He rolled down his shirtsleeves, then extended a wrist toward her.
It was a simple unspoken request, but she fought an internal struggle. It seemed natural to do this for him, yet it spoke of emotional intimacy. With a soft sigh, she threaded the metal through the slit in the material.
“Thank you.”
The huskiness in his words sent a ripple down her spine. Without being asked or instructed, she seated the second link in place as well.
“Perfect.” He adjusted the cuffs. “Now my jacket?”
When she hesitated, he captured a lock of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. How could she refuse him?
Hope held his expensive jacket while he shrugged into it.
“It smells like you,” he observed.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I may never clean it again. Your scent—it’s lilacs, isn’t it?”
She nodded as he turned to face her. The approval in his eyes made her curl her toes into the cool flooring.
“I’ll make dinner reservations.”
“I haven’t agreed to go with you.” She wasn’t sure which one of them she was reminding.
“I’d enjoy the honor of your company.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead.
Charming or otherwise, he was impossible to resist.
“Is seafood okay?” He suggested the Bluewater Bistro, one of Houston’s ten best restaurants. “They have one of the best wine and champagne selections in the city.”
Her remaining resistance drained away. He’d had her at wine. She suspected he would have moved on to dessert if she’d still protested. With that kind of epicurean temptation, she didn’t stand a chance. “Sounds wonderful.”
When she didn’t move, he added, “Hurry.”
He stood near the door, a Titan who helped rule the world, as she shined the table. When she finished, he placed all the electronic equipment back where it belonged.
Her pussy was still damp, her ass a bit tender. He’d read her well. She was going to go to dinner with him and allow him to spank her ass for coming without permission. Then, like Cinderella, at midnight, she’d return to her regular life.
After she’d put away the cleaning materials, she led the way to the reception area. He went into the bathroom to wash his hands. Since he’d left the door open, she watched him refasten his tie and straighten the knot.
He flicked his glance to the side, and in the mirror, their gazes met.
Desire arced through her. It was as if he was reminding her of what they’d done and what he intended later in that night.
By the time he had finished up and joined her, she was dressed.
She excused herself to shut down her computer and turn off the office lights. In the distance, he made reservations, the deep tones of his voice reverberating through her.
After grabbing her bag from her bottom desk drawer, she made a call of her own, to her next-door neighbor. “I know this is a lot to ask. I need you to feed the Colonel.”
“Girlfriend, you can’t pay me enough to take care of that hell-spawn.”
Hope sighed. The last time Caroline had looked after the Colonel, the cat had escaped. By the time the hissing, shrieking feline had been corralled, Caroline had an armful of scratches, a bite mark, and emotional wounds. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”
“I still have PTSD.”
“There’s a bottle of your favorite wine in the refrigerator.”
Caroline was silent for a moment. “Is it leftover from the other night?”
“No. This is a new one that I’ve been saving.” Silence echoed over the line, but Caroline hadn’t hung up. Waiting for the deal to be sweetened? “There’s a cheesecake in the freezer. It’s topped with chocolate.” Hope had ordered it for Skyler’s upcoming birthday. With luck there was time to replace it.
“I’ll need a Starbucks gift card too. Chocolate goes with coffee.”
“Done.” She didn’t even ask how much. “Thank you. Seven o’clock, sharp.” Or all the building’s residents would know that the Colonel had missed her can of tuna.
“You owe me!”
“Anything,” she swore, ending the call before Caroline could change her mind.
“The Colonel?” Rafe inquired when she met him at the door.
“My mom’s cat. Well, mine now. I inherited her.”
“The Colonel is a she?”
If he wanted to go to her house, he needed to know her deepest secret. “She’s a Somali. Long-haired, a tail like a fox. My mother took her in when the woman who owned her deployed to Afghanistan. When the woman returned, she made a hundred excuses about why she couldn’t take the cat back. The truth was, the Colonel is a tyrant.”
He grinned.
“You laugh now, but you haven’t met her. Her original name was Samantha, but because she’s so bossy and wants everything her way, my mom nicknamed her the Colonel.” Which had been much better than Tyrant. “It stuck.”
“So how did you end up with her?”
“No one else would take her, and I didn’t have the heart to take her to the pound. I doubt she would have found a new home.”
“Did something happen to your mother?”
Emotion clawed through her. “Yes.” She reached for the doorknob. “Shall we?”
He curled his hand over hers. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“She was involved in a one-car accident after she’d worked a double shift at the hospital. The investigators said it appeared she fell asleep at the wheel.” As horrible as it was, that news hadn’t surprised her. Once Hope had left home, her mother hated the loneliness. She’d taken extra shifts all the time, even the overnight ones. In her remaining free time, she had volunteered at a veterans’ charity. “It was almost two years ago.” A knot of pain lodged in her throat. “I keep waiting for it to get easier.”
“If you want to talk about it, I’m an excellent listener.”
After swallowing, she was in control again. “Thank you.” She left it at that. Watching her mother’s pain had taught Hope to avoid dependence on a man. Keeping her fractured soul buried was still the best way to accomplish that. “Shall we?”
He let her go, and she turned the knob, then locked the door behind them when they were in the hallway.
