He clears his throat. “Are all of your visits going to be this disruptive?”
I sigh like I have a wonderful secret. The world is your cocktail party—that’s an attitude Max suggests in his book. I actually liked that one—it really resonated with me. “We’ll see.”
I grab the five bags of chips before he can demand his array. He watches, expression intense.
Of course, in the cocktail party I’m imagining, I’m not acting as a human sandwich dispenser. I’m having fun and laughing, and Max is watching me, besotted.
And it’s not because I have a pork chop lifted to my face.
“Are we going with cheesy puffs today?” I ask when he doesn’t say anything.
“Cheesy puffs,” he says hoarsely.
“Good job,” I say. “You made an excellent choice. And just for that, you get an extra bag!”
He tightens his jaw as I snatch up an extra bag.
I’m keeping him off-balance. I feel like I’m really nailing his system today. I head right for him, all the way around his desk, holding his gaze, because that’s what you do to show a dog that you’re in charge.
It hits me here that holding a man’s gaze and walking steadily toward him, never looking away, is also an incredibly sexy thing to do. Every inch of my skin feels alive with excitement.
He swivels away from his desk as I near, facing me with that strangely serious expression. His shirt cuffs are rolled partway up his muscular forearms. His hands rest on his hard thighs, fingers relaxed. Nails trimmed short. Pianist-short. Some habits die hard.
And those thick thumbs. They’re the same thumbs he stuck in his belt loops while he sang with all of that sweet goofiness during that lost summer. Though science tells us that the cells of the body replace themselves over time—nine years for an entirely new body. So he really is a different person in every way.
But god, the way he’d sing to me.
Even when there was a full auditorium, it was as if he was singing to me and me alone, gaze dancing under that floppy hat, red bandana around his neck. And he’d make these jerky motions, pointing this way and that, singing about how the farm animals will scurry when he gets a surrey with a fringe on top to drive me around in.
The song was about young, hopeful love. It’s how I felt that summer.
It meant nothing to him. A dalliance of proximity. The second we were back at school, he went back to his cold and cynical mode. Too cool for me.
Quizzically, he tilts his head. “Mia?”
Have I been standing there weirdly long?
If you feel your control slipping, simply give her another reward for something.
“And as a reward for extra predictable behavior…” I toss one bag onto his desk and pull open the other one with a loud crinkle-snap that splits the air.
His eyes flare.
I remove one puff from the bag and hold it out to him. “Open,” I whisper, pulse racing. “Open for your prize.”
He watches me sternly. Opening for his prize is the last thing he’s going to do. Nobody pushes Max Hilton around.
The book doesn’t have instructions for outright rebellion. The book doesn’t say how sexy that might be. How a person’s beauty can squeeze deep into your belly. How you might really want to kiss him. To straddle him. To sink into him and make him remember. Make him come back.
I’ve wrested control away from him, but I don’t seem to have it, either. Like I flung it out the window. Fly! Be free!
I swallow. “That’s not open.” I nudge his lower lip with the cheese puff. “Do better,” I say.
He grabs my wrist, encircling it snugly and completely with his big, warm hand.
My breath quickens.
His challenging gaze deepens, like he can see right into me.
The bright orange cheese puff falls from my fingers.
Slowly, he pulls my hand toward him, pinning me with his eyes.
I swallow, mouth dry. “Are you going to eat my fingers instead?” I whisper.
He brushes his lips over my knuckle, soft and warm and smooth as velvet.
More shivers. I’m a fireworks show of shivers.
“Somebody thinks he’s quite the operator,” I gasp out. “Somebody thinks his robot moves are all that.”
A chunk of brown hair has fallen over his eyes, and it’s unbearably sexy. He kisses my next knuckle, still watching me.
I stifle a gasp.
Is Max Hilton seducing me? Yes.
My knees tremble.
I steel my resolve. Max doesn’t get to think he’s actually seducing me. No way. Not him.
But his lips are hovering over my pinky knuckle, and everything between us is electric.
God, I need to get control back. I try to think of the book, but I’m in a canoe heading over a sparkles waterfall, and control is soaring over the treetops. Control doesn’t remember me. It will not come when I call.
Max’s eyes are bluer than blue, and his breath is a wisp of silk on my skin. And suddenly I’m imagining his mouth over other parts of me.
Behind those blue eyes I think he’s thinking it too. I ball the hand that he doesn’t have hold of, tightening it against the overwhelming urge to shove it into his hair, to pull his face to my chest. Or maybe just straddle him.
He looks down at our joined hands and adjusts his hold, making my hand all the more his. We’re holding hands. I nearly collapse from the unexpectedness of it. The jaw-dropping sexiness.
He looks up and it’s a bolt through my belly.
Holding my gaze, he kisses my pinky knuckle, a brush of a kiss that sends shudders through me.
How is this happening? He’s taking me over and he hasn’t even gotten past my wrist!
He turns my hand so that his lips are over my thumb knuckle. How could I have forgotten about that one? He’s now going to kiss my thumb knuckle.
I wait, barely breathing. My entire world has collapsed to that thumb knuckle. It cries out for his lips.
And omigod, what will he kiss after that? Images of me stretched naked across his desk crowd through my mind. Flashes of his wicked lips hovering over my belly. Pressing to the space between my legs.