Champagne Cravings (13 page)

With a nod, Mike said, “It was the perfect platform for
anyone wanting to get even with him, considering the extravagance of the
evening, those in attendance and the coverage it would have received whether or
not there’d been a scandal. Any leads?”

I thought about what my supermodel friend had told me
regarding the head of the lab at Elan. I said, “Mav had a fling with someone who
definitely had opportunity to replace the waterproof makeup with the
non-waterproof variety. Apparently, the relationship was on the up-and-up,
nothing scandalous about it. He just couldn’t commit the way she wanted him to,
since he was still hung up on his ex.”

Mike whistled under his breath. “Hell hath no fury and all
that.”

“Exactly. I mean, I can honestly tell you a million ideas
popped into my head about how to kick Brandon in the balls without physically
doing him bodily harm. I seriously wanted to take a baseball bat to his
ninety-thousand-dollar Jag. I rose above it, of course. But not everyone does.”

With his signature grin, Mike asked, “So you never minded I
broke his nose?”

I laughed. “Well, it wasn’t the smartest thing to do. He
could’ve sued you. But…no. I never minded. He deserved it.”

“I have Neanderthal tendencies sometimes,” he admitted, as
if I didn’t know that.

“Ya think?”

We finished the bottle of wine and Maria packed up our
leftovers. Mike paid the bill and I offered to treat him to a movie.

“Do I get to choose?” he asked.

Remembering how much I’d subjected him to my chick flicks,
not to mention all the mushy romantic stuff he was suddenly facing because of
our first kiss, I said, “Some blood and gore might help to restore the balance in
our universe.”

He totally got my meaning. “Good point.”

We dropped the food off at his apartment and then hit the
closest theater to our Upper West Side neighborhood.

He selected an alien movie that had been out for a while and
we settled in seats in the very back of the nearly empty room. With his arm
draped over my shoulders, I nibbled on popcorn while Mike nibbled on my
earlobe.

“Did I tell you how good you smelled when we were at the
restaurant?”

I laughed softly, so as to not draw any attention to us.
“How could you smell
me
over sinfully delicious Italian food?”

“It’s a floral scent I’ve inhaled for years, babe. I’d
recognize it anywhere.”

“Lilacs,” I told him.

He sniffed my neck, then kissed it. “Gets me all hot and
bothered.”

Yes, I did adore how he spoke his mind. I tried to do the
same. “Your mouth on my body gets me all hot and bothered.”

“What about my hands?” he whispered as he made to reach for
the popcorn bucket, but instead slipped his hand behind it and cupped the apex
of my legs.

His fingers massaged my labia through my jeans and I
wriggled in my seat as erotic sensations crashed over me.

Stifling a moan, I ground out, “Watch the show.”

“I can watch it and make you come at the same time. I’m
pretty talented that way.”

A moan sipped from my lips. “I have no doubt.” Yet as I
turned my head toward him, I found him staring at me, not the screen. “You
picked the movie, remember?”

“Yeah, well it’s impossible to be with you in a dark corner
and not want to take advantage of the situation.”

I mulled this over, then whispered back, “Hey, why is
foreplay okay, but sex is currently out of the question?”

He didn’t stop what he was doing. It was a wonder such a
coherent thought had gelled in my mind, because he was driving me crazy.

His lips brushed my throat as he said, “Foreplay is a
prelude. You can have a prelude to something for a very long time.”

I couldn’t stymie the sigh that bubbled up as he applied a
bit more pressure while he rubbed my clit through the denim. “And exactly how
long can
you
hold out?”

“You gave me a world-class blowjob this morning. I can take
the heat for a while.”

This caused my heart to skip a beat. I said, “You are being
totally selfless.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t stop you this morning in the
shower, did I? And, for the record, getting you off turns me on.”

When he kissed me behind my ear, I let out a soft gasp. “I’m
going to come if you keep this up.”

“That’s sort of the point.”

“Not here,” I said, pushing his hand away from crotch,
though I was reluctant to do so. I was seconds away from a satisfying release.
“I’ll get us kicked out of here and banned for good because I can’t keep my
mouth shut when you make me orgasm.”

He groaned. “I do like the sexy sounds you make.”

Though we were only a quarter of the way into the movie, he
got to his feet and reached for my hand. I dumped the popcorn in a trash bin as
we headed out.

