She laughed deeply, his comment catching her off guard. “Shouldn’t I have on glasses to complete that look?”
He raised an eyebrow, his lips curving up in a naughty grin. “Do you have some? And can you pin up your hair too?”
She had a hunch he’d like to see her dressed up in something terribly naughty. Engaged in role-play. Yeah, she could picture Jack getting into those kind of sexy games—the boss and the secretary, the teacher and the student, the delivery service.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer the French maid costume I have back at my apartment?” she posited.
He shook his head, and wrapped his arm around her waist. “I’m sure. Because that sexy librarian look of yours brings me to my knees,” he said, his midnight-blue eyes blazing darkly at her.
She shivered against him, her body responding to every sensual, suggestive, and dirty thing he said. She ran her hand through his hair, savoring the soft slide through her fingers as she shifted her body closer. Who cared that they were on a makeshift bocce ball court in the back of an Italian restaurant? She didn’t. “But maybe I want to get on my knees for you,” she said in her best sexy voice.
His reaction was instantaneous. His breath caught in his chest. A low rumble sounded in his throat. Then, there was the press of his erection against her thigh. “I want to see that. You on your knees,” he said.
She gripped his hair harder, moving her lips across the deliciously salty skin of his neck, traveling up to his ear, cataloging every second of his physical response to her. Playing into it. Feeding him the images he craved. “Imagine me with my black glasses, my hair pinned up, my pencil skirt on,” she said into his ear, and he slammed her chest to him, crushing her. “Sucking you,” she said, flicking her tongue against his earlobe, leaving him with that image firmly planted in his head.
She wrenched back, enjoying the look in his eyes. Hazy, wild, unrestrained.
“Later,” she added, nodding to their table several feet away. The waitress had just set down their dishes.
* * *
“You have fans.”
Jack looked up from the chicken parmigiana in front of him to see Michelle casting her eyes in the direction of the bar. He spotted a pair of young women wearing tops that revealed bare shoulders and holding glasses that held copious amounts of red wine. The redhead in the pair whispered to her friend when he looked up, the sort of conspiratorial he’s-seen-us warning.
He shrugged as if to say what can you do. Whether from having been involved with somebody like Aubrey, a world-class athlete with sponsorships and Olympic medals to her credit, or from the job he held, he’d grown accustomed to being recognized from time to time.
“It doesn’t bother me. Does it bother you?”
She laughed, and shook her head. “Not really. Honestly? I’m used to it. My brother’s a well-known theater director and his wife is a Tony award-winning actress so I see it a lot with them.”
“Good,” he said, flashing her a grin that he hoped would melt her. “Then you won’t be bothered by the stares as I take you out around town and romance you.”
“You’re presumptuous, aren’t you?”
“You’re the one who mentioned a bocce ball tutor.”
“Maybe I’ve simply been hoping to improve my game.”
He didn’t give her a chance to answer. Instead, he cupped the back of her head and dropped his mouth to her lips, kissing away that first sexy gasp of surprise. Her lips were divine, soft and full and thoroughly delicious. He swept the tip of his tongue across the curve of her top lip, then nibbled on her bottom one. Her mouth was sweet and tasted of the white wine she’d been drinking. The scent of her jasmine shampoo filled his nostrils, and it was heady, and perfect for her, as all these scents collided in a kiss. He hardly wanted to break the kiss at all, but he was so tempted to explore more of her, to kiss her neck, her ear, to bite the soft flesh of her collarbone like he’d done last night. To hear all her sexy responses to every touch. Even the way she responded now, to a simple kiss, was intoxicating. She was a woman who relished kissing, who seemed to let go of herself in the moment from the way he touched her. He wanted more of her physical abandon.
He also didn’t want to have a painful erection throughout the entire meal. He’d been hard the whole night sitting next to her. Then rock-hard when she’d teased him with her delicious blow-job imagery. But the more he consumed her lips, the more trouble he’d be in. Better stop now.
He pulled back, thrilling at the look on her face. Lips parted slightly, eyes closed. Then she shuddered and opened her eyes, as if she were dragging herself out of a trip down Unexpected Lust Lane.
“Who said you’d be romancing me?” she countered as she reached for her fork and dove into her plate of pasta primavera.
“I say it,” he said, as he took a bite of his chicken.
“Maybe I’m only going on one date with you.”
“I’ll have to find a way to convince you for more then. I’ll see if I have any tricks up my sleeve.”
She took another bite, chewed, then set down her fork. Her expression turned serious. “Actually, I hate to be blunt, but I’ve learned a thing or two about being upfront, seeing as how I failed to be upfront about something really important for ten years.”
“What do you mean?” he asked after he finished his bite and took a drink of his wine.
“What I mean is I’m not interested in getting involved with someone who has intimacy issues,” she said in a direct tone of voice. She didn’t mince words. She didn’t pull punches. She simply told him. “I’m sorry if that sounds harsh. And I know I shouldn’t be judgmental, given my job, but my reality is I was in love with a good friend of mine for ten years from a distance. From afar. I never said a word to him until he’d already fallen madly in love with someone else. He had no clue I had any feelings for him. Even if I had told him, it wouldn’t have made a difference. He never saw me that way. He never thought of me romantically.”
“That makes no sense to me,” Jack said, speaking plainly. He could only see Michelle romantically. How any man could look at her and talk to her and not want to know her more confounded him.
She sighed, took another bite, and then continued on when she’d finished. “And that was three months ago, when it all came to a head. And it’s fine. We’re all good. But my point in bringing this up is I’m the poster child for unrequited love. And while I’m certainly not asking for love, the bottom line is, I don’t think you’ll be romancing me because I can’t risk my heart again for someone who might be closed down,” she said, and her words were like a heavy stone around his neck.