by Sey, Susan
“Damn skippy.”
Bel indulged in a long, skeptical silence.
He frowned at her. “All right, let me ask you this, then, since you’re being such a font of insight into the female psyche today. Say I kissed this girl.”
Bel’s stomach twitched and she glanced at him, suspicious. “What girl?”
“Mouth like sin, kissed like a startled angel.” His eyes went dreamy. “All soft and surprised and disapproving.”
“Disapproval generally means no, James.”
“But does that mean I can’t try again?”
“Why on earth would you want to?” She pulled into the Annex’s circular driveway and parked next to the naked fountain frolickers. She switched off the ignition with careful hands and made sure there was nothing but casual curiosity in her face when she turned to him.
“Did I mention her mouth?”
“You did.”
His eyes dropped to her lips and Bel’s heart stumbled into a confused patter. “It’s definitely worth another shot,” he said.
“No isn’t try again later,” Bel said. “No means no.”
“She never actually said no.”
“She...didn’t?” Bel thought frantically. She’d said no. That night in the kitchen. She’d said no. Emphatically. Of course she had. Hadn’t she?
He leaned forward, as if to impart a confidentiality. Close enough that Bel could smell him, that clean, warm scent of man mixed with melted butter and burnt sugar. Her scent, she realized with a start. Hers and his, melded together. It sent a liquid surge deep into her belly.
“She didn’t,” he said. “I get the feeling she was just giving the question a depth of consideration I hadn’t figured on.” He reached up, ran the pad of his thumb gently over her cheekbone. The breath stopped in Bel’s lungs, hung there, waiting. “She’s a thinker, that one. No question too casual for a deep answer.”
“She doesn’t sound like your type,” Bel managed.
“Not my usual, no. But I can’t get her out of my head.”
“Oh.” She stared at him, transfixed by the patient green of his eyes. His hand cradled her cheek now, warm and large and just a little bit rough and she wanted with all her heart to just lean on him. Let him take the weight of her aching head and her battered heart into those strong hands. She wanted to slide into his lap, press herself into the circle of his arms and rest there.
“Bel.” His voice was low and soft, more statement than question.
“Hmmm?”
“Will you tell me about it?”
She stiffened. “About what?”
“About why you disappeared on me today.”
She pulled away from his hand as if burned, yanked the keys from the ignition and dropped them into her purse. “I did no such thing.”
“You did.”
She made a dismissive noise and jerked open the door. She slung her bag over her shoulder and said, “I have a hundred minicakes in the back that say otherwise. Cakes that need to get into the freezer if I’m planning to keep what little employment I’ve managed to hang onto since I met you. So if you’ll excuse me?”
She dropped out of the van and slammed the door behind her. Her feet bit into the crushed gravel drive as she stalked to the rear doors of the van. And found him there, already leaning against the back panel.
She stared at him. “What, did you teleport?” He hadn’t even been unbuckled when she’d slammed her door.
“I can run, Bel. I do it for a living.”
She lifted a skeptical brow. “So you’ve said. I personally haven’t witnessed anything above a reluctant jog.”
He smiled. “You have now.”
“Color me impressed.”
“I will. I’d enjoy that, actually.”
The heat in his eyes had her swallowing hard and reaching for a dampening tone when she said, “Will you excuse me please? I need to get those cakes into the freezer.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no. I’m not going to excuse you.”
She frowned at him. “You’re holding my cakes hostage?”
“Sure.”
“In exchange for what?”
“The truth.”
“The truth.” She turned the words over in her mouth, really tasting them. “You think I owe you the truth?”
“I think you owe me something.”
“I owe you?” She shook her head in disbelief. “How do you figure that? You’ve been trying to destroy my career since the minute we met!”
He sighed. “You’re still sore about your wedding?”
“It was live TV.”
He shrugged. “I’d feel worse if you’d actually loved the guy.”