In the elevator of our building, on the way up to our floor,
I leaned in close to him, grateful we were alone. I murmured, “I want to try it
your way.”

He gazed down at me, a curious look on his devastatingly
handsome face. “Meaning?”

I sucked in a breath, gearing up for the unknown, then let
it out slowly. My eyes locked with his and I told him, “I want to make love.”
My fingers grazed his temple and then his clenched jaw as I stretched on my
toes and kissed his warm, soft lips. “Show me how.”

Ask and Ye Shall Receive. (I’ll Try Not to Fuck It
Up.)

We went to my apartment. I was adamant about that because
I’d never christened the bed with anyone other than Mike when he’d used my
vibrator to make me come. Whereas his mattress had seen some action in its day.

I was actually a bit nervous, wondering if I could pull off
this lovemaking-slash-intimacy thing. Chase had been my first lover and we’d fucked
like bunnies for almost a year. The dirty kind of sex you didn’t tell your
proper friends or your mother about. Brandon had possessed slightly more
finesse, but we’d still gone at it as though we were storing up for the
apocalypse and it was always crazed and aggressive, more porn movie than love
story. Being uninhibited sexually, I now realized, had put me in control in the
bedroom. It had kept the bad boys’ interest long enough for us to establish
what we had deemed ‘relationships’. I knew better now. It had just been sex.

When I let Mike into my apartment and locked the door behind
us, I told him, “I get everything you’re saying to me. And you’re right about
it all, but there are a lot of other things I’m just beginning to look at
realistically and honestly.”

He tucked a lock of hair behind my ear as he grinned at me.
“Such a quick learner.”

I frowned. “No. I’ve dragged my feet for three years when I
should have seen what was right in front of me.”

This caused him to scowl, surprising me. “I’m giving you the
wrong impression. I wanted you from the beginning, that’s true. But not like
this.
This
grew over time. I have to remember that or else I’ll be the
one to fuck this whole thing up by pushing you too hard too fast.”

I considered how he always nudged me and then pulled back. I
said, “You want me to move forward with you, but you’re not exactly leading,
are you?”

“Neither one of us is,” he admitted. “How can we when we’re
both rowing the same boat? I’m the bad boy who never wanted to be tamed until
he met you and you’re the good girl who’s tried to tame two of my ‘kind’
unsuccessfully.”

I thought of how I’d given my body to my former lovers in a
way I knew would keep them sexually satisfied—for a longer period of time than
their previous girlfriends, at least—despite the fact I’d never felt fulfilled
emotionally.

“I was thinking powerful orgasms would equate to love,” I
said, a sad sentiment. “It doesn’t.”

“No, it doesn’t.” He pulled me to him and kissed me
tenderly. Then he said, “And what’s so bizarre about us is that we’ve switched
roles. I want to be for you everything you wanted Chase and Brandon to be, but
instead of going for it with me, the way you did with them, you’re thinking of
sex as our bond. It’s not. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting you every
second of the day. It’s just that…I want the whole package with you. The
intimate sex
and
the emotional bond.”

Tears instantly sprang to my eyes, but I didn’t move away
from Mike or try to hide from the feelings his words evoked. I faced them head-on,
saying, “Sex is an enhancement to a relationship, not the anchor. But it’s
still important when it has meaning behind it.”

His lips swept over mine. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

I was actually quite ashamed of myself for trying to bind
Chase and Brandon to me through sex. I couldn’t bring myself to forgive them
just yet for cheating on me and destroying what we’d shared, but I certainly
had to take responsibility for my personal idiocy of trying to turn water into
wine with my sexual exploits.

“For the record,” Mike murmured against my lips, “this isn’t
my
way. I’m as new to all of this as you are.”

“And yet you’ve assimilated so much faster.”

“That’s because I made up my mind and committed myself to
it. You’ve been floundering all this time.”

I had to hand it to the guy. When he stepped off the ledge,
he did it with flair.

“So, should we move this into the bedroom?” I asked.

He kissed me in that raw, passionate way that turned my
insides into a bonfire. Then he told me, “I never said we had to be conventional.”

My toes curled in my ankle boots. “What’d you have in mind,
bad boy?”

