Kiss & Makeup

by Alison Kent

  She wanted to go to the library? “Is it even open this late?”

  She laughed. “Oh, not the public library. The one upstairs.”

  The Hush library. Admittedly more interesting. “You’re serious then.”

  “About?”

  Her fingers massaged the base of his skull, and it was all he could do not to close his eyes and let her have at him right here and now. “About a bedtime story.”

  “Well, we don’t have to be in a bed.”

  There was no other place he wanted to be. And he started to say so.

  But Shandi stopped him by whispering close to his ear, “There are enough sofas and chairs in the library to make you forget you ever needed a bed for anything.”

  4

  THE ELEVATOR RIDE UP DROVE her mad.

  She and Quentin both stood against the back of the car, side by side, hands curled over the railing at their hips, not touching, not speaking, simply letting the ascent heighten the tension that sang in the air.

  She stared at their reflections mirrored on the stainless-steel doors. Her skirt appeared the size of a bandage, her legs the length of fence posts. The colorful mask with which she’d taken exquisite care looked like a neon bar sign. Her pigtails like commas of corn on the cob.

  Oh, yeah. She was definitely this man’s type. Mr. Sophistication? Meet Clueless in Manhattan. She wanted to slam her palm against the panel of buttons and stop this joke of a journey.

  Stop it, put the car in reverse, back her way into the lobby and out into the street. She wanted to start over. To meet Quentin Marks on a level playing field. Not on one where she felt like a rube.

  But then it was too late. The doors slid open with a whisper. He gestured for her to precede him, and she did, turning toward the double glass doors that separated the airy room that was their destination from the hallway.

  He walked far enough behind that she couldn’t see him without turning, that she couldn’t touch him without reaching out. Close enough that she could feel that he was there, hovering without threatening, looming without alarming, beguiling and tempting and hot.

  At the entrance Quentin reached for the handle and pulled open the door. Shandi stepped through, dropped her lollipop into a wastebasket. The room was empty, the only light that of several reading lamps left burning low.

  The sky outside glowed with the hues of the sunset, and the walls of windows had begun to reflect the room, the atmosphere one of the kind of intimacy found only after dark. She stopped as Quentin joined her and as the door eased shut.

  “This,” she said with a sweep of one hand, “is the library. The sofas and armchairs I mentioned, along with everything from classics to erotica to popular fiction.” Breathing deeply of the room’s bound leather and wood, deeply of the subtle scent of the man behind her, Shandi moved farther into the room. “Pick your poison.”

  He walked ahead of her, stopping to study the space and giving her a full rear view of his body. So far she’d seen him sitting down at the bar and in the lobby. She’d had a full-frontal view, too, when he’d come toward her in Erotique’s back room. But, oh, did she like seeing him from here.

  His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, his backside taut beneath the expensive fabric of his dress pants. His hair was the mane she’d described it as. Leonine as it hung there in waves of gold and tawny-brown resting on the tops of his shoulder blades. It was thick and beautiful, and he wore it as few men could.

  And then he turned and met her gaze. His brows came down. A wickedly sexy V. “I’ll pick the chair. You pick the story.”

  She laced her hands at her back, hooked one foot behind the other, canted her head to the side and rocked back and forth, playing up the part she’d created. “Where do you want me to sit?”

  “In my lap, of course,” he said and reached out, pulled her hand from behind her and led her across the room to the far corner. The chair he chose was built for two, not quite the size of a love seat but definitely not meant for a single. He turned and dropped into it, tugging her down.

  She sat sideways in his lap, her back against the plush arm that was wider than her body. Her feet she settled on the cushion on Quentin’s far side, where there would’ve been plenty of room for her to sit if he’d let her.

  He hadn’t. He didn’t. He wouldn’t.

  Instead he draped one arm over her bare thighs, one behind her on the arm of the chair. He was so close. Right there. Inches away. It was hard to breathe, to think, to believe she was sitting in the lap of a man with this one’s fame, fortune and reputation.

