One Taste
Page 72
Chapter Nineteen
“So? What do you think?”
“It’s a nice place.” Kiki rubbed her damp palms against her hips. Breathe. Just breathe. “I like it.”
“I’ve heard you sound more enthusiastic over snow.”
“I really like snow.” She wandered to the window, more to get away from him than to check out the view. But oh, that backyard. She nearly gasped at the sheer size, and the adorable picket fence….
Holy dream-come-true.
“What’s wrong?” He clasped her shoulders, his grip just tight enough to let her know he was battling his own nerve demons. “You don’t like the house?”
She closed her eyes. Don’t screw this up. “Why did you bring me here?”
“I think you already know.”
Kiki dug her nails into her thighs. She needed that quick, stinging pain to stop her mouth. “You really go from zero to sixty in a heartbeat, don’t you?”
“Pretty much. I know it’s fast. I know lots of things that don’t make one whit of difference compared to how I feel about you.” She let him turn her around and met his gaze when he cupped her face in his hands. “I know how tenuous life is, Kiki. I don’t want to live on someone’s else timetable. What I want is you and me. Here.”
Her throat convulsed. “You’re not proposing.”
His clenched jaw did wonders for her own anxiety. She loved him, but marriage in a month was more than she could handle. “No. I’m not ruling it out someday. I mean, I know that’s the usual way of things, but—”
“Thank God.” She gave him a quick kiss. “I was afraid you’d finally taken one too many painkillers.”
He smiled. Slightly. “I’m off them now.”
“Glad to hear it.” She shifted her gaze to the computer on her left. The adorable pink computer. She couldn’t help but giggle. “Is the pink one yours?”
“I have a secret fetish.” Smiling, he released her to tap a few keys on the PC in question. Then he pulled out the thickly padded desk chair. “Take a look.”
She let out a purely female purr as she sank into the buttery leather. “God, you know how to bribe a girl, don’t you?”
“It’s not bribery.” His clipped tone told her she’d said too much yet again. How surprising. “I want you to be comfortable. Even if you don’t live here, I hoped you might be interested in writing with me. And if not, at least you can sit here once in a while so I can throw pencils at you.”
“Hoped I might be interested.” Her voice wobbled at that one. She blinked, trying to focus on the sharp colors on the computer’s desktop. Then she noticed the document he’d opened in a small window. Stripped. Their book. Okay, his book, but still. She rubbed her thudding heart. “You finished it?”
“Take a look,” he said again.
But she already was. She gobbled the last twenty pages of the story in one greedy bite, her smile broadening until she came to the last line. “It’s not done.”
“No kidding.”
“But you used my ending. The one you said you hated. Well, started using it, anyway.” She shoved trembling fingers through her hair. “Decided it didn’t work after all, huh?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you throw all my questions back in my face.” But she swiveled the chair in a slow circle as she thought it through. “It’s great, but it needs a little work. The last love scene needs something. Reads kind of flat.”
“I thought so, too.” He drew a fingertip down her chest, stopping just short of the plunging vee of her slinky red dress. “Did I tell you how incredible you look?”
“Actually, no.” She couldn’t stop staring at him. If she’d thought he destroyed a suit, he maimed a tux and left it for dead. The fabric clung in the right places, billowed in all the others. Sheer male beauty, complete with the hint of geekery that drove her wild. “Right back at you, Buonfiglio.”
“Only one way I’d rather see you.”
Kiki rose, her smile growing with her confidence as she backed him up to the desk. “What do you say we christen this office the right way?”
He’d already started undoing buttons. Yet another reason she loved him. “Thought you’d never ask.”
Kisses, long and deep and drugging, came first, continuing through his maddeningly slow strip routine. Every time his hands wandered to her dress, she returned them to his clothes to speed up the process. He laughed and went back to undressing her until finally, there were no clothes left between them.
When they were skin on skin, heart to heart, she arched against him, desperate for more. For all of him inside her. God, it felt like it had been so long. But he just kept kissing her, and touching her, and looking at her in the triangle of moonlight pouring in the window above her desk. “You’re beautiful.” He palmed her breast, but his eyes lingered over hers, entrancing her effortlessly. “My miracle.”
