by S. L. Naeole
I grabbed a napkin to wipe the liquid away when Michael took hold of my arm and then brought it toward him, even as he leaned forward. Holding my breath, I watched as he licked from my elbow to the tips of my fingers. He winked at me. “Delicious.”
“Dangerous,” my body told me.
“Delectable,” my mouth told me.
“Destructive,” my brain told me.
Returning my focus to my ribs, I proceeded to consume every single bite, licking my fingers and even sucking on the bones. A choking sound caused me to lift my eyes in alarm at Michael, only to find him gaping at me with dark, sensuous eyes. “I’m feeling strangely envious of naked bones and your fingers, right now.”
As if possessed, I dipped my finger into the ramekin of barbecue sauce and then brought it to my lips. Opening up, I let my tongue swipe off the dripping sauce, never once breaking eye contact with Michael. I caught the hitch in his breathing at the sight of my tongue, and then the low, almost undetectable groan that left him in a slow exhale that brushed softly against my skin.
“Shit, Victoria, start talking about something, please. My brain is fogged up with images of me doing things to you that you’re not ready for. Distract me. Please. Ask me a question. Shit, read the ingredients on that sugar packet, I don’t care,” he mumbled quickly.
Surprised by his request, I dropped my hand and blinked. Ask him a question? Ask him a question. Okay.
Fuck. What the hell is a question?
“How were you able to follow me to the catacombs?”
It was as if someone had turned off the sex-switch and he straightened, his focus returning to his food as he spoke. “I’m surprised you don’t know the answer to that question.”
“Why would I know the answer to that?” I took a sip of my tea.
He grabbed my mug and sipped from my straw, my insides heating up at the sight. “Because I figured you’d already done the prerequisite internet searches on my businesses and real estate holdings.”
I picked up my fork and wagged it at him before shoving it into my potato. “That just goes to show how little you know me. I haven’t done a single search on you. In fact, the only thing I’ve researched on the internet this month was which cab company was the best.”
Disbelief marred his beautiful features. “Everyone looks up information on me. Everyone googles me. I thought that was one of the reasons why you’ve been avoiding me. You’re telling me that you didn’t?”
“Yes, I’m telling you that I didn’t.”
Did he believe me? It was hard to tell by the expression on his face. “So you’re telling me you don’t know what they call me on the internet and in the tabloids?”
A blush of shame quickly masked my features and I had to look away, but I knew he’d seen it. I knew there was no point in lying about it, either. “My roommates told me after you stood me up.”
He gave me a knowing smile and nodded. “Ah. So that’s why they were shouting about assholes in the bar.”
Another round of embarrassment washed over me and I shook my head. “It’s part of the reason, but then they saw you come in with those two women when you were supposed to be out to dinner with me and, well, they’re very protective over me.”
Michael pushed our dinner plates to the side and took my hands in his, leaning forward on his elbows as he coaxed me to look at him again. “I understand their need to protect you, which is why I want you to know that those two women you and your friends saw me with were the owners of the bar, Elise and Veronika. They borrowed money from me several years ago to finance the entire thing and, just as your friends are protective of you, my friends—the few that I have—are protective of me. They were the ones who had you and your friends removed. I wasn’t even aware that you were gone until I went to your table to talk to you.”
He’d come to our table? What? “But you didn’t call or text me to apologize when you found out we were gone,” I pointed out.
He shook his head, no remorse in his eyes. “No. I wanted to apologize in person.”
“So you waited until Wednesday.”
He frowned. “No. I went to your apartment the next day, but your roommate said that you were still asleep so I asked her to have you call me when you woke up.”
It was my turn to frown because no one told me that. “Which roommate?”
At the way his shoulders tensed and his mouth thinned out into a frustrated line, I knew who it was. “Holly,” I said, a one-word confirmation and condemnation.