  With this one’s trail of broken hearts…because she was sure they must be legion.

  “So what story do you want to hear?” he asked softly, his fingers toying with the end of one of her pigtails. He gestured toward the stack of books on the side table. “Beck Desmond? Harlan Coben? Charles Dickens? Anaïs Nin?”

  Shandi shook her head. There was only one story she wanted. “Quentin Marks. I want to know everything. From his humble roots to his rise to stardom. And all the juicy bits in between.”

  His mouth crooked. A dimple appeared at the edge of his beard stubble. “That story will put you right to sleep. I was hoping to keep you awake. At least for a little while.”

  She had no intention of falling asleep now any more than she had of staying asleep on Christmas morning. Not with this gift she’d been given, this man who’d come out of nowhere and into her life when she’d least expected anyone to arrive.

  She looked away from his gaze that left her breathless—oh, but his scotch-and-water eyes were compelling—to where she held her fingers twined together against what there was of her skirt. That didn’t help much with distracting her since his arm lay across her thighs.

  Thankfully it wasn’t his skin but the fine fabric of his dress shirt she felt there. Otherwise she was quite sure she wouldn’t have been able to speak. “I doubt anything you could tell me would put me to sleep.”

  “Trust me. I’m as boring as it gets.”

  “I don’t believe it. I’ve read enough about you in People and Vanity Fair to know how fascinating you are.” When he gave a soft snort, she smiled, cast him a quick glance and laughingly added, “Hey, it’s better than reading what all the tabloids have to say.”

  He used his arm across her thighs to pull her closer. “Too bad all of the music-loving public doesn’t share your restraint. Or your taste in publications.”

  She couldn’t help it. She had to tease, to take her mind off what his fingers were doing to her leg. “Those paternity suits getting to you, are they?”

  He groaned, shook his head. “You’d think I wouldn’t be surprised after what I’ve seen, but that one left me reeling. The lengths people go to, thinking they can shortcut the process.”

  “Lengths like regaling you with their curriculum vitae and cleavage in a hotel lobby?” she asked, thinking of Mrs. Cyprus.

  “Yeah.” He chuckled. “Lengths like that.”

  “Or like dressing up in schoolgirl plaid and kneesocks and begging for a story?” she asked, wondering if he thought her desperate and waiting several long heartbeats for him to answer.

  When he finally did, it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “Look at me, Shandi.”

  She didn’t want to look at him because she was already feeling all itchy and hot being in his lap, and it was not a part of the evening’s plans to make a fool of herself. At least, no more than she could help.

  But he was waiting patiently in that way that seemed so natural to him, and so she finally did, cutting him off at the pass. “If I’ve come across that way, I haven’t meant to. I’d hate to have given you that impression. That you’ve jumped from the frying pan of Mrs. Cyprus into my fire.”

  “I’ve never felt your spending time with me was because of what I can do for you professionally.” He raised his arm from her lap, stroked his knuckles over her cheek, his persuasive gaze holding hers spellbound. “If it is, then you’re a better actress than those who�
�ve offered to exchange, uh, favors. Either that, or I’m blinded by infatuation.”

  “Oh, please.” Her heart tripping wildly, she dropped her gaze, feeling strangely shy and out of her league. She reached over to toy with the buttons on his shirt. “Infatuation my ass. You just like the way I mix your drinks.”

  “I like a lot of things about you. And, yeah, a couple of them do involve the bar.” He returned his arm to her lap, used his hand on her hip barely covered by her excuse for a skirt to scoop her close. “You see, when I’m sitting there in that chair at the end, I can watch you work.”

  She slipped a finger between two of the buttons on his shirt placket, tickled by his thatch of soft hair she found beneath. “You like watching me work?”

  “I like watching you move.” When she slipped a button through its hole, his breath caught. When she slipped a second, he exhaled. When she slipped a third, he sank deeper into the chair and grinned. “Your legs are absolutely amazing.”

  She found herself twisting up her mouth to keep from grinning along. “Isn’t that a rather boorish attempt at a compliment?”

