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“Half naked,” he said in a strangled voice. He looked down. He looked away. He looked like he wanted to look back down, but he would not let himself do it. His startlingly black eyes darkened even more. Maybe he was going to — No, he wasn’t going to. He blinked instead and shook his head.
Finally, he rolled half on top of her, eyes firmly averted and hands planted on the ground to help support his weight, and maybe send a message his hands were staying where they belonged, were not straying anywhere near her — half-nakedness.
He was probably now blocking the view of anyone on the street, where the traffic roared with all the din of rush hour.
“Thank you,” she said.
Good. If she could speak, she must be able to breathe too.
Well, sort of. Actually, she was close to breathless. She didn’t think it had much to do with whether he was crushing her chest, though. She was just finding out how exciting it was to stretch out under a long, lean man with a spicy scent.
But awful too. She was being punished. She knew it. She was a gossip columnist — at least, she had been — and she hadn’t been trying hard enough to stop spying on other people for a living. Okay, most of the people she spied on loved seeing their names in her Movers and Mavens column, and she had made a seductively good living with about one one-hundredth of her brain power and writing talent.
But she’d felt like a Peeping Thomasina sometimes. Maybe she’d have earned some good karma if her conscience had made her stop, but it hadn’t. Getting fired had made her stop. Maybe it was horrible justice that she was darn near providing a girlie show for every pair of eyes in the busiest block in this town.
Including the eyes of Francis Van Deventer the Fifth.
“Don’t look!” she said.
“Hmmm?”
It turned out that saying don’t look was a little like saying don’t think about dessert with chocolate, whipped cream and five million chemicals. She even had to look herself.
How bad was it?
It was bad.
Shecouldseefarmorethanshecaredtoofherbits of beloved black froth, which didn’t feel lucky at all in this cold morning light, at rush hour, in the middle of the park, in the middle of the town.
“I said, don’t look.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.”
Mary wiggled and squirmed, trying to manhandle the lapels of her torn coat together down her front.
“Ma’am, don’t do that,” he said in a strangled voice. “Excuse me, but your knee — ”
Oh, my. Something was feeling distinctly different in the neighborhood of her knee. Something was stirring and flexing and feeling, well, harder. It felt — very large. It felt — very interesting.
“I — that is — forgive — ” he stammered.
Awww, he didn’t have much experience with this kind of mortification.
Marythoughtaboutteasingthepoor,torturedman a little more. Wouldn’t it be fun? It was so tempting. She often took a devilish little pleasure in shocking people, just to see how they would react. No, no, she shouldn’t try to find out how he would react. She should — aw, what the heck — just do it.
So she did.
She puckered up and planted one on him.
For a second, his lips were hard, clenched and forbidding. Disappointing, although not too surprising.
A second later — wow.
Their lip lock suddenly turned into a mind blower of a kiss. That she had not expected. His lips moved over hers, seeking. What came to mind was gentle, warm, seductive Caribbean surf. Languid. Alluring. Lustful. Absolutely necessary to the next moment of her existence.
Histeethnippedherlowerlip,asking.Shehadonly one answer for that. Yes! But she wouldn’t let his mouth get away long enough to say so. She let her body do the speaking.
He seemed a tad reluctant, but enthralled nevertheless. Which made her feel like the sexiest thing since siren Marilyn Monroe.
