Down, girl, she ordered herself as the butterflies took flight again, but it was too late.
His smiled widened as his gaze swept over her, his knowing look challenging her to say yes simply because he could tell she wanted to. For the first time in her life, Regina literally felt her willpower being sucked away as she all but drowned in the man’s emerald gaze.
*** *** ***
Ben looked the woman over thoroughly, feeling genuine relief when he saw no ring on her left hand. She was older than he had guessed from across the room, with faint but definite smile lines softening her eyes. Ben liked the lines. They were marks of a real woman, someone with character, he thought happily, thanking the instinct that had sent him across the floor to her.
“Just a dance—I promise I won’t keep you long,” Ben said sincerely, holding out his hand.
Sighing reluctantly, and looking more resigned than pleased, the woman put her hand in Ben’s and walked out to the dance floor with him. Her obvious reluctance made him smile even more.
Sure, Ben could tell he made her a little nervous, but her gaze returned his interest, which he found intriguing. Her color was high and her breathing erratic as she stepped into his arms. It was exciting as hell to coax her, Ben realized, and equally exciting to think the woman wanted to be coaxed. It also didn’t take long for him to notice how thrilled he was to get his hands on her at last. If she hadn’t felt so good, Ben would have laughed at his reaction.
Too delighted with his own spontaneity to be shocked with the speed and direction of his thoughts, Ben simply wrapped the woman in his arms and spun her off to the music. In her low heels, she was the perfect match to his five-ten height. They moved around the floor slowly while she worked out her comfort level with dancing with him.
Ben sighed in relief when she finally relaxed, and used the opportunity to move in to her a little more. His face brushed her hair when they had to dodge the other dancers, and Ben noticed she smelled like a rich dessert, something with vanilla ice cream and warm cherries. His body tightened, reminding him it had been a very long time since he had even thought about dessert, much less wanted something so specific.
Like an impatient kid, Ben found himself testing the attraction between them by pulling her even closer, inappropriately close for strangers no doubt, but the fleeting concern didn’t stop him. Ben found he was suddenly beyond polite as her scent filled him and he felt himself connect to a woman for the first time in years.
She drew in a sharp breath as their fronts brushed. Since he pretty much had the same reaction, Ben ran a hand across her back to let her know. To his amazement, she leaned into him further then, bringing her breasts against his chest until he could actually feel her heart beating rapidly against his. Ben took another deep breath, pulling her scent further inside him.
When he felt her sigh and sag against him in surrender to what was happening between them, Ben swallowed hard. The urge to kiss her came swift and strong—too strong not to act on it. Dipping his head, intending to follow the urge, Ben felt her ease their bodies apart.
Then he noticed her flushed, almost embarrassed face. Instead of feeling guilty, it only confirmed for Ben that she felt exactly as he did. That was why when she started to draw away, Ben immediately tightened his hold to stop her full escape. When their fronts brushed again during the silent struggle, they finally just stopped moving altogether.
Then they were just standing still in the middle of the crowded dance floor, staring at each other in shock, arms still linked in the dance form. It was a toss-up though which one of them was breathing harder.
When Ben checked in with himself about what to do, his instincts laughed at his hesitation.
“We need to take a walk,” Ben said decisively, pulling the woman along with him, not really giving her time to formulate a reasonable answer or to say no.
“No, really—I can’t, I—I really don’t have time to take a walk,” she protested, trying to clear her throat to speak more clearly even as she reluctantly let him lead her outside.
Ben slowed a little as they followed the brick path through elaborate English gardens. They passed by red roses draped and flowing over trellises. A large fountain spilled water over several layers of concrete and rock. Finally, he stopped near a very old magnolia tree already half in bloom. Ben walked them over to it, his urge to connect to her overcoming his usually impeccable manners.
Using the full length of his body, Ben pressed her into the tree, not the least bit surprised when she let him. He’d never been so in sync with a woman.
