“She’s exactly your height,” he said, having come to one inescapable conclusion after weighing up all the facts: if he didn’t tell Charlotte the truth, she’d roadblock him every inch of the way. Unlike many of the women who came on to him, she didn’t see him as a trophy to bag and damn any other loyalty he might have. Charlotte Baird took promises seriously.
A startled look, the knife coming to a halt. “Really? I mean, you always date tall women.”
“I used to.” He tended to feel like a big ox around smaller women, but he’d changed his mind since meeting Charlotte. He was dead certain she could handle him—in bed and out of it. And he definitely wanted to handle her. Every small, perfectly formed part of her. “Then I met a woman with clear hazel eyes and soft blond hair I want to fist in one hand as she straddles my lap and lets me kiss her, my other hand unbuttoning her very sensible white work shirt… or her green cardigan.”
Charlotte’s breathing was uneven, her head slightly bent as she stared at the cutting board, her fine-boned hand tight on the knife handle.
The same part of Gabriel’s brain that allowed him to make multi-million-dollar decisions in split seconds had him continuing when she stayed silent. “I now have all these extremely dirty fantasies of how easy it would be to handle her in bed.” Oh, his body liked this line of talk, liked it a hell of a lot. “Though my imagination isn’t confined to the bedroom.”
Hoping she wouldn’t glance at him and see the hard line of his cock pushing against the zipper of his jeans, he kept his distance despite his desire to do the opposite. “The lap fantasy? It doesn’t end there. Sometimes,” he said, “I pick her up and put her on my desk, shove up her skirt, nudge her black lace panties aside—and they’re always black lace in this fantasy—and lick her until she screams my name as she comes against my tongue. Other times—”
“Stop.” A breathless order.
“So,” he said, wrenching so hard on the reins that his entire body protested the abuse, “you want an onion for this sauce?”
Bracing her hands on the counter after placing the knife very carefully on the cutting board, Charlotte sucked in gulps of air. His eyes, of course, went straight to her chest and to the ripe breasts he wanted to bite and suck and mold with his hands. She’d probably kick him if she learned the erotic dreams he’d had about her taking dictation while dressed only in a black lace bra on her top half, the rest of her as prim and professional as always.
He’d never had office-sex fantasies before, not even once, but now they drove him crazy; night after night, he woke sweat soaked and hard as fucking stone. Charlotte, of course, had the starring role in every single debauched dream produced by his subconscious mind. In some, she was on her knees, but his all-time favorite was the one of her in his lap or on his desk as he drove her to orgasm after orgasm.
Battling a groan and an erection that would not die—how could it with Charlotte so close, her cheeks flushed and lips just slightly parted as she attempted to temper her breathing—he grabbed the packets of seasoning he’d thrown into the cart at the grocery store while Charlotte chose the fresh ingredients. “I didn’t know which ones you’d want,” he said, “so I got one of most of the ones I thought you’d need.”
“Chop the tomatoes.” Shoving the board at him, she strode away. “Where’s your bathroom?”
“Go upstairs and turn left. First door, then to the right.”
It was a measure of her flustered state that she didn’t question why there wasn’t a bathroom on this floor. Instead, she padded quickly up the spiral staircase and into the master bedroom. He liked that she was up there, in the center of his domain. Taking the chance to grab an ice-cold glass of water in lieu of a cold shower, he managed to get his body under some kind of control.
Then he caught sight of her coming back down, her hand sliding along the polished wooden rail and her curves moving sexily in the jeans that fit snug to her butt. He loved those jeans, loved her friend Molly for talking her into them. He knew about Molly’s input because he’d overheard part of Charlotte’s conversation with her best friend the first weekend she’d come in wearing them. He’d been about to walk into the break room when he’d heard Charlotte inside, whispering furiously into her phone.
“They’re too tight, Molly! I feel naked! I’m going to go to the department store and—”
Molly had clearly broken in then, and whatever she’d said, Charlotte hadn’t disappeared off to replace her jeans—which weren’t too tight. Nowhere close. They were just right, the boot cut giving her plenty of freedom to move. Thanks to what he’d overheard, Gabriel had known to say absolutely nothing about the disappearance of the two-sizes-too-large jeans she’d worn till then.