“You need a new security system,” he said.
She opened her mouth but nothing came out. New security system. The words circled around her head but couldn’t find a place to land. She couldn’t get a handle on them, on her emotions.
His expression was completely unchanged. Set, unsmiling, serious. She couldn’t begin to read his reaction.
If he even had one. He seemed completely unaffected. And yet she knew he had been affected in at least one big way.
Embarrassment was coming in right after the shock, in great rolling waves. She could feel the heat of it rise in her face, together with another heat, completely uncontrollable.
Suzanne searched in her depths for some way to deal with the situation. Some nice neutral ladylike etiquette that would help her handle having felt the penis of a complete stranger.
Erect penis, if you please.
Huge, erect penis.
Oh God.
Her gaze shot to about six inches above his head. Her throat was dry and her lungs hurt.
“You need a new security system,” he repeated. New security system. New. Security. System. She needed a new security system.
Well…yes. If he was able to break through her system in the time it took her to place a phone call, she probably did need a new one.
“Okay,” she croaked. She cleared her throat. “Okay. I’ll look into it as soon as I can. I’ll ask around—“
“Don’t bother. I’ll install one for you. One not even I can get through. As a thank you for your designs.”
“You don’t need to—“ Suzanne looked at his face. Not a face you said no to. “Okay. Thanks.”
“What’s your favorite restaurant here in Portland?”
She huffed out a little breath, shifting gears. “Well, I suppose… Comme Chez Soi. But why do you—“
“We can talk about your new system tonight, over dinner.” He stated it as a fact, like gravity.
“Dinner?”
He nodded. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
Suzanne fumbled to get her bearings, but balance eluded her. She couldn’t even begin to think, not with this man in the same room, sucking out all the oxygen and taking with it all her common sense.
She said the only thing she could say. “Okay.”
“Bring a key for me because I won’t be able to install the new security system until the day after tomorrow at the earliest. I’ll be sleeping here tomorrow night. I’ll bring my bed first thing.”
Bed. His bed. Suzanne could imagine him only too well in his bed, big body sleeping in tangled sheets.
“Okay,” she whispered.
He stared at her for another few seconds, dark eyes boring into hers as if he could walk inside her mind. Then he nodded and walked toward the door. He didn’t seem to rush but he covered ground fast. In a second, he was out the door.
Large as he was, he didn’t make any noise. How could that be? He was wearing boots and they had to make some sound on hardwood flooring, didn’t they?
But he disappeared as silently as he had come. He’d appeared before her as suddenly as a ghost. And then he was gone.
Suzanne stared at where he’d been long after she heard the front door snick shut, then groped blindly for a chair. She had a busy day ahead of her but she couldn’t go anywhere until her legs stopped trembling.
CHAPTER THREE
At 1900 on the dot, John rang Suzanne’s front doorbell and at 1901 he heard the light click of her heels on the floor inside. She was punctual, he had to say that for her.
John supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Suzanne Barron was a businesswoman, after all, and a successful one at that. You don’t survive in business if you can’t meet a schedule.
He’d found the business world, in its own way, as demanding as the Navy.
John stood patiently outside the door, refraining from picking her locks and cutting through the alarm system out of pity. He’d made his point.
No, he stood outside her ridiculous excuse for a door and rang the bell, like a normal human male waiting for a female. To go out. Out on a date.
He supposed that’s how you do it. Man waits for woman outside door. His dating experience was pretty limited. Usually when he wanted sex he’d go to an off-base bar and cast his net until someone bit. Sometimes it took five minutes, sometimes ten.
The women weren’t looking for hearts and flowers and he wasn’t looking to give it to them.
Suzanne Barron was an entirely different matter. Getting into her bed was going to require some finesse and some dusting off of his rusty social skills. He was going to have to make some polite non-business-related conversation, something he rarely had with civilians.
Why couldn’t he just fast forward to the good part? He shrugged his shoulders under the cashmere overcoat that was part of his businessman disguise, wishing they were already in bed, recognizing how unusual it was for him to be so impatient.
He’d once hidden behind a boulder in the Sandbox for four days and four nights without moving a muscle to get a shot at one of Abdul Rasheem’s lieutenants. This itchy feeling was unlike him.
He was going to have to get through this evening. And probably a few other evenings after this one. Asking her out to dinner—out on dates—was necessary. There had to be something between meeting her and having sex. He couldn’t just say, “Let’s go to bed.” It didn’t work that way, not with ladies.
Or so he presumed. He didn’t have much experience with the species. So here he was, locked into getting through an evening making conversation.
He didn’t want to make nice.
He didn’t want to have to give his opinion on how to decorate his new office. He just wanted to dump the whole problem in those pretty hands of hers and let her take care of it. And he sure as hell didn’t need her input into what security system the building needed. He was fine with that.
What he wanted was to skip dinner and go straight to bed. Feel those long, slender legs wrapped around his waist. Sink into her. She’d be hot and tight…
He sighed and shifted, jaws clenched. It was altogether likely that getting into her building was easier than getting into her bed.
The door swung open and there she was, Suzanne Barron, as of this morning his new landlady and just about the most desirable woman he’d ever seen, silhouetted in the frame, warm fragrant air from inside the building condensing in the cold night.
Damn! His stomach clenched. Did the whole freaking building smell like her?
She looked up at him, one foot in, one foot out, stunning and anxious, as if she could read his thoughts, which, please God, she couldn’t. Her long coat was open; revealing a pale pink blouse with pearl buttons opened enough to show the round swell of ivory breasts. His hands fisted.
“Hi.” She couldn’t read his mind but maybe some of his sexual energy was coming through because she looked a little apprehensive. Maybe he should have taken two cold showers.
“Good evening,” he rumbled in reply and she smiled, some of her tension easing.
Right response.
Good.
He could do this. He could. For a few hours at least.
She bent to carefully lock the door he had cracked in three minutes flat. She straightened and as she turned her head up toward him, perfumed strands of dark honey-blonde hair caught on the dark wool of his coat. He lifted them off carefully and they ran like silk through his hand. She watched him with wide gray eyes as if he was about to eat her up.
Nothing he’d like more. Just spread her out and dip in. Get her ready before mounting her…
He took her elbow and a deep breath. First things first. He had to feed her and strangle out some conversation before climbing on top of her.
It was going to be a long evening. The first of many long evenings.
“Thanks for ringing the bell and not picking the lock.” Suzanne looked up—way up—at the man walking beside her down the path to the front gate.
His mouth twisted and lifted in a half smile. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m sure you were tempted.”
“No. I’d made my point.”