“Mia… I want you too, you can’t imagine how much I would love to say that I could go to your bed with you, but this is too soon. It’s our second date. You barely know me. I want to know more about you. As truly tempting as spending hours in your arms would be,” his eyes fell to her mouth and he hesitated and then looked back up into her dark eyes again, “I have to be the voice of reason. I don’t want you to regret anything between us. If that does happen between us, there needs to be more to it than just lust.”
He spoke simply and honestly, and she felt everything in her crash down. He wasn’t going to give in to her. He wanted more than just simple sex. She’d never heard a man say that he wanted more than just sex. She’d never had a man turn her down even once, let alone twice, when she said she wanted to sleep with them. It was both a blow to her ego and to the rapidly growing yearning for him in her body that he had put her off again, yet at the same time she found that she was bewildered and astounded by the man before her. He was a man like no other that she had ever met. He found value in what lay beneath the surface of everything, from his building to his employees to even the women he chose as his lovers.
Mia had no idea what to do. Part of her was intrigued with him and wanted to delve deeper into all of the mysteries of him that confounded her, and part of her wanted to walk away right then, simmering with frustration, and just buy her own plane ticket to Italy. She had never found herself in such a strange situation and it was all that she could do to just keep her cool and try to figure out how to react to him at that moment.
She blinked and sighed in frustration; air gushing from her as she tried to exhale all of the frustration in her. “You want to wait…” she said in a low voice.
He nodded. “I think it would be best for both of us if we waited,” he told her earnestly.
She shrugged and pushed herself away from him. “Then I guess we wait,” she said with a disappointed sigh, looking down as she pulled her hand from his and rested it in her lap.
He reached for her chin and placing his fingers beneath it gently, lifted her face to look in her eyes. “Mia, I do want you. Making myself wait to be with you comes at no small sacrifice to me, and obviously to you, but I don’t fall into bed with women at the drop of a hat. I take my time and I make sure that the women I do love physically are women I would want to be with whether we were intimate or not. You are most assuredly one of those women, but there needs to be more than just mutual desire. You are worth that, and so am I.”
He smiled and let his hand go from her chin and she stared at him in awe, her mind whirling at his words. She was worth waiting for. Of course she was worth waiting for. She knew that. She just didn’t believe that she had heard a man tell her that. Surrealism crashed over her and she blinked again at him and remained silent as her thoughts and emotions reeled in new directions.
He seemed to sense that she was at a complete loss and he gave her a nod and a smile and reached for her champagne glass. “Besides… we have this perfect afternoon here together, and I haven’t seen a more beautiful day yet this year. We are so lucky to be in this place with each other, sharing this right now. I wouldn’t be anywhere but right here with you, right now.” He grinned and offered her the glass of golden bubbles.
The magic of the day around her seemed to pull her from her amazed state and she looked down at the glass and then took it into her hands. “Thank you,” she said as she lifted the glass to her lips and sipped in the tiny bouncing bubbles. He was right, she realized. It was the most perfect day that Manhattan had seen that whole year and they were in the park together drinking champagne, picnicking, kissing, and enjoying each other. She drew in a breath and sighed slowly, letting her tension go as she looked up at him.
“You’re right. This is an incredible day and I have had such a wonderful time with you. Thank you,” she said, raising her glass to him. He toasted her and they both took a long drink from their glasses as the moment and the mood shifted and everything between them relaxed once more.
The remainder of the afternoon was quiet and pleasant for them as they talked about a wide array of things, and though there was a little more distance between them, he still held her hand, touched her arm or her back here and there, and they both enjoyed the rest of their time together.
When he took her home late that afternoon, he walked her to her door where he wrapped her in a warm embrace and kissed her tenderly, taking his time to savor her in his arms, and she knew as their kiss grew heated just before he pulled away, that he was holding himself back as much as he could, and she found herself respecting him for it, much to her surprise.