Kiss Don’t Tell

‘Through here,’ she said.

Was that a tremble in her voice or did he only hope it was?

She led the way to her room and turned to face him. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Shall we get undressed?’

She’d already removed her jacket. Now her hands went to the buttons on her shirt.

CHAPTER SIX

There was no doubt who was calling the shots tonight, and it wasn’t Adam Quinn.

Was he gaping? Adam thought he must be. But Lane just kept unbuttoning.

She managed to get half her buttons undone before Adam could find enough of a voice to say, ‘Keep your clothes on.’

That stopped her. ‘Is it a … a turn-off, to do that without being asked?’

Turn-off? She sounded so uncomfortable saying that. He recalled how she’d tripped over the word ‘douchebag’. Weirdly, it cheered him up, that she couldn’t say those things easily.

‘Is it a what?’ he asked, hoping she’d repeat it.

‘I mean, is it unappealing?’ she clarified. ‘When a woman takes the initiative and starts … you know … the ball rolling?’

Starts the ball rolling? Adam swallowed a laugh. She was brazen enough to pay a man for sex but couldn’t actually talk about it without sounding like a prude. Ball rolling? It was kind of adorable.

‘Well is it unappealing?’ she asked again, a little impatient now.

Adam knew exactly what the early stages of arousal felt like, and figured Lane was certainly appealing to something in him, because the half-moon of bra he could see through the slackened opening of her shirt was pushing him into it—and God only knew why, since that bra was the most utilitarian undergarment he’d ever seen on a woman. Maybe seeing Lane even slightly dishevelled was as forceful as seeing another woman butt-naked. Especially coming on top of that kiss earlier, which had been so much hotter than he’d expected it to be.

‘I like women who take the initiative,’ he said, and somehow managed to sound like he was talking about the weather. He was going to match her cool for cool if it killed him.

Lane’s shoulders seemed to slump—yet they didn’t actually move. ‘Then what is it?’ she asked, rebuttoning herself briskly.

‘There’s just no need to hurry.’

‘But there is,’ Lane burst out, then seemed to catch herself. ‘Look, please understand, I’m not giving you an order, or trying to coerce you, or telling you what you should be doing. This isn’t … isn’t personal.’

‘Not personal?’ It was news to him that sex wasn’t personal. He waited, fascinated, for what would come next.

‘No. It’s just that I’m giving a presentation on economic indicators in the morning and I therefore need to be in the office early. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to step things up, so I can … um … check … my slide deck … um … before … er … What are you doing?’ Because Adam, one slow step at a time, had come right up to her.

‘This,’ he said, and reached out a finger to run the tip of it around the edge of her lips. ‘One of the first things to learn is that you don’t have to do everything all at once.’ He circled his fingertip inwards. ‘Waiting can be extremely … exciting. Lesson … Number … Two.’

Oh, God, her lips were soft. He moved his finger again, running it down her chin to the top of her collar, dipping it just below the stiff white fabric to rest where her clavicle dipped in the centre, at the base of her neck. He had to pause there because his breathing was becoming erratic. And he was supposed to be the experienced one! His finger still hooked in her shirt, he kissed near one eye, then the other, until her eyes closed, then he softly kissed her eyelids.

He moved back again, but Lane’s eyes stayed closed. She was leaning forward, lips parted, showing him that he was her guide in this, that she was willing to be led. It was as though that uncomfortable scene at the office had never happened, as though she was giving herself to him, putting her trust in him. It set off a strange feeling inside him. A shivery feeling that he wanted to understand for both their sakes before he went any further. It was something to do with how she could be both tough and soft at the same time.

No, it was more than that. A surprising jumble of things was making him uneasy.

She was super smart, but intuitively as well as academically—she’d had him pegged at the office, despite her woeful lack of experience with men on the prowl, making him wonder how she could know what he was doing and yet … and yet not know him.

She was clearly not a sulker—because here she was, ceding control to him despite the way he’d behaved.

She was driven to succeed—and yes, Sarah had told him she was like that, but it was startling to see her so absolutely focused on the goal at hand; she’d set aside the embarrassment he’d caused her without going over it endlessly and making him grovel, because she just wanted to move on.

