Wicked Games

Or so she deluded herself into thinking.

“I’m definitely game.” Doug reached over to drizzle papaya glaze onto her chicken. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

He paused, waited until she looked up from cutting her chicken before dropping his bomb. “That you’ll serve dessert first every time.”

He was so incredibly cute when he teased her. She loved that they were so comfortable together already that neither one of them hesitated to speak their mind.

After they’d showered and dressed and reheated the food, he’d made sure that his chair and hers were as close to the same corner of the square table as possible.

The result had been a lot of bumped knees and a very crowded table, but Kinsey adored him for wanting to keep her near. “Sex does rather stir up the appetite, doesn’t it?” She suppressed a grin while cutting her food. “I kinda like the idea of dessert first.”

“Kinsey.” Doug’s eyes flashed as he pulled his chair even closer. “Don’t tease me like that unless you mean it, darlin’.”

“Why, Doug Storey.” She swirled a bite of chicken through the puddle of glaze. “When have you ever known me to say something I didn’t mean?”

“Sixteen months ago on the veranda of Coconut Caye.”

Whoa! A blast from the past out of nowhere. If she’d had anything in her mouth, she would likely have choked. “During the group’s vacation? What did I say?”

He sat back in his chair, his knees spread wide, his unbuttoned shirt hanging open. She wanted to crawl into his lap and bury her nose in his skin, but decided this was not the right time.

No matter that he looked terribly dejected.

Strange. Why would he be dejected over something said so long ago in the heat of the moment and under the influence of rum?

“Then you don’t remember.”

She finished with the bite of her chicken, then moved to toy with what was left of her salad. “I remember…several things.”

“Like what?” He laced his hands over his flat abs and stretched out his legs even farther, hooking a foot around her chair leg and dragging her practically into his lap.

Two could play his game, she mused, abandoning her plate and propping her legs, ankles crossed, over his thighs. “Like the fact that we don’t fit well together standing up. Your legs are too long.”

He shook his head. “Your legs are too short.”

“My legs are not short.” She angled them this way and that until Doug did as she wanted and touched her, running his palm from her ankle to her knee.

“Not too short if you’re standing over my lap, but for normal vertical sex?” His mouth curled into a deliciously wicked grin. “Definitely too short.”

Kinsey tossed her open robe back over her legs, which he’d bared. “Then I suppose we were lucky the veranda had such a sturdy railing.”

“Then you do remember.”

“I told you I did. Would you like any more chicken?” she asked, not quite ready to give everything away.

But Doug wasn’t ready to let it go. “Do you know that I still have that pair of your bikini bottoms? String ties are truly a man’s best friend.”

She was not going to let him get to her. She was not, was not, was not. She had to let him know he’d met his match if a match was what she was looking to explore. Calm, cool and collected.

Ohhmmm. “Personally, I’m a big fan of those little tiny mesh pockets in swim trunks. The perfect size for stashing a condom.”

“Be Prepared, that’s my motto.”

“Stealing from the Boy Scouts these days?”

“Why not? Thousands of kids can’t be wrong.”

“Maybe not.” She went back to innocently moving lettuce and carrots around on her plate. “I just would’ve thought you might have more originality about you.”

She waited for one beat, two beats, three beats, four, and then she looked up. But the teasing Doug of seconds ago was gone. In his place brooded the Doug from earlier in the evening, the one who’d been fairly hard on himself for missing the meeting with Media West.

Her phone rang again. She ignored it. She wanted to know what was going on behind those intensely focused green eyes. Sure, they could banter and bed their way through a relationship, but she was certain, she knew, he had so much more to offer than a sexual good time.

And if she discovered that all this time she’d been wrong, well, then—

“Aren’t you going to get that?” he asked before the phone rang one last time.

She shook her head. “That’s what voice mail is for. I’m more curious to hear the voices in your head.”

“The ones telling me to haul you back to the sofa?”

That one she wouldn’t mind listening to herself. “No, the one that shut you down the second I questioned your originality.”

Doug snorted, glancing toward the living room, ignored her question the way guys usually did when they haven’t yet worked out the best possible reply in their minds. She supposed that was one thing she liked about him so much.