All of my reservations chose that moment to clatter away in my brain and I had to force myself not to look away, not to tear my hands from his while a new fear took over as I said the one thing I should have told him in my office, before his touch and his kiss turned me into a sensual zombie.
“Tell me about Holly.”
“We’d like a refill on my date’s sweet tea. And two orders of your brownie sundaes.”
Michael had called Naomi over, her cheerful expression feeding off the tension that had grown between him and me. She nodded enthusiastically at his request, and then took his mug and mine from the table, as well as our plates. The minute she left, he moved forward, loosening his hands from mine and turning my palms face-up so that he could trace the lines as he spoke.
“I met her at the Puccini gala two years ago, to celebrate MOAT’s production of Turandot. She was beautiful and funny, and extremely drunk.”
My gasp echoed around the restaurant. “You took advantage of her when she was drunk?”
“No,” he hissed, his voice low to avoid others from listening in, their curiosity piqued. “I took her to a hotel and left her there because she was too drunk to tell me where she lived and I wasn’t interested in taking her to my place.”
Denial immediately bubbled up within me. “That’s not what Holly told me. She said you took her to your hotel room and the two of you had sex. Then you never called her again.”
Naomi returned with filled mugs and two bowls of sundaes. She dawdled, her eyes lingering on Michael even as he picked up the spoon resting inside the bowl to scoop up some ice cream and hot fudge. “I’ll go get your check,” she said when he brought the spoon up to my lips.
I opened my mouth and took in the spoon, licking it clean even as I quietly fumed at the lie he’d told me. Reading me, reading my thoughts as if they were scrolling across my face like a news ticker, he shook his head and scratched at the dessert in front of him with his spoon.
“I didn’t have sex with her. I know you have no reason to believe me, Victoria, but I’m telling you right now that I did not have sex with your friend. I didn’t even kiss her.”
Gaping at him, I shoved the dessert aside, the bowl clinking against the mug and causing some of the tea to splash onto the table and onto his arm. My mouth watered to repeat with him what he’d done to me earlier. Get your shit together, Ria. This man is lying to you.
“Are you serious right now? You expect me to believe that you, the Pussy Collector, didn’t even kiss her? You admitted you thought she was beautiful and that you took her to a hotel room. Your hotel room. So why deny the rest?”
His eyes narrowed. “Yes, I thought she was beautiful, but beautiful doesn’t automatically mean fuckable. Not to me. I demand more from a woman than pretty packaging drenched in mango martinis, Victoria. And yes, I took her to a hotel room, one that I’d paid for because again, she was too drunk to even tell me where she lived and it was the only way to guarantee that she didn’t drive home. She was a mess. A total mess. If I had left her at the gala, who knows what would’ve happened to her.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged then, and a mask of indifference slipped into place as he leaned back into his chair. Naomi returned with the bill and before I could take it, he’d slipped in his credit card. She smirked at me before leaving to process the bill. The minute she was gone, he started speaking again.
“Victoria, if you don’t want to believe me then that’s fine. I’m not go
ing to try and convince you that I’m not some sex-crazed monster that would take advantage of a drunk girl. If you don’t realize by now that that’s not who I am, I don’t see the point in continuing this.”
Anger brewed within me at his apathy. “I don’t know anything about you, Michael. You’re expecting me to take the word of a man I’ve known for two seconds over someone I’ve known since I was fifteen.”
“You know me, Victoria. Time doesn’t equate to knowledge. Sometimes all it takes is a single touch to know everything about a person.”
At this, Naomi returned and without saying another word to me, Michael signed the bill, took his card and slipped it back into his wallet, and then stood. It was my cue to stand as well, and as I did, I saw the slip of paper with a phone number and the name “Naomi” scribbled on it peeking out from the top of the black folder containing the bill.
Disgusted, I snagged the piece of paper and stormed after Michael who was already halfway out of the restaurant. He held the door open for me, and as I passed him he snatched the phone number from out of my fingers and crumpled it before throwing it onto the restaurant floor. Despite how angry I was at him for lying to me, that tiny act made me smile.
