He turned around and wrapped her in his embrace, offering her the first smile since they’d met that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “If you ever take me shopping, I promise not to complain when you try on the entire store,” he teased.
She found the idea of big, sexy Ryan sitting outside a dressing room while she tried on clothes a bit disconcerting. And appealing.
Lacing her fingers with his, he led her to the kitchen. “It’s nice,” he said, releasing her hand and surveying the counters and stainless-steel appliances.
“It’s gorgeous,” Sabrina said. “It makes the house.”
“Not that I cook,” he said.
“Well, neither do I,” she admitted. “My mother was always so busy, we ate a lot of takeout. Thus, I eat a lot of takeout. Or microwave meals. But still. There’s something about a great kitchen that makes a home.”
He frowned at that. “So, your condo…did it feel like home when you first saw it?”
She nodded and leaned on the counter next to him. “I was in love with it right away. But no, it didn’t feel like home. It felt like someplace I could make home. But I’m drawn to condo-style living because I grew up in Manhattan, where a building, rather than a house, is the norm. Maybe think about what was ‘home’ to you in the past. It’s clearly not the style of the houses we’ve been looking at.”
He scoffed and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I’ve been in deserts and jungles for so many years, the hotel I’m in feels more like home than this. Though I like your place.” His eyes took on familiar mischief. “But then it might have been the mud mask that turned me on to it.”
Sabrina rolled her eyes. “Can we vow to replace that memory with one that is mud-free?”
“Oh, no,” he said, a teasing, erotic hitch to his voice. “That is a memory I will cling to with immense pleasure, for quite possibly the rest of my life.”
She might have ignored the bold comment, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Ryan wasn’t himself right now. Not that she knew him well enough to say that, but yet… He joked. He teased. And still he was more withdrawn than normal.
Sabrina eased in front of him and let her body rest against his. Instantly, his eyes darkened, turned an amber-brown. The heat of his body radiated into hers like the soft glow of a newly lit furnace.
Blinking up at him, she wanted to ask him what was wrong, but the newness of their relationship held her back. And so she decided perhaps she should simply give him something else to think about. An escape, pleasure.
“This house might not be home,” she offered, her hand sliding across his chest and down his side, “but it’s a good place for a memory. And if I remember a certain stairwell properly, I do owe you a memory.” Her hand slid over his belt, down the front of his jeans.
His face hardened with desire, and that wasn’t the only thing hard. He covered her hand where it rested on his zipper. “You’re tempting the beast,” he teased, though his voice was taut, his cock hard against her palm.
She surprised herself by laughing. “The one in your pants or out?” she joked playfully, remarkably relaxed with Ryan, even when pushing her own boundaries. And she was very much about to push her boundaries.
“Both,” he said. “Man and beast want you way too badly to be teased.”
“No teasing,” she said, mercilessly stroking him through his jeans. “We’ve already established I owe you a memory. I intend to pay up.” She reached for the snap on his jeans.
Again he stilled her hand, his expression serious, his voice, as well. “You don’t owe me anything but a date,” he said.
His words stilled her for a moment. She owed him nothing. “Then this is for me,” she said. “A memory I want very much.” And she did. More than she’d ever imagined possible. She wanted to pleasure this man as she had never wanted to pleasure another. Wanted to forget the world around her. Forget prim and proper. Wanted just to enjoy him here and now.
For several seconds, he held on to her hand, studying her, probing her expression. “I want this,” she whispered, using her free hand to shove his shirt upward, to press her fingers against the warm flesh beneath the shirt, to absorb rippling muscles with wonder and delight.
His hand eased from hers, and she unzipped his pants, her fingers quickly finding the hard length of him beneath. She wasn’t sure who inhaled the sharpest when she pressed beneath his underwear and grazed his cock with her fingers. Her gaze jerked to his, the connection scorching, intimate, erotic. As was the moment she freed him, closing her palm around his hot pulsing flesh and then stroking slowly up his length, spreading the dampness there, the sign of just how ready he was for what came next.