He was one-hundred-percent-predictable male, even while surprising her constantly.

He finally returned his hand to the leg he’d bared again, stroking her ankle in a circular motion, as if the movement allowed the gears in his head to engage. “The meeting I stayed in Denver to make?”

She nodded. “The one that caused you to miss the one here.”

“Yeah. That one.” He twisted his hand around her foot, stopped, started again. “It was over a restaurant design. A café, really. Two women who’d arranged their financing and were looking at models and plans.”

“And they didn’t like what you gave them.”

His mouth quirked. “Who’s telling this story, sister? You or me?”

She made the motion of zipping her lips.

“That’s better.”

“Hey,” she said, before remembering her virtual zipper. She mouthed the word, Sorry, and waited for Doug to go on.

“Warren Sill Group, the firm where I’ll be working in Denver, tossed the café my way. A welcome boon. Or so I thought.” He smirked. “The joke was on me. I learned the hard way that the café’s owners had turned up their noses at at least six top-notch concepts already.”

“And they made you number seven.” Kinsey broke her silence solely because she could sense what was coming and how painful the admission was going to be.

“Always been my lucky number, seven.” He shifted in his chair, moved her feet closer to the V of his legs and began to massage her soles. “Thing was, I’d seen what they’d vetoed and I’d read every word in the original proposal. I knew I’d nailed it. I knew it.”

But he hadn’t. She could tell he hadn’t, and that the setback had been a hard one to take. “I’m sorry. That must really suck. Especially with the added blow of disappointing your client here.”

“‘Blow’ just about covers everything,” he said with more than a touch of sarcasm. “I’ll get over it. Hell, I’m over it now.”

He obviously wasn’t, but she played along, wrapping her robe tighter around her shoulders and settling her legs more comfortably in his lap. “So, tell me about it.”

He frowned, stopped massaging in midrub. “About what? The meeting?”

“No, duh. The café’s design.” She smiled. “Astonish me with your brilliance.”

“I thought that’s what I just did in the living room,” he said, and the look in his eyes left her breathless.

Incorrigible flirt, making her heart beat like a jungle tom-tom. “Which part? The astonishment or the brilliance? Because I seem to recall doing most of the work.”

He squeezed her foot hard. “Do you want to hear about the design, or do you want to take this outside?”

“Bring it on, tough guy.”

He stared at her for several seconds, an expression on his face that she couldn’t define. His hands on her feet stilled while he seemed to consider where to take the conversation.

And then he shook his head; his lips quirked in a wry smile. “You don’t make it easy on a man, do you?”

Poor baby. He was not having one of his better days. She pulled her feet from his lap, tucked her robe around her body and leaned forward to kiss him. A simple kiss. Just a quick brush of her lips to his.

But Doug had other plans.

The moment their mouths made contact, his hands were in her hair, holding her head for a kiss that escalated beyond a comforting gesture into a desperate and needy embrace. He devoured her, and Kinsey’s mouth trembled.

She’d intended to soothe him, yet he seemed resistant to being easily calmed…as if…as if…nothing. She couldn’t express what she sensed in him except for a strange sort of despair.

And despair did not fit at all with what she knew of Doug Storey.

His kiss, on the other hand, was the one she remembered from Coconut Caye. Wild and hungry, reckless and hot. His tongue possessed her mouth, stroking over and around and along the length of hers, stirring both her body and her blood. Her heart raced, her breasts tightened, her sex quivered.

And then he was done, setting her away as quickly as he’d struck.

She sat back, stunned speechless by his shift in mood and emotion, thinking that she really had no idea what it was that made Doug tick. For months she’d enjoyed his company, but until hit with the news of his upcoming move, she hadn’t thought about Doug’s deeper appeal.

She’d really been stupid not to take him more seriously, not to learn what she could while she’d had the chance. A chance she now might never have.

“So,” she began, reaching for her napkin and dabbing it at her mouth. “What were we talking about?”

Doug sat up, stabbed at a bite of chicken, swirled it through a smear of papaya glaze on his plate. “About what you said to me during last summer’s vacation.”

