Damn, he’s good.
Michelle fanned herself. “Whew! On that note, we’re going to wrap it up, Atlanta. Check out Lindsay Winthrop’s book, The Sexy Diva Talks Dating, when it releases on July 21st. Until then, you can listen to her podcast, Lindsay the Sexy Diva, on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. If you’re an art lover, visit her fiancé’s website for his latest metal sculptures. They’re really amazing works of art, y’all.” She gave the website address. “Thanks for joining us for this very informative interview, and stay tuned for more sexy sounds on tonight’s episode of Late Night with Michelle.”
An R&B ballad filled the airwaves, and they all removed their headphones.
“I am so sorry about that. We screen every call, but we can’t stop every instance of the wrong person getting through.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re fine,” Lindsay said.
“You two are great together, and it’s nice to get the male and female point of view. Have you ever considered having a show together?”
“Never,” Malik said without hesitation.
“As you can see, there’s no way he would ever do a show. Besides, that’s not where his passion lies. He’s a gifted sculptor and needs to focus attention on his art.”
“And she needs to focus on what she does best—talking and giving out advice. I’m happy to support her when she needs me, but other than that, I prefer to stay in the background. I know what I got, and I’m content.” He flashed a grin.
The interviewer stared at him and shook her head slowly. “He’s supportive, too? Lindsay, I’m about to pre-order your book so I know how to get me a man like him.”
The three of them laughed.
Minutes later, Lindsay and Malik were out the door.
Chapter 12
“Who is Amy?” Lindsay asked the question from the passenger seat of Malik’s truck once they were out of the parking lot and on the way to her house.
“Here we go,” he muttered.
“No, really, who is she? Because Michelle may not have seen your face when your girlfriend called, but I sure did, and I know you know who Amy is.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s someone I used to know.” She saw the hard set of his jaw beneath the beard.
“Someone whose heart you broke?”
“I don’t break hearts.” He slid a glance at her that she couldn’t read before returning his gaze to the road.
“So the hearts break themselves?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth about Amy, and any other woman who might be lurking in the shadows and making an appearance at an inopportune time while we’re in the middle of promoting my damn book.”
He shot a steely, sideways glance at her. “I thought I responded very well to the call.”
He actually did do a great job of handling the irate woman, which could have derailed the interview, but Lindsay remained irritated.
She folded her arms and fell quiet for the next few miles. Her mind raced with all kinds of thoughts, and finally she couldn’t remain silent any longer. “What did you do to her?”
Malik sighed loudly. “If you recall, she said I wooed her. That’s not exactly a bad thing.”
“It is, if you’re the kind of man who loves ’em and leaves ’em. The kind who makes a woman feel good and pretends she’s everything you ever wanted, then you cheat and get another woman pregnant and move on.”
Dammit. She’d said too much.
Malik swung his head in her direction. “What? I never…”
Lindsay turned to stare out the window, kicking herself for going off on a tangent.
“I’m not that kind of man, okay? I never cheated on a girlfriend in my life.”
They drove in silence, the city lights whizzing by in a blur as they rolled down the highway.
“I guess that comment was about your ex-boyfriend?” Malik asked quietly.
At first, she didn’t want to answer and crossed her legs toward the door. But maybe because he sounded genuinely concerned or maybe because she needed to talk, Lindsay found herself replying to the question, though she kept her eyes averted to the passing nightscape.
“When Shawn told me about Melanie, I confronted her, and she claimed she didn’t know about me. Yet the few times we’ve run into each other, she always makes a point of coming over to speak, so she can rub my nose in her relationship. I hate her and her perfect little family.”
One hand tightened with the regret of mistakes she’d made in the past. When she and Shawn worked together at the agency his family owned, he’d been charming and she’d fallen in love with him. Hard. Because he’d treated her well, different from other men.
She knew what it was like to be the fun girl. The one men wanted to party with and hook up with but would never take seriously. Never put a ring on her finger. That was saved for the nice girls. In exchange for the care Shawn took with her, she’d been the best girlfriend she could be. But while she’d been with him in a monogamous relationship, he’d cheated on her with Melanie.
She glanced at Malik. In the dark vehicle, she saw pity in his eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that!” Lindsay snapped. “I’m not a charity case. I don’t need marriage, and I bought my own ring.” She wiggled her fingers, showing off the diamond before turning to stare out the window again.
Neither of them spoke the rest of the way. When Malik parked in front of her townhouse, Lindsay pushed open the door and hopped onto the street.
“Lindsay—”
She cut him off with a slam of the door and stalked around the front of the truck where she encountered his solid frame. “Make sure you have a good answer for when your other women come around, Mr. I-Don’t-Date-Much.”
“There won’t be any other women. Amy was a long time ago and is holding a grudge for some reason.”
“Maybe if you weren’t so charming.” She flashed a tight smile. “Goodnight.” She marched around him.
“What is your problem?”
She faced him again, hands on her hips. “I don’t have a problem.”
