He shakes his head, his gaze intimate on my face as he basically admits to being celibate for what has to be a record time. I’m so undone by the thought, I drop my lashes and gaze with sudden shyness at his throat.
“What about the after-party I couldn’t go to? You got a show from . . . those girls?” I quietly ask him, stroking one of his shirt buttons with a fingertip. Why does he make me so shy? I’m afraid he’ll see that I’m jealous, but I have to ask.
It feels like this elevator is our own cocoon and nothing can come between us right now, nothing in the world outside this perfect space.
His throat: it’s so masculine. I watch the thick tendons and his Adam’s apple move as he answers now, his voice warm, his breath moving the hairs along my temple. “The Ice Box that night was a way of me distracting myself—I had every intention of fooling around. But you appeared, the very thing I wanted to distract myself from, and I couldn’t go through with having anyone else after the way you looked that night.”
The elevator stops at the penthouse, and I blush as he takes my hand and leads me in, my brain almost flooded with pleasure from what he just said.
He called his friends when he was riding in the car with me on our second interview. He was attracted to me then, while I’d been fascinated with the water he’d drunk, almost wanting to drink from the bottle he’d left behind—not even understanding what was happening to me.
Saint would’ve seen me for another interview—I would’ve made sure of that—but I’d have never known whether, while I lay wanting at night, he went and buried his desire for me between another woman’s legs.
I’m glad to know; he didn’t need to tell me this, and yet he did.
“Do you do that often?” I whisper. “Take just any woman in exchange for the one you want?”
He lets his head fall back and shouts with laughter, squeezing my hand. “Rachel, I never settle . . . not in business, not in pleasure. You were going to be the exception because you were a reporter. I never mix business and pleasure.”
“I ended up being that exception. To not mixing business with pleasure,” I say, almost to myself, flushing again when I think of the way I’ve totally mixed things too. I step away for a moment and stare out his massive windows at Chicago, admiring the thousand tiny, flickering lights that awaken in the city after sunset. “Your views are incredible. You have a completely different view of the world . . . both from your office and from here.”
“I like my view right now.” He speaks from behind me, and I inhale sharply and savor the butterflies in my stomach, the melty sensation in my knees. His voice is like tree bark now, raspy, firm and steady underneath, firmly rooted. When his tongue plays with my earlobe, I feel weightless, leaning back against him.
I part my lips just to breathe, noticing the large erection swelling prominently against the small of my back. Oh, how I want that. I want that so much. He turns my face to him. He slides a hand to cup my breast.
“I’m so ready, we can skip the foreplay,” I breathe.
I frown a little when he stills his hand. Um, not the reaction I was going for. I twist my neck a little.
His lips curl, a glint of mischief entering his gaze. “I’m taking my time, Rachel.”
Oh no. More foreplay? How wet does he want me to get? I’m so swollen I’m afraid nothing could go in right now. “Saint, don’t be a dick! I want you—”
“I want you too.” He kisses the corner of my mouth; then he heads to a huge black granite bar and brings us each a glass of wine.
He sits down on the couch and looks at me. It’s too easy for me to lose myself in the way he looks at me. Too easy to do anything else but want. Want, want, want.
“Come here.” He offers me a glass. “I want to know if you liked my gift.”
“I drank enough in the car. Didn’t you?”
He sips calmly.
I frown.
Suddenly I want to just toss his cat-and-mouse game right back at him and go home, but something in his expression stops me. It’s so male. So completely concentrated. Somehow it makes me wetter. Whatever it is I see there, the energy and power of a male establishing domination over a female, it pulls at me harder than my pride can. I’ve never had a relationship. I’ve never been attracted to a man as infuriating, impossible, and beyond hot as him.
I would physically fight a woman right now, naked and in mud, for the rights to him tonight.
So I tug my top down my arms and let it fall on the floor, barely suppressing the urge to cover myself when he has his first full look of me. Oh, fuck, did I just strip like a hooker? Before Saint? I did.
His voice is thick. “If you’re going to do that, do a little dance at least.”
“Fuck you,” I murmur.
“I’d rather you do it.”
I open my eyes, and he’s sipping his wine, devouring me with a small smile. He’s so virile, testosterone pulses around us. I want to rip his shirt off. God, I want to be reckless with him, wild with him. Somehow, within that recklessness, he gives me a measure of safety.