The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient 1)

She crossed her arms and tapped out an unusual rhythm with her fingertips on her elbow. “How?”

“We’re going to . . . unlock you.” That made him sound like an arrogant jackass, but he hadn’t gotten those five-star reviews by luck alone. When he’d lost his virginity at the ripe age of eighteen, he’d discovered he had a natural talent for fucking. Going pro had taken his skills to a whole new level.

“I don’t think that’s possible.” She slanted her lips like she was listening to a used-car salesman.

“Did you

think you’d like kissing?” And she had liked it—once she’d gotten over the pilot fish thing. There was hope for her. Girls didn’t do that weak-in-the-knees, fainting heroine stuff when they weren’t into sex. He just had to figure her out.

She tapped one of the foreplay boxes. “What happens if you try everything and I don’t like it? We’re under a pretty extreme time constraint.”

“I don’t think it’ll come to that.” But if it did, they’d deal with it then.

After a long stretch of silence, she said, “Let’s try it your way, then.”

{ CHAP+ER }

8

Once the hotel door shut behind them, Michael toed off his shoes and ambled to the windows. He opened the drapes and was presented with a fine view of the medical building next door, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. It reminded him of his mom, bills, responsibilities, and escorting commissions. Not really what he wanted to think about right now.

He yanked the drapes shut and turned around, locating Stella standing at the foot of the bed. She looked away from him and fiddled with the folded sheets of paper in her hands. Her lesson plans.

He imagined himself shredding them into confetti. He couldn’t explain it, but he detested those lists. Instead of acting on the fantasy, he approached her, took the papers, and set them carefully on the nightstand. He found a narrow silver pen in the nightstand’s drawer and put it on top of Lesson One. If she was clearheaded enough to check boxes tonight, he needed to analyze his technique. He dimmed the bedside lights.

“How should I—what should I—maybe I—” She gripped the collar of her shirt. “Should I undress?”

“I don’t know. It’s not in the lesson plan.” Once the words were out, he wanted to take them back. Her lists annoyed the hell out of him, but he didn’t need to belittle her. “I’m sor—”

“You’re right. I didn’t think to include that.” She hurried past him to the nightstand. After she considered the list for a moment, she bent down and picked up the pen, demonstrating the only reason why a woman should wear a pencil skirt: to show off the perfectly rounded curves of her fine ass.

That had to be why it took so long for her cluelessness to register. She hadn’t caught his rudeness or his sarcasm. Maybe she was one of those book-smart people who didn’t know how to socialize, and he was being too hard on her. “If I told you your lesson plans are insulting, what would you do?” he asked quietly.

She looked at him over her shoulder with alarmed eyes. “Are there parts I should reword? I’d be happy to change things.” She turned back to the lesson plan and skimmed her fingers over the lines at a thoughtful pace.

The ball of irritation in his chest loosened. He couldn’t be annoyed with her when she didn’t understand.

She worried the inside of her lip and tapped her fingers on the table with increasing speed before sending him an anxious look. “Should I have written something other than Performance Review? I hope you know when I wrote that, I meant my performance. There’s nothing wrong with your performance. Even if there were, I wouldn’t know. I’m not qualified in any way to judge—”

Before she could work herself into another panic attack, he said, “It was just a hypothetical question. Forget about it.”

She seemed confused for a second, but she blinked the look away and released a relieved breath. “Oh, okay.” After adjusting her glasses, she turned back to her papers and neatly wrote Stella’s in front of each iteration of Performance Review.

That was a good reminder. This was about helping with Stella’s performance. That was it. So what if she wasn’t viewing this as the fulfillment of secret fantasies like his other clients did? He needed to take his own advice and stop thinking.

When she flipped to the second page in the pile, he shrugged out of his jacket, draped it over the arm of a chair, and unbuttoned his shirt. Tugging the tails free, he sat on the bed next to Stella. She snuck a quick glance at him, and her gaze dropped to the portion of skin revealed by his open shirt. The pen paused in midscrawl, clattered to the tabletop.

He smiled with satisfaction. Not so clinical now.

She squared her shoulders before she lifted her hands to her collar. Buttons came undone at a painstaking pace, and white fabric fluttered to the floor, followed by her gray skirt. The set of her jaw was determined as she let him look at her. And look he did.

He usually preferred women with bigger breasts, lusher hips, and rounded thighs. He liked their softness, the way they filled his hands. That was not Stella. Everything about her was modest. Wearing only a flesh-toned bra and panties, her petite body was composed of elegant shoulders and arms, a little waist that flared to gently curved hips, and shapely legs with delicate ankles. She wasn’t what he’d thought he’d always wanted, but she was perfect.

“Take your bra off.” His voice came out rougher than he intended, but he couldn’t help it. He was dying to see the rest of her. She might not have fantasized about their time together, but he had.

Down at her sides, her hands fisted. “Is that necessary? They’re not my best feature. They’re small.”

“Yes, it’s necessary. Men like to see them even when they’re small.” And touch them. God, he wanted to touch them.