“You definitely have a problem. You can’t even reason correctly because you’re upset about the wrong issue.”
“Excuse me?” She glared at him.
“Don’t take out your anger about your ex on me, and don’t take out your anger at him on his wife.”
“You don’t even know her and you’re defending her?”
“I don’t have to know her to know you’re wrong about your perception of the chance meetings you’ve had with her. What exactly about Melanie makes you think she’s trying to rub your nose in her relationship with your ex?”
“Because it’s obvious. Every time she sees me she talks to me.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough to prove she’s an evil witch? Why would she insist on talking to me? She won. I lost. She loves the fact that she got Shawn. “
“Or maybe that’s your imagination.”
“Oh, please. How can you possibly be an expert on someone you met once?” Lindsay tapped her foot in aggravation against the sidewalk.
“I’m not an expert on Melanie, but I’m reading the situation differently than you. What if she really didn’t know?”
“Didn’t know what?”
“Didn’t know about you,” Malik replied, as if the answer were obvious.
Lindsay snorted. “Right.”
“I’m serious. Wouldn’t that explain why she’s always been friendly?”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Shawn said he told her we were in a relationship, but she came onto him anyway. She seduced him. He told me what happened after we broke up.”
“So he claims he told her about you, but he for sure told you about her after she got pregnant?”
Lindsay pulled up short. “You’re reading the situation wrong.” She saw where the conversation was headed and didn’t want to go there. She’d known, on an instinctual level, that Shawn hadn’t bee
n completely honest with her, but she’d ignored the signs, and she’d been furious with herself for doing so. Furious for ignoring the instincts she advised her listeners to trust.
“Am I? You didn’t know he was sleeping with her, so isn’t it possible she didn’t know he was sleeping with you, until you confronted her?”
“That’s not what happened.”
Malik ran a hand down the back of his head. “Look, I’m not trying to be mean, okay? But that’s classic cheater behavior. You probably messed up his whole game when you confronted her, and he had a lot of smoothing over to do. Cheaters never tell the truth to the woman they don’t want to risk losing.”
She stiffened as pain lanced through her. “God, you’re a dick.”
“Your ex is a dick. He used you for his own purposes, strung you along, and then dumped you when he was finished and had the woman that he really wanted to be with.”
Lindsay shoved his chest, but he didn’t move. She simply encountered solid muscle as firm as a brick wall. “Shut up. I don’t want to hear this.”
“You don’t want to hear the truth? Because that’s what I’m giving you. You do all this talking about dating and sex, but what do you really understand about any of it? You had blinders on when it came to your own relationship. How are you qualified to give anybody advice when you don’t know the basics?”
“I. Know. Plenty. I’m a woman. I know how women think, and I know what they feel.”
“And that makes you an expert?”
“It makes me someone with first-hand experience who can share my thoughts in a cohesive and coherent way. I make women feel better about themselves. You wouldn’t believe the number of letters I get from women thanking me for helping them. How dare you question me and what I do. How dare you!”
“How dare you pedal your shit, your bullshit, when you know good and well your own life is a mess. Isn’t that the reason I’m here, Lindsay? You talk a good game about giving advice, but you don’t have a man of your own.”
That stung. Those words were brutal, and the expression on his face hinted that he knew he’d gone too far.
“Don’t you ever talk to me like that again,” Lindsay said in a quiet voice. “I know what my truth is. I don’t have to justify my behavior to anybody. Certainly not to some wannabe artist who hides out in the country because he probably can’t fuck.”
Malik lowered his voice, narrowing his eyes on her. “Oh come on, Lindsay, you know that’s not true. You’ve been wanting me to get between those pretty thighs since we first met three years ago.”
Her nipples quivered at the heated anger in his face. She’d fantasized way too often about that same face between her legs, his beard rubbing the bare skin of her pubes. Her very bones ached with anticipation.
“And you’ve been wanting to get between these thighs ever since then,” she shot back.
Malik’s nostrils flared, and his gaze flicked from her face to her thighs and back again. “Yeah, I have.”
The admission temporarily threw her off balance. Electricity hovered between them, like a current on steroids.
“Maybe we should do what we both want to do,” he added, his voice going distinctly lower.
Chapter 13
Her eyes widened.
Malik was as shocked as she was. He hadn’t planned on saying that, but he’d been wanting to kiss her again ever since the photo shoot. He’d been wanting to do much, much more, too. Because his desire for her had started long before the shoot. It had started three years ago. He’d never forgotten a thing about her since the night they met at Stephan’s.
Tension had been building in him since they began this stupid charade, and he was wound tighter than a spring. Every little bit of contact, no matter how slight, sent a charge through him.
His eyes focused on her mouth, and his entire body went still. He moved and she gasped right before he pressed his lips to hers, holding her face between his hands so she couldn’t move.
Heat exploded between them like an eruption of lava. He felt everything from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. His fingers, all his extremities, tingled and his heart raced like someone afraid. He kissed her hard and with enthusiasm on the sidewalk outside her house, moving his mouth aggressively over hers and tasting the flavor of mint on her breath.
