Looking Inside

Right. Focus.

Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Bingley.

What? Who was Mr. Bingley, and who was this waiter, Mr. Bennet? Why should Trey care? He read the line again, but apparently, his brain had been turned to sex mush.

Sometimes, it was just plain shit being a guy.

Movement caught his eye again and he glanced up against his will. The goddess was pulling her book out of an expensive handbag. (He’d bought enough designer purses as gifts for girlfriends over the years to know that the woman’s bag did not come cheap.) His stare got stuck on her legs. She must be pretty tall to have legs that long. Five foot eight or nine? At six three, he liked a tall woman . . . liked the feeling of long, strong legs wrapped around him, pulling him deep. He liked seeing them spread-eagled and tied to his bed too. He’d love to see this woman in that position. The boots? Hell yeah, he’d keep those on, right along with those stockings.

She settled into the wooden chair, shifting her hips ever so slightly. Ever so distractingly. The stockings she wore weren’t lacy lingerie; they were opaque. In combination with the boots, short skirt and legs that seemed to extend all the way up to her armpits, they struck him as ridiculously sexy. His gaze locked on the juncture of smooth, toned thighs. His mind zeroed in on what was snuggled in that dark, tight crevice. She shifted her hips again slightly, as if she was getting friction on her pussy, stimulating herself ever so subtly.

Not that she was getting off on exhibiting herself so enticingly, of course. That was just his filthy man brain pulsing with hormones and going into overdrive.

Wasn’t it?

She set her book on the top of her thigh and opened it, the cover facing him. He immediately recognized what was quickly becoming an iconic cover. Born to Submit.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

He started to sweat. He hadn’t read it, any more than he’d read Pride and Prejudice. Both the book he held in his hands and the one she held in hers were considered women’s reading, even if they were drastically different in content. Of course, he, along with every other salivating schmo in this coffee shop, knew that Born to Submit was about sex. Raw, hardcore BDSM. Trey didn’t consider himself to be some kind of card-carrying BDSM master, but he enjoyed being the dominant in the bedroom.

He was aware of the cultural buzz about the book, the massive sales figures, the talk shows, the Saturday Night Live and YouTube spoofs, the snarky newspaper and magazine articles. But he’d never thought about it much until tonight, seeing it in this woman’s hands. Surely she knew what the book involved too. Yet she’d brought it to a high-minded reading event at a museum.

Well, she was wearing that sexy, sophisticated outfit, wasn’t she? This was no naïve little girl.

Then she began to read, and Trey found himself doubting. He had the bizarre thought that the somber, endearing expression she wore while she focused on the page was a completely natural one for her. This was how she looked often: sweet and sexy and utterly absorbed in her task, her succulent, full mouth pursed ever so slightly, her brow wrinkled with the innocent hunger of curiosity.

Suddenly, she looked up and met his stare dead on. He started slightly at being caught red-handed at gawping. Huge greenish gold eyes—cat’s eyes—held him in their hypnotic trap, making it impossible to look away. Then she smiled, slow and sexy, the widening of her pink lips corresponding with the swelling of his erection.

And he wondered how the

hell he could have ever thought she seemed innocent.

TWO

Blue.

Trey Riordan possessed the most amazing pair of clear, cobalt blue eyes. They seemed to see straight through her.

Eleanor had been dubbed shy as a child. As an adult, she preferred to call herself reserved, or possibly just extremely discerning about to whom she opened up. Whatever her excuse du jour, the truth was that self-consciousness usually overwhelmed her when she met an attractive man’s stare. At twenty-eight years old, this particular trait had grown beyond annoying, but she couldn’t seem to prevent it. Her gaze typically skipped off a man’s interested glance like a nervous twitch.

Miraculously, that didn’t happen with Trey. Instead, she sunk into his direct stare.

His dark-rimmed glasses were swoonworthy. He didn’t wear them in his bedroom that she’d ever seen, or when he was making love to a woman. She’d seen photos of him before, once in Rolling Stone magazine and another time in Forbes in an article entitled “Trey Riordan and TalentNet, Rocking the Online Artist Scene.” But she’d never seen him wear glasses. She couldn’t have guessed at the impact of his eyes, either from those photos or her bouts of voyeurism into his bedroom window. She sensed his intelligence in his gaze, the crystal-clear acuity of his mind. Her smile came naturally, along with a rush of warmth that suffused her limbs and chest.

Her sex.

Before she knew how far she’d sunk into his eyes, they suddenly turned smoky. Hot. It hit her that she was sharing a steamy stare with Trey Riordan. As if he’d experienced a similar shock to the flesh, he started slightly. Her gaze popped off his face before she could stop it. Damn it, stop being so jumpy. She was supposed to be a bold, experienced woman, not a skittish virgin. Not that she was a virgin, of course. Even if she did sometimes feel like she was the next closest thing to one.

Forcing herself not to look away from him entirely, her gaze slid down his mouthwatering, cut torso to the book he held on one long, jean-covered thigh. He abruptly moved the open book a few inches so that it blocked his crotch. She caught the title.

Pride and Prejudice?

You’ve got to be kidding me.

She’d pegged him for committing to reading a book on technology and its interface with art and creativity, a weighty history or maybe even a Hemingway novel that he’d always wanted to finish. But Pride and Prejudice, that beacon of feminine escape and pleasure, not to mention Eleanor’s favorite book of all time? It was disorienting, almost as if he’d been the one to arrive here tonight with the explicit purpose of seducing her versus the other way around.

She glanced back up at his face again. His brow knitted slightly in consternation above his glasses. She realized belatedly he’d noticed her amazed expression upon seeing his book choice. Worried she’d exposed her hand yet again, Eleanor forced her attention back to page one of her book.