  “No doubt,” he said with a low, husky laugh. “But since we’re both being honest…”

  “Honest?” she asked, opening his shirt and slipping her fingers along his collarbone, absorbing the warmth of his skin. “About what?”

  “You’re undressing me.” His palm spanned the back of her thigh; his thumb stroked along the leg of her white lace panties. “I’m assuming the attraction is mutual.”

  “It is,” she admitted, even as Evan’s words came back to haunt her. Did she want to be another woman-notch on Quentin’s bedpost? Or did she have her sights set on being the one he took home with him to Austin?

  The first was fine, she decided, since he would be the biggest man-notch she’d ever made; the second wasn’t a possibility she’d even consider. She had no intention of making her life anywhere other than exactly where she was.

  Still, she couldn’t help but be curious. What in the world would a man like Quentin Marks want with her?

  She suppressed a shiver, her belly tingling with the ebb and flow of her nerves. “It’s as mutual as it gets. As long as you’re not here only because of my legs.”

  “Not a chance. Legs I can get anywhere,” he said, and she brought her gaze back to his, arching her brow and drawing a gravelly chuckle. “I like your ambition a lot, Shandi. That you don’t think of success as your right and expect it to be handed to you.”

  “Well, no. Putting in long hours to get what you want is pretty much a way of life in Round-Up,” she said, wanting to kick herself the minute the words left her mouth. Now all he’d be seeing was the long-legged, willowy cat’s tail of a filly she was trying so hard to be so much more than.

  Except he didn’t say a thing about Round-Up. He simply went on. “I also like that you’re determined and realistic about fighting the odds. You wouldn’t believe how many think the business is solely about the very necessary connections. They forget the hard work or refuse to face the reality that they might never have what it takes.”

  She pressed the pad of her thumb to his pulse where it popped at the base of his throat, feeling the contraction of his muscles there when he swallowed and fighting the urge to slip out of her panties and straddle his lap. “The first I won’t argue with. The second? That’s harder. Especially if accepting that reality means giving up a dream.”

  He didn’t respond immediately. He simply sat there, his heart beating, his chest rising and falling, his skin warm against her wrist, finally asking, “Are you calling me a cynical bastard?”

  “No,” she said, raising her gaze from the relief map of tendons and veins and muscles in his neck to meet his eyes, heavy lidded and sharp. “I think that’s what you’re calling yourself.”

  “Does that bother you?” he asked, his gaze dropping to her mouth, where she’d caught her lower lip between her teeth. “The fact that I don’t share your optimism?”

  She moved her fingertips from his throat to his chin and to his mouth, where her thumb stroked over the pillow of his bottom lip. “Not enough to make me keep my clothes on.”

  “The best news I’ve heard all night,” he said, cupping the back of her head and pulling her down for a kiss, pressing his mouth to hers, his tongue to the seam of her lips, seeking the same entry here she wanted to give him elsewhere.

  She turned and leaned into his chest, wanting this more than she’d ever wanted anything from a man. His bitterness made her heart ache. His body, his smile—both made her knees go weak. The questions in his eyes made her mind race with ways to answer his challenge.

  But right now what he made her was pins-and-needles aware. His hand slid farther beneath her skirt, his fingers finding the elastic of her panties and easing underneath. She parted her legs, whimpering into his mouth when he found how wet she was, when he pushed one finger inside her.

  Cupping his cheek, she kissed him, clenching her sex around his teasing, probing finger while sliding her tongue the length of his, stroking, nibbling, tasting him and testing the edges of his teeth. And when his questing thumb found the bud of her clit, she did what she’d been waiting to do.

  She reached between their bodies, between his legs, found the base of his shaft that was thickly erect and squeezed. He tore his mouth from hers. “You keep that up, story hour will be over and it will be time for bed,” he said in a near feral growl.

  The way he said it, the desperate echo of restraint in his whisper, the desire that spilled swollen from his pores…she could hardly think, hardly breathe. She was desperate to take him, to feel him, to have him thick and hot and pulsing inside.

