The Kiss Quotient

by Helen Hoang

  He took a step toward the door before he paused. “We should do something new next Friday. I could take you out.”

  Her heart squeezed. “Out?”

  “Maybe dancing? Drinking? At a club? I hear there’s this new place in San Francisco . . .”

  “I don’t dance.” And she didn’t drink. And even though she’d never been clubbing, she was certain she didn’t do that, either.

  “I can teach you. It’ll help with lessons when we get to them later in the evening. Trust me.”

  Trust.

  This was the second time he’d told her to trust him. What would he think if she told him how difficult it was for her to do things like dancing and drinking? Going out was supposed to be fun. For her, it was work—hard work. She could interact with people if she wanted to, but it cost her. Some times more than others.

  In this case, was the reward worth the price?

  “How will it help with lessons?” she asked.

  “You think too much. It’ll help get you out of your mind, make you relax. Also, I’m really good at dancing. We’d have fun. Are you up to it?”

  She told herself it was the idea of getting out of her mind—whatever that meant—and checking boxes on the lesson plans that decided for her. But that was only a small part of it.

  The biggest part was the eager sparkle in Michael’s eyes. He wanted to go, and he wanted her to go with him. It was like a date. But not, of course. She knew it wasn’t a date.

  “I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to dance.”

  “Does that mean you’ll go?” he asked with a tilt of his head.

  She lifted her chin and nodded.

  White teeth flashed as he smiled. “Great. I’ll make plans and keep you posted. Looking forward to it.” He leaned down and pressed a fast kiss to her cheek before he left the room.

  Stella bolted the door and sank onto the bed in a daze. These were supposed to be simple sex lessons. Why was it getting so complicated? Why had her body betrayed her? And why did she want to please Michael so badly she’d go clubbing for him? Who was she? She didn’t know herself anymore.

  { CHAP+ER }

  9

  “It’s really bad to eat dessert first, you know,” Stella commented.

  She knew she sounded pedantic and boring, but she couldn’t help the nervous chatter spilling from her mouth. Her anxiety over clubbing had been escalating exponentially during the past week, and the main event was just hours away now.

  Also, Michael was holding her hand.

  Her palm sweated so badly she didn’t know how he could stand touching her, let alone act like it was the most normal thing in the world. Oddly, she’d handled foreplay better than this—up until the end, that was—and she’d been naked for that. She couldn’t blame her reaction on her usual aversion to touch. She liked Michael’s touch.

  As she and Michael walked down the busy San Francisco sidewalk hand-in-hand, passersby smiled at them. An old man in a newsboy cap winked at her.

  They thought she and Michael were a couple.

  Stella would have laughed if she didn’t feel like she was somehow taking part in a duplicitous charade. A gaggle of party girls in low-cut dresses flocked by, giving Michael double takes, then triple takes as they giggled into their hands and whispered to one another. They glanced at Stella with open envy that she enjoyed even as she knew she didn’t deserve it. Wearing a slate-gray suit and black oxford shirt, he was particularly scrumptious-looking tonight.

  “Here it is.” Michael released her hand and held open the door for her as she walked into the old-fashioned gelato shop. Black and white tiles checkered the floor. Pink chandeliers illuminated display freezers filled with gelato and toppings. “What’s your flavor?”

  She could barely think about ice cream with his hand resting at the base of her spine like that. Did he know he was doing it? She’d seen men do that with their girlfriends. Stella wasn’t a girlfriend.

  “Mint chocolate chip,” she said.

  “Really? That’s my favorite, too. I’ll get something else, then, so we can try something new.” He idly rubbed her waist as he considered the gelato flavors, and her body heated with awareness.

  “Wait, what do you mean by ‘we’?”

  A mischievous grin curved on his lips. “You don’t want to share with me?”

  The college-aged girl behind the counter stared at Stella like she’d kicked a puppy.

  “No, that’s not it.” Not entirely. After all the kissing they’d done, she knew it was silly to worry about germ transference. The fact was she’d made a detailed analysis of ice cream flavors, and she’d decided this one was the best in existence. “I just know what I like.”

  “We’ll see about that.” He tapped on the display case. “Mint chocolate chip for her and green tea for me.”

  Stella wanted to pay, but he dug bills out of his wallet before she could pry the credit card out from the bodice of her sapphire-blue sheath dress. Once they were seated at a black wrought-iron table by the window, he dipped his spoon into his gelato, tasted it, and grinned a slow, wide grin as he slipped the clean spoon from his mouth and scooped out more.

  “Oh, that’s just ridiculous,” she said. “You look like you’re auditioning for a Häagen-Dazs commercial. No one smiles like that after eating ice cream.”

  He laughed. “It really is good.” His grin was out in full force, and, God forbid, did he have a dimple?

  “Now, I have to try it.” She lowered her spoon toward his bowl.

  “Ah, ah, ah.” Instead of letting her scoop up some herself, he held his spoon to her lips. Her eyes jumped to his, and conflicting thoughts skittered through her mind.

  She shouldn’t do it. This was too intimate. It was crossing a line of some kind. It felt too much like dating—which they weren’t.