He had to admit the whole Lane Davis package at that particular moment was pretty damn classy, which made her anything but unappealing. He wanted to touch her, and touch her, and keep touching her, and—

Stop now! Adam’s brain ordered. But somehow, his finger moved again. Then both his hands were moving. One button … two … a third … a fourth, undone. One more.

Adam watched the rise and fall of her chest. The plain white cotton bra was bared to his gaze, the hint of her shockingly full breasts visible over the tops of the cups. The freckles meandering down her cleavage were a sweet imperfection on her otherwise perfect skin. His finger couldn’t seem to help sliding along their path. He wanted to kiss them, one by one.

Danger ahead, he could feel it.

***

Lane’s breath caught as his finger circled each dot in the row of freckles she’d always thought she hated … until now. His touch was so strange—his calloused fingertips like a raspy whisper against her skin. She could feel a spinning sensation inside her, but didn’t know if it was in her head or somewhere else. She wanted to open her eyes, watch what he was doing, learn what he was doing, see his face, but her eyelids felt so heavy. Her arms felt heavy, too. Even her breasts—especially her breasts—felt heavy, the tips so sensitive she wished his questing finger would touch her there and relieve the pressure.

But he didn’t. His finger dragged upwards, making a slow retreat along the same path, and Lane knew instinctively he would do no more that night. She opened her eyes then, biting down on a sigh of disappointment. Men weren’t supposed to pull away from you when you were making it so easy. Even she knew that.

Adam’s fingers moved against Lane’s flesh. He was refastening her buttons.

She sucked in her breath as his hands brushed the tops of her breasts. It was on the tip of her tongue to demand he do what she was paying him for, but the words jammed in her throat. She’d embarrassed herself enough for one night, oozing at him like an overripe Camembert cheese. And she suddenly couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear the thought that she was forcing him to touch her when he clearly didn’t want to.

‘Please don’t bother,’ she said. ‘I can do it.’

She turned her back to him, her own hands moving into action. She was forcing the last button through its opening when Adam’s hands on her shoulders stopped her.

He turned her around and very deliberately undid the same five buttons. ‘I want to do it,’ he said huskily, and started doing the buttons up again while she stood rigid. ‘Just so you know, at the end of three months, I’m going to know every button of yours intimately. This is just the start.’

But Lane wasn’t fooled by the sexy voice. The buttoning/unbuttoning was nothing but a lesson in who was the boss. A mechanical lesson, putting her—the student who knew nothing—in her place. A lesson she’d bought and therefore had to value.

On that basis, she concentrated on not swooning towards him again and tried instead to analyse what it was about the way he smelled, the way his roughened fingertips felt, that made her feel so restless, so … edgy. She came up with nothing. She was clearly going to have to work harder, think more, feel less, divorce her body from her brain, if she was to make these lessons work for her.

Adam was frowning, his hands sliding up and down her arms as though he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. And then, abruptly, he stepped away, jamming his hands in his pockets.

‘I can’t make Sunday,’ he said. ‘If you want to uphold your two-night minimum, you’ll have to reorganize your weekend and meet me on Saturday.’

Lane said nothing. She was trying to work out why his voice sounded so sexy. It wasn’t as though he was saying anything seductive. It was nothing more than a calendar entry.

‘Okay, Lane?’ he asked.

The way he said her name was slow and husky. Sexy, even when he wasn’t saying anything specifically associated with sex.

‘Lane? I’ll come to you, okay? No surprises.’

It was always kind of gruff, his voice. Even when he was talking softly, like now. No surprises. Sweet of him to reassure her, since she’d told him she didn’t like surprises. Sweet. And sexy. And dark. She wondered if she could get the timbre of her own voice a little lower. Would that automatically make her sexier?

‘Lane?’

And now it was kind of urgent.

‘Lane!’

She blinked. Refocused. Blinked again. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was thinking of …’ How your voice will sound up close against my ear, how my voice will sound in your ear, when we— ‘Never mind. Just … thinking.’

Adam looked at her for a long moment. ‘You need to think less,’ he said.

‘Think less, feel more,’ she said. ‘Yes, I got that.’

‘So … Saturday?’

‘Saturday, yes, all right,’ she said.

Another long look from Adam. A half-step towards her, and then he said something under his breath, spun on his heel, and strode out of the room.