“I know this is crazy, but I really need to kiss you,” Ben told her at last, hoping the explanation was enough to justify his boldness. The woman looked at him with confusion again, but also with the most honest desire Ben had ever seen in a woman’s eyes. His heart beat hard in anticipation, knowing she wasn’t going to stop him from kissing her, and even harder thinking she might want what was happening as badly as he did.
“Okay,” she conceded softly, her sexy voice a tiny whisper across the distance between their mouths.
Ben kissed her lightly at first, testing the strangeness of her lips against his, but found only a sense of absolute rightness. He tasted the sweetness of the grape he’d watched her eat earlier. Then he kissed her a little harder, letting his tongue ride the seam of her lips, asking to be let inside. When she finally opened her mouth to him on a moan, his tongue dove in, delighted to tangle with hers at last.
And as he kissed her, Ben explored her, letting his hands travel boldly over her body. When his hands eventually found her hips, he held her tightly to him, rocking rhythmically against her as his tongue made love to her mouth.
The sweet pleasure of what they were doing gave Ben the most astounding sense of hope.
Need deepened and Ben eagerly ground his still growing erection against her, pushing her back into the tree with little thought of her comfort or his.
On some level Ben knew it was crazy to make out with a woman he didn’t know, but he still didn’t want to stop. Like some randy teenager, the question of who she was simply became secondary to the one about how long he would have to wait before he could be inside her.
*** *** ***
Regina ignored the alarms sounding in her brain about kissing a stranger. Delighted with the erotic madness the man was creating with his mouth and hands, she chose to forget the fact she didn’t even know his name. She didn’t even want to acknowledge the tree scraping her back through her dress. Instead, she willingly let him rock his impressive hardness against her, the pleasure of each press sending her spiraling a little higher.
Surrounded by the wonderful smell of magnolia blossoms, what they were doing was a fantasy come to life for her. The man’s mouth on hers was its own kind of heaven, better than any erotic dream, better than any man she had ever known.
Where had he been all this time, she wondered?
Then an awful thought intruded. What if she hadn’t come tonight? What if she hadn’t agreed to help Lauren? No—no, Regina denied in a panic, pulling the man with the talented mouth tighter to her and straining against him more, thrilled every time she felt him pulling her hips up against his in time with what his mouth was doing.
From far away, she heard Lauren calling her name. The man pulled away a little, ceasing to rock against her.
“No—please, don’t stop kissing me,” Regina begged, groaning into his mouth, kissing him again.
He laughed roughly, hiding his face against her throat. “I don’t want to stop either, but someone is coming,” he told her sadly, his voice husky and low in her ear.
Yes, and I so wish like hell it was us, Regina thought sadly, her true self surfacing at last from the haze of lust he had generated. It was all she could do not to speak the complaint aloud.
Regina closed her eyes, trying to reign in her libido before she exploded. As Lauren’s voice got closer, the man stepped away from her body, pulling her away from the tree in the process.
/> His eyes were still dazed, still dark with passion. Regina imagined hers looked pretty much the same.
She sighed hard in resignation. “Lauren,” she called, having to clear her throat before continuing. “Stop yelling. I’m over here.”
Regina reached behind her and dusted her rear to make sure no tree bark had stuck there.
“It’s time for your speech,” Lauren said, amused, taking in Regina’s mussed hair and missing lipstick, as well as Ben’s stunned expression and his rumpled clothes. She couldn’t help smiling at their guilty expressions.
“Get your Dr. Logan butt back inside and dazzle some money out of these people for me,” Lauren teased. “Hi, Ben. I see you met my friend Regina.”
Ben looked at the woman he’d been kissing in absolute shock.
“Regina? Regina Logan? You’re—Dr. Regina Logan?” he exclaimed. He ran a hand through his hair as he glared at her. “Shit—I don’t believe this. Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
Over the years, many men had rejected her just for who she was or what she did for a living, and Regina had survived those rejections. Eventually, she’d survive this too, but at the moment she could still taste him, still feel his hands exploring her, still feel him rocking against her in passionate possibility. The loss of what could have been between them broke what was left of her forty-seven-year-old romantic heart.
