skin, hot sex. A man hotter than any she’d ever known. This chance was one she’d never have again and was exactly the one she’d been wanting. No ties. No expectations. No regrets.
One deep breath later, she walked to the vanity, peered into the box and thought wicked thoughts as she reached for a handful of condoms.
Who was the scary one now, she mused, and turned toward the shower.
SEBASTIAN STOOD BENEATH the center showerhead, his forehead pressed against the arm he’d braced on the wall. The water beat down on his back as he waited. He knew she’d come. He’d always known she’d come. They’d played this game now for months and by morning would have gotten what they wanted.
He just had to make sure his twisted mind didn’t attempt to take things any further, to imagine an involvement that wasn’t there. This wasn’t a fictional creation. He didn’t need to supply deep motives for either of their choices.
He needed to purge his mind of this distraction, finish up his current Slater contract, then do what he could with the germ of a story idea his muse had planted so he could get the insistent bitch off his back. As motivation, he figured it worked.
And Erin, well, he didn’t know what brought her here. Her reasons were her own and unimportant to his plans. But, when he felt her at his back, he forgot about every reason but the one that mattered, the one throbbing like a wild thing between his legs.
Her palms made contact with the center of his back and she stepped into his body. Her breasts were soft and pliant, her belly a sweet curve beneath his backside. He didn’t think she could possibly get any closer but, when her cheek came to rest on his spine, she proved him wrong.
He spread his free hand over his abs and then slid his fingers to the base of his cock where he pressed hard to stop the pulse of semen ready to flow. Not yet, not so soon, not when they hadn’t yet tasted heaven or one another.
Erin nuzzled her face against him, moved her hands to his shoulders, slid her palms the length of his arms, stopping only when her one hand reached his holding his erection. She worked her fingers underneath his palm and silently demanded he show her the way he liked to be stroked.
If her touch wouldn’t have guaranteed an abrupt end to their shared pleasure, he would have gladly spread his legs and let her have her way. Instead, he cupped her hand over the head of his cock, thrust once, oh, damn, into her hand. Then, shaking, he turned.