His hands drifted over every inch of her skin, caressing her to the point where she didn’t know where he left off and she began. As his mouth moved down her body, she shivered. Without altering the meandering path of his lips over her nipples, his arms drew her closer.
His miracle? Her eyes smarted even as she heard herself whimper. Their miracle. And it wasn’t over yet.
She dug her fingers into the desk the moment his mouth brushed the moist curls between her thighs. Oh yes. Heat zipped through muscles already tight with expectation, and his name sighed from her lips in an endless chant.
Through it all, she didn’t look away. Right then, his eyes were her signposts, his tongue and lips her roadmap straight into bliss.
Crying out, she erupted in what seemed like seconds, but he didn’t stop tonguing her until she begged him to. Not because it didn’t feel good, but because she needed something more.
Needed him.
The moment he stood, she locked her legs around his hips and closed her fingers around his length, so hard and hot and thick. She stroked him the way he liked, the way she knew would bring him to his knees, while he ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, tormenting her with her own tangy taste.
He groaned as her free hand traveled between his legs to tickle and tease. “Need you,” he managed. “Inside you.”
“Mmm.” She bit his tongue lightly. Squeezed. “Now.”
Then he bit off a curse. “I can’t believe it.”
“What?”
“Condoms.” He tugged off his glasses and tossed them on the desk, frustration leaking out of every pore. “Friggin’ forgot them.”
She flashed him a blithe smile. “Oh, well.”
“Oh, well?”
Kiki hopped off the table and knelt to pick up her coat. She fumbled in her pocket, finally withdrawing the blue box she’d forgotten in her car for a month. His swift exhale made her laugh. “My Christmas present’s not nearly as perfect as yours, but it does have a bit of sentimental value.”
“There is a God.” He snatched the box and went to work. His gaze snapped to hers. “These aren’t the ones I bought that night at the Quikky?”
“I saved them for you.” She leaned up on her toes to kiss him. It wasn’t as much of a stretch as it usually was because he’d conveniently neglected to remove her boots. She grinned. “Okay, for us.”
He grinned back. “See why I love you?”
“I am quite a find.” Laughing, she helped him suit up, then without preamble, slid back on the desk and parted her thighs, welcoming him.
They found their rhythm quickly, as if they’d done this millions of times rather than only for several weeks. Even though she felt another orgasm begin to build, she wouldn’t give in, wouldn’t let go, until he finally tightened and released inside her. He panted her name into her mouth, banding his arms around her as she shuddered and came again.
“Four weeks,” he murmured, still breathless. “Only four.”
She dropped her damp forehead to his. “A lifetime.”
“Yeah.” After his breathing leveled, he touched the gold
chain around his neck. “You asked about this.”
“It’s not important,” she said, trying to be understanding and undemanding. If she ever could be, tonight would be the night.
“It belonged to my mother.”
She felt ridiculous for ever asking. “I was just being nosy. And jealous.”
“Something I know a little about.” His eyes sobered. “I bought it for her at a kiddie craft fair the Christmas she died. I insisted on giving it to her a day early, which turned out to be good because she went in to have Ben on Christmas Eve.”
No wonder he hated the holidays. She gazed at the chain he held. “My birthday’s Christmas Eve.”
He smiled slowly, his features relaxing. “Figures.”
“It’s a pretty necklace.”
“Eh, it’s not much, but she loved the stupid thing. She got to wear it for twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, Vincent.”
“When she died, they gave it back to me, and I’ve worn it ever since. Even had it replated in real gold.” He shook his head, laughing a little. “Got quite a few looks at the jewelry store, believe me.”
She gripped the tiny key. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve been more sensitive.”
“Yeah, please.” Vincent’s grin lit up his face. “Be more sensitive to my man issues.”
She struggled to keep her face straight. “I don’t want to laugh.”