  “What did I tell you when we came up here?” she asked, struggling to find her voice. “About the sofas and chairs and not needing a bed?”

  This time the sound he made was that of a man tortured. He pulled his hand from her panties to squeeze one cheek of her ass. “Here. Now. Is that what you’re saying? Is that what you want?”

  “What do you want?” she asked, holding his gaze as she stroked him through the richly textured linen of his pants.

  “You straddling my lap, for one thing,” he said, tugging at her leg and giving her little choice. She straightened where she was sitting, climbed up and around and settled where he wanted her, her knees sinking into the seat cushion on either side of his hips.

  “Anything else?” she asked, his erection pressing like a brand against the inside of her thigh. She felt the heat through the fabric of his pants; the rigid proof of his desire amplified her own.

  He settled his hands beneath her skirt at her hips and held her. “If you want to finish with my shirt buttons and start on my pants, I could go for that, too.”

  He wasn’t the only one, she mused, pulling his shirttails free. Once the final button was unfastened, she parted the two sides of the garment, taking her fill of his tight abs and the trail of hair that started at his sternum and ran down behind his belt.

  She followed it with her finger, watching his muscles bunch and flex as she made her way south, looking back up to see his throat convulse as he swallowed, to see his jaw set tight and hard once he had. “You like?”

  “You’re killing me here, Shandi,” he said, grinding out the words, then pressed his lips together, his eyelids drifting down. He slid his thumbs deeper into the crease where her thigh met her hip, and she went to work on his belt, stopping only long enough to ask, “Do you have a condom?”

  He nodded once, nudged away her leg to reach into his front pocket. He pulled out a money clip with a strip of three condoms tucked inside. When she arched a brow, he laughed and said, “I keep all my valuables together.”

  “I guess that’s a good thing,” she replied and freed his belt from its buckle before easing his zipper over the roadblock in the way. He wore designer boxer briefs, white, that left nothing to the imagination. She could see the bulge of veins in his shaft, the seamed ridge of his cock’s plump head.

&nb
sp; He was full and, as evidenced by the circle of moisture he’d already released, beyond ready to burst. Yet he slouched back on his spine like an expert in debauchery, all tanned and toned and king-of-the-jungle, with his scotch-and-water eyes and leonine mane.

  She wanted to reach beneath the elastic, to take him in her hand and set him free. But she could not get enough of the way he looked. Her gaze drifted from the band of his boxers, tightly smooth against his abs, up that tempting line of hair bisecting his torso, to his pecs and the dark flat disks of his nipples.

  She’d known men who considered themselves sex gods or a divine gift to womankind. This one lived the part. And here she was, Shandi Fossey, a bartender from Round-Up, Oklahoma, sitting in his nearly naked lap.

  She glanced at the money clip he’d set on the chair arm. “Do you think we’ll need more than those three?”

  “I’ll put in a call to room service as soon as we get back to my room,” he said, moving his hands away from her hips to the buttons of her blouse.

  His room. A bed. Tangled limbs on soft Egyptian cotton. Space to stretch out. To lie beneath him and feel his weight. To climb on top and ride. She closed her eyes as he unbuttoned her, shivering as she felt both the cool brush of air on her skin and the hot touch of his fingers.

  He left her blouse hanging open but did not expose her the way she’d exposed him. Instead he eased his hands beneath the fabric, ran his palms up her torso to her breasts, where he cupped her, squeezed her, pinched her nipples tightly between his forefingers and thumbs.

  Moaning, she leaned forward, her hands on his rib cage supporting her weight. “Do you have any idea how wonderful that feels?”

  “How’s this?” he asked, one hand sliding around to her back as he crunched his gorgeous abs to sit forward and take her into his mouth. He rolled her taut nipple with his tongue, sucked her between his lips, caught her with his teeth, biting just hard enough to let her know he was there.

  As if she didn’t know. As if she wasn’t one hundred percent in the moment.