We walked to the car in the dark, smoky parking lot, and with each step, I felt a pang of regret. He unlocked the car and held the passenger door open for me. I climbed in and sat down, catching a hint of his cologne as I moved past him and hating it because an unspoken part of me had wanted the heavy scent of smoke to burn into my brain so that I’d forget what I’d wanted to do to him earlier in the car, forget what my body had yearned for before the smoke had revealed of the first man I’d ever been attracted to.
But he told me I intrigued him, that I affected him.
I affected him.
Michael climbed into the car and closed the door. I turned to pull on my seatbelt when I felt his hand on my forearm. I stilled, my body moving like it was coated in oil as he tugged gently, easing me around so that I was facing him. My breathing was ragged, my heart thundering in my chest as the space in the car seemed to grow smaller and smaller the longer I looked into his eyes.
He affects me, too. God, he affects me so much.
“Victoria,” he breathed. I was mesmerized by his eyes, by his voice, his citrus, spicy scent. I didn’t even realize that his hand on my arm hadn’t lifted, hadn’t stopped pulling me toward him, until I gasped at the feel of his thighs beneath mine. My hands were pressed up against his chest, my belly touching his beneath our shirts.
“Michael,” I panted, trying to ignore the heat that seeped into me through his shirt. “What are you doing?”
His hands lifted to cup my face, just a faint stroke of skin against skin to let me know that he was there. And then he lowered his hands to mine and brought them to his face, placing each palm against his cheeks before he dropped his hands to the side. He didn’t touch me, though he could have. His hands could have easily landed on my thighs or moved behind me to press against my back or even lower to cup my ass. But instead he held one against the door and the other rested on the center console.
That was when I understood. As I looked into his eyes, as his words played in my head, I understood. He hated not being in control. He hated it. And yet he’d just given it up to me. I literally held his control in my hands and that knowledge fed me, it fed that need in me, that want that I had for him that I still didn’t understand.
“Michael,” I whispered, my thumbs moving to his lips and tracing them with a firmness he hadn’t dared use with me. I dragged my fingertips over the line of his cheekbones, around his eyes, and over the slope of his brows. His lashes whispered a kiss of silk against my knuckles, and as he exhaled, the skin at my neck grew damp.
I dared myself more and more, my fingers slipping through the thick silk of his hair and trailing until they reached the nape of his neck. I wrapped my fingers around the thick column and finally did something that I’d been wanting to do since he’d walked into my hospital room.
I put my nose against the curve of his neck and inhaled.
A groan left me at the rich, masculine scent that filled my nose and assaulted my senses in ways no smell ever had. My throat tightened, my ears pinged with the rush of my blood, my skin prickled with sensation, and my tongue watered. Possessed, I pressed my lips against his pulse, taking in the vibration of a moan that was trapped in his throat.
Something shifted against my thighs, a movement that caused me to jerk back in reflex. My eyes were wide as I watched Michael’s reaction, but he did not move. His eyes were dark with desire, his mouth open as his breath moved in and out of him in quick, heavy puffs.
But I was in control.
Bolstered by this, I adjusted my legs and felt something hard and hot nestle between my thighs. Intuition made me rock forward and a jolt of unexpected pleasure shot through me before rebounding and sending me rocking forward once more.
“Christ, Victoria,” Michael hissed.
I stilled, but only just so. My hands, still on his neck, moved up to cradle his face once more. His eyes were almost completely black, his lips parted as a need I understood faced me in its truest, rawest form.
“I want to kiss you,” I breathed. Before he could respond I leaned forward and pressed my mouth against one corner of his, a mirror of the kiss he’d given me in my office. I lifted my head and looked at him, taking in his expression before I bent down and pressed another kiss to the opposite corner. I looked at him again and then pressed my mouth fully onto his.
And my world changed.
