“Congratulations,” she said, deciding “breezy” was her best tack. “Phone killer. And now you’re going to say that I shouldn’t have electronics near water, and I’m going to say that I wasn’t expecting a Peeping Tom, and you’re going to ask me why I was here this late, in your house like it was mine, and, ah… making myself way too much at home. I also parked my truck in your garage. Go ahead and say something about that, too, while you’re at it.”
“I’m not going to say that,” he said. “Any of it. Come over here and tell me which phone you want.”
He didn’t even look up, and she started to feel a little stupid. She’d been right. It wasn’t that big a deal to him. She dumped her clothes by the couch and sat down beside him. “Shouldn’t we try to dry it out first?”
“I looked it up,” he said, still clicking and scrolling. “It’s not likely to work. Besides, that phone’s old. Here’s the latest version. Unlocked. That way, you can use any carrier you want. Will that do? We’ll put on the protection plan, in case some other bozo throws it in the lake or something.”
She leaned closer. “That is over a thousand dollars. Are you kidding me? My phone is three years old.”
“Yeah. And we killed it. So—is this good? Or do you want to change brands? And do you have a backup for your data?”
“Uh…” She was having some trouble here. “Everything’s on my laptop, I think. Mostly, anyway. But if you’re buying things, buy me new headphones. I’m sure they’re just as drowned.”
“Gotcha.” Some more clicking. “Cord, or no cord?”
“Oh, whatever’s most expensive. I want to make you hurt.”
He looked at her at last and started to smile. “I’m sure I shouldn’t say this, darlin’, but you already made me hurt.”
“Oh, way to keep it classy. You’ve seen that before.” Fortunately, she never blushed. That was one benefit of her Indian side. He didn’t have to know how she’d felt when she’d seen him standing there. Other than the hissy fit she’d already thrown, of course.
“Could be,” he said, “but I’ve never seen you doing it. And no, that wasn’t a real subtle comment, either. Hang on a sec.” He did the kind of one-clicking she could never have dreamed of, then sat back and said, “There you go. Tomorrow, you’ll have a new phone. You’ll even be here to get the package. Problem solved.”
She sat still for a moment. “I’m trying to decide whether to be huffy and flounce off like this was all your fault, sit here and be gracious and ask you about your trip like none of it happened, or slink off and show you how embarrassed I am. I’m really struggling with it, to tell you the truth.”
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll get you a beer while you decide. Or better yet—I’ll get out a bottle of wine from this case I had to buy. Long story, but I ended up with way too much fancy wine. You were drinking wine that night at the restaurant, so I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.”
He’d noticed what she’d been drinking? “But you already have a beer,” she said.
“Yep. Happy to pour it down the sink, too. And I’ll give you something to chew on while I’m gone. I was pretty happy to think you were still here, and then I was pretty bummed to think you were gone. I was thinking about sitting here, having a beer, and watching the light change on the lake, and I’d sure rather do that in your company. And if you want to ask about my trip and tell me how my shell’s coming along—well, that’ll be good, too.”
“Which makes me look stupid if I’m huffy and flouncing off.”
“Let’s hope so. Hang on. I’ll get that wine.”
He was back within two minutes, handing her a glass of deep ruby liquid and setting the bottle on the table. “I’ve got to say,” he told her as he sat down with his own wine glass, “you look a whole lot better in that robe than I ever did.”
She plucked at the delicate fabric. “Brown and black paisley silk? Blake Orbison, you secret cosmopolitan, you. It’s like I’m sitting here with Hugh Hefner.” She took a sniff of the wine, then a sip, and had to sigh, because that was good. Black cherry and black pepper, tobacco and black licorice. Exactly like sitting around in a gorgeous house in a silk robe, possibly with a man who was smoking a pipe. “No,” she decided, “it’s more like Dinner With My Billionaire. Serious class overload.”
