Dishing Up Love

“But you’re a California boy. Don’t you make frequent trips to Las Vegas? You can do it there too,” I ask him.

“Nah, I don’t go to Vegas much, and if I do, I don’t really do anything but cook for celebrities who flew me in for a special dinner or something,” he responds.

“Not a big gambler?” I take a sip of my drink, toying with the straw as I look into his eyes while he speaks.

He shakes his head. “Not a gambler at all. I’m actually quite the hoarder when it comes to spending money all… willy-nilly.”

“Willy-nilly?” I laugh.

“I don’t blow what I earn on senseless crap,” he explains. “I have this… fear, I guess. As quickly as I was able to earn it, I’m scared I could lose it just as easily.”

I lean closer, taking a sip from my straw. “If we were in my office, this is when I’d pull my reading glasses down off the top of my head and start making notes,” I whisper, and when he looks at me with a raised brow, I smile at him jokingly.

“There are no cameras, sugar. Whatever you want to know about me, just ask. I’m an open book… at least, with you I am,” he confesses, and for some crazy reason, it makes me want to open up to him as well.

What. The. Fuck?

The drinks must give me loose lips. “Probably because you know you’ll never see me again after tonight. And you’ve caught on I’m a good person who would never sell your story to a magazine or some shit, so you find me safe to vent to.” I nod in conclusion.

Next thing I know, my drink is no longer in my hands, and I barely have time to let out a squeak of protest before I’m letting out a silent scream as my body flies through the air, floating… floating… before I’m suddenly facing Curtis, my ass no longer on my bar stool but perched upon his muscular thighs. I’m incredibly aware of the way the zipper of his jeans lines up perfectly with the seam running up the center of my denim shorts, and it all presses right up against my clit that is more aware of the situation than my mind is. Because it takes me a moment for my brain to catch up with the arousal I’m feeling, finally figuring it out that it’s because I am sitting on Chef Curtis Rockwell’s lap in a crowded bar… not in a dark corner we’ve snuck off to, but right. Fucking. Dead. Center. Of the bar itself. People surrounding us on all sides. I can only imagine the bartender’s face right now.

Who am I kidding? He’s a bartender in New Orleans. Nothing probably fazes him anymore.

But back to the situation at hand.

My pussy throbs at the closeness of his now extremely hard cock. The poor guy has had so many boners today from our horsing around I feel sorry for him. Blue balls are no joke, I’m told.

Before I can continue assessing my new position, Curtis’s deep voice in my ear as he leans forward to press our bodies flush against each other brings me back to the conversation we were just having.

“If you think I’d never see you again after the day we’ve had together, you are mistaken, sugar. I’ve already made the decision for us,” he murmurs, and my head jerks back to look him in the eye, a haughty expression on my face, I’m sure.

“You’ve made a decision for us?” I sass. “Sorry to inform you, homeskillet, but no one makes decisions for m—”

He cuts me off with a single, subtle pump of his hips beneath mine, the seam of my shorts rubbing against me in the most delicious way, making me gasp and forget what I was saying.

“Tell me when you’ve ever felt this way with another person. Tell me, and I know you’ll be lying. Because I know for a fact that I’ve never come close to feeling like this before.” He leans ever closer, one of his big hands going to the edge of the bar behind me before he pushes my body against the back of his hand. Even in the heat of this intense moment, he thinks of everything to keep me safe, even if it’s just from a bruise.

He pulls only his head back and just enough to look into my eyes. And it’s the stormy look I see there, the complete seriousness I’ve yet to see in this usually lighthearted and carefree man’s eyes until now, that stops me from blowing off his words.

The joke I had locked and loaded dies in my throat, and my words come out almost strangled as I can’t look away from his beautiful irises. “I… I can’t.”

His other hand tightens on my hip, sending sparks up my side. “Don’t tell me you can’t, Erin. There is nothing stopping you from being mine—”