“I’m happy to drive us,” he said when they reached the elevator.
Being in an enclosed space with him? No escape? Breathing him in? “I thought we’d take separate cars.”
“It will be easier if we’re in one. Then we can make plans for whose house we will go to.”
Once again, she reminded him, “I haven’t said yes.”
“And you haven’t said no.”
The elevator doors slid open, and he ushered her inside.
“So tell me, Ms. Malloy—” He turned to her, backed her into the corner, then pinned her arms above her head, her purse dangling from her fingers. She gasped as he dragged her skirt hem up her thighs and burrowed his fingers beneath her panties to find her damp pussy. He stroked her clit, hard, just this side of brutal. “Am I a sadist?”
She gasped, and Rafe smiled in sweet victory.
Maybe he wasn’t a sadist in the strictest sense of the word. Until now, he would have denied that he was. Yet nothing ignited him like the soft sounds of her gasps and her sweet little whimpers. Her cries were the icing on top. “Could you come for me right now?” He pinched her clit.
“God, Rafe…” Her words were a whimper. Her golden-hazel eyes were wide as she looked to him for guidance and permission. “Yes. Yes. I could.”
Her pretty little pleas would echo in his ears for the rest of the night. He slid his finger inside her cunt.
“I…” Like the best kind of horny and helpless sub, she ground her pelvis against his hand.
He found her G-spot, pressed it, played with her clit even harder, waited for her breaths to turn to gasps. Then he pulled away his hand.
She sagged forward, and he caught her. “You can’t mean to leave m
e like this.”
“Yes. I can.” He removed his hand from beneath her skirt, helped her to stand, then smoothed back her hair as the elevator swooshed to a stop.
“You are a sadist.” She strode ahead of him across the lobby. He let her, enjoying the crisp click of her high-heeled shoes on the marble and the sight of her stiff spine as she took steps as long as her tight-fitting skirt allowed.
At the glass door, she paused.
“I’ve changed my mind about orgasm denial.”
“Pity. I enjoy what it does to you. All that tension. Frustration. Even the anger.” He reached around her to grab hold of the oversize handle. “My car is parked at the curb.”
She shivered.
He schooled his features, so he didn’t grin. Houston’s ever-present spring humidity draped them like a wet woolen sweater. “Looks like rain.” And he wouldn’t mind if she got drenched.
Not responding, she strode through the exit.
Using his remote control, he unlocked his SUV, then opened the passenger door. He offered his hand to assist her, but she didn’t accept. Instead, she slid in and clutched her bag in front of her as if it were a lifeline.
“Perhaps you’d like to hike up your skirt and masturbate without coming while I drive to the restaurant?”
Her mouth formed an adorable O.
“No?” he asked. “You’d prefer not to? Then I suggest you be grateful for the orgasms I give you rather than express your displeasure when I withhold them.” He closed her inside the vehicle.
When he slid behind the wheel, she was still looking straight ahead.
Since it was so late in the evening, the drive to the seafood restaurant on Westheimer took less than fifteen minutes.
The valet took the car, and Myrna, the owner herself, greeted them. When she learned that it was Hope’s first visit to the Bluewater Bistro, Myrna signaled for an employee to bring over a rose, then guided them to a quiet corner at the back of the dining room. Rather than a table, they’d been given a booth, so he could slide in close to his still-pouting matchmaker.
Hope set down the flower, the petals a shocking splash of red against the white tablecloth. Rafe had a sudden idea of what to do with the stem.
Myrna extended a high-end tablet toward Rafe. “May I get you a drink? Or would you like a minute to settle in?”
He glanced at Hope. “Any preference? Wine? Champagne?”
“Champagne?” Her eyes widened. “Do you mean it?”
“They have it by the glass.”
“In that case, yes.”
He swiped his finger across the screen a couple of times, not stopping until he reached the sparkling wine section. After scanning the list, he offered a recommendation.
She smiled. “Sounds wonderful.”
“Two glasses,” he told Myrna.
“My pleasure.” She conveyed the order to the server whom she introduced.
“They know you here,” Hope mentioned when they were alone, a basket of yeasty rolls on the table between them. “Is it a favorite place to bring dates?”
“Fishing for information, Ms. Malloy?” The thought pleased him.
“I thought it might be something I could tell the candidates about you.”
He shook off his sudden annoyance. Was she trying to prick his ego? “I come here because the food is superlative, and it’s not at one of my hotels so I can relax more, away from business. Besides, if I took out a lot of women, my mother wouldn’t have needed to hire you.”
The server returned with the wine, then left again when Rafe said they needed a few minutes of privacy.
“To a fruitful partnership.” He raised his glass.
She clinked hers against his rim, then took a delicate sip. “Oh wow.” Then she went quiet for a moment. “Oh, my God. Yum.”
“Glad you approve.” She didn’t hide her pleasure, and he savored her reactions. “How’s your pussy?”
“What?” Over the top of her flute, she cast him a glare that would have castrated a lesser man. “You can’t talk like that in public.”
Rafe was intent on doing far more than that. “I’ll give you that orgasm now if you want.”
