He coolly poured her another glass of wine and waited for her response. What he had hoped would be a seduction was rapidly turning into an interrogation instead. He wondered if the irreproachable Miss Beckett was as frosty in bed as she was at the dinner table.
Virginia took a sip of wine. The waiter approached again, and he was on the verge of waving him away again, but decided instead that they should order. This whole process needed to slow down before one of them blew their top again.
Virginia ordered fish, no appetizer, and he opted for the beef.
When the waiter left, he found himself fiddling with his silverware, uncharacteristically unsure as to how to proceed. He tried smiling at her as she took a bite out of one of the soft, warm rolls in the basket at the center of the white-linen-covered table.
“You must have a very inflated opinion of your charms if you believe that I would in any way risk my company in order to enjoy them,” she offered conversationally.
He stared at her lovely face as she chewed her roll.
“I’m not asking you to risk your company. Let’s put that aside for now. This isn’t some elaborate plan to trick you out of control or make you fall in love with me and hand over your stock.”
“As if,” she snorted.
Something about that rubbed him the wrong way. “I realize I didn’t make the social register, but I don’t see what you could object to in terms of dating me.”
“Other than the fact that you’re trying to take over my company?”
“Your company. Your company. Why do you keep harping on that? Possessions are made to be bought and sold. They’re not people.”
“Sold when the seller wants to sell them.”
“Your aunt wanted to sell me her stock. Somebody else will too. I guarantee it. Maybe even you at some point.”
“Do you plan to wear me down by continually asking me out?”
“Are you gay?”The thought had just occurred to him.
“Oh please! Do you honestly believe that’s the only type of woman who could bear to turn you down?”
“I know you’re not married,” he persisted. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
Maybe he was just trying to bug her now. He couldn’t tell anymore. And he’d never been very good at charming a woman into bed. He’d never had to be. They just came to him. When he was younger, it was apparently his looks. Now it was the money undoubtedly. He didn’t care either way, but neither seemed to matter much to Virginia Beckett.
He tried another tactic. Honesty.
“I find you extremely attractive.”
“I bet!”
That one did surprise him. Surely she knew how beautiful and sexy she was. Maybe, like all women apparently, she wanted to be complimented. Fine, he could get behind that if it served his purpose. “Really, you’re so gorgeous, I was a little stunned when I met you.”
“So it’s not CEOs you routinely offer to sleep with when you first meet them, it’s just ‘gorgeous’ women.”
“I said I was sorry about that.”
“That makes it all better, then.”
“Can you honestly say you don’t feel something between us that would be worth exploring, ah, in bed?”
For a minute, she seemed at a loss for words.
Unfortunately, she then found them. “You might just be the most egotistical man I’ve ever met. You’re trying to take over my company. All I’m feeling is hatred. Do you think I’m admiring your deep blue eyes or your hot body? Christ, why is it always about sex with men like you?”
“And money,” he muttered, knowing he was hurting his case but starting to feel he might have lost it anyway already.
“Isn’t one woman’s body much the same as the next to you, Mr. Winston? Why so obsessed with mine?”
“Well, I haven’t gotten a good look at it, but what I can see I like.”
“No really, if it has nothing to do with my company, why are you so intent on getting me into bed?”
“Other than that I’m having wet dreams about you?”
She colored.
“The answer is I don’t know. I don’t usually pursue a woman so blatantly.”
“They all come to you, I suppose, as soon as you crook your finger.”
“No false modesty here, honey. Like you don’t have a pack of admirers waiting at the foot of your bed? And while we’re at it, why don’t you be honest about why you really don’t want to see me? You think I’m beneath you with your old money and lily white hands.”
“Well, there’s that,” she said easily.
At the look of fury on his face, the little witch laughed. Oddly, it relaxed him. He let out a deep breath. “I take it I’m not winning you over?”
“I can’t separate sex from—from everything else, Mr. Winston.”
“You won’t know unless you try.” He smiled at her, for the first time with some genuine warmth despite his defeat. It was kind of ridiculous.
“No thanks.” She stood up and dropped the napkin that had been on her lap onto the table. “I knew it was a mistake to come here. If you want to sell me your stock, fine, call Minlow. But otherwise, no more one-on-ones for both our sakes, okay?”
Aaron stood up and signaled for the check. “All right. Message received. Again, I didn’t mean to offend you by coming on to you. I apologize. Let me give you a lift home.”
“No, no need for you to leave. You can have my fish.”
“No thanks. I’m not hungry anymore.” He scribbled on the check the ever-present waiter brought him without asking why they were leaving before they’d eaten. The guy probably thought he was about to get lucky. Hilarious.
He walked Virginia out. A couple of passers-by had stopped to chatter noisily on the corner. Something about someone’s job being too tedious to endure.
“I think you’ll have a tough time getting a cab around here. There’s a lot of competition at this time of night. I can give you a lift. My driver’s right here.”
“Okay. Thanks,” Virginia conceded as Aaron ushered her into the waiting gray limousine. An opaque sheet of smoked glass separated them from the driver and they pulled out into the Manhattan traffic.
