All That She Wants(22)

Which made me a little sad.

She was treating it as the scene of the crime…

…and for me, it had been the happiest I had been in months.

Maybe years.





18





She was rinsing out our coffee cups in the sink as I finished dressing. I leaned up against the doorway and watched her… watched that gorgeous ass… thought about how much I wanted to undress her again… how much I wanted to hear her cries and moans…

“Lily,” I said softly.

She turned around and looked at me distrustfully. “What?”

The way she said it…

Like she was a totally different person from the woman I’d walked in here with.

I just shook my head. “…never mind.”

That seemed to make her even madder. “What?!”

Maybe if I got her out of this fucking place, she’d calm down.

“Walk me down to my car?” I asked.

She crossed her arms over her body and hugged herself, like she was cold. Except she couldn’t be cold, because it was pretty warm in here. We’d done a pretty good job of raising the ambient temperature with our earlier, ahem, activities.

I watched her. She was lost in her own little world of worry… but it slowly began to change. The negative emotions receded, and a sad look slowly dawned… and then the sadness turned to something else.

Wistful happiness.

In my line of work, I’m a negotiator, a salesman, a confidant, an asshole (depending on who you’re talking to) – but more than that, I’m a poker player. And in poker, the best players don’t play the cards. They play their opponents. And the only way to do that is to get inside their heads. Learn their tells. Find out what makes them tick… and exploit what they tell you to win the hand, and the game.

That look of wistful happiness was my ace in the hole.

“What?” I asked.

She woke from her reverie and looked at me. I could see the worry seeping back in, which I absolutely didn’t want, so I spoke quickly. “What were you thinking?”

She sighed. “That I wish I wasn’t freaking out, because…”

She stopped and looked abashed. Afraid to tell me.

But for one bright shining moment, she looked like the woman I’d brought up here, and not the one who had just had a meltdown.

“Because what?” I prodded gently.

She looked at me in pain, like a drowning person might as they saw their last hope of being saved slip away.

“…because I was having the best night of my life.”

My heart leaped in my chest – and broke a little bit, too.

I wanted her.

I wanted to show her that it didn’t have to be like this.

I wanted to set her free from this goddamn prison she called home.

I wanted…

…hell, more than anything, I just wanted to sleep with her again.

I smiled at her and held out my hand. “Walk me down to my car?”

She hesitated for the longest time…

…but eventually she nodded, and reached out and put her hand in mine.





19





We walked out together, and I pushed the button for the elevator. I smiled to myself as she fussed over her reflection in the black marble walls, trying to smooth out her hair.

If I get my way, Lily, it’s going to be a LOT more tangled in, oh, another hour or so.

We got in the elevator.

“Still freaking out?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Let me see if I can take your mind off it.”

I smashed every single button on the panel I could hit with one swipe of my hand. They lit up in a smear of glowing circles.

“What did you do that for?!” she cried out.

“So I’d have a little more time for this,” I said, and moved in and kissed her.

And not just any kiss – this was a full-on ‘sweep her off her feet’ play, a kiss you’d see from movies back in the 40’s or 50’s, where the men were men and to hell with propriety, they wanted what they wanted right now. The kind of kiss that was sometimes preceded by a slap, but which almost always ended up in bed, with the woman as a very willing participant.

I could tell she was surprised, so I started off slow – but I ramped up fast, until every ounce of my passion for her shone through. I was trying to make love to her through a kiss, in the hopes that maybe I could lure her back to where we’d been up in the boardroom.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Mission accomplished. She basically just melted in my arms. At first she didn’t resist – and then she actively matched me, running her fingers through my hair as she sighed and moaned.

But all good things must come to an end. As we got closer to the main lobby, she started to fidget a little, until she finally pushed me away.