Ready to enjoy the rest of her evening, she pulled her hand away and focused on her menu. The relief that filled her was so tangible she could almost taste it...reminding her she was in the nicest restaurant in town.
“Ooo,” she chirped in delight. “The ravioli looks good.”
But when she grinned at Braxton, he looked like in was in pain.
“Not to be a guy or anything.” He cringed. “But, umm, this will eventually lead to—” He broke off, his face filling with embarrassed color. “Well, you’re not saying you
never
want sex in this relationship, or whatever this is that we’re doing. Are you?”
Actually, yeah, she had been trying to say that. Merely befriending her dad’s boss has to be less of a betrayal than starting a hot, torrid affair with him. But something strange happened whenever she was in this man’s presence. He must have a spell over her, because she was powerless against him. She couldn’t stop looking at him, smiling at him, or denying him anything.
“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, no, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m sure someday we can...” Her words trailed off as their server showed up with their drinks.
Braxton, however, didn’t need her to continue. He’d already caught the gist of her answer. He looked relieved and grinned up at the waiter as if the man were his best friend.
After that little discussion, dinner progressed nicely. Relieved she’d gotten their sex talk out of the way and it hadn’t ended in a fight or tense silence, Lenna relaxed.
When their food arrived, she took a bite before grinning across the table at him. “How’s work?” she asked.
He lifted his eyes from his lasagna, looking startled. “Uh, it’s fine.” Then his gaze turned suspicious. “Why?”
Lenna rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. I was trying to make conversation.”
His shoulders relaxed. “Oh. Sorry.” Pink tinged the tops of his cheeks, making him look adorable. He cleared his throat. “Work is good,” he started again. “Actually, I’m thinking about expanding the enterprise.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Really? How so?”
His eyes brightened, making them bluer than she’d ever seen them before. She watched his face grow animated as he spoke about turning Farris Industries into an international provider, and the strangest thing happened to her. She’d just told him she didn’t want to sleep with him, and he’d agreed to keep his hands off her. But his easy agreement only seemed to make the temptation stronger. She wanted to touch, nibble, and lick.
She kept remembering what he looked like with his shirt off. Little flashbacks of their night together in her apartment plagued her. She couldn’t help but recall the silken, wet pleasure of his mouth on her flesh. The snug thickness of him inside her. It made her skin tingle in every little place he’d kissed her. Whenever he lifted his glass to take a drink, her gaze fell to his hand. She shivered, knowing exactly what those long, talented fingers could do.
Lenna grew aroused just sitting across from him. As he changed the subject and asked about her job hunt, sounding interested and concerned about her having no prospects, she squirmed in her chair, wanting to climb across the table and into his lap to straddle his thighs.
When they stood to leave, he set his palm on the small of her back to usher her out. His touch shot a zing straight to her loins. She couldn’t meet his gaze as she walked stiffly beside him.
She could barely breathe when they shut themselves alone inside his Land Rover. God, she just wanted to take him right there. And what was worse, he didn’t seem afflicted by the same unsettling attraction. At all!
He put the automobile into drive and glanced over. “Want to go dancing or something?” he asked, as if he were blissfully unaware how wild her hormones were currently raging.
“No,” she answered honestly.
Lord, she couldn’t dance with him. She couldn’t get that close, with her body sliding against his and her hands on—
She shivered.
Heck, no. Dancing was out of the question.
“So you want me to take you home?” he guessed, sounding depressed about that possibility.
Lenna’s shoulders slumped. “No, not really,” she admitted.
But where could they possibly go? If they went to her small, cramped apartment, they’d end up in bed. Thinking his place had to be larger with plenty of space for her to keep a safe distance away and yet still be with him, she said, “Why don’t you show me where you live?”
He swiveled his head to gape at her. “Um...yeah. Sure, we could do that. If that’s what you want.”
She nodded, and he pulled away from the curb.
When they parked in front of a fancy brownstone condo, Lenna leaned forward and looked out her window. “Wow, this is nice.”
Braxton was suspiciously quiet. He pocketed his keys and walked her to the entrance. Once he had the door open, he quickly reached around the corner to turn on a light. Then he stepped back to let her precede him inside.