“There we go,” he said, sitting back down beside her. “The badass returns. I shouldn’t tell you that my old girlfriend bought me that robe, and that I don’t even know why I brought it up here and stuck it in my closet. Or that I bought all that wine and only cracked one bottle. Thinking I was turning into a different guy, maybe. But I will tell you that I’ve only worn that thing a couple times, because I hate it. Well, I did hate it. It’s growing on me. And right now, the wine’s looking like a real good idea, too.” He touched his glass gently to hers. “Here’s to all that badass,” he said with his slow smile, and took a sip.
“Mm.” She gave him a quick sideways glance and drank some more of her wine just to hold the dark flavors in her mouth and let the pleasure fill her. She tried not to remember that she’d been about thirty seconds from reaching that mountaintop when she’d opened her eyes to see Blake, and that she still had the lingering tingles to remind her of it. She looked out at the lake, because the alternative was looking at Blake and watching him watch her. “Did you see your bedroom?”
“I sure did. Saw my flower, too. I do like that flower, darlin’. Kinda reminds me of this wine, wouldn’t you say? Seductive, I think that’s the word. All that darkness pulling you in, like when you see the sin coming a mile away and you know you’re going to be taking the fall. Or maybe that’s just me.”
His voice was as deep and rich as the wine on her tongue. She tried to haul herself back from the edge, and failed completely. Those tingles were back again, and they’d brought their friends.
Somehow, she’d stopped looking at the lake and was looking at Blake from over the rim of her glass. She shouldn’t flirt. She wouldn’t flirt. He might be doing it, but nothing said she had to return the favor. But what came out of her mouth was, “Does that mean you had a good time on your trip? Or does it mean you didn’t?”
“Not good enough,” he said. “Not nearly good enough.”
This was getting out of control. Time to pull it right on back. She sat up straight. Somehow, she’d ended up with her feet curled under her. “Do you want to see the shell? Or have you had enough stained glass?”
He looked confused for a second, like he hadn’t quite shifted gears. “What, it’s here?”
“Yeah. In your hall closet. I was going to show it to you tomorrow. I’ll go get it.”
She started to get up, but he was faster, and he had a hand on her shoulder, pushing her back to sit. A casual gesture, or… maybe not. “Nah,” he said, giving her a look that made her pulse flutter despite everything. “I’ve got it.”
Whoa. Alpha much?
Yes, and you knew it.
She’d leave as soon as she showed him. Or as soon as she finished her wine, anyway. It was a customer meeting, that was all. Maybe it had had an unorthodox start, and maybe she was unusually dressed for it, but he didn’t seem to mind. He hadn’t made a move on her since he’d kissed her and she’d taken off. He’d flirted, sure, but flirting came as easily to Blake as breathing. It was fine. She just had to be casual about it, the same way he was.
It was fine.
She was still working on that thought when Blake came back holding the framed piece of glass. He was frowning at it, and she forgot to be casual.
He didn’t like it. Despite everything he’d just said, it was too suggestive. It was another step beyond her flowers, and she knew it.
His next words confirmed it. “How the hell,” he asked her, looking at her at last, still with that frown, “do you do that?”
“What?” She’d jumped up and was pulling the robe more tightly around her.
He came to sit on the couch, holding the framed piece in front of him. He was still
frowning, too. She sat down again, because she couldn’t think what else to do. Snatch her shell away from him and make her escape?
Customer meeting, she told herself. Professional. “You’re under no obligation.” She heard the stiffness in her voice, but that was all right, too. “You asked me to show it to you, and I am. I’m aware that it’s experimental, a different direction for me.”
He frowned at her some more, and then his expression cleared. “You think I don’t like it. I like it. I want it. If you’ve shown it to somebody else, I’ll outbid him. I’m just saying… how did you get the idea? No shells like this in Idaho, and none in Oregon, either.”
“Oh. No.” Once again, she was off balance. “I just… it was the flowers, I guess. First. And there are some shells in Oregon, even if they’re not conches. I have a few in my workshop, in a jar. I was looking at them, studying them, close up, sort of… unfocusing. Seeing the roughness outside, the edges, then all that smoothness, you know, inside, where they’re polished like that. And I wanted to show that. The contrast. Different from a flower.”
