“Where’d Lucy disappear to?” Rachel asked, turning to look at Michelle.
Michelle was once again regarding Rachel with an air of suspicion. “She had to take a phone call in her office. She’ll be right back.”
Her voice, however, became pleasant and smoky when she turned to Joe. “You didn’t have to help her with that. She’s gotten extraordinarily great at balancing those things.”
Rachel glared, wishing for a moment that she could develop super powers and toss Michelle into the sun. Joe gave a vague sniff and smiled politely.
“Well, I’m nothing if not a gentleman,” he said. “Where I come from it isn’t right to let someone carry everything without at least offering to help.”
Michelle gave him a smile, her eyes darting down the length of his figure and back up again. Rachel snarled inwardly. Back off, homegirl!
“And where exactly are you from … Do you mind if I call you Joe?” Michelle’s voice was gratingly flirtatious, and Joe didn’t even seem to notice.
Rachel watched Joe with interest as he opened the folder that sat in front of him on the desk. With a quick grin, he held up a business card, flipping it front to back with two fingers. Briefly stealing a glance at Rachel, he placed the business card directly in his jacket pocket. This sent the butterflies, which seemed to have taken up residence in Rachel’s stomach, into a tornado of excitement. She bit her lower lip and cast her eyes downward, scribbling on her legal pad.
“No, I don’t mind at all. And I’m from Michigan,” Joe answered. “We moved out there from New Jersey when I was five.”
And that’s something you might have known if you hadn’t spent half the night with his tongue in your mouth! Rachel squirmed in her seat. Michelle’s eyes expressed interest, and probably a wicked desire to get her claws into him.
“You know, it’s customary for the editorial team to take a new author out for a celebratory drink,” she said, her voice filled with intrigue. “You know to get in a comfortable spot to toss around some ideas, build a rapport … How about tonight?”
Rachel’s eyes widened at her brazen offer. She also thought to herself that Michelle was coming dangerously close to wearing that coffee, especially if Kirby were to have anything to do with it! She fully expected Joe to say yes; networking was important in any field, and turning down an offer like this when Michelle was certainly a mover and a shaker would probably be foolish.
“That’s nice of you, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline,” he answered, his smile absolutely charismatic as he shut her down. “Honestly, I’d be much more comfortable in the conference room discussing book-related topics. I’m sorry, I’m just old-fashioned like that, I guess.”
Michelle sat back, her eyes expressing shock and concern now that her normally winning advances hadn’t panned out. “No, it’s okay! I didn’t mean to offend in any way.”
“Besides,” he added with a grin as he flipped through the contents of his welcome packet. “I’m celebrating with my girlfriend tonight.”
His casual remark started a delicious feeling in her pelvis, and Rachel crossed her legs tightly to keep her libido under control as her body practically vibrated. As a result, Rachel’s knee hit the table and she flinched, frowning as her kneecap stung from the impact.
Just then, Lucy re-entered the conference room. With a broad smile, she walked over and grabbed her coffee mug.
“Ah yes, coffee! Thanks so much, Rachel — I needed this.”
She took one long, satisfying sip and smiled warmly in Rachel’s direction. Rachel gave Lucy a pleasant smile, thankful for her return. Lucy looked to Joe, who looked up at her as he closed the folder before him.
“Do you have any questions, Mr. Pavon?”
“Please, call me Joe,” he grinned. “And I actually do have a couple of questions, I was hoping that we could speak privately?”
“Certainly,” Lucy nodded, her professional demeanor kicking in. “How about we give you a quick tour of the place, and then we’ll have a chat in my office?”
Joe stood quickly, his height and muscular body making the room seem so much smaller. He straightened his jacket and nodded. “That sounds perfect. Ladies, it was great meeting you.”
Michelle stood, offering her hand first. “It was great meeting you too, Joe. We’ll be in touch.”
He nodded in acknowledgement. Rachel stood slowly, hoping that her legs wouldn’t give out. She gave him as professional a smile as she could muster and stuck out her hand. “Mr. Pavon, it was a pleasure.”