“No. I’m sure that wasn’t it.” Think, think, think, Kinsey. Think. Why could she remember in great detail her rum-soaked ramblings from over a year ago, but nothing they’d said before that kiss? “The café. We were talking about the café and your design.”

Doug sighed, then shook his head, a momentary surrender, but she knew he’d be back. “My idea would actually have given the place more the look of a diner. But I went there with a reason after seeing what they’d been offered previously.”

“Which was?”

“They wanted retro.” He snorted. “And, no offense to anyone at Warren Sill, but I didn’t see a lot of thought in any of the concepts.”

Interesting. He wasn’t even settled into the job yet and the penis wars had already started. “Maybe it was a case of the group’s frustration in dealing with that particular client. I mean, why go all-out when faced with what sounds like guaranteed failure?”

“I don’t buy it.” He shook his head. “That’s a bogus way to work.”

She should’ve known he wouldn’t understand anything less than a commitment of two-hundred-plus percent. “Maybe, but it’s human.”

“Well, it would certainly account for the cliché after big stinkin’ cliché I saw. Booths and counters. Red vinyl. Black-and-white-checkerboard floor tiles. As if the designs were all dialed in.”

“Booths and counters say retro to me.”

He shrugged. “Sure. They say retro to everyone. But there’s a difference between retro and authentic. I read a New York Times quote once that basically said when it comes to retro fashion, historical accuracy is often beside the point.”

“And your diner design was authentic.”

He shook his head. “It was actually more reminiscent of a railroad dining car. True historic diners were prefab, usually stainless steel with porcelain enamel skins. I didn’t go quite that far.”

She felt her mouth tipping up in a smile. “Actually, I know that about diners.”

Doug blinked and then he grinned. “So? Astonish me with your brilliance already.”

“It’s a long strange series of coincidences that make the entire thing sound like fiction.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, and settled back into his chair.

There he went again, making her feel like she was the center of his world. It was the sort of attention she was used to receiving before sex, not after, and it raised Doug’s rating a number of notches on her mating scale.

“I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard Sydney talk about her friend Izzy? Isabel Leighton?”

Doug shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

“I’ve heard her talk about her off and on, but only met her last year. The funny part is that I already knew her. Or I had known her, way back when we were kids and last names didn’t matter,” she explained, adding a cheery laugh.

“This is the truth being stranger than fiction part, right?” he asked, and she nodded.

“Izzy’s uncle works for my parents. He does lawns, theirs and several of their long-time neighbors. He put in my mother’s backyard pool garden.” She fluttered one hand expansively.

“Anyway, Izzy and her mother lived with her uncle Leonard for a while after her parents divorced, and he used to bring her along when he worked weekends. He’d take me with them to lunch at his mother’s diner, where her mother worked.”

“And it was original.”

“Yep. The whole long counter, the stainless-steel panels and spinning stools that Izzy and I had way too much fun playing on.” She shrugged, grinned. “They lost most of the original structure years ago during Hurricane Alicia. Anyway…” Ugh. Why was she rambling on?

Her cooking might not kill him, but she was definitely on the right track for babbling him to death. “That’s the extent of my diner-specific brilliance. And I really am sorry your concept didn’t work out. Nothing like starting off on the wrong foot, huh?”

Doug made a face as if blowing off her concern. “I suppose being the brunt of an inside joke didn’t sit well, but I’ll live. And I’ll hold on to the design.”

“And you should. You’ll get a chance to use it later. The railroad car idea sounds like a lot of fun. I can see the serving staff dressed like porters or engineers.”

“My thoughts exactly.” He pushed his plate away, rubbed his hands together with way too much glee and returned them to her legs. He tossed her robe open so that she was exposed from her toenails to her panties, before pulling the garment completely off her shoulders.

And then he reached for the papaya glaze.

Kinsey held her breath as Doug lifted the spoon toward her, and she curled her tongue to catch the sweet drizzle he poured. Except that he continued to pour even after she’d closed her mouth, dripping the sticky fruit glaze over one bare nipple before moving to the other.

Shudders rippled through her as she waited for Doug’s next move. Finally, he made it, leaning forward and lapping his way around one breast, from the underside to the upper curve before settling his lips over her tightly drawn nipple and licking her clean.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.