Aaron studied her aristocratic, lush profile. She was gorgeous. He would have loved to trace his finger along her delicate, shell-like ear and press his mouth against her long white neck. Needless to say, though, he certainly wasn’t going to do so with a woman who kept begging him not to come on to her. He was more irked than he’d like to admit at the thought.
“So, honestly, do you have a boyfriend or what? At least throw a sop to my enormous ego here.”
She darted a look at him.
The driver slammed down on the brakes and, failing to have belted themselves in, Virginia fell against him, practically into his lap actually. He caught her, surprised, as she steadied herself, palms on his legs, mere inches from his crotch. Her mouth fell open and their eyes met. Desire roared through him and he froze, afraid to move a muscle.
But he didn’t have to. The electricity between them was not one-sided. She leaned forward and ran her soft lips along his cheek. Her palms on his legs clenched, her fingers digging into the wool of his trousers and his body roared to life. He groaned and she covered his mouth with her own.
She felt his tongue in her mouth, tentative, questing in response to her own. She should have pulled away then and stopped at the one kiss, understandable given how they had been, quite literally, thrown together. Instead, she opened her mouth wider, distracted by the delicious, warm pleasure that coursed through her body at the touch of his lips. The rough feel of his mouth against hers, his hands beginning to move slowly over her shoulders, down her arms, made her shiver. Wow.
Acting thoughtlessly for once, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer to her, and was rewarded with the whole hard length of him suddenly pushing her back to lie beneath him on the leather seat, stretching her hands above her head. She arched her hips against him and registered the long, hard ridg
e of his penis as his mouth moved from her lips down her throat, one hand lingering tentatively around her rib cage as if not yet daring to move higher. She moaned and parted her legs beneath the skirt of her suit, lost in the pleasure she had not felt for quite some time, maybe never quite so keenly either and he pulled back a little, looking down, to slip his hand beneath her skirt.
Oh no, she better stop that right now. That was…oh…his fingers were skimming along her bare thighs and heading… It felt so… Oh no, that was so…inappropriate.
She’d said it out loud, hadn’t she?
But when she would have objected—she would have, really, assuming she could speak through the pleasure that was thundering through her veins—he covered her mouth with his own again, thrusting his tongue deep as his skillful fingers below slipped under the elastic of her underwear.
He swallowed the moan she let out as the base of her stomach jumped at his warm, sure touch and he dipped his thumb into what was undoubtedly a very wet vagina by now and then rubbed the moistened pad of it lightly against her clit.
Oh, Jesus—it was just the right amount of pressure. When he supplemented it by thrusting his middle finger up her, turning it some way she had never felt, her bottom arched up off of the leather seat.
She felt his smile against her lips as he paused in his kissing. “You like that, eh?”
He added a second finger, swirling it around in her. Oh God.
She clamped her thighs tighter against his hand and he bent his head, nudging her suit jacket out of the way and pressing his mouth to the silk of her blouse over her nipple. Her hands came round to the silky hair at the base of his neck and she pulled him closer to her breast until he latched on fiercely and sucked, the silk of her blouse and her bra no impediment to the sharp tug of pleasure he was inflicting.
Her breast underneath the silk was full and soft as he sucked it, dampening the material. Very nice. With one hand buried in her wet pussy, learning the feel of her, his other hand was free to wander and, surprising himself, he thrust it into the silky strands of her long hair. Every X-rated zone of the cool Miss Beckett’s body was suddenly, magically open to him—he could fondle that plush ass or unbutton her shirt to check out the color of her nipples poking against his tongue or even lead her own long fingers to his aching cock—but he did none of those things. Instead, he ran his fingers through her fucking hair, like some besotted teenager. Dry-humping her at the same time, of course, but still…
Man, considering he still had his pants on, he was dangerously close to going over the edge, fucking his fingers into her wet pussy and mirroring the motion with his hips, rubbing the length of his cock against her. She groaned, her legs spreading farther out to cradle him, and for a minute, he considered unzipping his trousers and dipping his cock into her right now.
An abrupt swerving of the vehicle reminded him where they were, and he thought better of it.
“Man, I want to fuck you,” he muttered, punctuating the thought with an even deeper thrust of his fingers, biting her nipple lightly through her shirt.
She came.
As easy as that.
She, who often had trouble making herself come when she took the time to bother to even try, and he had done it so quickly, so masterfully. Despite herself, she shuddered as the orgasm gripped her. He lifted his head to try to kiss her lips, but she twisted away, panting, and felt as much as heard his low laugh against her ear.
“Oh, you are so hot.”
Kissing her ear, her neck lightly, he withdrew his fingers and though her eyes were closed, she could feel him adjusting her underwear back into place, murmuring, “No thong, Virginia? I’m disappointed.” Even the utilitarian brush of his fingers against the cotton sent a jolt through her.
Then he laughed again, pulling her skirt down, and sat up. She heard some rustling. He was probably wiping his fingers on a tissue.
“Not here, though,” he said, sounding very matter of fact. “I’m as nostalgic as the next guy about making it in cars, but I need more room to explore this first time.”
