Second Time Around

by Nancy Herkness

  She’d learned how cooking warded off stress in Macungie. The chef at the restaurant where she worked let her chop all his vegetables when she came in fretting about something her mother had done. Slashing a razor-sharp knife through crisp veggies worked wonders.

  She took a gulp of champagne before she looked at Will. “I held out for two years, knowing that this was my only chance to become myself.”

  “And then your father got sick.” Will’s voice was gentle with understanding.

  The familiar sadness and loss welled in her chest. “Lung cancer. He’d smoked all his life. I wanted to be there for him, so I stayed home as long as he lived. My mother couldn’t cope with his illness, and she leaned on me heavily. I always felt like I wasn’t doing enough for either one of them. Now I understand that it was a lot to expect of a nineteen-year-old.”

  Will stretched his arm out on the table with his hand palm up. She put hers in it and found a surprising comfort in the warm, strong cage of his fingers.

  “That’s a lot to expect of anyone at any age,” he said. “No wonder you’re so strong.”

  “I didn’t feel strong. I felt exhausted and wrung out. A failure.” She’d never admitted that to anyone else. “After Pop died, I wanted to go to bed and sleep for about a month. But my mother needed me.”

  She took a deep breath. “I wrote the date that Brunell started again the following year on my calendar. Every time I thought I was going to collapse under the weight of her demands, I pulled out the calendar and counted how many months were left. Then it was weeks. I never got down to days because Mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.” She still remembered how guilty she felt, because after she’d cried with her mother at the terror of the news, she’d cried for herself that she would never go back to Brunell.

  “You had to put your dreams on hold again,” Will said.

  “I gave up on my dreams.” Or maybe that had come later, when she’d discovered all the credit card bills her mother had accumulated in her efforts to ward off the terror of her impending death.

  “We all need dreams,” he said. “Or life becomes drudgery.”

  Her dream was to write “paid in full” on all her mother’s debts. Then she could begin to build her own life again. She shook her head. “I’m happy. I have two good jobs and a cozy place to live. What more does anyone need?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Some people might find that satisfying.”

  “And I’m one of them.” She said it firmly so that he knew the topic was closed on her end. “What’s your dream? You’ve already become a titan of industry.”

  He picked up a clean fork and twirled it between his fingers, his gaze on the spinning tines. “That was never my dream. It was just a giant middle finger to my father and the law.”

  “Interesting motivation, but it carried you to the top.”

  “But now that I’m there”—he lifted his eyes to hers, letting her see the dissatisfaction in them—“the top feels empty. Because it was not my real destination.”

  “The good news is that you can do anything you want to now. You have all the resources.”

  “I’m responsible for thousands of people’s jobs in multiple countries. I can’t just walk away.”

  “You have a management team, don’t you? Can’t they run the company?”

  His lips curled in a dark smile. “No one’s irreplaceable? Of course they can and do run the company day to day. They just can’t grow it. I have access to the financial resources. And companies are like great white sharks . . . if they aren’t moving, they die.” He flipped the fork again. “I’m trying to get Cronus Holdings into a position where the cash flow will fund future expansion. It’s just not there yet.”

  “But you have a plan.” In some ways, his predicament wasn’t all that different from hers. It was just on a much larger scale.

  “Several,” he said. “But they take time, and I find myself suddenly impatient.”

  “Why suddenly?”

  She was annoyed by the interruption as another course was served.

  “Chicken poached with black truffle and asparagus,” the maître d’ intoned.

  The rich, earthy aroma of truffles caught her attention, and she closed her eyes to inhale the expensive fragrance.

  “You know truffles are considered an aphrodisiac.” Will’s voice held a note of provocation.

  She opened her eyes to find his gaze focused on her. “Did you request that they be included on the menu?” she asked.

  “I don’t need an aphrodisiac when I’m with you.”

  “Aphrodisiacs aren’t just for men.” Arousal rippled through her but it had nothing to do with food. She took a bite of the chicken and groaned out loud as the tender poultry melted in her mouth and released a cloud of earthy, sexy truffle. “This is so good I never want to eat anything else for the rest of my life.”

  “The chef will be very disappointed since there are eight more courses with the appropriate wines to come.” He took his own first taste and nodded. “I see what you mean.”

  Kyra ate another bite, enjoying it just as much as the first. “It’s hard to concentrate on conversation when the food is so distractingly delicious. However, I haven’t forgotten my question.”

  “I haven’t either. I’m just not sure I want to answer it.” His tone was dry.

  “Aha! A secret to pry out of you. Let me think of what leverage I might have.” She dipped her fingertip in the small smear of sauce that remained on her plate and licked the exquisite flavor from her skin. It was so good, she forgot that she was teasing him and did it again.

  “Stop!” he commanded. “Unless you don’t want to taste any more courses.”

  She looked at him to find his jaw tight and his gaze fastened on her mouth. She ran her tongue over her lips and was rewarded by a guttural noise deep in his throat. “Will you answer my question?”

  “That depends on what I’ll get for it,” he said.

