“Yes,” she breathed. Suspended in a web of white-hot lust, she was unsure if she’d managed enough volume to make herself audible.
“This is what happens to me when I sit at your bar and watch you.”
Holy—
Before she could finish the thought, his mouth was back on hers, his tongue testing the seam of her lips. She opened, and he sucked on her lower lip. When he shoved his tongue into her mouth, she could have sworn she felt it between her legs too.
“I have rules, too,” he whispered, dragging his mouth down her throat until he hit the first button that was done up on her shirt. “And this”—he grabbed the button between his thumb and index finger and pulled until it simply snapped off—“is against them.” With a groan, he lowered his mouth to the exposed flesh.
And there she was, shoving her chest up shamelessly, trying to make it easier for him to access her cleavage with that wicked, wonderful tongue. When the next button popped off and a hand pushed inside her shirt, taking the place of his mouth, she dropped her head back. It was too much work to hold it upright. And when the hand pressed aside the cup of her bra and went straight for her already taut nipple, rolling it between thumb and forefinger, she broke a rule of her own, cursing despite herself. “Oh, shit.”
He laughed, a low, self-satisfied, almost mocking laugh that made her want to punch him. But she feared doing so would make him stop, and right now the most important thing was to make sure that he never, ever stopped.
“We should stop,” he whispered, removing his hand from her shirt.
“Shit.” Once more for good measure—why the hell not? See, once she started, it was all potty mouth all the time.
He took a step back, into the streetlight, and revealed himself to be…completely unaffected. While she, panting and sweaty and breathless, felt like little pieces of her were scattered about the dirty snow at their feet…he was as cool and unruffled as ever. She had heard him groan at one point, hadn’t she? Or—please no—maybe that had actually been her?
He narrowed his eyes at her with a look she could not decode. Voices made their way into her consciousness, and she looked around, disoriented. Had he stopped because someone was coming? Or because she was a disappointment?
“Should I apologize?” he asked, no inflection in his tone. The question was followed by the jingle of the seasonal bells Edward tied to the restaurant’s door.
She shook her head no, not trusting her voice. If she spoke, she might do something as humiliating as beg him to kiss her again.
Sara and Camille—she could make out the voices now—approached, chattering and laughing. Her eyes darted around, searching for an escape, which was ridiculous because it wasn’t like they were doing anything wrong. She looked down at herself. He reached out and closed her coat, tucking one lapel over the other.
The chattering stopped as the women halted and took in the scene. “Cassie?” said Camille, with her signature upspeak. “What are you doing?”
“We were just, ah, talking about scotch,” she said. “Are you two going to the subway? I’ll walk with you.” She formed her lips into a smile. “Have a good evening, Mr. Winter.”
He did not smile back, merely said, in that completely neutral tone that gave no hint as to what was inside his mind, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Cassie.”
She didn’t know that he knew her name. The way he said it—crap. She had to get away. “Shall we?” she said to the girls, her voice just a little too chipper. They followed, having the sense to at least wait until they were out of earshot before unleashing their interrogation. When they were half a block away, Cassie risked a glance back over her shoulder.
He was gone.
Chapter Three
Though it just about killed her, Cassie waited until ten the next morning to call Danny, who had never been a morning glory, even in the brief period when she’d been sleeping with him, and they’d both had to get up at five so he could sneak out her bedroom window and down the fire escape before school. Not that her mother ever would have noticed. Heck, her mother would have sympathized—a high school boyfriend was how she’d gotten knocked up with Cassie in the first place.
“I get it now,” she said, not bothering with a greeting when he finally answered after eight hundred million rings.
“Cassie? What time is it? Huh?”
“Sex. I get it now.”
“What?” Suddenly he wasn’t groggy any more, and she laughed, picturing him sitting bolt upright in bed. “You had sex?”
“No! I made out with a guy. Outside, against a wall. Ack—it sounds so juvenile.”
“Oh my God. Who was this guy?”
“That rich guy from the restaurant.”
“You made out with Ebenezer Scrooge?”