Joe took her hand to shake it, and the electric current that shot through them must have surprised him as much as it did her. But he held his demeanor outwardly, only a flash of mischief playing in his eyes as he held her gaze.
“Miss Sirianni, it was lovely to meet you.”
Without another glance, he picked up his folder and placed it in his messenger bag before following Lucy out of the conference room. Rachel lowered her head, hardly paying attention as she sifted through the sparse notes from the morning meeting. Feeling Michelle’s eyes on her, she looked up and met her icy stare.
Unfazed, she sighed and went back to her notes. “Is there anything you need, Michelle?”
“Uh, yeah,” she answered curtly, “You can tell me what’s going on.”
Rachel paused to look at Michelle. “Going on with what?”
“Don’t patronize me,” Michelle replied. “I’m not an idiot.”
Rachel muttered quickly, “You could have fooled me.”
Michelle’s voice hardened. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Rachel sighed, looking up at her again. “What are we talking about here?”
The junior editor’s voice was cold, calculating. “We’re talking about you. I saw you crushing on him like a little schoolgirl. At Equinox Publishing we discourage that kind of behavior. So I suggest you tread carefully, because you could end up losing your job.”
Rachel regarded her with a brief nod. “Interesting. Well, given your reaction to Mr. Pavon a few minutes ago, asking him out under the guise of calling it a business meeting? I’d say you might want to follow your own advice.”
Michelle huffed, picking up her materials and walking around the table. “Watch yourself, rookie.”
Michelle took her leave and Rachel dropped into a chair, placing her hands over her face as she leaned back. What the hell is going on? Hottie McCoffeehouse comes into her life: large, in charge, and available for the occasional rescue from errant coffee shop carpeting. She’d never been this attracted to a guy before and oddly enough, he seemed to be attracted to her too.
In a bizarre twist that even Edgar Cayce couldn’t have predicted, she not only gets a job as a phone sex operator, but Hottie McCoffeehouse calls her for advice about … well, her! Rachel shook her head dismally. Now Hottie McCoffeehouse is also Joe, a man whose lap she wanted to straddle so that she could kiss and touch him forever. And, if things weren’t confusing enough, Joe is also AJ Pavon, the writer whose novel was already tapped by the editorial staff at Equinox to do amazingly.
What’s more, tensions between she and Michelle were higher because Rachel decided to be brave enough to stand up for herself and not let the junior editor from hell intimidate her. This mess was all her fault. No, no — Kirby’s fault. I never would have caused this much trouble if that sex kitten hadn’t emerged from the deep recesses of my soul!
Then another delicious thought swam happily to the front of her mind: dinner with Joe tonight! Rachel shivered delightedly as she considered what sort of dessert might be on the menu. Her mind was suddenly full of ideas for dinner, and the incredible night she would undoubtedly spend with Mr. McCoffeehouse.
• • •
In Rachel’s kitchen, her grandmother’s pasta pot held rapidly boiling water. On the countertop sat mounta
ins of tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions. The smell of fragrant basil and perfectly roasted garlic filled the air, mingling with the slightly spicy and earthy undertones of oregano. The smell was heavenly and nostalgic, and seemed to work like an old world aphrodisiac.
A box of spaghetti lay unopened on the floor, having been unceremoniously dropped when Joe spun Rachel around to plant a kiss on her full, wanting mouth. Rachel was now wonderfully dizzy, trapped beneath Joe’s rock hard frame as his hands rested on her waist, just beneath the edge of her shirt.
His hands were soft, yet slightly calloused; deliciously rough but maddeningly gentle as he teased her skin with his fingertips. His mouth was pressed against hers urgently. Rachel couldn’t seem to figure out what to do with her body — her nerve endings were more alive than it they had ever been from the way Joe was assaulting her senses and she had no idea where she wanted to place her hands first. They started at his waist, moving to his strong back where she kept them until her hands burned from the way his muscles flexed beneath her palms. Now they were locked on his belt buckle, where she held on for dear life as her insides slowly melted in time to his seduction.