  It was just gelato. Just his spoon. He might take it as rejection if she didn’t do it, and she could never, ever in a thousand years hurt him, not even in a trivial way.

  She parted her lips and let him feed her the gelato. Her heart knocked around her chest like a pinball as sweet green tea melted on her tongue. He watched her with expectation, oblivious to his effect on her.

  “Okay, it’s good.” She tried to sound casual. This didn’t mean anything. This wasn’t a date. She was just another of his clients. Keep a cool head. She stabbed her spoon into her gelato.

  “I told you so.”

  “I still like mine best.” She put a spoonful of mint chocolate chip in her mouth. The complex combination of vanilla and mint exploded on her palate. Bits of chocolate crunched between her teeth. Perfection.

  “Let me try it.”

  She held her bowl out toward him, but he didn’t put his spoon in it. He trailed his fingers over her jaw as he tipped her head back and sealed his lips over hers. His tongue speared into her mouth, and the salt of him mixed with the flavor of the ice cream. She didn’t know if she was mortified, shocked, aroused, or all three.

  With a lingering lick on her bottom lip, he pulled away and grinned, his dark eyes intense and hazy.

  “I can’t believe you did that.” Flustered, she tried to scoop herself another spoonful. Her white plastic spoon skittered onto the tabletop.

  She grabbed for it, but his hands wrapped around hers. In the next instant, he was kissing her again—sweet, closed-mouth kisses that still felt scandalous. And too delicious to resist. The gelato shop dropped away. The people disappeared. In that moment, it was just her and Michael, the taste of ice cream, and their slowly warming lips.

  * * *

  • • •

  As Michael eased his tongue between Stella’s parted lips, the chilled silk and mint chocolate sweetness of her mouth drove him out of his mind. He forgot he was seducing her. He even forgot why. All he knew was her taste and the hot sighs of her breath. He wanted to devour her.

/>   Did she know she was making those soft humming sounds as she returned his kisses? Or that her cool fingers had snuck beneath the cuff of his shirt and were caressing his wrist?

  He wanted to slide his hands up her bared thighs and slip them beneath the short hem of her dress so he could touch her again. But the last time he’d done that, he’d scared the hell out of her.

  Because she didn’t want to make him feel the way she had with those three assholes.

  Clients never worried about him like that. Why did she? He wished she’d stop. It was fucking with his head.

  “Easy, man,” a laughing voice interjected. “You’re in a public establishment.”

  Stella tore away, touching trembling fingers to her red lips. She’d surprised him today by trading her glasses for contacts and leaving her hair down in loose waves. She even wore makeup, though he’d kissed off all her lip gloss. That was fine. Like this, she was almost too beautiful to be real.

  When the group of wiseasses at the next table started clapping and cheering, Michael expected her to grow flustered and embarrassed. She didn’t. She ducked her head in that shy way she had and laughed along with them. Her soft smile and the luminous look in her eyes, however, were just for him, and they made him feel like he’d single-handedly vanquished an army. He was the one she saw, the one she smiled at, no one else.

  His plan to seduce her out of her anxiety was working. He had no doubt that by the time he took her home tonight, she’d be ready to check the big boxes on her lesson plans. He should have done this from the beginning. Everyone knew if you wanted inside someone’s pants, you didn’t start in the bedroom. That was what seduction, romance, hand-holding, and dancing were for. That was what these ice cream kisses were for.

  The problem was they were working on him, too. The more time he spent with her, the stronger his attraction to her grew—and not just physically. If he couldn’t check all her boxes within the next two lessons, he’d feel obligated to extend the length of their arrangement, and that was a bad idea. He might do something stupid and fall for her.

  Never once did he imagine he could spin a fairy-tale ending out of such a scenario. Not only were they worlds apart in terms of education and culture, but Stella was rich. If she learned about his dad and the shitty things he’d done to get his hands on money, she’d never be able to trust Michael. There was a reason they had sayings like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, like father like son, and a chip off the old block. He fought against it and hated his dad for it, but he carried that same badness inside himself. He was a ticking time bomb, and he didn’t want Stella to be around when his endurance ran out and he exploded, hurting everyone around him.

  Sex was the way out of this. Check the boxes, finish the lessons, move on. Only now that he knew her better, he wanted to do more than teach her how to be good at sex. He wanted to give her the best nights of her life.

  Tonight, he was giving her fireworks.

  { CHAP+ER }

  10

  After dinner at a fusion restaurant, Stella walked with Michael down streets lined with posh department stores and skyscrapers bearing the names of large banks. Pedestrian traffic—one part tourist, one part native city dweller in Windbreakers, one part young partygoer dressed to the nines—choked the sidewalks and spilled onto the roads, where cars passed at a slow crawl.

  This was the Bay Area at night, something she had never cared to experience. Surprisingly, she was having a good time. When it came to escorting, Michael was the full package. He was great both in and out of bed. His very public kisses should have embarrassed her, but instead, she’d loved them. Who wouldn’t love being kissed by Michael where people could see and admire and become green with envy? He held her hand every chance he got, and he was easy to talk to. She didn’t usually enjoy new things, but Michael made her feel safe. With him at her side, she was a part of this busy San Francisco night, not just an onlooker. There was something novel and wonderful about being in a crowd and not feeling alone.

