Matthew The Daddy Richardson had been a disgraceful mistake. Travelling across the world for him had been a dire error. An embarrassing one. It had been the only mistake of its kind for her. And she’d promised herself, after, that it would be the last of its kind.
No, Melissa Daniels was a proud woman. One hiccup in her life would never destroy that. If Keith Devonshire wanted a piece of her, he’d have to go a lot further than flashing his sexy Porsche or his sexy Limo or his sexy watch at her. He’d have to do way more than pay for an expensive dinner or show her his desirable chest and his desirable abs or even his likely desirable house. Although, she would accept all those things. And more.
But if he wanted her, all of her, he’d have to show her the one thing no one had ever shown her before, even to this very day: He’d have to prove to her that he was a real freaking man!
FOUR
THE RESTAURANT
-1-
He waited for her outside A Adega, a Mediterranean restaurant ensconced three miles out of the nearest town, nestled under imposing evergreen oaks whose sizable leaves rustled like people whispering above him. The dark and romantic area had a woody smell that made him want to take his shoes off, sit back on a couch, and put his feet by a fire...with a woman in his arm.
Melissa—Mel, she’d told him her name was later—had insisted on driving here herself. An independent woman. A strong woman, he thought.
Oh how he’d grown weary of...girls! Tiresome and fretful...children!...who chased his money and degraded themselves in the hunt for it.
Melissa hadn’t batted an eyelid at his efforts to display his power—a car to pick her up, a dinner at his mansion... (She must’ve known he lived in a kind of mansion, surely.)
He waited. Bronze light washed out from the rustic, stone-walled restaurant behind him. The Southern England air was cool. But, thankfully, it was also dry—an irregularity for this time of year, or even England itself. He faced the long and dark rural road. A road not dissimilar to the one he revved his car wildly on the night before. In twenty minutes, only two cars had driven by. Each one had made his heart race, and, he confessed, his palms sweat. Thrilling, he thought. He hadn’t felt this nervous (or, rather, this excited) since Belinda had lured him behind that pavilion and...
But this was nothing like that. That had been hormonal teenage tomfoolery. This was... This was—
A car’s headlights approached in the distance, curving down the road. In the dark he couldn’t tell the model. Its indicator light went on. Keith Devonshire’s heart sank. The dark blue vehicle turned into the restaurant parking lot. And, through the driver’s window...he saw her—her confident face, earrings to her shoulders, her lightly curled blonde hair. And her unwavering confidence.
Keith Devonshire could not move for a moment.
The car drove past him.
He heard its engine turn off, heard its door open...
And he felt like an absolute ass for not being there to escort the lady out of her vehicle!
So he ran.
-2-
He was slightly out of breath when he got to her Prius’s door. He held his hand out and...all time stopped as he watched the elegance which was her form, stretch its glamorous leg out of the driver’s seat, and extend its hand to meet his.
Every motion, every move, was a millenium of time—the black heel hitting the dust floor; the sheer shawl draped around her shoulders; her lips as they parted slightly to say hello to him.
Keith Devonshire...was an absolute wreck.
Somehow he held onto her hand and actually managed to assist her out. She stood and faced him. His eyes drifted down, down, down, then up, lingered, up, down again. He felt his mouth had gone dry. She said, “Mr. Devonshire.” Devonshieyah.
His grip on her hand squeezed tighter. He swallowed a lump. “Mizz...Daniels. Please...call me Keith.”
“And I already told you you can call me Mel.”
He was all lust right now, he confessed to himself. There was nothing he could place as to why he was like this around her. He...tried to place it. Her body was all woman. And that turned him on. It would turn any man his age on. But there was more. Her grin was knowing. She knew she had this power over him! She knew he, powerful as he might be, was currently being reduced to whimpering jelly at the site of her self-possession.
Yes, that’s what it was, that’s what it was completely: She was a confident woman. And it hit him now, a boxer’s fist to the stomach, why her image had lingered in his mind, why he’d thought endlessly of her after meeting her, why he’d sought out her telephone number so surreptitiously. Hell, even why he’d bothered to walk up to her and ask her if she’d needed “any help” at Bookworms! Melissa Daniels had that je ne sais quoi which few women ever find in themselves, that pheromone of pheromones to attract any virile man: Melissa Daniels didn’t need a man. She never would. Which is what gave her the power to get any man she ever wanted.
Keith Devonshire closed the driver door for her and put her hand on his arm as he guided her to the restaurant’s entrance. Standing just outside it, they made small-talk for a bit. He asked her about her drive, they commented on the weather, he held the door open for her and she whisked past him and unsteadied him with her erotic perfume. At the table, he held her chair out for her, then ordered them fine wine.
And all he could think about was easing the shoulders of her dress down, unsheathing her breasts, cupping them in his hands, lifting her skirt up above her thighs...
It was for this very reason that, sitting there under candle-light, sipping on Sauvignon Blanc, he decided he would not have her. Not tonight, at least. Because he wanted her more than once. And to do that—if he was judging her character right—he’d have to prove himself to her. And, as he looked into her eyes which were the color of light sherry, he somehow knew that proving himself to her had little to do with showing her how much money he made, or how strong his body was despite his age. Or how good he was in bed...