She kind of relished being the one with news for once. Usually these calls were about Danny relating his latest exploits. “Actually it turns out his name is Jack Winter.”
“Jack Winter of Winter Enterprises?”
“Um, I guess so?”
“He’s worth, like, a billion dollars, Cass! He’s always on those annual Canadian Business roundups of the richest people. He’s like the thirty-fifth richest Canadian or something. But no one really knows because it’s a private company.”
Danny had majored in business, and given that he wasn’t on the eight hundred million year plan like Cassie, he had spent several years working in marketing. He knew about stuff like who was the thirty-fifth richest Canadian.
“What does Winter Enterprises do?” Please don’t let it be something like killing puppies.
“Real estate development. Commercial buildings at first, resort properties now mostly.”
“That’s okay, right?”
“What do you mean okay? Are you going to invest? Have his babies? Do you need a background check to make out with him?”
“No! Stop asking me questions. I just made out with him once. It’s done.”
“Yeah, but you get sex now. The man singlehandedly makes you quote-unquote get sex, and that’s it? You’re throwing him over?”
“I was exaggerating. It was just that he was…”
“What are you trying to say? That he was better than Mark? Wait.” There was a theatrical pause. Cassie knew what was coming, but she let him have his fun. “Are you trying to say he was better than I was?”
“I’m saying I get what all the fuss is about now.” Sex used to seem to Cassie like just another complication. Going to school, working more than full time, the odd social event—it was more than enough. Why waste time fumbling around awkwardly with strangers when she could produce reliable, efficient results with her trusty Hitachi Magic Wand?
“Welcome to the human race, my friend. I’m just a little miffed that I couldn’t have been the agent of this wonderful revelation.” Danny was forever trying to push her at guys. He’d been advocating casual sex for years, and for years Cassie had ignored him, going home alone when he caught the eye of some handsome stranger at a bar on their nights out. “What did he smell like?”
What did he smell like? Danny was such a weirdo. “Um, scotch?”
“Scotch isn’t a smell; it’s a taste.
“It is too a smell. He smelled peaty.”
“Like a bog?”
“Like scotch! Peat and…lemon?” She surprised herself with that last bit. It was true, though she hadn’t been able to put her finger on the lemon part until she’d been pressed.
“So he’s like a lemon tree growing in a bog.”
She burst out laughing.
“Cassie, wait—you know how it works, right?”
“Yes, I know how it works, Danny!”
“I don’t mean how it works works, I mean condoms and stuff.” He paused. “And heartbreak.”
“I’m not an idiot. Use condoms. Don’t get your heart broken. That about cover it?”
“It’s just that you can be so innocent in some ways, Cass.”
“Gah! It’s not happening again anyway,” s
he reminded him. “At least not with him.”
“But he’s opened the floodgates, hasn’t he?”
“Mmmm.”
“Well, good. And remember, he’s not the only man in the world. He may be the only thirty-fifth-richest-person-in-Canada man in the world, but a girl can be too picky. The point is, the floodgates are open. Yay!”
Yes, Jack Winter had opened the floodgates. Opened them, ripped them right off the hinges, and splintered them into a million tiny pieces.
…
The next night Jack hardly spoke to Cassie. Thursday marked the beginning of the weekend in some ways, and the bar was much more crowded. He sat on the end stool as had become his new habit, tucked against the wall, but instead of a long stretch of empty stools between him and Miss Alana of the Ants, he was hemmed in by a trio of intoxicated lawyer types out for ladies’ night. Try as he might to work his way through another month of invoices, he couldn’t make his brain perform the necessary steps. So he gave up and turned his attention to the Wexler pitch. How he was going to get through it without Carl was another unanswered question, but at least the work was something he excelled at—figuring out how to get people to do what he wanted them to.
Something rubbed against his arm. Stifling a weary sigh, he raised his eyebrows at his neighbor, a tall blonde in a skin-tight pinstriped skirt suit who had been “accidentally” brushing against him and “accidentally” dropping things all evening. He deployed one of his signature looks. It was designed to convey a certain amount of frostiness, but not so much that could be called impolite. The problem was that Miss Droppy Pinstripes was not responding to his look.