Shoving his hands into his pockets, Braxton followed her around to the different rooms as she gave herself a tour.
“Whoa,” was all she could think say. His home was amazing. “It’s...huge. And really clean”
Braxton shrugged. “I use a cleaning service.”
Lenna nodded and continued strolling. When she entered a room that was obviously his bedroom, she jerked to a stop in the doorway and backed out.
Dangerous territory.
Braxton sent her a small, knowing smile. Blushing, she hurried down the hall away from any glimpse of a bed.
The last room they found themselves in was the kitchen. Yes, good. Kitchens were nice, nonsexual rooms. Lenna folded her hands at her waist and took in the top-of-the-line appliances surrounding her.
Wow. This was one fancy kitchen. Everything was made of chrome and so sleekly polished, she could see her reflection staring back at her a hundredfold.
She wondered how much he actually cooked.
Stopping in front of one rather large appliance, Lenna cocked her head to the side and tried to figure out what exactly the stainless steel object was. It looked like a huge, overrated coffee machine.
“Um...” She glanced at Braxton, who leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and watched her with his hands in his pockets. “What is this thing?”
His cheeks brightened. Pushing off the doorway and edging closer, he examined the object as well. “It’s, uh...” He paused to scratch at the back of his neck. “It’s a latte maker espresso machine,” he finally answered.
“Oh.” Lenna nodded, feeling like an unrefined moron. “Of course.”
Braxton continued to look uneasy.
“So do you make lots of lattes?” she asked, eyeing the machine. He didn’t look like an espresso enthusiast to her. She would’ve guessed him for a regular coffee drinker.
Braxton flushed and finally grinned. “Never have,” he admitted.
Lenna stopped looking at the latte maker espresso machine to turn toward him with an expression full of confusion and crinkled eyebrows.
“So, then why do you have a latte maker?”
Braxton’s lips quivered as if he was trying to hold back a smile. “What?” he asked innocently. Then he caved. His shoulders slumped. “Okay, fine. I thought it looked cool.” When her mouth fell open with incredulous disbelief, he argued, “Isn’t everyone allowed to have at least one basically worthless appliance in their kitchen?”
Lenna threw her hands in the air as if calling defeat. “That’s it,” she announced. “We’re making lattes.”
“Okay,” he said. “Fine by me.” But when she continued to stare at him, he frowned. “What?”
“Well, I don’t know how to use this thing,” she said.
He snorted. “And you think I do?”
Lenna rolled her eyes as she sighed. “Where’s the manual?”
In return, she received a blank look. “Uh...” He glanced around the kitchen as if he thought the instruction booklet would appear in thin air before them.
She groaned, setting her hand against her forehead, “You threw it away, didn’t you?”
Once again, Braxton didn’t have a ready answer. “I might not have.” He opened a drawer and peered inside.
Lenna joined the hunt and was the one who discovered the manual a few minutes later.
“
Voilà
!” she exclaimed, cheerfully holding it up.
As she read through the instructions, she called out the different supplies they would need, directing Braxton to fetch them from his cabinets.
“Okay,” she announced, once they were ready to start their project. “First we need to pour the cold water into the water chamber.”
Braxton looked at the warm water he’d taken from the faucet. “Should I chill it in the freezer first?” he asked.
She laughed. He looked so boyishly sincere.
“Just give it here.”
He promptly handed over the measuring cup.
“Alrighty then,” she murmured, returning to the instructions. “Now...we place the coffee basket—” She paused to glance at the machine. “Where’s the coffee basket?”
“The coffee
basket
?” Braxton asked, raising his eyebrows. Then he lifted one finger. “You wait right here. I’ll go ask Little Red Riding Hood if we could borrow
her
basket.”
Making like he was actually going to leave the room, Braxton started for the door. Lenna laughed and grabbed after him. She caught him by a belt loop and tugged him back. He turned toward her as she did so and gave her a devastating, yet ornery, grin that stopped her heart for a full second.
Wanting to ignore the sexual pull, she quickly let go of him and turned away. Focusing on the machine, she said, “Here it is.”