The kiss deepened, and he pressed her against the front grill of the truck and pushed one thigh between her legs. He ran his hands up the back of her shirt and slid his rough tongue against hers to maintain control of the kiss.
She moaned loudly, as if she got so much pleasure out of the mouth-to-mouth contact. But he was the one who got pleasure. So much so he thought he might explode. He couldn’t simply attribute the intensity he experienced to the fact that he hadn’t been with a woman in a long time. The truth was, it was because of her. Her taste, her flavor. Everything about her was soft and smelled good. Her innate sensuality attracted and teased him constantly. The fact that she had been on his mind nonstop added to the sensation of helplessly falling into this feeling.
Malik ran his hand up the side of her torso and around to her breasts, cupping their fullness in his hands and feeling her body tremble as his thumb flicked over the nipples. Even as he did it, he knew he was going too far but couldn’t stop.
He had her pinned between his hard thighs and the even harder vehicle. He consumed her. Damn near swallowed her whole, mouth pressed bruisingly hard against hers and his tongue forcing her lips apart in a dance of divide and conquer.
Lindsay angled her body into his grinding hips and his brain flatlined, need sinking in its claws as the kiss turned from hungry to rapacious, from a flame to a raging inferno.
He released one breast from the confines of her blouse. The chocolate nipple puckered in the warm night air and his mouth closed over it. He sucked the taut flesh, licking around it with pure relish like he’d never had the pleasure of a nipple before.
Her knees buckled but he held her upright, pushing his hand down her pants and cupping the already swollen flesh that practically dripped with want. She reached down between them and rubbed his crotch, making him harden and his body scream with hunger.
His mouth left her breast and he bit her neck. Sucked her soft skin. Tonight she didn’t wear perfume and smelled like honey and almonds and the sweetest womanly scent he’d ever had the luxury to inhale.
Cars zoomed by and a dog barked in the distance, but he didn’t care. What he wanted to do was fuck Lindsay. Hard. All night, until his body emptied and he had no strength left to move.
Once again, he slid his tongue between her teeth, and he hoisted her knee up to his waist and ground his hips against her center. His body throbbed and ached with the need to possess. He lifted her from the ground, and she closed her legs around his waist so that he was perfectly centered at her core.
Her soft hands traveled over his face and into his hair. She stroked his curls and cupped the back of his head as his lips moved over the crests of her beautiful breasts. This hunger was bone deep. He couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop.
The relentless sound of a horn pierced the night air and jolted Malik from the intoxicating pull of Lindsay’s body and drugging kisses. He tore his mouth away from hers, both of them staring hungrily at each other and breathing hard.
Neither one of them said a word for a minute, and he quietly debated if he wanted to keep going and finish what they’d started. Then sanity returned.
“Goddammit!” The expletive exploded from his lips and he dropped her, swinging away, tension tightening his back and shoulders.
“You don’t have to stop.” Her husky voice sounded huskier.
Malik scrubbed both hands up and down his face. “I need to stop.” He closed his eyes momentarily before turning to face her. She’d covered herself, but the blouse lay unbuttoned against her full breasts.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t do this.”
“We don’t have to be in a relationship, Malik. I�
��we need to get the edge off. Admit it, there’s so much tension between us all the time. I know you feel it. Let’s go upstairs. My bedroom is on the main floor. We can get this over with once and for all. One time. That’s it.”
“It’s not that simple, Lindsay.”
“It is that simple. I’m not asking for a commitment. We’re not kids. I’m thirty-two and you’re thirty-one. We’re old enough to know what we want.”
He shook his head. “Lindsay—”
“What’s the problem!” she said, almost yelling in frustration. “I’ve never had to beg a man to have sex with me, and I’m not about to start now. But remember when you told me, in a very cocky way I might add, that we’re going to have sex? Care to give me an ETA, because it’s obvious I want you and you definitely want me.” She gestured at the bulge in his pants.
He might as well tell her. “I can’t have sex with you. I’m celibate.”
She blinked. “Say what now?”
Malik heaved a sigh. “You heard me. I’ve been celibate for three years.”
“Why? Don’t you like sex?”
“I like sex.”
“Then what prompted your decision? Religious reasons? What?”
He almost laughed at the comical disbelief on her face. “Like I told you before, I wanted to concentrate on my craft. Sex and relationships pose too much of a distraction.”
“But isn’t sex hard for you to…resist?”
“It’s not that hard. Once I made up my mind to abstain, I did. I’ve spent time with a few women over the years, but none of them interested me enough to break my promise to myself.” Until you, he silently added.
“You’re a complicated man, Malik.”
“Not so complicated.”
She stared at him. “What does this mean for us?”
“That we stop here.”
“Even though we both want it?”
“Even though we both want it.”
He’d had to deal with women before who didn’t understand his decision. Women who tried unsuccessfully to seduce him, but he’d never gone so far as putting his hand down their pants before. She was so wet. So ready.
Wild Thoughts Page 8