He might be on the road to becoming a reformed womanizer,
but I’d already learned he hadn’t changed his wicked ways when it came to
pleasuring a woman.

“I want the lights on and your eyes open,” he told me in his
low, sexy voice.

“I have no objection to that. You’re pretty amazing to look
at.”

With a lazy grin, he reached for the buttons on my oxford
and undid each one. He pulled the hem from the waist of my jeans and then tossed
the garment aside. I was already burning up, but the way he looked at me, with
such intensity, made my pussy throb and my heart stammer.

“You might be more than I can handle,” I admitted as heat
flooded my veins and every erogenous zone seemed to pulse with a life of its
own.

He reached behind me with one hand and unfastened my bra
with a quick flick. His gaze never left mine. “You are definitely more than
I’ve ever experienced.”

“Bit unnerving?” I ventured.

After giving this a few moments’ thought, he nodded. “Yeah.
I don’t want us to screw this up.”

“You’re talking about more than our lovemaking experiment,
aren’t you?”

“Our friendship means a lot to me.”

“Me too.” I slid the small disks on the flap of his white,
button-down shirt through their holes. He’d rolled the sleeves up to reveal his
strong forearms and bronze skin. “So, really, how could we mess this up? We’re
not using each other for a good time. We’re trying to be, you know…involved.”

He tugged the shirttail from his Levi’s and stripped off the
slightly rumpled material. With a pointed look, he asked, “Did you tell Biel
McKinley I’m your boyfriend?”

I didn’t have to run my conversations with her through my
mind to answer that question honestly. “No. I said we were friends who’d moved
into different territory.”

This gave him pause. “You didn’t use the word
relationship
?”
His tone was not the least bit accusatory. More like curious. And not just as
he probed me. I suspected he was doing some mental probing of his own.

I slipped out of my unfastened bra and tossed it on top of
our mounting pile of clothes.

“No,” I told him. “Have you used that word or called me your
girlfriend?”

We had several mutual friends, including Sharon and her
husband Jeff. We got together with them from time to time and it did not escape
me that Mike and I had essentially double-dated with couples without actually
calling it a date.

He said, “I haven’t tried out either yet. I guess I needed
to have steadier ground beneath us before I do.” With a serious look, he asked,
“Would you mind if I did? Would it freak you out?”

I nodded. “For sure, it’d freak me out. But no. I wouldn’t
mind.”

I had to admit the mere idea of him staking his claim made
my pulse race as much as the way his intense gaze did.

In the interest of full disclosure, since that had been the
whole point of my afternoon with Biel, I said, “I’d like our friends to know.”

His jaw clenched. “Tell me why. So they’ll keep me on the
straight and narrow?”

That was a very good question. I splayed my hands over his
chest, loving the feel of his warm skin and hard muscles. I said, “Yes. And
no.”

Despite the tension that suddenly filled the foyer, one
corner of his mouth lifted. “You’re full of contradictions tonight.”

“I’m full of contradictions
every
night,” I told him.
“For the past three years. Because I’ve wanted you as long as you’ve wanted me,
but I am literally scared shitless when it comes to exploring all this sexual
chemistry and flirtation between us.”

His hands covered mine on his pecs. “So why both yes and no
when it comes to my question?”

Biel had helped me to see that it was critical not to beat
around the bush when he needed me to be forthright. So I shored my defenses
with a deep breath, then let it out slowly before saying, “You’re right that I
don’t yet trust you explicitly. But I
do
trust you. And—” Something
occurred to me that instantly changed my mindset, which was a huge shock.
Staring up at Mike, I said, “That’s not true. Or we wouldn’t be standing here,
half naked, discussing this. I totally trust you.”

This seemed to both please and perplex him.

I continued. “The fact is, you were big enough to admit
tonight that you felt like the bad guy for dating other women while you were, I
don’t know…pining?…for me. And you said you want us to come clean with each other.
Furthermore, you told me the other night that you knew you didn’t have a proven
track record when it came to longevity.”

His eyes narrowed on me as he tried to reach a conclusion
with my new train of thought. “Yeah?”

“Except you do…with me. Only I countered and said that was
just because we hadn’t had sex yet.”

“Whoa,” he said, cutting me off before I really got rolling.
“You’re about to say that if we make love, I’m going to lose interest.”

