Wanted(79)

Since he wouldn’t tell me where we were going, getting dressed was a bit of a challenge. But he swore that the flirty dress and sandals I picked out were perfect. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail with a few loose tendrils framing my face, then swiped on some mascara and lip gloss and called myself ready.

“Perfect,” he said, returning to my bedroom after leaving to change clothes himself. He wore jeans and loafers now, with a casual jacket over a simple white T-shirt.

“You couldn’t possibly have had an entire outfit in your briefcase.”

“No. In my suite.”

“You have a suite? If I’d realized, I wouldn’t have let you share mine last night.”

“Don’t even joke about kicking me out of your bed. And yeah, Cole and Tyler and I crashed here quite a bit. Jahn gave us each a drawer.”

“A drawer,” I teased. “That’s serious.”

“It was,” he said. “The man was like a father to me.”

I might have been playing, but I could tell that Evan was serious. “What about your own dad? I mean, you were old enough when he died. Surely you remember him.”

“I remember him,” he said, his words like ice. “He was a goddamn bastard.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing my words were inadequate. The press had painted a picture of a happy family struck by tragedy. Now I tried to revise my perception to picture a broken family that had been even more destroyed with the death of Evan’s father. A man who, from what I was guessing, hadn’t exactly been around for his wife or kids.

I tried to imagine not having my dad, and the thought left a huge hollow spot in my gut.

I went to him and took his hand, then rose up to brush a kiss over his lips. “In that case,” I said, “I’m even more glad you had Jahn.”

We headed out, and to my surprise, Evan stopped the elevator on the lobby level instead of descending all the way to the parking garage.

“No car?”

“It’s reasonably close. We’ll take a taxi.”

“Close,” I said, running various options through my head.

“Don’t even try. I’ll only be disappointed if you manage to guess.”

I laughed. “Fair enough,” I said as a taxi pulled up in response to the call light. Evan stepped off the curb to open the door for me, then walked around and got in on the opposite side.

“One thing I forgot to mention,” he said, as he settled in beside me. “I’d like you to put this on.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a black sleep mask with an elastic strap.

I peered at it dubiously. “Seriously?”

He just looked at me, not answering.

“Evan!”

“Hey, if you don’t want to …” He trailed off, then leaned forward and told the taxi driver to take us back to the condo.

I goggled at him. “What are you doing?”

“Rules are rules.”

“Fine,” I said, snatching it out of his hands. I slid the mask on over my eyes. And in the moment before the world disappeared from sight, I was pretty sure that I caught the driver’s smirk in the rearview window.

“Better?” I asked.

“Much,” Evan said.

“And you’re not going to even give me a clue?”

“Not even,” he said.

“I know this area pretty well. I could probably count stops and turns. I’ve watched enough espionage thrillers to know how that works.”

He laughed. “Good point.” He sat silent for a moment, and then I felt him drape something across my lap. “You look a little cold,” he said. “Let me warm you up.”

I started to tell him that my legs weren’t cold, but in that same instant I felt his hand upon my thigh. I realized as he gently stroked my skin—easing his fingers higher and higher toward the mid-thigh hemline of my dress—that he hadn’t put the jacket there to keep me warm, but to give us privacy.

He eased the hem higher, and it was all I could do not to whimper. I felt on fire, my thighs craving more of his touch, my sex so sensitive that even the slight rubbing of my panties against my flesh in time with the movement of the car was making me hot. And, so help me, the fact that I was blindfolded and we were in the back of a taxi, not four feet away from some anonymous driver made the whole thing that much more arousing.

“Evan,” I said, because we should stop even though I didn’t want to. Even though I wanted this rush. This heat.

“Hmm?”

“What are you doing?”

“Distracting you so you can’t count turns,” he said, even as his finger slipped under the tiny strip of material that made up the thong part of my teeny-tiny panties.