“Okay, I will.” And he did, until she silenced him with a kiss. His fingers brushed hers as he angled back to draw the chain over his neck. Even before he began to lower the necklace over her head, she pushed at his chest.
“No.” But she didn’t try to give the chain back because the gold was warm from his body. “I shouldn’t,” she said, not protesting too loudly.
“You should.” He kissed his key where it lay below her collarbone. “Only two women ever held my heart. My grandmother and my mother. Now there’s you.”
“I’m not crying,” she whispered.
“Good.” He nudged her chin up to his. “It’s not a ring, but it’s a promise. I don’t break my promises, Kiki.”
“Sorry.” She sniffled as the first tear tracked its way down her cheek. “Losing battle.”
He kissed her, slow and sweet and full of the promises he’d offered her. “So are you going to live with me? And help me write smutty books my grandmother can read?”
“Oh, yeah.” She grinned through her tears. “Try and stop me.”
“I talked to my agent today.” He fingered his chain around her neck. “Your name’s being put on our next book.”
“Oh, you don’t have to….” She stopped. “Never mind. Yes, you do. I want my name on a book.”
“You’ll have it on more than one, if my agent’s feedback on Stripped is any indication.” His smile filled her with warmth. “My grandmother will be thrilled. More Vicenza to love.”
Something in his tone hinted at more than his words. Her breathing tripped. “Did you tell her?”
“I told her. I also told her I wanted you to live with me.”
“No wonder she hugged me so much tonight.”
“She likes you.”
“Not as much as my parents adore you, hero.” Laughing, she slid her arms around his neck. “So when do we get to work?”
“Now would be good.” He rubbed his hands up and down her back. “We’re on deadline and we still have a scene to write. The most important scene.”
“Yeah.” Smiling, she blotted away the last of her tears. She was done with them for the night. “About time Julia and Nathan finally get their happy ending.”
“Damn straight. I’ve come around to your way of thinking on a couple points, but I still think Julia should—” He paused. “What the hell was that?”
She heard a door open and close then a burst of giggling. Lynsay. Brent’s deep laughter soon followed, along with a spate of noisy kisses and naughty talk.
Naughty talk that got louder with each passing second.
“Shit.” He took a step before turning to grab his pants. “Forgot about Brent.”
Kiki slid off the desk, her heels hitting the floor just as Brent chased Lynsay past the open door, presumably toward another bedroom. Then Brent returned to the doorway and grinned. “Well, hello there, Kiki. Fancy seeing you here. You, too, Vincent.”
Without hesitation, Vincent walked over and slammed the door in his face. “Don’t you know how to knock, Andrews?”
“Don’t you know how to keep your pants on, Buonfiglio?” Brent replied cheerfully over Lynsay’s peal of laughter. A moment later, another door slammed.
Vincent gave her a sheepish look. “Sorry.”
Kiki shrugged and slipped into her dress. “It’s dark. He didn’t see much. I hope.”
“If he did, he knows better than to admit it.” He zipped his pants and pulled her into his arms. “Want me to kick them out?”
“No. You have—” she caught herself and grinned, “we have a couple bedrooms. But Brent won’t be living here, too, right?”
“God, no.” He gripped her hand, lacing their fingers together. “It’ll be just us.”
She laid her lips on his. “Just us. I like the sound of that.”
Let Your Voice Be Heard
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He’s the man her fiancé handpicked for her…she just never expected to fall in love.
Layla Palmer is starting over in New York City with a new job at Hot Shots, an agency that specializes in hiring talent for jobs with an erotic bent. Happily engaged, she writes off the changes in her relationship with her fiancé, Aidan, as growing pains. But that all comes into question when her beloved fiancé comes up with a startling suggestion: he wants to watch her have sex with another man.
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LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD
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About Cari Quinn
USA Today bestselling author Cari Quinn grew up wanting to be a singer more than anything else. When she realized she probably wouldn’t be hired as the opening act for the Foo Fighters, she stopped singing and started writing. Now she happily writes about rock stars, MMA fighters, suited her
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