Melissa Daniels was no girl. This he already knew. And what pleases a girl is far beyond what pleases a woman!
Melissa was as womanly as they get.
FIVE
THE MANSION
-1-
I’m his, Mel thought. He has me. Does he know this? He has me completely. From the moment she’d seen him outside her car door, catching his breath and extending his hand out to hers, he’d had her.
Now, sitting and eating olive-bread with butter, trying to focus despite the glimmer of his disarmingly green eyes, she listened to him. He spoke of pleasantries; she did the same. And, under it all, flowing like dangerous rip currents, was the the theme they both actually wanted to talk about, but neither mentioned: How fast they could rip each other’s clothes off.
She sensed this. She knew it from the flicker in his eyes every time he looked at her, the slight parting of his lips as those same eyes grazed briefly past her breasts throughout the night.
As the night passed by, him learning about her time in Brooklyn, her learning about his time at Oxford, the tension in her grew stronger. She wanted to see where he lived, wanted to share a glass of wine with him by a fire. She wanted him to slide his hand up her dress, slowly, up her stomach, and then under the wiring of her bra...
He poured her more wine. She drank her third glass. “I’ll have my driver take you home,” he said, “and then pick your car up and drop it off for you.”
She was in no state to drive. And she accepted the offer.
“Will we...do this again?” he asked, their desserts now finished, and the inevitable end of a night that promised so much more, fast approaching.
“You don’t strike me as the type of man to ask such a thing so hesitantly, Mr. Devonshire.”
He smiled, looked down at his empty crème brûlée. He looked so innocent for a second. Then, still looking down, he stopped smiling. His eyes changed. The green in them suddenly intensely bright. He looked up at her—peered into her.
She was caught
, a deer in headlights. His glare felt like hands—warm, powerful hands—on her shoulders, sliding down—
“Melissa Daniels, you’re absolutely right. And I confess that...” He waved a hand. “Never mind.”
“Tell me,” she insisted.
He steeled himself. “...I confess that...you’ve...disarmed me, shall I say. I don’t like that feeling. I’m being cautious around you, because I would like to see you again. And...” He was unsure of how to finish. Keith Devonshire had never admitted of weakness in his entire life, and here he was, admitting it completely to, well, a near-stranger!
“Don’t be cautious,” she assured him, not hiding the innuendo. And she slid her hand over to his over the table, held it.
His...anatomy...reacted. He gripped her hand in return, pulled it toward him, as if the table between them didn’t exist; as if the entire restaurant didn’t exist! Now he wanted her! Now he downright must have her!
Forget his thoughts of earlier. Melissa Daniels had cast a spell on him, and he was under its control.
She’d given him the OK, given him the cue to take her. Hadn’t she? Don’t be cautious. “I’m afraid, that if I’m not cautious, I might scare you off. I don’t want to scare you off.” Because you...intrigue me, he completed in his mind.
Melissa saw the man—this giant of a man, influential and significant in the world—break in front of her. It was not an obvious break. He did not collapse and cry. His eyes stayed focused on hers...just. But she did see it. It was in the light quaver of his voice as he’d said, I might scare you off. “I’m not scared easily. I think you underestimate me,” she teased.
“No, I don’t.”
And there it was again, she noted—that microscopic quaver of...fear? What a thrill it was for her, to see a man so dominant, so incredibly influential, seem, suddenly, a little afraid.
And afraid of what? she wondered. What would a man like this, with eyes that would pierce the heart of even the coldest siren, be afraid of?
“I don’t underestimate you,” he continued. “You’re a proud woman. I see that. You know what you want. You’re certain of it. I see—”
The waiter arrived, asking if all was fine and if they needed anything else. Without looking away from her, Keith said brusquely, “Wine. Another bottle.” The waiter, being typically English, lingered, ensuring all the niceties of social intercourse were adhered to before...simply, well, fucking off! Keith glared the young waiter down. And, through clenched teeth, growled, “That. Will. Be all. Son.”
The boy was either stupid, or... No, he was indeed stupid. “Yes, sir. Yes. So, that’s one wine, you said?”
Keith smirked, and bowed his head, defeated. He could send a torrential rainfall of money into a futures contract with one phone call, but he could not get this child to realize that he needed a moment of privacy—a moment of intimacy for chrissake!—with this woman.
The waiter, finally, after an endless time, left.
Melissa laughed.
“You find it funny that I cannot control the youth of today?” Keith joked.
She looked down at her dress. “I find it funny that...you and I are sitting here...thinking of one thing, and one thing only, and we’re ordering more wine.” She couldn’t look at him after saying that, after being so obvious about it. She felt her cheeks blush, felt her skin prickle.
Keith Devonshire was a good man, she felt. She’d spend a night with him gladly. He seemed a gentleman of a man as well. She was under no illusions that it would last, that it would be love forever. But she would grant him—nay, herself—a night of passion.
He was exquisite in features, every part of him chiseled and firm and perfect. Like a statue made by the masters. His eyes, ever-so-slightly wrinkled on the sides, and seemingly hard at first glance, were sincere, and—she admitted—kind.