She looked at the piece, which Blake was still holding up, and couldn’t help that same sense of rightness that had driven her as soon as she’d started working on it. Now, she tried to explain it better to Blake. He could see the fluttering edges, the deepening pink, the gorgeous, secret shine, but he couldn’t know this. “As soon as I started,” she told him haltingly, “it was there. That happens sometimes. My brain doesn’t even seem to be telling my hands, or it’s not the neat front part of my brain, the part that plans. It’s the messy, dark, unorganized back part, and it wants what it wants. The shell’s right. It might not be right to sell, but it’s right for me.”
That wasn’t flirtation in his eyes now. It was intensity, a nearly ferocious need to connect, to understand. She understood it in the same way she’d seen her conch. From someplace deeper than her conscious mind.
“I want it,” he said. “And not just because it’s the sexiest damn piece of art I’ve ever seen. It’s a piece of your soul. And I want it.”
Her scalp prickled, and the fine hair on her arms rose. The shudder came from someplace deep inside, and he sat there and watched it happen.
“How much?” he asked.
“Ah…” Her mouth was dry, and she took another heady sip of wine, which didn’t do anything to still the electricity that was sending sharp little shocks straight to her core like some kind of devilish sex toy. She tried to think through it, but it wasn’t easy. “A thousand dollars.” She’d thought of asking more. She’d chickened out. This didn’t have a million tiny pieces. It was good, but it hadn’t been complex, not once she’d gotten it right.
Blake sighed. “Now, darlin’, we had a talk about this. This isn’t some pattern you found in a book. Come on. Give me a price that lets me know what I’ve got here, what it ought to be worth to me and how I ought to treat it. Give me a price that tells me it’s precious.”
She was losing herself in his intensity, his focus. “Fifteen… hundred,” she whispered.
“Now say it like you mean it. Like you know it.”
She took a deep breath. “Fifteen hundred.”
A slow grin spread over his face. “That’s what I’m talking about, baby. That’s telling me you mean it.” He stood up and carried the glass across the room, where he set it against the wall. “Going to put this bad girl in my bathroom for me tomorrow?”
“Oh, so this one’s a girl, huh?” she said, trying to rally. She went to take another sip of wine, then realized it was gone.
He saw it too, because he came back to the couch and filled her glass again, then topped up his own. “Yeah. My eagle’s male all the way, but that shell? That’s sure-enough a beautiful woman. All the secret spaces of her, the ones she’s holding back until she knows you’re worth showing them to.”
“I think you might be reading between the lines there,” she said, trying with all her might to keep some dryness in her tone.
His mouth curved in a smile, and he sat down again, not seeming in any hurry to get anything going. “I might be,” he said, “or could be I’m getting to know you a little bit. And that isn’t easy, because you’re all sorts of things.”
“What sorts of things?” She shouldn’t ask, but what woman would have been able to resist an opening like that?
“Oh, let’s see. Smart, and she doesn’t know it. Creative, though that’s not a good enough word, and she doesn’t quite believe in it yet. Loyal. Honest. Brave. How’s that?”
“I sound like the Boy Scout Oath, is how that is. I thought this was going to be some sexy list that was going to send me into your arms. So much for that. Same old story. The woman who’ll gut your fish for you. I have bigger hands than any man I’ve ever dated, and I could probably have beat most of them at arm wrestling, too.”
She didn’t look down at his feet. They were bigger than hers. A lot bigger. She was turning into some sort of foot fetishist, the way she kept looking at his bare feet. It was that high arch, those long toes.
Definitely a foot fetishist.
“I noticed Evan doesn’t seem to mind,” he said.
She blinked. What? Evan? “That’s because he knows he’d win.”
He put up his hand, palm out. “Let’s see.”
She put her right hand up to meet his left. Their palms touched, and it was an effort not to jump.
And, yes. His hand had to be two inches bigger than hers. Big palms. Long fingers.
“And that other thing?” he said. “I’d win at that, too.”