She smiled. He did not.
“What are you drinking?”
He paused long enough that a normal person would understand he was answering reluctantly. “Scotch.”
Then, goddamn if she didn’t reach over, pick up his drink, and take a sip. She scrunched her face up like she’d chugged a glass of roofing tar. “Yuck! Scotch is such a masculine drink! I just don’t see the appeal!” Then she did something he could only describe as simper, though a minute ago he wouldn’t have known what the hell the word meant. He glanced at the glass in front of her on the bar. She was drinking something pink with a whack of fruit in it.
“This isn’t working on me,” he said. Sometimes the direct way was the best.
“Excuse me?” Miss Droppy began blinking rapidly. Oh, shit, was she going to cry? Maybe he’d been too hasty giving up his solo table. There, no one bothered him.
Suddenly there was Cassie, inserting her barely tamed tresses between them, bringing with her a whiff of what he was coming to recognize as her signature scent—it was like vanilla mixed with some kind of spice he couldn’t identify. “Gay,” she stage-whispered to Miss Droppy, hitching her head in Jack’s direction.
“Hey!” he protested, but Droppy’s “Ohhhh!” drowned him out. She shot him a wry smile and said, “Well, that’s a shame.” But then, hallelujah, she turned her back.
“You’re welcome,” said Cassie, winking as she grabbed his empty pitcher—it being crowded, she hadn’t whipped out the big ugly plastic water jug this time. She was halfway down the bar, on to the next thing, before he could really process what had happened.
The rest of the evening passed like that—Cassie dropping in briefly to anticipate a need, or merely to flash him a smile. She was in her element. She looked like a lifer, but not a downtrodden, resigned lifer. It was more that she was somehow the source of the place, its human battery, supplying it with the energy and life it needed to function. She was the tuning fork that kept everyone playing the same song.
She must have lent him some energy too, for he suddenly had a brainwave about how to appeal to Wexler. He would suggest they have the meeting on the island, try to get himself invited over. Maybe the old guy just needed to see Jack’s vision in context. Maybe the truth would be enough, and Carl’s absence wouldn’t matter.
“That bartender would be cute if she lost twenty pounds. Am I right?”
Jesus. It was one of Droppy’s crew. Maybe he’d call this one Perky. She certainly was, but unlike Cassie, that much…endowment on such a skinny frame called to mind plastic surgery. And personally, nothing killed a boner faster for him.
“She has a ruuuulllly pretty face, for sure,” slurred Droppy. “Plump girls always do. But I’d still way rather do Angelina Jolie.”
“I’d rather do one of you guys!” exclaimed the third member of their unholy trinity. He’d call this one Dopey, because, really, didn’t every group need a Dopey? “Seriously! If I had to kiss a girl—ewww!—it would be one of you guys!”
“That’s so nice! Oh my gosh!”
“I would totally kiss you, too!”
All right then, that was his cue. He fished a couple of hundreds out of his wallet and left them. It’s not like he was waiting for something.
Correction—it’s not like he was waiting for something he couldn’t just as easily wait for outside.
By the time she emerged, he was fucking freezing. Freezing and mad. At what, he wasn’t sure. Though maybe the better question was what wasn’t he mad at? Let us count the ways. To be fair, Droppy, Perky, and Dopey were really just the targets of his rage because they were convenient. The CFO whom he suspected was embezzling him to the tune of several million dollars wasn’t here right now. He was probably in the office “working late.” You know, demonstrating his commitment to the company.
The bells of Edward’s door jingled, drawing his attention. Christ, finally, someone he wasn’t mad at.
It almost seemed like she was expecting him this time, because when he stepped out of the shadows just long enough to pull her back into them with him, there was no evidence of surprise. Her lips opened, but instead of rounding in shock, her jaw relaxed, letting that plump bottom lip fall open. Jesus fucking Christ, the places he could imagine that mouth. Instead of widening, her eyes glazed over with something that looked suspiciously like desire. He eyed her for a moment, trying to remember why this was a bad idea. Too late, though, because she kissed him this time. Rising onto her tiptoes, she grabbed the back of his neck, tugged his head down, and pressed her lips against his with a soft little whimper that managed to drown out any lingering peeps of better judgment.