  They neared a set of red velvet ropes where scantily clad women and men in suits waited in long lines. A bouncer raked coldly appraising eyes over Stella’s body and face, making her lean into Michael.

  “Is this the club?” she asked, feeling her anxiety resurface.

  He wrapped an arm around her and nodded. To the bouncer, he said, “We should be on the list. The name is—”

  The bouncer tipped his buzzed head toward the entrance. “Go on in.”

  Michael brushed a kiss against her temple, tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, and walked with her toward the front doors of 212 Fahrenheit. A third bouncer held the door open for them, nodding at Michael as they passed.

  “They let us in because they think you’ll be good for business,” Michael whispered in her ear.

  Her cheeks heated, and she tried not to let his words go to her head. She’d gotten her hair and makeup done for tonight. This wasn’t really her.

  A decent number of people milled about the interior of the club, and she fisted her hands and gave herself a quick pep talk. She’d been to benefit dinners and work galas. This shouldn’t be a problem. The din of their conversations mixed with subdued electronic music and filled her ears. Thankfully, neither of those things was particularly loud. She could still think.

  The space was one open room decorated in a minimalist modern style with exposed metal beams and sharp edges. A large bar occupied the back, and a DJ controlled the music from a crow’s nest on the adjacent wall. Seating was sparse and came in the form of upholstered booths centered around low metal tables. There were only four such arrangements, and two were occupied.

  “I want one of those tables.” Her voice came out sure and steady, and the sound reassured her, loosened the knots in her stomach. She was doing fine.

  “They’re not free.”

  She slipped her credit card out from the top of her dress and handed it to Michael, laughing when he stared at her with a surprised grin. “I had nowhere else to put it.”

  He slid his hands up her back and pulled her close. “What else is in there?” he asked as he peered at her modest show of cleavage.

  “My driver’s license.”

  “I have pockets, you know. You could have given me your cards and phone to hold for you.”

  “I didn’t think of that. I left my phone at home because I couldn’t fit it in.” But now that she knew it was an option . . . This was why women had boyfriends.

  Except he wasn’t her boyfriend.

  Michael’s fingertip tucked beneath the bodice of her dress and skimmed across the front. It brushed inadvertently across a nipple, making her blood race and breast swell before he found the license and slipped it free. From the twinkle in his eye, she realized it hadn’t been an accident at all.

  His expression softened as he swept his thumb over the photograph on her driver’s license. In the outdated picture, she looked young and extremely shy—an accurate description for the time. She liked to think she’d gained sophistication since then. Just look at where she was now.

  “That was right after I finished my postdoc.”

  “How old were you here?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  The corner of his mouth kicked up. “You look eighteen. Even now, you barely look legal.”

  “Allow me to demonstrate how legal I am by drinking.”

  Feeling drunk off success and empowerment, she marched to one of the empty tables and sat, eyes peeled for waitstaff. Michael tucked a hand into his pants pocket and strode toward her with a relaxed bearing worthy of the runway. All of him was worthy of the runway, but there was also something about that suit. It looked expensive and excellently tailored, yet somehow more chic than anything she’d ever seen on other men.

  He stretched out next to her, close enough that their thighs pressed together, and propped his arm on the seat behind her. She
liked that. A lot. It made her feel like he was staking a claim on her.

  “What brand is this suit? I love it.” With the barest hesitation, she smoothed her hands over the lapels and crisp shoulders of the jacket.

  Searching her eyes, he smiled a slow, beautiful smile. “It’s custom made.”

  “My compliments to your tailor.” She checked the inside and was even more pleased when she couldn’t detect the bunching of hasty seams underneath the fine silk lining. Expert craftsmanship.

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Maybe I should switch. Does he do women’s apparel? Is he terribly busy?” As she spoke, she couldn’t help running her palms down his chest, loving the firmness of his body beneath the starched cotton of his dress shirt.

  “He is very busy.”

  She sighed in disappointment. “My tailor is all right, but she thinks I’m crazy. She stabs me a lot, too. I’m not convinced it’s always an accident.”

  His muscles tensed underneath her hands, and he sat up straighter. His voice had an angry edge as he asked, “You mean she stabs you on purpose?”

  Was he upset . . . on her behalf? The thought sent warmth bubbling throughout her body, and whatever grudges she’d harbored against her vindictive tailor were forgotten.

  “In her defense, I’m very picky. She calls me her diva client,” Stella said.

  “That doesn’t make it okay. She should have better control of her pins. It’s not that hard. Even when I was ten, I still—” He pressed his lips together and raked a hand through his hair. “What things are you picky about?”

  “Oh, well, I . . .” She drew her hands toward herself and laced them together so she couldn’t tap her fingers. “I’m particular about the way things feel on my skin. Tags and scratchy, lumpy seams, loose threads, places where the fabric is too tight or too loose. I’m not a diva, I’m just . . .”

  “A diva,” he said with a teasing smirk.

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Fine.”