Their hands were still gripped on the table. She felt his hand break in a light sweat. She took the final half-glass of white wine and drained it.
“And what is it,” he whispered intensely, “that you and I are thinking of that we aren’t saying?”
Her legs widened minutely, as if of their own will. Her stomach clenched and rose. Her throat tightened. Her lips...below...moistened. Her head went light. Her cheeks went warm. Keith’s hand gripped her own. The wine arrived. Keith said something to the lad—she missed most of it—and before she knew it, the bill had been paid.
“What about the wine?” she asked as Keith Devonshire was suddenly next to her, holding his hand out to help her up.
“Fuck the damn wine.”
-2-
On the table, right here in this restaurant. That would be perfect, she dreamed. He could smash the plates down on the ground, set fire to the drapes and tablecloths. And then he could widen her legs for her, slip his fingers in the lace panties she’d put on (always be prepared, she’d thought earlier), rip them off, and satisfy her.
This is what she thought of as she stood there. Crazy, I know!
She was short of breath, engorged to the max! She needed to call Nadja or something because such a hormonal reaction had no explanation!
They actually made it outside without setting fire to the place. Cool wind gusted past her, under her dress and...there! She shivered. He put his arm around her shoulders instinctively.
And, also instinctively, she raised her lips to his.
And then he kissed her.
-3-
She had no strength left after that, no will to resist him anymore. “Don’t be careful,” she croaked, reminding him, hoping the nuances of the statement were clear.
And so he pressed his hard chest against her buxom one, and brought her closer to him.
She felt him stir below, and, in her mind, she yowled with need. It was the sound of a demented soul flying the skies, frenzied with desire and lust.
Lust. That’s what it was. It was pure, ancient, animalistic lust she felt for him now. She liked the feeling, because she understood it. She wasn’t confused by its effects on her lightheaded mind. She’d mistaken that feeling for Love once. Now she knew better. But lust like this she’d never experienced!
This was Nine and a Half Weeks, Basic Instinct. This was...freaking Christian Grey meets Mr. Darcy!
She wanted to call Nadja, wanted to text her so badly and tell her about it.
Keith’s experienced tongue teased her own, licked her lips. It slid over her teeth, under them.
His hand...
Oh god, his hand eased itself lower, lower, lower behind her until—
She gasped when it touched her butt and—
“Ouch!” he cried.
She snapped awake. What just—?
The closeness between him and her disappeared instantly. He was inches away from her now. He was holding his mouth—
Did I just bite his...tongue!?
He laughed. A tiny drop of blood was on his lip. “I bit your tongue, didn’t I?” she said.
“No, the lip.”
Her hand went to her forehead. She was mortified! The heat flushing over her skin now had nothing to do with desire, but with absolute and utter embarrassment!
Keith chuckled more, the smiles reaching his eyes—eyes that currently glowed preternaturally under the yellow lights of the restaurant as they reflected in his irises. He moved his hand from his lips, put the hand back on her waist, squeezed, gripped, and yanked her to him.
His lips were once again on hers, warm and moist. She wanted those lips everywhere on her skin, her breasts. Oh, god, down there...
Her heart galloped. Her skin prickled. She gripped his arms. They felt like unyielding granite in her hands. He pulled his lips away, guided her to the limousine waiting for them, and led her into the backseat.
-4-
Inside, he opened champagne. He poured her a glass and they toasted. “To...” He didn’t know how to finish. Acquaintances would be insulting. Friends would be equally so. Lovers would be...presumptuous?
She finished for him: “...a
good night.”
And a better morning, he hoped.
They drove for a good half hour, kissing, touching. But Keith would not push it further than that in here. Not in the backseat of a car.
Mel didn’t want it in a car either. And she was amazed that Keith didn’t insist on it. He has manners, she noted.
The car slowed, and she realized they were at his estate. The size of it did not surprise her when she looked out the car’s tinted window. She’d expected him to be something like today’s equivalent of “landed gentry.” That she couldn’t see a wall anywhere on the horizon after they’d entered the gate was, perhaps, slightly more land than she’d at first anticipated.
But Melissa was no stranger to money. She was far from rich herself, but she made more than enough. Money as such did not impress her in others. Money in a man was, however, a mark of his industriousness. And that was important to her. “Inheritance?” she asked cockily as they drove into the driveway circle.
“No. I made it all myself.”
That made her gulp. She drank another glass of champagne.
Inside the house, they were greeted by a uniformed man of thinning white hair and warm gray eyes. He took her shawl, asked her if she wanted anything to drink. She said no (because she’d had way too much already!)
“Will that be all, sir?”
Keith Devonshire acknowledged that, yes, that would be all.
“Then I shall retire for the night.” The uniformed man stepped away. Melissa could not help feel that he was smiling at her as he left the room.
The servant closed the door. She heard it click.
There was a moment of the sound echoing grandly in the large foyer.
She felt Keith’s heat at her side, sensed his fingers move toward hers, saw him turn slightly to face her...
And then he jumped her.
Easter Sundae (Hot Holidays Series Book Two) Page 4