“What?” She checked to see if anyone had heard his outrageous suggestion. Her drink sloshed as she slid the glass onto the table.
“You said you didn’t want orgasm denial anymore.”
“I didn’t say I wanted public ones!”
He picked up the breadbasket and offered it to her. “Roll?”
“You’re impossible, Mr. Sterling.”
“So I’ve been told.”
With the focus of a gemologist cutting a diamond, she selected the roll with the crispiest crust. He watched her butter it, then take a bite. She closed her eyes and made a sound of satisfaction. Sharing this made him realize how empty dining alone every night was.
While waiting to order, she turned their discussion toward the women she’d been interviewing for him. His patience snapped. He didn’t want to think about the perfect Miss Texas runner-up or a blonde doctor or anyone else. “Mind if we save that conversation for business hours?”
She inhaled. “Then what do you want to talk about?”
“You.”
“Why? You’re the client. One of Houston’s most eligible bachelors.”
“Who is having dinner with a seductive woman who I want to submit to me.” When the thought had first formed, he’d meant for the remainder of this evening. But the idea of stretching it for a longer period interested him. There were a million things she might enjoy, and he didn’t want another Dom to be her instructor. “Let’s start with your name. Does it have any significance?”
She pressed her lips together and stared into her glass.
The fact she’d avoided the question surprised him. “Was that too personal?”
“Not many people ask.” A few seconds later, she dragged the wine toward her and kept hold of the stem. “My dad was in the army.”
“Was?”
Rather than give him a direct answer, she responded with, “I was born while he was deployed, and…my mother couldn’t get hold of him to let him know she was in labor. Of course, she was nervous, but she refused to think anything but positive thoughts.” She gave a half smile that was heavy with grief and touched with bravery. “He didn’t make it home alive. He never met me.”
Rafe reached across the table to curl his hand over hers. He expected her to pull away, but she didn’t. “It couldn’t have been easy, growing up without your father.”
“My mom…” Hope paused, as if searching for the right words to convey her emotions. “She did her best, but…”
He continued to hold her. In his peripheral vision, he saw the waiter heading in their direction. Then, noticing their body language, he instead walked toward another table. “Go on.”
“She didn’t recover…spent a lot of her time lost in the past. She worked as a nurse at an army hospital, taking care of soldiers, as if she could maintain some sort of connection with him.” Hope blinked. Trying to clear the memories? “Sorry. You didn’t need to hear all that.”
“She didn’t remarry?”
“No. She believed that she and my dad were soulmates.”
“And you? Do you believe in fate that way?”
“I’m pragmatic. The idea of someone being all-consuming terrifies me.”
The server returned, and she tugged her hand away and picked at her roll. After consulting Hope about her preferences, Rafe ordered an appetizer.
Before he could ask another question, she leaned forward. “What was it like to grow up in luxury as the heir of a multibillion-dollar conglomeration?”
“Not as exciting or as comfortable as you might think. Loaded with expectation. I went to nursery school at age three, then boarding school.” How did he describe an upbringing that was silent, at times frigid? “When I was home for summers and holidays, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, instead of with my parents. He believed in hard work, so he hire
d me as the general errand boy at the Sterling Downtown the moment I turned ten. On my thirteenth birthday, I became a bellboy. I was allowed to keep tips, but my paychecks went to pay for my education. My senior year of high school, I worked as an assistant concierge. And then in college, when others slept late or went on vacation, I worked as a manager for several different properties. I did an intern year in Asia.”
“What was his rationale?”
“He didn’t want me to be self-centered like my dad.”
She winced and pushed away her plate, and he realized she hadn’t taken a single bite.
“My great-great-great…” He frowned. “Maybe one or two more—I forget how many—grandfather emigrated from Norway in search of a better life. He understood the value of hard work, and each generation has tried to instill that in the next. My dad, you may or may not know, was not the family heir.”
“No?” She pulled the glass toward herself again, then sat back and crossed her legs.
The feminine picture she presented made him forget the past and think about the immediate future.
“You were saying?”
Rafe prided himself on his ability to focus, yet Hope distracted him. “My uncle—my dad’s brother—was killed in a car accident. Since the terms of the family trust are clear—a woman can’t inherit, and a male must be married to become the heir—my father married my mother.”
“And if you’re to succeed…”
“My cousin, Noah, is married.” To a woman who was as much of a social climber as he was. “They have a couple of kids.” That they had packed off to boarding school. Rafe suspected neither of them wanted the responsibility of being parents. “He’d like my father to step down from the CEO position. And since Noah’s married with children, he thinks he deserves to fill the role. He would begin to sell off most of our brands.”
“Would that be bad?”
He’d considered that question. “My great-grandfather was forced to do that around the time of the Great Depression in order to forestall bankruptcy. As the extended family grew stronger, they loaned him the money to get out of debt and buy back the properties. That was in the 1940s and early 50s. He swore it wouldn’t happen again. It wasn’t until thirty years ago that my grandfather was able to repurchase the Le Noble in New York.” One of the chain’s crown jewels, a five-diamond property near Grand Central Station.
Billionaire's Matchmaker (Titans) Page 8
