Dirty

I could only nod in reply and close my eyes. I curved my hand over him. His trousers were smooth under my fingers and beneath them I felt the outline of him. I moved my hand and he twitched. His other hand slid around under my hair, his thumb pressing the pulse on the side of my neck. His mouth brushed my earlobe, his voice tight, low, thick with need.

“Who are you?” He asked me. “Some kind of angel? Or a devil, maybe…?”

I turned my head to bring my mouth close to his ear. “I don’t believe in angels or devils.”

I stroked him slowly, infinitesimally, a gentle curve and straightening of my fingertips undetectable to anyone watching. He got harder. Hotter. I traced the line of his cock, then lower, my hand cradling the softer bulge below.

His hand tightened on my neck. “You look like a goddess when you come, did you know that?”

Sex makes bumble-tongued fools even out of the most eloquent, but the beauty of it is that it also tunes our ears to hear the meaning of words that, spoken under other circumstances, would make us laugh or cry or frown.

“I’m not a goddess.”

“Not a goddess. Not an angel. Not a devil.” His breath, whiskey-scented, washed over me. The wetness of his tongue caressed my earlobe, making me shiver again. “Are you a ghost? Because you can’t be real.”

In reply, I took his hand and put it on my chest, over the place my heart had begun its triple-thumping once more. “I’m real.”

His thumb passed over my nipple, which tightened. His hand covered my breast, but he didn’t fondle me. He held it against me, and I knew he could feel the beat of my heart.

Then he took his hand away and took mine from its place on his crotch. He moved back in his seat a little. His hair had fallen tousled over his forehead. His face was somber, eyes bright with reflected neon.

He reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a business card. He put it on the table between us, then pushed it in front of me.

“The next time I watch you come,” he said, “I want to be inside you.”

Then he got up from the table and left me there, alone.

Chapter 03

“Daniel Stewart.” His name, embossed in fine black script upon heavy, cream-colored card stock. Expensive, elegant, without a hint of the whimsy he’d shown me in Sweet Heaven. So much and so little to be learned from a business card.

I waited a week before I called him.

“Next time,” he’d said, as if there could be no doubt there would be a next time.

That easy confidence set me back, but more than that was the realization I wanted there to be a next time. I wanted to see him again, wanted to feel his hands on me, wanted to come with him inside me, as he’d said.

I wanted all those things, and the wanting frightened me. Knowing his name, where he worked, glimpsing that part of his life from something so intimately anonymous as his business card, all of it had me tossing and turning each night in my bed. Solace came from my hand, a finger gently circling my clit as I imagined his face and the scent of him. I came hard, alone, gasping and unfulfilled, and knew there would be a next time, just as he’d said, even though it took me seven days to give in.

His secretary took the call and passed it on. I imagined a tone of smugness, curiosity, jealousy. Was he fucking his secretary? Did she imagine me as a client, colleague, sister, lover? She asked only my name and if Mr. Stewart would know what this call was in regard to, and when I answered yes, she put me through without hesitation.

“Elle.” His voice, warm, like honey dripping into tea. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Were you?”

My own office door was closed. I sat back in my chair, the curling cord of my ancient phone tangled in my fingers. I closed my eyes.

“I was.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking,” he said, his voice sending a slow shiver of delight down my spine, “that you weren’t going to call me.”

That made me smile a little. Surely he’d had no doubts? “You knew I would.”

“I didn’t.” I heard an answering smile in his tone and pictured the upcurve of his mouth. “I thought you’d forgotten about me.”

“I haven’t.”

“So you’ll be coming to meet me for lunch today.”

The assumption was no more forward than what he’d said when he handed me his card, and there was no sense in playing coy. “Yes.”

“Good.”

He gave me directions to a restaurant, though I knew how to get there. I wrote anyway, my pen making smooth marks that belied the unsteadiness of my hand. I hung up the phone, uncertain of how the conversation had ended, and looked to see that I had written his name, over and over, in handwriting that looked like it belonged to a stranger.

“Daniel Stewart. Daniel Stewart. Daniel Stewart.”

La Belle Fleur had a pretentious name but good food, nonetheless, and was central between both our offices. It took me fifteen minutes to get there in a cab. I’d told my secretary to reschedule my afternoon appointments.

“Miss Kavanagh?” The maître d’ smiled as I pushed through the double glass doors and into the small foyer. “You’re meeting Mr. Stewart?”

I must’ve looked surprised, because he cast his eyes around the small, wood-paneled area and lowered his voice as though he were revealing the chef’s recipe for a secret sauce. “He described you perfectly. And told me to expect you.”

“Ah.” I nodded. “I see.”

He beamed, a small, spare man with a head of perfectly groomed hair and a tiny mustache to match. “Right this way.”

I’d eaten at La Belle Fleur dozens of times. Clients liked its nice atmosphere and good bar. Colleagues chose it because the food was decent and reasonably priced, despite the fancy decor. I saw several faces I recognized, and I smiled and nodded as I passed.

Every step I took was a triumph over my shaking legs.Dan’s name echoed in my head as I followed the maître d’ through the maze of white-cloth-covered tables toward a smaller back room, the doorway half-hidden by an embroidered screen for privacy.

“Mr. Stewart has booked a table in our Jolie room.”

And there he was, Daniel Stewart, at a small table in the corner. He stood when I came into the room. Today he wore a dark-blue suit, a pale-blue shirt and a tie with a hula girl imprinted on it. He didn’t approach me, made no move to touch me, not an awkward social half hug nor a handshake, and I found myself both grateful and disappointed.

“Hello.”

Foolish to feel shy after what he’d done to me at the Blue Swan, more foolish still when I knew I’d let him do it again in a heartbeat. We stared at each other across the elegantly set table, until the maître d’ cleared his throat to draw my attention to the chair he’d pulled out for me, and I sat. Then we stared a few more moments until at last he spoke.

“I wasn’t sure you’d show up.”

I dropped my gaze and studied every bead of condensation on my water glass before I looked up at him. “I wasn’t sure I would, either.”

“I’ll have a glass of merlot,” Dan said as the waiter appeared. “The lady will have a glass of the cabernet. We’ll both have steak salads with the house dressing and fries.”

Then he sat back in his chair again and looked at me as though he were waiting for something. I had an idea of what it was. I sipped my water before I gave it to him.