“And the enemy of yours, he agreed to throw it out?”
“No. I threatened to go the board at the firm and he read my willingness to do it accurately.”
“And you won the case?”
“Yes. I won.”
I rotate to my side to face him. “Can you tell me about it?”
He glances over at me. “You want to hear about the actual case?”
“I want to hear about how you won it under those circumstances, yes.”
“Why?”
Because I need to hear about someone else overcoming another person’s crimes, and winning, I think. But I say, “Because you intrigue me,” and it’s true. He does.
He laughs at my play on his earlier words, the passing lights illuminating his handsome face. “Aren’t you the witty one, Ms. Winter?”
“Actually, not many people call me witty.”
“You sure about that? Because that comeback in the bathroom where you called me insecure was pretty witty.”
“That was snarky.”
“So, you’re known for your snark?”
“No,” I say, “but I am known for excellent pancakes and an incredible knack for sprucing up a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese like nobody’s business.”
“You’re known for your paint brush,” he amends.
“I’m almost known,” I correct, before I can stop myself, but I’ve said it so I just wade on into it. “Which is like almost winning a case to you I suspect.”
“You downplay your achievement,” he says. “Chris Merit wanted you in his show. That’s pretty damn powerful in the art world.”
“Our families share a connection,” I say. “Apparently more so than I realized.” I change the subject that I wish I hadn’t breeched. “Tell me about winning that case.”
“I’d rather hear about you. Tell me about your art.”
“You teased me with part of a story,” I press. “I really want to hear about how you won the case.”
His phone rings and he hands it to me. “Tell me who’s calling so I don’t drive us into a cliff.”
Stunned by something that feels rather private, I nevertheless take the phone and glance at the caller ID. “It’s says North and why don’t you use Bluetooth?”
He grabs an earpiece from the visor and attaches it to his ear. “Hackers love Bluetooth and I deal with confidential information for powerful people. And I need to take that call, sweetheart. It’s my associate working on the depositions with me.”
“Of course,” I say, the endearment doing funny things to my belly all over again.
“Punch the button for me, will you, before he hangs up?” he says, battling his headset.
“Yes,” I say, turning down the radio for him, “but take the next right and it’s going to be about five miles before we turn again.”
“Got it,” he says, and I hit the button to answer the call, and then face forward, sinking into my seat. I feel as if I’m intruding on his world now, when really, I haven’t even searched him on the internet or otherwise, as he has me. It’s a thought that does not sit well. I really don’t want him in my world, just in my bed. I don’t want anyone in this hell with me right now. I inhale and shut my eyes, listening to him speak, and I don’t remember ever being so attracted to a man’s voice. But there is something about his deep, masculine voice that is almost musical to me, and judging from the warm heaviness in my body, a song that plays all the right notes for me.
“No,” Nick says to the person he’s labeled as “North” in his phone. “Don’t ask him that. He’ll walk right around the topic and you’ll alert him to what comes next,” he pauses to listen. “No. Explain your reasoning and you’re going to need a miracle to get me to agree to this.”
As his conversation continues, I’m struck by how certain Nick is about everything he says and does, wondering how long it’s been since that was me. And it was. There was a time when I was young and thought I could rule the world with a paintbrush, back when I was as confident as he is today. When I’d thought big dreams and hard work would get me to the level of success Nick is at now. But I wasn’t Nick. I wasn’t hard enough. Life chipped away at me, and right now, that makes me feel more of that anger I’ve been feeling. Only I realize it’s not really at my mother’s fault at all. She did what she did but she didn’t make my choices for me. I did. I chose how I let me handle me.
“And I’m off,” Nick announces.
“And all is well?” I ask.
“All is well when I finish a deposition with a settlement.” His brow lifts and he surprises me by turning the radio back up and testing my musical knowledge. “Do you know this one?”
“Dawn from Also sprach Zarathustra, Richard Strauss. Did you know that this is the opening to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey?”
“Did you know that Elvis used it for his entrance to concerts?”
“I did,” I say. “Mostly because I had an art teacher who not only thought painting to classical music gave the work depth, but she was also insanely in love with Elvis. Painting to Elvis gave the work sexiness.”
He laughs, a deep rumble, that feels real to me when not much else has lately. Maybe that’s why I need this man so much. That lust we share, can’t be faked. It’s real. “Is that art teacher the reason you know classical music?” he asks, pulling me back to the present.
“Oh yes,” I say. “That’s how I know classical music and every word to every Elvis song ever recorded. Doesn’t everyone know the words to every Elvis song ever recorded?” I laugh, his lighter mood lighting mine as well. That is until he asks, “Do you still paint to classical music and Elvis?”
I am instantly thrust back in time, to the excitement I once woke up to every day to just hold a brush. “Sometimes I’d just turn on the music and let it run through songs until one inspired me.” Except today, I think. He was my inspiration.
“Why was that statement past tense?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I think I’ve made it pretty obvious that I’m good at complicated,” he counters.
“I’m not. And take the next right. You’ll go down about a half a mile and then turn at the white gate. That leads to my property. You can park in the driveway. I left the garage door opener in my car and the door sticks half the time anyway.”