“How big are your feet?” She could hear how breathless she sounded, and she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t stop looking at their hands, either. She couldn’t seem to take her hand away.
He didn’t smile. “Thirteen.”
She swallowed. “Oh. Big.”
“Yeah.” He was looking into her eyes, and so slowly, he pushed his fingers through hers and held her hand there. “You didn’t like my list. I’m ready to make a better effort, because I’m watching you drink that wine, the way you’re tasting every bit of it. I’m seeing the way you’re looking at your shell. I’m remembering the way your perfume smelled when you walked by me at that restaurant. And I’m sure as hell thinking about the way you looked in my hot tub. So if you want the rest of my list, I’m waiting to give it to you.”
“I think you just did,” she managed to say. She realized that her body was turned toward him on the couch, and that the material of the robe had parted over her legs, so she was flashing some thigh, and she didn’t care. The sky was glowing pink, reflected in the water, and she was floating on a pink cloud herself made of warm water, rich wine, and hard man.
He reached out at last, but he didn’t touch her. He took off her glasses and set them on the coffee table, and she forgot to breathe. Then his hand came down on her shoulder, and she sighed as if she’d been waiting for it and it was finally here. And still he didn’t grab her. Instead, his fingers rubbed along the edge of the silk, and his voice was low and deep and absolutely mesmerizing. “I’ll give you some more, then. Your art turns me on like nothing I’ve ever seen. Your face changes every time I look at it, and it makes me want to keep looking. Your mouth makes me want to do dirty things to you. And your skin makes me want to lay you down and love you all night long. I’m looking at your legs right now, and I want to take this robe off you and touch you everywhere. And damn, girl, but I want to kiss you.”
Silver-tongued devil. She heard Russell’s words, but all she could think was, Oh, yeah. Tell me some more. His fingers were still stroking, her eyes were trying to drift shut, and he was taking her wine glass from her hand. And she let him do it.
When his lips brushed over hers, all she thought was Yes, and all she felt was fire. And when the back of his other hand traced the edge of that silk robe down the vee between her breasts, all she wanted was more. He’d let go of her hand and taken hold of the back of her neck, his fingers so strong there, and somehow, s
he was going back, sliding along the edge of all that leather until her head came to rest on the arm of the couch. And he came right along with her.
His mouth tasted like wine, and like man. One hand still held her head, and she wanted it there. Her mouth had long since opened under his, and his tongue was exploring, tasting.
She heard a humming in her head and realized she was moaning, and she couldn’t help it. His hand had parted her robe and was on a bare breast. His thumb flicked over the nipple, then did it again, and the shock went straight to her center as if he’d licked her there.
His mouth left hers, and her lips tingled and wanted his back. And then she forgot that, because his mouth was trailing over her cheek, kissing its way down her neck, lingering every time he felt her squirm or heard her moan.
“I want to kiss you everywhere,” he said, his breath warm in her ear, and she shuddered. “Everywhere you were touching tonight. It’s going to be me this time. All mine.”
He was biting the lobe of her ear, his lips moving up around the edge, sucking the chain in her ear into his mouth, and somehow, that felt better than anything else. Or maybe it was his hand on her breast, exploring, pinching, then circling, not letting her get used to anything, not letting her settle.
“Dakota,” he said, and now, he’d moved down her body, brushing the robe entirely aside. She was lying there, sprawled naked against the leather of his couch, and he was propped on an arm, looking at her like she was all he wanted to see.
“I’m going to have to fuck you, baby,” he told her, and his finger was there, painting her, probing, parting the slick folds and pushing inside, where she was already so wet. Exploring her like there was no such thing as embarrassment, no such thing as a second thought. “But I’m going to eat every bit of this first. I’m going to open this shell and eat it all up. I’m going to watch you come, and then I’m going to do it again. And after that, we’re going to do the rest. I'm going to do it slow, and then I’m going to do it so hard and so deep. I’m going to make you know you’re mine.”
Silver-Tongued Devil (Portland Devils Book 1) Page 17