She was stunned to hear him instruct the driver through the intercom to take them to his apartment. She felt as if the absence of his touch had switched something on, or off, in her seriously disordered brain. Or maybe it was just that she had gotten hers and her brain went back to functioning. She didn’t know.
She sat up too. She had just gotten through with telling the guy she wasn’t interested in him and she started to kiss him and then came apart right in his hands not two minutes later. What the hell was he supposed to think?
As he turned back to her, the corner of his mouth rose in a slight sexy smile, she moved out of his reach, terribly embarrassed. Winston didn’t let the distance she put between them discourage him. He merely used it as an opportunity to blatantly do what he had probably furtively been doing since he had first seen her—run his eyes in a frankly sexual assessment down her body, a body he had just beautifully, effortlessly, brought to a shattering orgasm.
“You are so hot,” he repeated, more to himself than to her, it seemed.
She didn’t know what to say to extricate herself from this suddenly humiliating situation. There were only two choices here. She was either going to allow herself to be turned into one of Aaron Winston’s casual hook-ups simply because he had proven himself as adept at seduction—well, making out, anyway—as his infuriating good looks suggested, or else she was going to have to blow him off again, which was seriously, and this time maybe understandably, going to piss him off.
Part of her wanted to pick Door Number One. But she wasn’t very good at casual relationships, actually at any relationships. And, standstill or no standstill, he still owned all that stock.
Well, there was no point in delaying it. “Look, I’m not going to bed with you,” she blurted out.
A number of expressions crossed his face before he responded.
Incomprehension. Surprise. And then wariness. “Did I miss something?”
What had happened between them just now hadn’t been one-sided by any means. He would stake his rather substantial and hard-won bedroom instincts against it. He hadn’t misread her or misinterpreted her or overstepped. Virginia’s shy, light kiss and then impassioned reciprocation of his own kisses and fevered writhing beneath him were what had driven him to shove her skirt up right there on the leather seat of the limousine and get her off, shielded behind the opaque tinted glass. And she had been eager to get off—on a hair trigger in fact. He could still feel the walls of her tight pussy squeezing his fingers as she came. She was so wet, she was lucky he’d still had the presence of mind to wait until they had more privacy to actually fuck her.
So what the hell was going on now?
“Tell your driver to pull over. I’ll get a cab.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong is I let a little kiss go too far.”
To describe the hot foreplay they’d just engaged in—her pussy juice still lingering on his fingers despite that he’d politely wiped them off with a tissue—as a little kiss was quite an understatement. Her blouse was still damp from his mouth. Aaron laughed, leaning back against the plush leather and considered pouring himself a drink from the small portable oak bar in the corner. “I’d say we didn’t let it go far enough.”
“Well, I didn’t. Ask you, I mean.”
“No, you just kissed me. Oh, and let me finger-fuck you too, of course.”
“For God’s sake—”
“What? I’m just saying. I didn’t exactly see you pushing me away and we’re both a little too old to play at making out. You were turned on, and you got off. Fine. You’re welcome. But if you don’t mind me pointing out, I’m still turned on.”
Her eyes flicked down, apparently registering that the excellent tailoring of his pants still didn’t hide a rather obvious erection.
He didn’t mind her looking, but he’d rather she touched.
“So let’s go to my apartment.”
He stared at her. Incredible.
She most definitely meant it—the stiff way she held herself, her back probably not even touching the back seat of the limousine, ensured it. There would certainly be no further kisses, or open legs, or anything else from Virginia Beckett tonight. But goddamn it, he was mystified by the whole thing. Not to mention, still turned on as hell.
“Fine. If you can’t wait until we get to my apartment, then I’m more than willing to fuck you right here. Is that what you really wanted after all? Do you have some fetish about doing it in cars or something?” A little harsher than he’d meant to be, but he wasn’t exactly feeling kindly toward Virginia Beckett right now.
“Fetish? You conceited jerk!”
“I think you covered that one last time.”
“Just because I won’t have sex in the car, I’m a pervert!”
“I told you we could wait until we got back to my apartment. You’re the one who wouldn’t.”
“Not because I wanted to have sex with you! Because I didn’t!”
“So you say. But you better work out that little writhing thing you do then and the moans, sweetheart. Because you’re sure as hell sending the wrong signals. Not to mention you were so wet—”
“You cannot possibly be this much of a jerk.”
Well, actually, right now he was feeling pretty jerky. As well as not exactly suave. What had been his plan for dinner again? Softening her up with seduction before he went for the jugular with her company. Isn’t exactly working out, Winston.
Maybe he had dazzled her, he thought ironically, and carried a simple spontaneous kiss further than she had meant to go. Underneath that frosty exterior lurked a very passionate woman. Maybe she’d suppressed it too long and at the first jostling against a hard cock—and he admitted his cock had probably been hard even before she’d fallen in his lap—she just erupted.
Or maybe Virginia’s sudden change of heart was really due to an attack of guilt about a boyfriend in the picture who he didn’t know about. She had never answered his questions about that. She was just the kind of goody-two-shoes who wouldn’t even consider an affair under those circumstances. He glanced out the window at the depressing thought.
Executive Perks Page 4