Lane heard the front door open … then close.

‘Saturday,’ she said, and looked down at herself—at her perfectly buttoned shirt, at her navy blue skirt, at her flat black shoes—and groaned. ‘Oh God, I’m going to have to go shopping.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Surely the green dress that had just been thrown over the top of the fitting room door was the only remaining untried outfit in the metropolis.

But apparently not, because two other dresses, a skirt and a satin top followed in quick succession.

Lane stifled a little scream. She only had herself to blame for this girly shopping trip. She’d thrown herself at Erica the minute Erica had arrived home from Los Angeles last night, garbled out what had happened in her absence and begged for her help choosing an appropriate wardrobe for her sex classes. Erica, with a martial look in her eye, had insisted on inviting Sarah along too, since Sarah had ‘already been so helpful’ in persuading Adam to take Lane on as his private student, and now …

Well, now, having spent three hours being pelted with assorted items of clothing, with only a black cocktail frock to show for the girls’ combined efforts, Lane was thinking longingly of her navy blue suit. And the fact that Erica and Sarah were whispering furiously to each other every time they banished Lane to a fitting room wasn’t helping to reconcile her to the prospect of any more shopping.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put together the mishmash of phrases Lane managed to overhear and conclude that she was the topic under discussion. Well, her and Adam Quinn and their ‘ridiculous contract’.

‘I can’t take much more of this,’ Lane called out to the girls, who answered her by lobbing a leather jacket into the room.

Dispiritedly, Lane slipped the green dress over her head and stretched it into place. She looked at herself in the mirror and had to stifle another little scream. Awful. Scary, even. She looked like a green bean with breasts.

How did Erica and Sarah both manage to consistently look like they’d walked off a high fashion runway no matter what they were wearing? Lane was closer to a model shape than either of her friends—Erica being more voluptuous and Sarah being almost too tiny to be real—so why did everything she tried on look silly on her?

She slipped the leather jacket on over the dress. It didn’t improve the look.

Time to admit this was a waste of time. When she thought about it logically, it wasn’t as though David Bennett had ever appeared to be turned off by the suits she wore to work; he saw her in them practically every day and still managed to flirt with her! So if she packed away the momentary panic engendered on Wednesday night by Adam and his two undone buttons, wouldn’t she be better served by buying a couple of negligees to replace her white cotton nightgowns and leaving it at that? Things for going to bed?

She couldn’t wear that black cocktail dress to bed! She didn’t need that black cocktail dress at all—and certainly not for the next three months. It wasn’t as though she’d be going to a cocktail party with Adam Quinn!

So she would go out there, show the girls this current fashion disaster, then she’d insist on going home. After one last disgusted look at herself in the mirror, she exited the fitting room without even bothering to brace for the verdict.

Erica’s hastily bitten lip did not suggest anything complimentary would be forthcoming. ‘Maybe take off the jacket …?’ Erica suggested.

Lane took off the jacket.

‘The colour’s nice,’ Sarah ventured, ever the optimist.

Lane raised disbelieving eyebrows.

‘Well, it is,’ Sarah insisted.

‘We’re making a mistake with the tight sheaths,’ Erica said. ‘You’ve got the boobs for them but the leanness everywhere else isn’t screaming sex.’

‘Who said I wanted to scream sex?’ Lane asked, a little alarmed. ‘I don’t want to scream sex. I don’t want to scream anything. I don’t want to scream.’

‘Then what was the point of hiring Adam Quinn?’ Erica asked.

‘Not to … to scream,’ Lane said.

‘Oh God help us all, do we have to do this?’ Sarah, covering her eyes with a hand.

‘The thing is, Lane, there’s screaming and then there’s screaming,’ Erica said, giving the hem of the green dress a slight tug. ‘And I thought this little fashion expedition was about putting you in the hands of Adam Quinn to entice a certain type of scream out of you.’ She stood back and looked Lane up and down again. ‘But this definitely isn’t going to do the trick, so try the pale pink silk dress Sarah chose for you instead. It’s kind of floaty and romantic, and if you cinch it with this—’ she handed over a thick, dark gold belt ‘—we might be onto something.’

‘Pink?’ Lane asked doubtfully. ‘With carrot hair?’