“Back to complicated,” he pushes.
My phone buzzes with a text and I lift his jacket, searching for my purse under the sea of cloth. By the time I have it in my hand, my phone buzzes again, and I unzip my purse, digging it out to glance at a text from Josh: Where are you? Your car’s still here but I can’t find you.
“Oh no,” I murmur, “I didn’t say goodbye to Josh.” I turn to Nick. “What was I thinking? He’s my agent and I said nothing to him.”
“Text him, sweetheart, or we’ll never get to those morning-after pancakes.”
“Who says you’ll be around for pancakes?”
“Me.”
“You know, I don’t like arrogant men.”
“Since we both know I make a living being arrogant, what’s my appeal? My money. My good looks.” His lips curve. “I’m just so damn polite that you can’t help but lose your panties?”
“You’re bad.”
“Dirty. And bad. So, is that the appeal?”
“It’s definitely not your money,” I say, while he pulls us onto the driveway by my house, dim lights casting us in a glow.
“Most women like the money,” he says, killing the engine.
“Which means you can’t ever know if a woman wants you for you or for your money. There’s a reason you’re what, thirty-five or thirty-six, judging by your career, and either divorced or never married.”
“Thirty-six,” he says, turning to me. “Never married and never plan to be married. I don’t believe in marriage.”
“Then I guess we are perfect for each other,” I say.
“Are we now?”
“For tonight,” I confirm and when his lips quirk, eyes li
ghting, I quickly add, “That’s not a challenge.”
“Of course, not,” he says, and there is the distinct vibe radiating off him that he knows something I don’t know.
“What does that mean?”
“Whatever I make it mean,” he says, giving a low chuckle before he adds, “I’ll come around and get you,” and he’s already exiting the car, clicking the locks before he departs. I turn to my door, and try to open it but it won’t budge. Frowning, I try again, and still it won’t move. Nick grabs the door and opens it, and I twist around to get out, and to go right along with the rest of my day, my skirt catches on my heel. Much to my distress, as I rotate to face him, the slit down the middle of my dress tears straight to my bare-naked crotch.
I gasp, and as much as I want to cover myself, my heel and my skirt are still not where they should be. But when embarrassment would kick in, Nick is suddenly squatting in front of me, his hand on my knees, his gaze sliding to my sex, lingering and then lifting to mine, the connection stealing my breath.
“If you’re trying to seduce me,” he says, his expression all hard lines, and passion, before he adds, “it’s working.”
It’s cold outside, and I am warm all over. “I…that wasn’t the idea.”
He leans in and kisses my leg just above my thigh high, and then, to my shock, he leans in and licks my clit, and then he’s doing this slow teasing swirly thing with his tongue, and now I really can’t breathe. I brace myself on the dash and just when I think I might melt right here in this car, Nick pulls back and stands, taking me with him.
I pant with the impact. “You can’t keep doing that to me,” I whisper. “Seriously. That is—”
He leans in and kisses me, hand at the back of my head, his tongue now doing that same slow, sexy tease he’d just done in much more intimate places, before he speaks, “I won’t stop next time. That’s a promise.”
NICK LACES HIS FINGERS WITH mine and guides me away from the car, shutting the door. Somehow though, instead of walking forward, we’re standing toe-to-toe again, and when our eyes meet, there is this flutter in my chest that somehow turns into heat radiating across my chest and down my arm to where our fingers touch. To where he holds my hand, and with all I have dared sexually, with good and bad outcomes, with all I know he will dare of me, this is still what affects me.
“You hold onto me like you think I’m going to run,” I murmur. “You wouldn’t be here if that were my plan.”
“I hold onto you like a man who doesn’t want to stop touching you.” He reaches up and caresses my check, the touch tender, my body reacting, my breasts heavy, my nipples puckered under the lace of my bra. That flutter in my chest repeating. “Let’s go inside where I don’t have to,” he adds.
“Yes,” I say. “Please.”
His lips curve. “Please.”
“I’m polite too,” I say, but I don’t add anything about my mother teaching me right, because she did not. My father did.
“I wonder if you’ll be so polite when I finally get you naked.”
“Don’t count on it,” I say, and it’s meant to be playful but there is this pulse of adrenaline in me that makes it more raspy and needy.
He knows it too. I see it in the darkening of his eyes. “Come,” he says, draping his arm around my shoulders, and turning us toward the door, leaving my hands free to tug his jacket around all my gaping, naked places, while I’m thinking about being truly naked with this man. And with each step we take, I am aware of how our legs move together, hips aligned. How he holds me close, touching me just as he said: Like he doesn’t want to stop touching me.
We’ve just reached the eight steps leading to the dimly lit porch when my cellphone rings in his jacket pocket I’m still wearing and I stop dead in my tracks. “Oh no,” I say, digging in the pocket. “I didn’t send Josh that text. It’s going to be him and where is my phone? I can’t find it but I hear it.”
Nick moves to the step in front of me, and reaches in the opposite pocket from the one I’m struggling with, retrieving my phone, which has stopped ringing. “Thank you,” I say, reaching for it, and I have no idea how this man handing me my cell, has turned into something sexual, but he’s holding it and my hand.
