He hooked a hand behind her neck, his thumb rubbing over her cheek as he stared into her eyes. “I like touching.”
Grace blushed, and he chuckled. “A little late to be embarrassed, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
“I know,” she said. “I just … it was so …”
“Dirty? Hot? Perfect?”
“Was it?” she asked, grabbing a pillow to cover up her front since the damned man was still clothed and she was still naked. Post-orgasm body confidence only went so far.
“Was it what?” he asked, kissing her.
“Perfect?”
Oh God, surely that needy, fragile voice wasn’t hers.
Grace 2.0’s eye roll assured her that yes, she had sounded that desperate while talking to a veritable modern sex god.
His eyes changed then, going from sexy and playful to a little bit soft. “Yeah. It really was.”
She locked her arms around his neck, pulling him in for another kiss. “A nice line. You should add that one to your permanent repertoire if it’s not already in it.”
He didn’t reply as she took control of the kiss, accidentally-on-purpose rubbing her bare breasts against his shirt. His hands ran up and down her back before going down to cup her butt and lift her against him.
“Hey, Malone,” she said, pulling back and smiling when he groaned in protest at the lack of contact. “You want a cheese plate?”
He did something tricky then, his hands finding the back of her thighs and flipping her onto her back before she realized he’d moved.
“If you really knew men, Ms. Brighton, you wouldn’t have to ask,” he said, his fingers quickly unbuttoning his shirt.
“Ah,” she said, her fingers going to his belt to speed up the process. “As one of Stiletto’s foremost luuvvvv experts, I guess I should have known that men declining sex is a foreign concept.”
“Not necessarily,” he said, pushing his shirt off his shoulders and revealing the ridiculously ripped body she’d known was under there. “But saying no to sex with you is.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Grace 2.0 threw up her hands in exasperation as Grace 1.0 melted.
The man really did know his way around women.
Chapter Twenty
“The flowers were a nice touch. White roses. Very classy.”
“They’re her favorite,” Jake said, not looking up from his laptop as he typed the last sentence of his article about the resurgence of Scotch in the cocktail culture.
Cole Sharpe entered the office uninvited. “How do you know what kind of flowers Grace Brighton likes?”
“She told me.”
“Huh.”
Jake looked up at that. He knew what huh meant in guy-speak. He’d practically invented it. He used it most frequently after learning that one of his friends had gotten engaged, was “in love,” or had gotten himself wrapped around some woman’s finger.
Jake snagged his coffee mug off the desk and took a sip while Cole made himself at home. “Go ahead. Get it off your chest.”
“Get what off my chest?”
“Whatever it is you want to imply about me and Grace.”