  She’d had too much champagne. That was the only explanation for the thought that struck her and the fact that she spoke it out loud. She leaned toward him and dropped her voice. “If you answer honestly, I’ll go to the ladies’ room, take off my panties, and slip them in your pocket on my way back to my seat.”

  She heard him inhale sharply. Then his eyelids hooded the blaze in his eyes. “Who judges whether my answer is honest?”

  “I do.” She gave him a sidelong smile.

  “That seems like a conflict of interest, but I’m counting on your integrity.”

  “Okay, let’s hear it.” She wasn’t sure what she expected, but she figured it would be interesting.

  “You.”

  She straightened in her chair. “Wait, what?”

  “You make me impatient.”

  “That requires clarification.” She had no idea what he was going to say next.

  “You reminded me of my younger self. Before I became a titan of industry.” He repeated her phrase with an edge of sarcasm. “Before I made the decision to sell out.”

  “You didn’t sell out.”

  He waved a hand in dismissal. “I won’t deny that I enjoyed the challenge of building Ceres but it wasn’t my passion. You’ve made that clear to me.”

  “I have?”

  “You fought for what you wanted against the most difficult of opponents. Your parents.”

  “You didn’t go to law school.”

  “No, but what I did, I did to impress my father, to show him I could succeed without him. I was still playing by his rules, following his definition of success.” He leaned in. “You didn’t allow your parents to warp your vision.”

  “But you won. I lost.”

  “You made it to Brunell for two years. That is a victory.”

  All she’d been able to see was the debt it had added to her suffocating load, but maybe he wasn’t completely wrong. Those two years at college had opened the world to her. If she hadn’t left Macungie before her parents fell ill, she might never have consi
dered living anywhere else. Brunell had given her the idea of striking out for the big city . . . and the confidence to take the risk.

  Her world seemed to tilt and then right itself, but with a new perspective, one where she saw herself as a bold adventurer rather than as a debt-ridden failure. She had gotten herself out of Macungie. She had survived in one of the world’s most demanding cities. She was eating dinner with a billionaire CEO.

  “Thank you,” she said, feeling dizzy with a sense of her own power. “I needed that.”

  Now she just had to hold on to this new idea of herself.

  “No matter what success I claim for myself, I began with more than most people. You remind me that if a dream was easy, it wouldn’t be worth dreaming.” Will dropped his gaze to his hands where they lay on the table. “I have too many regrets. It’s time to replace them with new dreams.”

  The waiters arrived with a new course, and Kyra was reminded that this conversation had started as a sort of dare. Somehow it had turned into something real, something that had changed her.

  She’d missed most of what the maître d’ said, retaining only that it involved lobster, which was fine with her.

  As soon the waiters left, Will leaned forward. “I believe I upheld my end of the bargain.”

  His eyes glittered hotter than the candle flames, and she sucked in a breath. She’d never done anything like this before. The idea had come from a story her fellow bartender, Cleo, had told her late one night when they were cleaning up. Kyra had thought it sounded hot and sophisticated, but she’d never imagined a situation where she might carry it out in reality. However, a deal was a deal.

  “Your answer lacked specific detail but it was honest,” Kyra said, putting her napkin on the table and picking up her purse. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. If you eat my lobster, you forfeit the panties.”

  Will laughed, a low rasp of amusement and anticipation. “I won’t even eat my own until you return.”

  She stood and glanced around to see where the restrooms might be. The maître d’ glided over immediately. “The ladies’ room?” he asked. When she nodded, he turned toward the lounge. “I’ll show you.”

  The bathroom was in keeping with the restaurant. Every detail was subtle but beautiful. The sinks were square white bowls set on a counter made of a gray stone with white veins. The hand towels were white linen embroidered with a snake-haired woman, Medusa, the Gorgon Perseus had killed. She smiled at the thought that Will would appreciate the mythological reference.

  Each toilet was enclosed in a spacious stall tiled from floor to ceiling with a mosaic of silver, gray, and taupe glass squares. She walked into one and locked the door, then laughed at herself. She was the only one who would be using this ladies’ room tonight. She bunched her dress up to her hips and hooked her fingers into her panties, pulling them down so they dropped to her ankles. Bracing her hand against the wall, she lifted one foot and then the other to free the black lace.

  Fortunately, the fabric was flimsy and there wasn’t much of it, so she could crumple it up in one fist.

  She unlocked the door and walked out to stand in front of the full-length mirror, smoothing her dress down over her thighs. Nothing in her reflected image betrayed the fact that she wasn’t wearing panties, but she felt so naked that she was sure anyone who looked at her would figure it out somehow.

  “Only if they have X-ray vision,” she reassured her image. But Will would know. She would be sitting across the table from him, but he would know that if she opened her thighs, nothing covered her.

  A wave of desire and nerves washed through her, leaving her skin flushed. She blotted her face with one of the fancy towels, repainted her lips, and washed her hands.

  There was no other reason to delay, so she smoothed her skirt down one more time before picking up her purse and the panties and pulling open the bathroom door.