Joe’s chest and abs were flexing against her, and she stuck her torso out as much as she could so that his granite chest would remain right where it needed to be. He gasped against her mouth as he pushed back against Rachel, effectively granting her wish and pinning her to the wall. She moaned beneath his lips in response.
He released her mouth, dipping his head below her chin to sample her soft, smooth skin with the tip of his tongue. Joe growled close enough to her ear to make her eyes cross, hungering for a taste of the rest of her. He gently grazed her neck with his teeth and she gasped breathlessly.
“Joe,” she sighed, reaching as far up as she could to wrap her arms around his neck.
He bent at the knees to accommodate her desperate reach, surprising her when he wrapped his massive arms around her waist and lifted her off the floor. She let out a moan of surprise, but rose to the occasion, wrapping her legs around him before he claimed her mouth again.
Another small growl began to build at the base of his throat, and her fingers were tangled in his hair as she kissed him wantonly. Dazed with lust, she clung to him as his hands gripped her thighs while he nibbled her ear, then the sensitive flesh at her collarbone. She whispered his name again, having already lost control of every rational thought in her mind.
“Damn it,” he sighed, his voice husky and smooth. “What are you doing to me?”
Like I know! “I was trying to cook,” Rachel panted with a giggle.
Joe lifted his mouth from her skin, smiling slowly. His eyes were filled with playful lust, darkened by desire. “Oh, you’re cooking alright … ”
Rachel put her head back against the wall and released a breathless laugh. “As are you, Mr. Pavon.”
He smiled then kissed her once, firmly. “Do you know what that attitude of yours does to me?”
Rachel smiled, holding on tightly to him as he hitched her upward between the wall and his smoking hot frame. “What attitude?”
Without answering, he smirked and closed his mouth over hers. He took her breath away as he sucked on her lower lip. He lowered her body slowly as he did so, sliding her down the length of his body. Rachel learned rather quickly just exactly what she did to him. Rachel let out a delicious moan as his tremendous erection grazed against her pelvis. Well, damn.
Barely eye level to his chest, she scanned the length of his body with a lick of her lips; surely he was carved from marble. Even beneath his black cotton T-shirt, his torso swelled with perfect definition. She couldn’t resist letting her hands wander, from his flattened abs to his deliciously defined pecs.
Her eyes followed her hands, and she found herself looking into his dark, amorous stare. Joe towered over her as she let her gaze leave his and wander down to his waist, where his pants hung from his hips and housed the most amazing bulge she’d ever seen. Rachel sighed, wondering just how much trouble she was actually in.
She flattened her back against the wall to get a better look at the pools of chocolate that were his wonderfully sincere eyes. Inadvertently, Rachel ended up pressing her pelvis against him. His eyes went dark again, swimming with desire as he smiled. A small rumble of a moan escaped his lips, and Rachel nearly passed out.
“If I kiss you again,” he commented, “I won’t stop.”
She challenged his stare. “Maybe I’m okay with that.”
He chuckled. “What about dinner?”
“You make it hard to focus,” she replied, smiling up at him. “Things like dinner seem ridiculous right now.”
Joe teased, “You make it hard, too. But it does smell amazing. Did you roast the garlic yourself?”
His cooking question effectively ended his naughty seduction, and Rachel found herself only slightly happy about it. It was surreal to be in his arms; he was out of this world, and wasn’t sure if she would be able to handle his lustful appetite. Moreover, she was already anticipating how weird it would feel to hear him recount the story of how he had Rachel pressed against the wall while he was talking to Kirby, his favorite substitute to therapy.
Rachel was able to distract her guilty conscience with things like pasta, homemade sauce, and stories exchanged about their respective grandmothers. Joe nearly caused a sauce-related tragedy when he continually pulled her hair aside to nibble on her neck while she talked to him and stirred the bubbling contents of her favorite saucepot.