“No.” But now that he’d mentioned it, the notion did make my
stomach plummet. “Actually, I was going to say you’ve been on the up-and-up all
this time and I no longer think you’ll cheat on me.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said in a slow voice, as though
not to make any sudden movements and set off the crazy girl. “What made you
change your mind?”

I smiled at him. I had my answer to both his and Biel’s
questions. “Because you punched a complete stranger in the nose for cheating on
a woman you didn’t even know.”

“Huh.” He gave this its due consideration, then nodded. “I
was seriously pissed off for you.”

“Imagine how you’d feel if
you
cheated on me.”

This seemed to have an even more profound effect on him. He
released my hands and instead wrapped his arms around my waist. Pulling me into
a tight embrace, he stared deep into my eyes and said, “I’d be a fool. An
asshole. I’d be the worst kind of hypocrite. And I’d never forgive myself.”

My arms encircled his neck and I leaned in close,
whispering, “I can hang my hat on that, mister.”

“Lace,” he murmured as his lips grazed mine. “Christ, this
really is something special.”

Yes, it was. And as Biel and I had both deduced, it needed
to be treated as such.

“Make love to me,” I said. My breasts nestled below the
ledge of his pectoral muscles and his skin against mine felt heavenly. His lips
skated over mine again before his tongue delved deep and he engaged me in the
kind of kiss that turned my bones to liquid, causing me to cling to him because
I didn’t trust the strength in my own legs.

When he dragged his mouth from mine, his lips trailed over
my jaw and down my neck. He released me from his embrace and reached for the
button and zipper on my jeans. I held onto his biceps, needing the support.

He shoved the denim down my hips and legs, kneeling in front
of me so he could remove my boots and socks and then discard my jeans. His
mouth and tongue caressed my inner thigh as his fingers curled around the thin
band of my thong panties. Slowly easing the material away, his lips skimmed
over my skin, higher and higher, until they glided over my labia. My thong
dropped to the floor and I kicked it away.

Mike’s fingers spread my slick folds and his tongue lapped
at my sensitive flesh. I gripped one of his shoulders and threaded the fingers
of my other hand through his hair. A throaty moan fell from my partially opened
mouth.

The tip of his tongue targeted my clit and all the
sensations he’d stirred when we’d been at the theater returned full force. His
lips gently tugged at my labia and then he suckled my clit as he slid a finger
into my wet pussy.

My legs trembled as the fiery tension built at a rapid pace.
My hips undulated to Mike’s rhythmic ministrations. When he pushed two fingers
into my cunt and pumped them quickly, the heat inside me erupted.

“Mike!” I cried out on a sharp breath.

The powerful orgasm rocked me to the core of my being and he
had to use his free hand on my hip to stabilize me.

My head fell forward, all the hair I hadn’t returned to the
ponytail holder after my unofficial photo shoot spilling over my bare shoulders
and across my face.

“Oh Lord,” I muttered. “You could wake the dead.”

With a chuckle that blew a warm breath over my dewy skin,
making me shudder with excitement, he said, “That’s sort of a morbid thought,
babe.”

“You know what I mean.”

He stood, towering over me, and winked. “Nice to know I’m
good for something.”

I laughed. “Oh please. You’re a wonderful friend and lover
and a total super sleuth.” My arms wrapped around his neck, since I could still
use a bit of support as I swayed from the languid feeling oozing through me, a
sensation that was a direct contrast to the way my pussy throbbed with the need
for more. With the need for this man. “You’re about to break an art theft case
wide open and before that, you single-handedly unearthed millions in misappropriated
funds during a political campaign, helped a defense attorney prove his client
was innocent of murder
and
you recovered a stolen private jet. You found
it in Bora Bora, for Christ’s sake.”

He grinned as he added, “Let’s not forget I located the four
championship Yorkshires that were abducted last year.”

I kissed him. Then said, “That one’s my favorite.”

I couldn’t help it. He made me feel warm and mushy inside.
He always had. I’d just never allowed myself to accept it. Nor had I ever told
him how I felt.

But that was what I was supposed to do now, right?

Staring up at him, loving the glimmer in his bright blue
eyes, I said, “You have a very big heart, Mike Lucas. I knew it the day I met
you. I also know I’m damn lucky you were at Sharon and Jeff’s wedding.”