Max
I tightened my fingers around the phone in my pocket. She was distractingly beautiful as usual. Her bright, intelligent eyes heated for just a moment. Drinking her in was a mistake, but one that I couldn’t seem to stop making.
I needed to go to my table and work. The good food and wine was a nice bonus, but I could get that in any number of places in this city.
No, I didn’t come into Bellamy’s for the food.
I came in for her.
Pathetic, but true. I wouldn’t lie to myself about that. There were a lot more insidious lies that I had to live with. My reaction to Georgia Barrows didn’t need to be one of them.
If she gave me just one nod or word that the interest was reciprocated, I’d go after her with the vengeance of a villain in a superhero movie.
Not the hero.
No, the hero would be sweet and capitulating. The hero would hold her and stroke her hair with the hopes of more.
I wanted her laid out and bare. I wanted to grip her hair as I took her from behind. I wanted to leave bite marks on that glorious ass that swung with each brisk step across the courtyard to my favorite table. I wanted to lick her from clit to ass and own it all.
Oh no, my wants were not the hero kind.
She turned with her beloved iPad covering most of the slice of tanned skin between the blue of her top and the black of her skirt. I wanted to fall on my knees and taste that band of skin until she begged me to peel the skirt up or down and shove my face between her thighs.
But when my gaze met hers, the quick bite of lust wasn’t there any longer. So I cooled those dark urges and slipped on my social mask. It was what we did around one another.
Polite and above reproach.
I swallowed the urge to lay my hand against her spine and draw her into me. Instead I smiled and took the menu because she expected it.
Because her wants didn’t
match mine.
They never would.
But I kept coming back because it was the knowing that gave me a boost. That I could want someone that much made me feel alive. Even if I didn’t get to act on it. I tried to find that feeling and quench it with other women, but it only glowed bright for her. A hostess at a bistro.
It didn’t seem quite fair that she was the one who leashed my cock as effectively as if she owned it, yet she had never put her fingers around my pulsing length.
Not yet.
I nodded as her sommelier came over and poured a deep red wine. I went through the dance of tasting it and approving. I needn’t have bothered. It was perfect.
She knew every other part of me except the one that roared out of my baser desires. There was an odd safety to our situation. That she’d never know just how she affected me.
“Andre wants to know if you want to play the ingredients game tonight, or have his Porterhouse, or the third option, the rosemary sirloin tips?”
I didn’t have it in me for the games. I’d been officeless all damn day. I needed something constant and Andre’s food would at least satiate one part of me.
“The rosemary sounds perfect.”
She took my menu. “He’s been teasing me with it all day. Great choice.” Her long lashes swept down as she smiled at some private joke. In that moment, I wanted to be the cause of one of her secret smiles.
When her mahogany-colored eyes met mine, the flicker of my Georgia—the one who followed me into cold showers and restless sleep—peeked out for a moment before she bowed slightly and turned away. I sighed and took out my phone.
The dark tablecloth was perfect for my laser projection keyboard. I flicked out the little kickstand at the back of my phone case and the Bluetooth adapter that let my long fingers use any surface as a keyboard. I’d modified it for one-handed use and replied to emails as I ate the garden salad one of the waitresses brought over with the other hand.
Multi-tasking was necessary in my business. Chapel Enterprise was an innovator in commerce, design, and technology. I was the head of the technology department. The geek of the family as my brothers liked to put it.