“Stupid business casual,” he muttered to himself, mouth tilted away from his phone. He was wearing the kind of pants where his arousal could become very obvious.
Now that he stood in front of her, no more than a foot and a half separating them, he felt like the biggest idiot on the planet for even joking about not dating her. She was stunning, all curves and woman and he wanted to smell her, bury his face in that sweet neck, feel her in his arms and listen to her breath as he made her happy.
What did her cries of ecstasy sound like? Would she turn her face away? Bite the pillow? Rake lines of ownership into his back with those glossy nails?
Later. Later, he would find out. The same confidence that had always been there for him told him so. Like a second person living in his head, it just knew. She was his, and she didn’t know it yet. But she would, and he had all the time in the world to teach her that.
With his tongue.
He just stood there and stared at her and didn’t know what to say; he couldn’t recite what went through his head as his eyes roamed over the perfect topography of her body. She stood there and stared back and didn’t seem to know what to say, either. This silent dance needed a better beat.
One he could drive home with his—
Finally, she said, pointing to the door, “That is a great restaurant you picked,” her voice as breathless as he felt. Except she was actually talking and he was standing there looking like a fish out of water, his mouth opening and closing as he tried desperately to get something like a linear thought going. Where the hell was that confidence now? He wasn’t awkward or worried or any of those namby-pamby feelings Mike always described having. It was more that his brain had gone blank at the sight of her and everything but his arousal went into hibernate mode. She smiled and seemed to expect something intelligible to come out of his mouth, but first he had to dig his way out of the enormous, gaping hole of lust he’d just tripped into.
How in the hell was she still single? Why hadn’t someone snatched her up?
“It’s this whole Asian fusion thing. My friend told me it would be a good idea to bring a first date here and it might be a place to impress somebody.” And the food is supposed to be amazing, but that’s secondary. She seemed so nervous, those glittering eyes wary, already on guard from his lame attempt at humor on the phone.
He felt like an ass, could sense he was losing her, and his charm system went into overdrive, not the shallow Dylan so used to getting a woman to step out of her pants within an hour of their first drink in a bar, but the slower burning Dylan who stumbled across Jill in college years ago and who felt sucker punched and euphoric all at once.
“So impressing me is more important than the food?” Laura laughed and looked at him with an uncertain caution in her eyes, a caution that he actually did not like but that spoke of something he couldn’t put his finger on.
“Yeah,” he said, a slow grin stretching over his face, the word more a promise than an answer.
“I don’t think you have to worry about someone like me,” she replied, looking away with a bashful smile, her blond ponytail sliding down the side of her creamy neck as if guarding her, creating a safe barrier and holding her in place.
He cocked his head, looked her over again and wondered what on earth was she was talking about. Standing outside the restaurant babbling like an idiot wasn’t exactly his idea of a good date, though, so he just motioned her toward the door and said “Shall we?”
As she walked past him impulse took over and he put one hand on the small of her back as the maitre d’ held the door open. The feeling was so electrifying, his hand on her body, that he grew harder, which he didn’t think was possible. This was already more promising than he had ever expected.
Even if this dinner was going to cost him half of an entire paycheck, he did not care. Oh—that’s right. He was not really relying on his paycheck anyhow these days, he reminded himself. Finances had changed radically months ago, a surprise that he and Mike still tried to assimilate. Stop it, Dylan. Stop thinking about Jill, he told himself. None of that should enter into the calculation of the emotional side of this. Tonight is about Laura.
As they were led to their table in a smoky-grey environment, with a giant twenty-foot golden Buddha lit up in the corner and a small fountain bubbling at its feet, all he could do was stare at her ass, trying to to figure out how not to sound like another one of those guys who is desperate enough to go on an online dating site and find somebody to fuck.
Neither one of them seemed to know what to say, so he figured, being the guy, he would take the lead. That’s how it would work in bed...and then his mind went blank at the flash of a vision of his face buried between Laura’s soft thighs. He practically threw the folded napkin in his lap to hide what he thought must be the tallest raging hard-on ever.