He let her take the lead for a while, bending down to give her better access as she twined her arms around his neck. Tonight, as yesterday, she tasted like cinnamon. But there was a boldness in her kisses that hadn’t been there last night. Then she went for the hollow of his neck, which, Christ, felt good enough, but it also meant her hair was right under his nose. That maddening vanilla—it must be her shampoo. Together with the cinnamon of her mouth, she was like a goddamned cake. A cake he couldn’t cram into his mouth fast enough, so this was the end of her little exploration. He was in charge now.
“That’s enough,” he said, and she dropped her hands immediately, misunderstanding. She took an uncertain step back, scared off. Shit. “That’s not what I meant.” He was still thinking of cake. With her curtain of dark hair, her killer curves, and that spicy-vanilla assault on his senses, she might as well have been a fucking cinnamon roll. Her freckles were the sprinkles on top. “Christ. I could eat you.”
A sharp intake of breath. Her head fell forward for a moment, like it was too heavy for her to hold up. Then she righted it, looked him directly in the eye and said, “Why don’t you then?”
That was it. A literal fire under his ass couldn’t have made him move any faster. They’d been standing in front of the restaurant—in the shadows, yes, but shadows were not enough for some things. He yanked her into the narrow alley that ran between Edward’s and the next building and fell to his knees in the crunchy snow. She gasped—she hadn’t thought he’d really do it. That would teach her to tease him. Sliding his hands up her skirt, he found the top of her tights and jerked them down.
Grabbing his forearms, she shoved him. “Whoa,” she whispered.
He held up hi
s hands as if at gunpoint, still on his knees. Christ, standing there with her tights around her knees, she was hotter than anything he’d ever conjured in his wickedest fantasies. If she stopped him now, there was no justice in the world. But still, he was a gentleman. He might be an ass, but he was also a gentleman. “You want me to stop?”
“Yes—no.” She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Her face was blazing. She looked like a goddess.
He lowered his hands and pressed his palms against the front of her knees. Keeping a close eye on her face, slowly he began moving his hands up. Despite the December air, her skin was warm. When his hands reached the top of her panties, he stopped, still watching her. He was vibrating, humming with lust. He raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Then he licked his lips.
She nodded.
Down came the panties—a plain black cotton bikini, which, God help him, was the hottest thing he’d ever seen.
No, scratch that. The hottest thing he’d ever seen was the shock of mahogany hair between her legs. She was trimmed and neat, but not hairless like most women. He hadn’t thought he had much of an opinion on the matter, until now, when he suddenly did.
He skipped the preliminaries, anchored his hands on her thighs, and buried his face in her. Vanilla there, too—how was that possible?—mixed with a musky spice. She was already wet. He drew a finger across her folds and was rewarded with a shaky exhale. “You like that?” he whispered, following the same path with his tongue.
She didn’t answer, unless you counted the little mewing noise she made when his tongue hit her. He snuck a glance up. He wasn’t even sure she’d heard his question—her head lolling against the brick wall, her eyes closed. She was good at this, at losing herself. Her lack of self-consciousness was maybe the most erotic thing he’d ever seen. He tried again—yep, there was that insanely hot whimper again. All right, they were in an alley outside in December—now was not the time to draw things out. He didn’t want to, anyway. He just wanted to lose himself in those curls. Fuck the financials. Fuck Carl. Fuck the Wexler deal. He went straight for her clit, licking softly a few times to make sure she wasn’t going to panic. When all she did was moan and twine her fingers in his hair, he increased the pressure, alternating with sucking, trying to figure out what she liked. When she cried out and clenched her fists in his hair, he stuck with a rhythm of thrusting alternating with softer licking. It wasn’t long before her shallow breathing stopped altogether. Unable to withstand any more, he used one hand to fumble his cock out of his pants.
Saving the CEO Page 3