Okay, breathe, she ordered herself. Screaming will not help. Do not scream. Do not let him know how destroyed you are.
Regina glared at the man’s embarrassed face, derision curling her mouth into a regretful grimace. In a matter of moments, the amount of anger rolling through her equaled the amount of attraction she had originally felt for him. She welcomed the anger because it was better than the pain.
“Well, excuse the hell out of me,” Regina said sarcastically, stepping an arm’s length away so she wouldn’t be tempted to punch the gutless man in the nose. “It was difficult to talk with your tongue in my mouth.”
Regina lifted her chin and moved past both the man and Lauren. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be ready,” she said to Lauren as she walked away, not glancing back.
*** *** ***
After Regina was out of sight, Lauren gave Ben a sheepish look and shrugged.
“Sorry about the interruption,” she said to him in apology.
Horrified, Ben stood there staring, watching the passionate woman he’d kissed striding angrily away from him. He could tell he’d embarrassed her, but Ben was too stunned by what he had learned to be able to feel bad about it yet.
Everyone in the club had seen him all but drag Dr. Regina Logan out the door. His predominant concern at the moment was that he had to go back inside the country club now as if he had done nothing out of the ordinary. The gossip about his behavior would be worse if he ran away as he wanted to do. God only knew what kind of hassle he would get when Alfred and Daniel heard about it.
“I just saw her across the room,” Ben declared in his defense, as if it somehow explained the insanity of it all. “I had no idea who she was.”
Lauren smiled wistfully, wishing something as romantic could happen to her sometime. She took Ben’s arm to guide him back.
“How utterly wonderful for both of you,” she told Ben in reply, squeezing his arm in approval.
Ben couldn’t tell if Lauren was being serious or sarcastic, but she dropped him just inside the door of the club, and walked up to the podium to introduce Regina.
Then Dr. Regina Logan, the woman who had only moments ago begged him not to stop kissing her, stepped up to speak. When a spotlight hit her full on, the applause in the room was deafening, complete with catcalls and whistles.
Ben looked around at the smiling, laughing faces in stunned disbelief. Then he looked back at the now smiling woman who was commanding the attention of the entire crowd.
How could he have not known? How could he have been attracted to the one woman here that was her?
“I see we have a lively crowd tonight,” she began, raising her voice above the whistles. “Okay people, let’s talk about sex.”
The crowd roared and clapped. Ben heard Regina Logan laugh huskily into the microphone. He felt himself getting aroused again as she began to talk, her teasing tone punctuated by her laughter. When she saw him, Ben could have sworn she winked in his direction. No one seemed to notice, but he blushed anyway, glaring back at her in response.
It wasn’t fair. He could still taste her, still feel the uninhibited response of her hips meeting his. Her reaction, he supposed, could now be explained by what she did for a living, by what she understood about the physical side of things.
Ben ran a frustrated hand through his hair before putting both hands in his pockets to restrain them. He wanted to hit something or someone. He wanted the violence almost as badly as he wanted to drag the woman behind the podium back to the garden and kiss her again to see if it was her or him or them.
Damn it, he thought. Why in the hell did that woman have to be Dr. Regina Logan?
*** *** ***
Regina’s legs were shaking the whole time she talked, but she glared back at the man glaring at her from the back of the room.
Let him be shocked. Regina didn’t care. She had learned years ago to handle the pressure of intense disapproval. By the time the evening was over, the man would officially be on the long list of just-didn’t-work-out relationships in her life.
Still, her emotions had tired her, and Regina was immensely grateful when Lauren rushed to rescue her after the speech, pulling her away from the lingering crowd and down the hall.
Since there were only a few stragglers left milling around, Lauren closed and locked them in her office.