“Love,” she spat. “Love? God, James, what did I just tell you? Love doesn’t exist, okay? It’s a convenient excuse for people to do whatever they feel like so later on they can sigh and shrug and say I couldn’t help it! I was in love!” She pressed her hands to her heart and batted her eyelashes. “Ah, l’amour. Any stupid, impulsive, selfish thing you feel like doing, go right ahead. Just tell people it was for love and all’s forgiven, right?”
“Is that what happened to you, Bel?”
She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Ditch your fiancée on live TV because you suddenly discover you’re in love with her assistant. Or, hey, break up a waitress’s engagement because you’re not convinced, upon half an hour’s observation, that it’s a love match. And people will forgive you because, hey, it’s love. God, it makes me sick.”
“I’m sorry Ford ditched you on TV, Bel. But I’m not sorry you didn’t get married and I’m damn sure not sorry you didn’t love him.”
“Of course you’re not,” she said. “You don’t care about—”
“I’m not sorry,” he broke in, “because, while it may have inconvenienced you or embarrassed you or whatever, it didn’t hurt you. And he couldn’t hurt you because you didn’t love him.”
She gave a muffled shriek of frustration. “So what? Why do you care? What difference could it possibly make to you if I loved him or not?”
“It makes a hell of difference. Because if you’d loved him, you’d think about him every time you looked at another man. Every time somebody else touched you, kissed you, held you, you’d be thinking of him.” His eyes were hot now, green and intense and predatory. “And I don’t want you thinking about anybody but me this time.”
Bel stared at him. “This time?”
He smiled at her, and it was alive with purpose as he came off the van and moved toward her.
“You never actually said no, Bel.” He closed the distance between them with a couple of those loose, lazy strides of his. “And I have half a mind to ask again.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Temper snapped hot in Bel’s whiskey eyes and a delighted laugh bubbled up inside James’ chest. Madame Self-Possessed looked like she might do him a violence if he laid a finger—let alone his lips—on her.
At first he’d just wanted to tweak her a little. The woman had invaded his house, after all, with her massive army of pots and pans, her sheets, her Tupperware, her relentless, nonstop efficiency. She’d moved right in, made herself at home, and started taking shots at everything he held dear in life. He’d expected her to disapprove of his family. But tearing into his life-long love affair with the opposite sex? That was going too damn far.
Because James liked women. All women. They were like Paris to him—foreign and strange, but at the same time so damned inviting. They were a mystery that demanded to be tasted and touched, savored and appreciated. And James wasn’t one to deny his appetite. But so what? Why should he? Lucky man that he was—and he’d never denied luck’s starring role in his current situation—women had always liked him right back.
Or so he’d always believed. Which was why Bel’s latest blow had been particularly low. Implying that no woman had ever wanted him just for the pleasure of his company? That it was just his money or status or what
have you? James was willing to admit that money was fun, but he certainly didn’t believe that all the women who’d been willing to share his bed over the past several years had been interested solely in his pocket book.
Not that he’d deny the pocket book could have played into it some. But he’d lay a big chunk of that cash on the bet that there was something more to it. Something simple and primal and hot. An appetite Bel claimed women merely humored in men to get what they needed.
It was an intriguing theory. One James felt like testing out. Right now. On Bel. Because if he was any judge of lust—and he thought he was—there was more than pure temper crackling in her eyes. Something more earthy and interesting.
Only one way to find out.
He took a step closer to her, anticipation a hum along his nerve endings. Her skin had been like warm peaches under his hands in the dark kitchen. He was itching to find out what she’d feel like, smell like, taste like in this golden, melty twilight.
He eased toward her the way he would a skittish colt and slipped his fingers around her wrist, nice and gentle. Her pulse bumped there, a wildly arousing flutter against his palm, completely at odds with the dark menace in her eyes. He smiled at her.
“Bel?”
“What?” She glared down at his hand, then back up at him.
“I’m going to kiss you now.”
Her glare went nuclear. “I think you should.”