Erica shook a finger at her. ‘Stop channelling Jeanne-the-Martyr! I keep telling you, your hair isn’t carrot, it’s scarlet. Girls spend a fortune at the hairdresser trying to get that exact shade of red. And you will be very surprised how lovely pale pink will look with it. Now, in!’

‘All right, but if I try it on, can we go home?’ Lane asked.

‘No. But if I like it and you buy it, we can drink margaritas. And I will even consent to going that hellhole bar you and Sarah like—especially if we can talk more about the elusive Mr Quinn.’

‘He’s not elusive,’ Sarah said reproachfully. ‘He’s just my brother, and not, as I keep telling you, a psychopath.’

‘Be that as it may, he’s still an unknown quantity and—as far as I’m concerned—and unmet quantity, so if I’m trusting my best friend’s tender heart to him, I need reassurance.’ She gave Lane a little push towards the fitting room. ‘So in please, margaritas and conversation await.’

Lane stood her ground. ‘As long as you understand I’m not dressing myself to please Adam.’

Another push. ‘In, Lane.’

Lane reluctantly re-entered the fitting room, and as she closed the door she heard Sarah whisper, ‘What are you doing, Erica? Don’t talk about hearts. Adam’s a commitment-phobe; he’s not interested in hearts!’

‘Shh!’ A hiss from Erica.

‘Well, to listen to you talk, anyone would think he was …’ But Sarah’s voice dropped so low at that intriguing point that strain though Lane did, she could only hear a snatched word or two after that.

Anyone would think he was what? How she wished she knew. Maybe if she knew, she would have found a way to entice him into having sex with her on Wednesday night instead of being left like a wilting wallflower.

Lane stripped off the diabolical green sheath and yanked the pink dress down over her head. Really, who cared what he was? This was a paid job for him. She didn’t have to entice him; the onus was on him to teach her to entice him. So he’d better find a way to get the lessons underway quick smart so they could all relax.

She glanced in the mirror, preparing for a shudder, and surprised herself with a spontaneous smile instead. She looked more closely. The pink really did suit her! She reached for the zipper at the back and tugged it up, only for it to jam halfway. She jiggled it, then tugged it, then jiggled it again, trying to ease it up, then down, then up. No joy; it wouldn’t budge.

At that moment she saw the dress as a metaphor for her life. The dress was Adam, chosen for her but not by her, and although it seemed to suit her at first glance, something was derailing her attempt to wear it. She couldn’t reverse the zipper, but she couldn’t move forward with it either, and she was stuck on her own with the problem while her friends tried to find other options for her. Damn zipper!

Just as she thought she was going to have to call Erica and Sarah in to help her, the zip unjammed and she managed to slide it all the way up. Victory was hers. She smiled to herself. Yes, victory was hers, just as it would be in three months’ time, without her friends having to step in to save her.

She grabbed the gold belt Erica had insisted on and positioned it around her waist. Instantly, she imagined Adam’s big hands there and shivered deliciously. It was a short step to thinking about his hands under the belt, under the dress. On her naked flesh. That was what she wanted: his hands, on her. And his mouth, she wanted his mouth sending her mindless as he kissed her. And she just had this feeling … this feeling that if she couldn’t find her way with Adam, she’d never find it.

On that basis, she couldn’t let her friends’ misgivings stop her. She wasn’t going to let anyone stop her from doing this. She was unsticking the zip that was her stalled sex life on her own and going all the way up with it.

She gave the belt tug, tightening it so enthusiastically an ‘Ouch’ flew out of her mouth.

The whispering outside stopped abruptly.

‘Laney?’ Erica. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ she called back, loosening the belt a notch. ‘Just give me a minute and I’ll be out to show you.’ She looked at herself in the mirror and nodded. ‘Coming out now.’

There was a moment of silence as she walked out and favoured the girls with a slow twirl. But she found, for once, she didn’t need their approval. She liked the dress without needing anyone else’s opinion.

Still, it was nice to see Sarah and Erica smiling conspiratorially at each other like proud parents. Better than the tension-fuelled whisper-fest they’d been indulging in all day.

Erica came up behind her, ripped out her hair elastic and turned her to the larger mirror. She smoothed the straight fall of Lane’s hair. ‘Darling, if you wear this with my chocolate suede high heels, I’m going to want to do you,’ she said. ‘If only I could be there tonight to make sure Adam’s worth the transformation. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to let me stay?’

