Her earrings swayed, and she felt a warm blush creeping up her face. Dressed in dark slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt open at the throat, Jase looked like nothing so much as an eighteenth-century buccaneer. All he needed was a sash, a sword, and a parrot.
“Light the candles and pour the wine, will you?” she said, edging sideways so he couldn’t see her rear exposure yet. “I’ll switch off the overhead.”
She took her chair quickly, to avoid his playing the gentleman and seating her. Her half-bare bottom was the dessert, not the appetizer.
The candlelight flickered between them, blurring her vision, and she had a split-second fantasy of him sweeping everything off onto the floor, candles and all, then lunging across the table for her. But her saner brain hoped he wouldn’t. The house would catch on fire, they’d end up huddling naked under blankets on the lawn with the volunteer fire department gawking at them, and she wouldn’t be able to collect insurance on the house because the policy probably had a sexual frenzy exclusion.
She picked up her fork to indicate Jase could begin eating. He was quite punctilious about manners, she’d noticed. Some woman must have schooled him along the way. He’d certainly never learned table etiquette from Growler Red.
Laurel sampled each item on her plate, but was too keyed up to finish anything. The rice was a little sticky but the broccoli was good, and the sauced shrimp had turned out surprisingly well. If she could work a few gourmet dinners into her budget, she’d buy this brand again. Not that the food mattered. This dinner was more about seduction than sustenance. The real meal would be when they went upstairs—or maybe into the den or the drawing room.
She took a sip of the wine to clear her palate and couldn’t help making a face. She didn’t know how wine was supposed to taste, but this Merlot thing made her want to scrub her tongue.
She let her neckline fall to one shoulder, then the other, so he got a different view with every breath she took—but never more than a glimpse. Her nipples tightened with every pass of the scarlet fabric across her breasts.
Neither of them spoke, but Jase’s eyes followed her every move. Did he realize she was testing his endurance, daring him to action?
Jase speared his last shrimp and lifted it toward his mouth. Upping the ante, Laurel slipped off a shoe and nudged his ankle under the table.
The fork slipped from his hand, and she made a moue of distress, as if apologizing, and withdrew her foot.
He crossed his fork on his plate and stared at her.
A heady thrill shot through her. She licked her lips in excitement, but the look she gave him was pure, wide-eyed innocence.
He poured himself a second glass of wine, lounged back, and sipped at it slowly, never taking his eyes off her.
She’d never realized how loud silence could be, how fraught. The very air seemed electrified. She shivered, but not from the cold. Instead, a wild heat spiraled along her nerves, and moisture pooled exactly where it needed to. Maybe she should have worn panties after all. It was going to be hard to explain to the nice Vietnamese woman at the dry cleaners in Waco exactly what sort of stain she’d gotten on her scarlet dress.
Now for the coup de grace. She stood up and turned her back to him so he could see her back was bare halfway down her butt. “I’ll go get dessert.”
Jase shoved his chair back so hard it crashed to the floor. “You—you minx!”
Before she knew what was happening, he’d crossed the room, his eyes dark with desire, and pressed her against her until she felt the wall at her bare back.
A minx? She, Laurel Elizabeth Harlow, the preacher’s daughter, the nicest girl in Bosque Bend High School, the class salutatorian, was being called a minx?
It was the sexiest thing anyone had ever said to her, and there was only one way to respond—she clung to his shoulders and ground her mouth into his. She wanted his arms around her, wanted his hard chest pressed against her, his erection teasing her thighs. She wanted him inside her as deep as he could go.
He pushed the slippery scarlet fabric away from her hips, opened his fly, and entered her. She buried her head in his neck and met him, thrust for thrust, then screamed in ecstasy and went limp.
Jase guided her with one hand as she slid down the wall, while his other hand hitched his trousers together. “If that didn’t bring the cops down on us, nothing will,” he muttered, swinging her up in his arms.
Laurel waved her arm weakly toward the table. “My shoes…”
“Get ’em tomorrow.”
Then, just like Rhett Butler, he carried her up the wide stairs to her room, and the night was all she could have ever dreamed of. Afterward, she slept with her head on his heart.
*