He paused. “What?”
She nodded firmly. “I do. I think you should kiss me.” She closed her eyes and puckered up those gorgeous lips. James’ blood jumped up and headed south but he forced himself to stop. Think. This wasn’t going the way he’d expected.
“Mind if I ask why?”
Her eyes opened. “What, now you want to talk? I said you could kiss me. Don’t you want to?”
That surprised a laugh out of him. “I do. Yeah.”
“But?”
“But I’m a little foggy as to why you’d want me to.
“For God’s sake, James. I don’t.”
“No?” He rubbed his thumb over the tender skin inside her wrist. Her pulse still jumped and skittered, giving lie to her steady voice and impatient words.
“No,” she said. “But you clearly don’t believe a woman could possibly kiss you and not be overcome with lust. You want me to be wrong so you can keep banging your merry way through life. So you don’t have to think and you don’t have to change and you don’t have to feel guilty about it. So why don’t we just get this out of the way, okay?”
He stared at her. “Well, that’s...unflattering.”
She cast her eyes heavenward. “Are you going to be temperamental about this?”
He rubbed his jaw, considered. “I might.”
“Great.” She jerked her wrist from his fingers. Her cheeks pinked up and something elusive and lost moved through those clear brown eyes of hers as she looked away. “Fine.”
“Well, geez, Bel. Can you blame me? You sucked the romance right out of it. You made it so clinical. Like some kind of transaction. Where’s the fun in that?”
She gave him a significant look. “It is a transaction. It always has been. I just made sure you noticed for once.”
She was wrong, of course. He knew it in his heart. But he couldn’t quite see his way to the end of that argument so he let it go.
They stood for a moment, a foot and a half of tense and wary space separating them. Finally, Bel said, “Can I have my cakes now?”
James moved aside. He considered her while she clicked open the panel doors and unlatched the straps holding the trays in the racks. Studiously avoiding his eyes, she slid out a large aluminum baking tray full of cakes. James slid out a second and followed her into the house.
He felt...itchy. Uncertain. Unsettled. And not just in light of the completely unsatisfying argument he’d just lost. It had been eating at him for days, actually. Ever since he’d seen her glaring at her bride and groom cakes with the same intense concentration she’d given his kiss. The concentration he’d mistaken for disapproval. For an unequivocal if unspoken no.
But what if it hadn’t been no? That’s what was chewing at him. He wasn’t by nature given to regret but he couldn’t stop wondering about that. What if what he’d taken for no had actually been more let me think?
Because the Bel he’d come to know would no more endure an unwanted kiss in silence than she would run her precious tea cups through the dishwasher. And James had tried to run those cups through the dishwasher once, so he knew of which he spoke.
And she damn sure wasn’t the sort of girl who’d allow her body to lead her into even the most harmless of detours. If there hadn’t been something real and compelling in that kiss, she wouldn’t have hesitated to slap his face and demand a written apology. But she hadn’t done any such thing.
Instead, she’d surfaced, slow and sweet, those ridiculously long lashes lifting over perplexed and curious eyes, those dark sharp brows drawn together in a wary line.
And what had he done? He’d given up. He’d seen undecided and interpreted it as unmoved, unimpressed and uninterested. And when had that happened? Just when had he forgotten that maybe wasn’t no but try harder? Just when had he started to take it for granted? The applause, the success, the women, the money?
He didn’t know when it had started. But he knew exactly when it was going to end.
Right now.
Bel slid her tray of cakes into the upright freezer and tried not to notice the way the very air between her and James still snapped and twitched with unspent energy. She composed her face into neutral lines and turned to take the second tray of cakes from him.
He gave it to her, his brows furrowed in a completely uncharacteristic frown. Not that she’d never seen him frown at her before—that, she’d seen, and plenty. No, this was something different. This was something new. This was James Thinking.