While dinner cooked, Rachel developed an obsession with Joe’s mouth, loving the way his lips parted when she offered him a taste of sauce from her wooden spoon and marveling at his tongue as it darted out to run across his bottom lip to catch any sauce that had landed there. The resident butterflies in her tummy awoke and fluttered madly when Joe dipped his finger into a spoon of sauce and ran it over her bottom lip so that he could gingerly lick it off.
“This is my favorite part of your mouth,” he muttered, staring at her lower lip with a seductive grin as he ran his thumb across it. Joe kissed her gently, and Rachel went weak at the knees. Mayday, mayday!
Joe was absolutely taken with Rachel at this point. Not only did she know her way around a kitchen, but he actually caught her doing little things that his grandmother did when she used to cook. Rachel threw salt over her shoulder when she dropped it, loved the smell of roasted garlic, and even tested the pasta’s doneness by throwing it against the wall. These were telltale signs of a girl steeped in her own family’s history, not a jaded city chick with a lack of ties to tradition. He smiled at her often as she worked, and blushed when she would look up to smile at him.
• • •
Rachel and Joe somehow made it through dinner and managed to get to know each other more. He was older than Rachel (and she was thoroughly embarrassed that this was the first she was hearing about it!) by a few years; she was twenty-seven, he was thirty-four. He was born in Edgewater, New Jersey and moved to Michigan as a boy with his family. He was raised in a big Italian family, complete with loads of cousins and friends of the family whom were always referred to as “aunt” or “uncle.” Thanks to his grandmother, who had come over from Sicily when she was a girl to be married, he was near fluent in Italian.
Rachel explained to him that it was her great-grandfather who had come from Sicily to make a life for himself in America. Beyond that, she came from a long line of New Yorkers. Rachel and Joe discovered that their lives very nearly ran parallel. They carried the same values, types of family stories, and a love for returning home. When their plates were finally empty, and their glasses had been drained, Joe gave her an admiring glance. She blushed under his playful scrutiny.
“Your mouth is delicious,” he said, “May I kiss it again?”
Rachel nodded with a lascivious smile and Joe stood, looking so much larger than life as he approached
her while she was still seated. He held out a hand, which she took eagerly. Rachel was pulled her to feet, and Joe cupped her face in his hands. Leaning forward, he planted a soft lingering kiss that was a far cry from the passionate embrace he’d pinned her in before.
“Thank you for dinner, babe,” he spoke, his voice deep and pleasant.
Wow. She could barely speak, so she kissed him again. Joe had a kind of charm that she wasn’t used to, and it threw her for a loop. Rachel grabbed his hand and led him into the living room, where they loaded a movie and sat on the couch together. His arm was resting around the back of her plush burgundy sofa, effectively caging her between the couch’s edge and his strapping body. She was barely able to keep her eyes off of him, and he turned to smile at her.
“Rachel,” Joe inquired, a note of teasing in his voice.
“There’s been something I’ve been wondering about,” Rachel spoke, trying her damnedest to build the courage she needed to pull off what she’d been thinking about since early this morning.
“Is that so,” he grinned. “What’s that?”
“Well, I’ve been wondering what it’s like … ”
He watched her carefully, his body at attention as she slowly moved his other arm from his lap. Rachel then raised herself to one knee, lifting the other and placing it on the other side of his hip as she boldly straddled him. His breath caught in his throat and their eyes met. Her gaze was lustful, yet so unsure. He raised an eyebrow, an amused smile forming on his mouth.
Rachel tried to speak again. “I’ve been wondering what it’s like to make out with you on this couch.”
He grinned, “This couch?”
Joe teased her, placing his hands comfortably on her hips, allowing them to stray dangerously close to her firm, round behind. She adjusted herself as he almost instantly began to rise to the occasion. Hands on his shoulders, Rachel tilted her head to one side and stared at him lustfully.
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