“I still don’t have you inside the house,” he murmurs softly, walking backward to lead me to the porch, only steps away from the door. “I still don’t have you naked.”
And that’s when my phone starts to ring again.
Nick sighs. “I’m starting to feel like this is a threesome.” He releases me. “Talk to the man so I can have you to myself.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just be done.”
I nod, and answer the call, “Josh.” And then I say that word again, “Sorry. I just saw your text.”
Nick walks to the door and leans on it, and while I intend to walk to the security panel to key in my code, I instead find myself standing just above the steps, embracing my first opportunity to fully appreciate Nick without a suit or tuxedo jacket on. His white shirt stretching across an impressive broad chest, his arms, also impressive from what I can tell, folded in front of said impressive chest.
He notices my attention, of course, because how can he not when I’m boldly watching him, he arches a brow, the look on his face, a wicked invitation. Josh says something about the parking lot followed by “And I texted and tried to call you,” while I have no idea what else he’s said.
Cutting my gaze from the distraction that is Nick, I reply with, “It didn’t ring,” and cross to the keypad, on the wall, right next to the spot Nick leans on.
“And you didn’t think about finding me before leaving?” Josh demands.
“I had car problems I was dealing with.” I key in my code to have it beep in rejection.
“Which means you were leaving without finding me,” he accuses.
Giving up on the code to the door, wishing now that I didn’t let the security company convince me to use this keypad system, I rotate and rest against the wall, next to Nick. Focusing now, on surviving this conversation with Josh. “You disappeared along with the crowd.”
“Where are you now?” he asks. “Do you need help with your car?”
“I got a ride home.”
“A ride with Nick Rogers,” Josh says, disapproval in his voice.
“Josh—”
“That’s a yes,” he says. “He’s an arrogant bastard, that will fuck you and leave you. You know that, right?”
A fizzle of unease slides through me at the harsh words, that do not fit Josh, but then again, he’s still close to a past that I’ve left behind. A man that I’ve left behind and I’m not going to go there with him with Nick standing here, or ever, if I have my way. “Thank you for the advice,” I say, trying to recreate the professional barrier between us that seems to have fallen. “And for everything tonight. I’m excited that you liked my new work. I can’t wait to see what happens with it,” I can feel Nick’s eyes on me, heavy, interested.
“In other words,” Josh says, “he’s with you, and you don’t want to talk.”
“Now’s not a good time,” I confirm.
“Right.” He’s silent several beats. “Just be careful.”
“I always am.”
“We’ll talk before I head back to LA.” He hangs up and I stuff my phone back in the jacket pocket. “Well, that went well,” I say, glancing over at Nick. “And I have to call the security company. I don’t have a key. I use the keypad.”
Nick pushes off the wall and steps in front of me. Big and overwhelmingly male, but he really makes overwhelming delicious. “What’s the code?” he asks.
“8891 but I tried it twice. It won’t work.”
He keys in the code and the front door clicks. “Of course, it opens for you,” I murmur.
“You were focused on Josh,” he says, and instead of making a move for the door, he presses one hand on the wall above my head, those blue eyes of his, too intelligent, too probing as he repeats Josh
’s words. “An arrogant bastard who will fuck you and leave you,” he says.
“You heard. Obviously.”
“I heard. And obviously, he doesn’t know that the description ‘arrogant bastard who will use you and leave you’ makes me perfect for you. Why is that, I wonder?”
“I could ask you the same.”
“You could,” he agrees, “but right now. We’re talking about you. Should I guess your reasons you like your men here and gone?”
“Should I guess the reasons you like your women here and gone?”
“Go for it, sweetheart,” he says, and the challenge is clear. If I make my guess, he can make his, without my rightful objection. But I do object, deny, and reject, the idea of this man, who sees too much as it is, seeing anything more than my body. The rest is off limits.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to know. Who you have in your bed, or in your life, aside from a wife you’ve said you don’t have, is none of my business. And we’ve already filled this night with too many words. Tonight isn’t about conversation.”
I dart away from him to the door, opening it, but I also know that I do not have to rush. He won’t rush after me. He’s a man of control. A dominant, that will follow at his pace, pursue in his way. And he’ll catch me but it won’t be for conversation, which is exactly why I’m making him pursue me. Entering the house, it hits me that the light is on, when I don’t remember it being on, but then, it was daylight, and I was in a rush. Dismissing the concern as nothing, I walk down the hallway, and I’m almost to the living room, when I hear Nick’s steps in the foyer, the door shutting behind him, locks turning. Adrenaline rushes through me, no longer a slight bump in energy, but a fierce surge, but really, how can it not? Nick Rogers, is nothing, if not an injection of adrenaline. And while I call him a dominant, that isn’t just a personality trait. He is a sexual dominant, and as I expected when I threw out the term “hard limit,” experience in a world where that word has heightened meaning. That knowledge should have been enough for me to decline this encounter, and yet, it wasn’t. I don’t know what that says about who I am, or what I want or need, and I haven’t for two years now. Maybe before, but maybe that’s the gift Nick will give me. I’ll figure it out through him.
Provocative Page 8