She slipped the second tray into the freezer with a tiny smile. She hadn’t thought it was possible, but had she actually broken through? Had she actually said something to him that made a dent in that perpetual laze of his? Something that had kick-started what she suspected was a perfectly serviceable brain into action? Or better yet, a decent dose of introspection?
She clicked the freezer door shut, checked the seal and turned back to him. His eyes were on her this time, and what she saw in them was enough to have her easing toward the stainless steel door at her back.
“Hey, Bel.” Not a question. Just the opening volley. She understood this the way a field mouse understands a hawk in the sky.
“Hmmm?” Words seemed to be beyond her.
“I changed my mind.”
“About, um, what?” She checked her watch. She didn’t know why. Was she planning to time him?
His pirate’s lips curved. “Kissing you. Your theory about women and lust? I think I would like to put it to the test after all. If the invitation still stands.”
“Oh.” Her pulse scrambled madly and she groped for an excuse. God, what had she been thinking? Asking him to kiss her? Throwing it down like a gauntlet? “I, ah—”
A verbal response turned out to be unnecessary, as in the next heartbeat, Bel found herself being thoroughly kissed.
His mouth was everything it looked like—utter perfection in the unlikeliest place. But Bel had been here before. She was ready for it this time.
Last time, he’d caught her by surprise and it had been one big sensory explosion. Like a well-trained army marching on an unprepared, unfortified village. Same army this time, Bel thought, dazed, as his mouth moved over hers, still sweet with the cakes they’d baked. Excellent weaponry. But this time Bel had a little firepower of her own. And a plan. It wasn’t like she’d asked him to kiss her without a strategy in place.
She just had to remember what it was.
She lifted her hands—had they really been clenched in fists by her sides?—and speared her fingers into that wild rumple of sunny hair. It was crisp and alive against her s
kin, and a startling bolt of bone-deep satisfaction shot through her. Finally, something inside her whispered fiercely. Finally.
She arched into him without thought, into all that solid, compact heat, and a purr rose up inside her, silent and unstoppable. She hadn’t known, she thought wildly, hadn’t understood that itch just under her skin. The twist of nerves, the twitch of discomfort. She hadn’t known what she wanted, what she needed.
She knew now. Now, with his mouth moving over hers like glory, with her body plastered up against the square strength of his, with her fingers twisted into his shaggy hair. Now, with electricity leaping in her veins, with want sliding hot into her belly, with the scent of him deep in her lungs.
It was him. Touching him. Quenching that low and aching desire to simply feel him under her hands.
She tugged him closer, rose up on her toes and opened her mouth under his. He made some kind of noise—surprise? Hunger? Gratitude?—and suddenly Bel’s back was flat against the cool freezer door. He pressed into her, his body hard and hungry, his mouth hot and avid, and everywhere he touched her she burned.
But she gloried in it. God help her, she did. She basked in his blatant want and whipped the flames higher. She slid a knee up his thigh, curved it around his hip and urged him closer. Higher. Fiercer. She wanted more. Needed it. Needed him.
One big hand slid down to cup her bottom, lifted her into him as he rocked against the center of her want. Pleasure and heat shot through her, and she dropped her head back to gasp. He dragged his lips along the exposed line of her throat in a blaze of hot, open-mouthed kisses that sent shards of pleasure dancing over her skin.
More. She needed more. More heat, more skin, more contact. Just more. Her hands streaked over him, tunneled up the back of his shirt until they found the broad strength of his bare skin. God. The animal heat of him, strong and smooth under her hands, had her head spinning, had desire leaping up mad and unruly inside her. She wanted to strip him bare, wanted to feel that tight play of muscle against her own skin. Under her lips, her tongue, her teeth.
She squirmed against him, against the heavy, insistent pulse of the body that had her anchored against the freezer. He pulled back just enough to reclaim her mouth with his and the dark swirl of desire washed over her, dragged her down. He jerked her up higher, until she was completely off the floor, her legs twined around his hips, his hand under her bottom.