  The stretchy cotton fabric of her dress seemed to caress her bare buttocks with every step she took. As she walked from the lounge into the restaurant, she made the mistake of looking at Will. He sat sideways in his chair, his gaze locked on her as she came toward him.

  It seemed as though he could see right through her dress to her nakedness underneath. She felt the flush rising on her skin again, but it was heady and thrilling this time. She could imagine his hand between her legs, the way it had been in the Jaguar. She felt a tiny surge of liquid heat on the insides of her upper thighs.

  Now she had to get the panties into his jacket pocket. She hadn’t thought through the logistics of how to manage that under the watchful eye of the maître d’.

  But Will was ever a gentleman. As she approached, he stood and came around to pull out her chair. When she was beside him, he turned to put his body between her and the rest of the room. He even held his pocket flap open, so she could easily slip in the handful of lace.

  “I admire a woman who pays her debts,” he said, waiting for her to sit down before he pushed in her chair.

  For the rest of the multicourse meal, he never said another word about their dare. However, every now and then he slid his left hand into his pocket. She could tell by the flex of his wrist that he was rubbing the lace between his fingers. Which sent a phantom touch between her legs.

  The dinner passed in a sensual haze of delicious flavors on her tongue and embers of desire glowing low in her body. Watching Will across the table—the drama of his jewel-green eyes, the waves of his hair glinting with candlelight, the shadow painting the cleft in his chin, the shift of muscles under the drape of his suit—everything twined together and coiled inside her. When Perseus’s celebrity chef came out to meet her, Kyra could barely put a coherent compliment together because her brain was so fogged by wanting.

  And then they were walking through the lounge on the way to the limo, Will carrying in one hand a box of tiny pastries that neither one of them had the patience to stay and eat. The other hand rested on the small of her back just above the curve of her bottom. She felt it like a brand, burning through her dress to spread heat where she wore nothing at all.

  The elevator doors closed and Kyra waited, expecting his hand to drift lower.

  “There’s a security camera,” he said, his voice tight. “Otherwise . . .”

  She nodded, slanting a glance up to find him staring straight forward.

  The doors opened and the limo stood right where it had dropped them. Will waved off the driver and opened the door for her. She slid across the seat, feeling every puff and roll stitched into the leather cushion as it brushed against the sensitized spot between her legs. Will folded himself into the car and tossed the box of sweets onto the facing seat without any care about damaging the exquisitely decorated confections.

  “I thought we’d go to my house in Manhattan,” he said. “I hope that’s all right with you.”

  “I’d love to see it,” she said, her desire ratcheting up at the thought of what they would do there.

  “We’ll wait if you want to, but . . .” He turned the burn of his gaze on her.

  The limo’s privacy screen made her bold. “No waiting,” she said, curling her hand around the nape of his neck and pulling his mouth to hers.

  His arms went around her, one cradling her head, one around her shoulders. As their mouths met, he lowered her slowly to the seat so she lay on her back with him braced over her. Freeing his hands, he skimmed one up her thigh, pushing her dress up with his wrist, and then his finger was sliding in her.

  He moaned. “You’re so ready.”

  She bucked and mewed a protest as he withdrew his hand.

  “I need to be inside you,” he said, yanking a condom out of his pocket and ripping the envelope open with his teeth.

  She unbuckled his belt and unfastened his trousers, knowing that he watched her as she did it. When she pulled down his boxer briefs to free his cock, it sprang up hard and long. She circled her fingers around it and stroked once before he slapped the condom on. He bunched her dress up to her waist an
d settled between her thighs, positioning himself and then thrusting into her with one swift stroke.

  “Yes-s-s-s,” he hissed between clenched teeth, his head thrown back.

  “Oh, dear God, yes!” she gasped as he finally filled the ache that had built to a near scream inside her.

  And then he was moving, fast and hard, so she had to brace her hand against the door to keep her head from slamming into it. She wrapped her legs around his waist to give him a better angle, and his speed accelerated. The scuff of fine wool against her inner thighs added an extra touch of friction to the overload of sensations.

  She felt the first ripple of orgasm, tried to fight it off, but his rhythm was relentless. As her inner muscles clenched, he growled. Then her insides exploded, gripping and releasing him as he drove her climax to another peak and another. Then he went still and, with a wrench of her name from his throat, pumped into her, flexing his hips to hold himself deep.

  Time suspended itself as she lay under him, the glow of her orgasm suffusing every inch of her body from her fingertips to her toes. He softened inside her, but still neither of them moved, the only sound, their breath slowly changing from panting to normal.

  Finally, he slid out of her and sat up to dispose of the condom. She drew in her legs and pulled her dress down over her thighs.

  He offered her his hand to sit up. “You could have stayed right where you were and I wouldn’t have complained.”

  “I felt a little exposed.” But her insides were still pulsing with remembered pleasure.

  “Exactly how I like you.” He looped an arm around her waist to scoot her against his side.

  She snuggled into him, sliding one hand under his jacket so she could feel his heart beating against her palm. “There’s nothing like having an eight-course dinner as foreplay.”