“Great speech, Regina! People were laughing the whole time. You should see the donation baskets. People were putting triple digit bills and big checks in them all evening,” Lauren beamed, hugging her. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
“Who was he, Lauren?” Regina demanded, rubbing her forehead and fighting not to cry.
“Who was who?” Lauren asked, her mind still floating on her success cloud.
“Who was the man who kissed me before he found out who I was?” Regina asked savagely. “The man who pulled me to the damn dance floor when I tried not to go, turned me into a melting puddle at his feet, tongue fuc—” Regina bit off the words and swore more softly, struggling to constrain both her temper and tears.
She rubbed her eyes and groaned. “I’m sorry. I know you hate crude language,” Regina said more quietly, pacing in front of Lauren’s desk with hands fisted.
Being this close to Regina Logan in a full mad was downright scary, Lauren decided. How Regina had gotten through her speech with so much angry emotion toward Ben trapped inside, Lauren didn’t know.
How a nice man like Ben Kaiser had so completely destroyed Regina’s virtually unshakeable composure was even more of a mystery. Regina didn’t let men disappoint her to such a degree.
But it was the hurt she could see in Regina’s gaze that worried Lauren the most and had her answering carefully.
“Well, okay. Let me think. The guy in the garden with you was Benjamin Kaiser. Ben just turned fifty and has been widowed about six months. He has a killer smile and always dresses like a male model. Oh, and he’s CEO of Winslow-Kaiser Builders. He continues to run the business and work with his dead wife’s family, which could be a little weird if you two hook up. Ben’s a really nice guy—well, usually,” Lauren said, fading off at Regina’s renewed swearing.
Regina wiped her eyes with her hands. She would not cry just because another nice guy had rejected her.
“Ben Kaiser wanted me when he didn’t know who I was, Lauren. He was the one that walked across the room. He dragged me out to the garden to make out.” The admission choked her. The memory of his passionate lovemaking lingered and made her want to weep. The sheer enormity of her loss had Regina genuinely screaming in frustration, making Lauren jump.
“
Shit. Sorry—really, I’m—sorry,” Regina apologized, mortified at her complete loss of self-control. She stopped pacing, took a few deep breaths, and then slowly gathered up her things.
Venting her temper wasn’t going to help and now she’d frightened Lauren half to death. There was nothing left to do but go home, have a drink, and cry it out.
But damn the man—damn Benjamin Kaiser—she wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight without reliving those moments with him over and over again.
She had to dig deep for it, but Regina finally collected the shreds of her pride and pulled her composure back together.
“Just more water under the same old bridge, right?” Regina said as calmly as she could manage. She located her car keys before swinging the portfolio bag over her shoulder. “I’m glad tonight worked out well for you, Lauren.”
“Regina, are you going to be okay?” Lauren asked softly, glad to see Regina mostly calm again.
“Sure. It’s just been a while since I got this churned up,” Regina said sadly. “Sorry you had to witness my meltdown. I shouldn’t have let myself get so emotional over a few kisses.”
“Oh, honey, one day the right guy is going to stand his ground and realize what a great catch you are,” Lauren told Regina, sincerely hoping it could be true.
Regina laughed, but there was little humor in it. “I’m forty-seven, Lauren. The right guy better hurry before I’m too old to care anymore,” she said sadly, closing the office door behind her as she left.
Regina walked outside, noticing darkness had already fallen. There was barely any moonlight to guide her way to the parking lot.
She had her hand on Harry’s door before she noticed Ben Kaiser leaning against the black beamer parked next to her car. Her heart pounded fiercely as she glared at him in the dark.
Damn the man for looking so good, she thought resentfully. Her first impression had been that Ben was absolutely the most attractive man she had ever come across. It only made Regina madder to reconfirm it.
She stared back at him, waiting for him to say why he was obviously waiting on her. A lame apology was coming, no doubt, but she was ready to blast him if he said anything further to hurt her. She was too tired to be polite, and there was no one listening this time.
Dating Dr Notorious Page 2