‘Very sure.’

‘Damn!’

‘And just to be one hundred per cent clear, I’m buying this dress for me, not Adam,’ Lane added.

‘Aha,’ Erica said, patently unconvinced.

‘I mean it.’

‘Aha.’

‘Erica!’

‘All right, all right. Go. Change. Pay. Margaritas. Talk.’

***

Erica barely waited until she’d ordered a double round of drinks (to avoid re-order interruptions) from Glory, the barmaid who was practically a fixture at Midnight Madness, before fixing Lane with a laser stare. ‘If you say one more time you’re not dressing to please Adam, I’m going to cut up every white shirt in your wardrobe. You’re deflecting.’

‘I’m not deflecting!’ Lane insisted. ‘I’m really not dressing to please him.’

‘Hide the scissors tonight, Lane!’ Erica sing-songed.

‘I mean not … not as such. Of course I’m interested in Adam’s reaction to the pink dress, but only as a means of comparing it to his reaction the other two times he’s seen me. It will be instructional to note if there’s more of a spark there.’

‘Oh instructional,’ Erica said, with an eye roll. ‘In that case—’

‘Hang on,’ Sarah interrupted her, reaching out a refocusing hand to grip Erica’s wrist. ‘Are you saying there hasn’t been a spark, Lane?’

‘Not on his part, no.’

‘Not on his part,’ Sarah repeated, ‘but what about on your part?’

And—bang!—into Lane’s head popped an image of Adam tracing a fingertip around her lips. ‘Oh,’ she breathed, as her own fingers came up to press against her lips, which had started to tingle at the memory. The memory kept going … his fingers moving down over her chin … to her collarbone … to her buttons … undoing them … that line of freckles. ‘Oh,’ she breathed again. Would the pink silk dress have made a difference? If she’d been wearing it on Wednesday, would he have pulled down the zip and dragged it off her body? Put his hands on her skin? His mouth? God. Oh, my God.

‘Okay you’re scaring me, Lane,’ Sarah said, and she really did sound fearful. ‘What’s the “God-oh-my-God” about?’

Lane snapped back to the present. ‘Did I say that out loud? I didn’t mean to.’

‘Well you did,’ Sarah said. ‘And I don’t want you to “God-oh-my-God” like that about Adam. I warned him, I really did, not to do this to you.’

‘Do what?’

‘Whatever it is that makes girls say “God-oh-my-God” about him.’

‘Do all girls say that about him?’

‘As far as I can tell.’

‘Oh! It’s just that he … he … he …’

‘He …’ Sarah’s eyes were wide with burgeoning dread.

‘He …?’ Erica’s were wide with unholy joy. ‘Don’t make me beg, Laney.’

‘It’s nothing, really. Just that the other night I started taking off my clothes—’

‘Oh my G-o-o-o-o-d.’ Sarah, melting down, covered her face with her hands. ‘No, no! I don’t need to hear this.’

‘—and he stopped me—’

‘Really don’t need to hear this.’

‘—so I did the buttons back up.’

Sarah peeked between her fingers. ‘Okay, I’m recovering.’

‘And he undid them again.’

‘Gah!’ Sarah’s fingers closed up again, eyes shielded. ‘I can’t take it.’

Glory chose that moment to deposit six margaritas on the bar in front of them.

‘Ah, thank you, Glory, what a sense of timing you have,’ Erica said, with a travesty of a smile.

Glory half tossed her head, as though they weren’t worth a full toss, grunted something unintelligible, and left them to it.

‘Okay, hold that thought, Lane, and stop moaning, Sarah,’ Erica said, looking around. She nodded at a table by the window. ‘Let’s grab that table over there—that one with the two stools. We can gaze out at the hustle and bustle of grungy old King Street while we contemplate why we keep coming to this bar when the cocktails are so bad and the service is worse.’

‘It’s our old uni hangout,’ Lane said.

‘And if either of you was still at university, I might—but only might—understand,’ Erica said. And then she grinned at Sarah. ‘But maybe it’s serendipity. Adam lives here in Newtown, doesn’t he, Sarah? Maybe he’ll walk in off the street.’