Keeping her back to him in the vain hope of ignoring how absolutely tantalizing he was, she put a bigger effort into fixing their lattes. “So.” Turning her attention back to the instructions, she read aloud. “Once the liquid starts to flow, it should have brown foam on top.”
“Brown foam?” Braxton wrinkled his face in horror. “That doesn’t sound healthy.”
Lenna threw back her head and laughed. How did he make everything cute and hilarious yet so freaking erotic?
Braxton came up behind her.
“Why do you have to look so sexy doing that?” He set his hands on the counter, one on each side of her. Though he left her plenty of room to move and didn’t lay a finger on her person, he’d successfully trapped her.
She sucked in a gasp as his breath brushed her ear. “Can I ask you something?”
Finding it more and more difficult to concentrate on her latte making, she managed to nod. “Sure.”
“It’s about this no-sex policy we started.”
Lenna dropped the measuring cup, dumping coffee grounds across the countertop. As she rushed to catch the clattering plastic and contain the spilled grounds, Braxton covered her fingers with his to stop her.
“Because I was just wondering,” he murmured, “is
just
sex prohibited or can we not fool around either?”
Then, as if to answer his own question, he bit her earlobe and sucked it between his teeth, tickling it with his tongue, just before he slipped a hand around her waist.
“Stop,” Lenna said in a throaty voice, even as she moved her head to the side in order to give him better access. “You’re making me forget what I’m doing.”
“I don’t think I
can
stop.” Another tug from his teeth caused her to moan. “I’ve become quite attached to this ear.”
Lenna moved back against him. “Okay,” she told him in a high voice. “We can fool around.”
His low chuckle had her loins tightening.
Lenna covered his fingers at her waist. Guiding him, she started to rotate his palm around her stomach. He found his way under her shirt and caressed her warm abdomen, circling her belly button. Every once in a while, his fingertips dipped an inch into the waistband of her skirt. When Braxton licked under the ear he’d been nibbling on, Lenna shuddered.
“You’re going to make the other ear jealous,” she purred, forgetting all about lattes and celibacy.
“Well, we can’t have that.” He obediently started to tease her other lobe as his fingers continued to toy with her abdomen.
He wasn’t moving up toward her bra or down into her underwear, but he was staying chastely at her waist, driving her insane.
Taking control of matters, Lenna sucked in her stomach, grabbed his wrist, and manually moved his hand south.
“Oh, God, Lenna,” he gasped when his fingers slipped inside her panties. “Are you sure?”
Hell, no, she wasn’t sure.
But she bit her lip and nodded. Braxton ditched her ear and rested his forehead on the back of her shoulder as he encountered pubic hair. Needing to grab onto something for support, she bowed forward and gripped the edge of the counter in front of her.
“Don’t stop,” she told him.
He let out a strangled laugh. “Wasn’t gonna.”
His fingers kept on their slow and steady path until he had one planted firmly in her warm center. Then two.
Oh God, three.
Lenna rocked against him. She threw back her head and smiled when he groaned.
“That feels...so good,” she told him as he stroked her, coming all the way out to slick moisture over the sensitive outer rim and then going back in for more. He repeated the action again and again with maddening slowness.
Lenna’s fingernails dug into the tiled countertop. “Don’t stop...please. Braxton.
Braxton
!”
He made an unintelligible sound and quickened the pace, then latched his mouth onto the back of her neck and cupped a breast with his free hand. Lenna bucked against him, and her body splintered.
She cried out a choking scream, her hips jerking erratically. Braxton held on tight, massaging her through the storm.
By the time she released her hands from the countertop, she was surprised her fingers hadn’t left grooves. She stared at the smudged fingerprints she
had
made, and laughed.
Oh, wow. She felt good. She felt wonderful.
Unable to contain her body’s delight, she continued to laugh.
“Oh, my God. That was fabulous, Braxton...”
Behind her, he slowly removed his hand from her panties and took a step back. “God damn. I could become addicted to this. You come apart too easily.”
Lenna spun around, absolutely glowing. But her smile fell when she saw him physically shaking. His eyes were unfocused, and a sheen of sweat matted his hair to his forehead.