His lips were strangely firm yet soft, and for the first time I completely understood what the phrase “give and take” actually meant, because as he gave me the most delicious moment I’d ever had, he took from me a memory of darkness, wiping it away and replacing it with this. This moment. This heat. I pressed my mouth against his and lifted, returning over and over until I’d peppered his mouth with dozens of kisses, hundreds of them.
I whimpered from want because the more I kissed him, the more my body screamed that it wasn’t enough. “Not enough,” I even murmured against his lips. When his lips separated, my top lip slipped into the gap and I found myself trapping his bottom lip between mine. A curl of hot want formed in me at the way his lip felt in my mouth. It was so plush, so tender, that I couldn’t hold back the urge to suckle on it and press down on it with my teeth.
Michael’s body tensed, and that hard heat between my thighs twitched almost violently beneath me, but he did not move. He didn’t even lean into the kisses I’d given him. As I pressed more and more kisses onto his lips, and even up his face and across his jawline, they started to feel empty, and once again understanding dawned on me and I found myself leaning back to look at him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a breathy voice that was nothing like I’d heard before, the sound so earthy, raw.
Embarrassment took my words, but the need was written on my face. He saw it, and so he took the responsibility of the question away from me. “Do you want me to kiss you back, sweetheart?”
My head bobbed up and down.
“Do you want me to hold you?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Do you want me to take control?”
I paused. I knew what it meant if I told him yes. And I knew that he wouldn’t refuse if I told him no. It was that understanding that made me nod before whispering that I did.
A heartbeat later his hands were on my face, pulling my mouth to his and, oh. Oh. Oh! His lips parted over mine, his tongue sliding along the seam of my mouth and dragging out a sigh from deep within me and coaxing my mouth open. With infinite slowness, he dipped his tongue into my mouth, each flick in going deeper until the tip found my tongue hiding. But that touch, that slick hint of himself was a buoy to my courage, and as his tongue retreated, mine followed. His tongue was like a pied piper, and when my tongue found its way into his mouth, he sucked on it and I groaned loudly at the electricity that blasted into me. My h
ips bucked and my groin rubbed against him, dragging out another groan that made him suck harder. It was a domino effect that I had not anticipated, each act triggering another.
“God, Victoria, you’re incredible,” Michael breathed into my mouth before slanting it over mine and thrusting his tongue into me. That hot part of him in my mouth, his hands touching my face, and the rocking of my hips that was now second nature combined into a maelstrom of sensation that focused unwaveringly right at the core between my thighs. My panties were slick with a moisture I could only associate with him, and with each sweep of his tongue against mine, that moisture grew as did the buildup of pleasure-induced pressure within me.
My thighs were quivering, a deep-seated vibration moving up and down my spine as my hands began to move frantically all over Michael’s body. “Michael,” I panted, pulling away to collect my thoughts. “Michael, I…” He hushed me with his mouth, lapping at my lips and tongue, filling me with himself. I pressed my chest into him, suddenly needing him to be as close to me as possible, and that was all it took for the concentration of sensations to finally overflow and I exploded.
Michael’s hands clamped onto my head, holding my mouth captive as I rode through a wave of indescribable pleasure against his groin, against his chest, against his tongue. My body jerked upward, and I realized that it was because his hips were bucking against me. I braced myself for the onslaught of terror at the familiar motion, but it didn’t come. Instead, my fingers slid into his hair and dug into his scalp, my kiss delving deeper, and he groaned deep into my mouth. Just that sound, the sound that I had caused. That was all it took for another wave of sensual joy to rocket through me.
When our kisses slowed, and his lips pressed less forcefully on mine and were, instead, reverent and gentle, I finally heard the thumping of my heart in my chest and the felt the heavy rhythm of his breathing against my swollen mouth. His taste was in me now, my memories overflowing with his embrace, his kiss, his hardness, his heat. His hazel eyes were imprinted on the backs of my lids so that every time I closed my own dark browns, I saw him looking back at me.
