Insatiable (7 page)

And then those cheeks of hers started to flush and I realized I was staring. However, I couldn’t tell at first whether it was a flush of embarrassment or anger.

“We’ll need a computer,” she said, trying to prompt me to some action.

I took her up to the second level where I had a study set up. As with the rest of the house, it was one of those blended classic and modern areas. Warm wooden bookcases, huge desk with an overstuffed chair in the kneehole, that sort of thing.

“This is nice,” Quinn said, standing in the doorway, “But where’s the computer?”

I stood behind her, looking into the room over her head. I caught the barest hint of some fresh, clean scent and knew it was her. I had the urge to wrap my arms around her, clasp my hands just below her navel, and pull her back against me so that I could nuzzle my lips against her neck, right where it met her shoulder.

“Oh, it’s in here,” I said. I put my hand on her shoulder, intending on asking her to let me go past. She stiffened at my touch and I withdrew.

Before I could say anything she turned around and looked up at me. This time I knew that red flush in her cheeks was anger. At me.

“
Mr.
Ward,” she said, stressing that title so as to maintain her professional distance, “This is nothing but business to me. It will never be anything other than business. I’m good at my job, and I’m sure if you put aside whatever this is, you’ll see that. Do you understand?”

I struggled to refrain from making some remark about how good she looked when she was angry. Really, I did. It wasn’t natural for me to not speak my mind.

However, I also got the sense that she was, in some way, expecting me to say something like that.

So I leaned against the door frame, thumbs hooked in my pockets, and nodded. “I know you’re good at your job. Why? What other reason could I possibly have for demanding that you be the one to handle my account?”

That put a damper on her righteous indignation. I watched her try and rally her anger again and fail. She frowned once, then again, unprepared for that remark.

“Well...” she started, “It’s because the last time you and I were together you said you wanted to kiss me...”

“Oh, that, right. I’m thinking more of how you handled yourself in that meeting. Answering all my questions, not being scared of me. Callaghan’s just a yes man. Trust me, I know them when I see them. You’re not one.”

She cocked an eyebrow at me, her defenses still up but not at full power. “I’m not a man, for one.”

At last, some humor!
I thought. There was a tiny sparkle in her eyes. It was that fire inside I’d noticed earlier. That heat that wanted to escape if only it got the chance. A tingle of excitement ran down the front of my stomach.

“Definitely not,” I said, smiling at her. It was a good smile, I knew. It had been on magazine covers. I knew exactly what effect it had on women.

The heat came back to her cheeks and she dropped her eyes from mine.

Ah, there we go
. I figured I had her. Beautiful brownstone, good coffee, the general warmth of the room, some charm and some flirting. The perfect recipe to loosen her up.

“Are you finished?” she asked, and I saw that the warmth in her cheeks wasn’t from my skillful flirting but rather another shot of anger directed at me.

I unhooked my thumbs from my pockets and held my hands up in surrender, “Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, wondering whether this was another joke or if I was serious. The thing was, I wasn’t certain of the matter myself.

It would certainly be easier to call it a day with her. I had another invite to some high profile movie junket tonight. Plenty of starlets would be there.

Except I found I liked the challenge. No woman had challenged me like this since college, and it got my blood pumping with the unexpected thrill of it.

So I brushed past her, inhaling her scent again as I went. It made me throb deep inside.

“So, about that computer?” Quinn said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a jump drive.

“You didn’t say the magic word,” I said.

Her face brightened again and I loved it. It also surprised me how she otherwise managed to maintain her cool.

“May I please use your computer?”

I touched a hidden button on the desk and the computer monitor folded up out of the top, right above the kneehole. It was one of those composite things with the USB jacks and all that built into it.

When the screen finished folding out, a minimalistic keyboard and a touchpad also came up. I pulled the overstuffed leather chair out and offered it to her.

She squinted at me again, once more questioning the purity of my motivations. I took my hands off the chair and stepped away. She sat down and went to work, plugging the jump drive in and browsing through the files.

“I spent the weekend thinking about the upcoming release of your latest app. The art’s just a mockup for now. But I think this is just the thing you need. This is a still that will run in all the major software publications:
Wired, PCWorld,
and the like.”

I leaned over, putting one hand on the top of the chair for support. I had to squint a little to read it, some of the text was small on the screen. It took me a second to feel her eyes on me.

“That’s good!” I said. And it was. The colors were eye catching, the tag line grin-inducing. Funny and witty. Just the sort of thing I wanted.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Quinn’s shoulders sag with relief. Then she launched in the other material, telling me where she got her ideas from. What made her think of certain things.

I could see the passion she had for her work, and how much of herself she put into it. And I have to say, that was a turn-on for me. I liked people who knew what they wanted and how to make it happen.

She loved the challenge of it, and took joy in creating.

After perhaps a couple minutes I couldn’t keep my sight on the screen anymore. I just couldn’t stop myself from watching how animated she became. The way she smiled and the way that smile made a dimple in one cheek but not the other.

Definitely the girl next door,
I thought. The kind of girl who was so damn hot without even knowing it, without even trying it. Hell, it looked to me like Quinn actively tried to dull her looks down.

“So, what do you think?” she said, finishing a PowerPoint slideshow about the proposed rollout schedule and distribution of the various ads. “I know it’s all a little rough, but, well, I wasn’t exactly expecting to be the one doing all this...”

“It’s great,” I said, “I love it all.”

My heart lurched in my chest when she smiled at me. It was an unreserved moment of joy. She knew she’d done a good job and she’d been afraid I wouldn’t like it.

When she realized what she was doing, she dropped the smile and turned back to the monitor. “Like I said, it’s preliminary. Rough. But it will be finished by the window you specified.”

I patted the top of the chair and turned away. I perused the spines of all the old books on the shelves, running my finger along them. I stopped at one and tapped it. Then I pulled it off and leafed idly through the pages.

It was
Pride and Prejudice
. A first edition, I knew. They were all firsts in here. “You know, you’re not my usual type,” I said, closing it up. I pushed it back into its spot.

“I hope I’m not your unusual type, either,” she said. She pushed the chair back and stood, pulling the jump drive from the computer as she went. The final PowerPoint slide disappeared from the screen.

“And I’m going to take this as approval to continue with what I’ve showed you. In the future, I think we should correspond through email. I can show you everything just as easily.”

In two steps I stood in front of her. She swallowed, but didn’t back down. “You know what? I think that you like me. I think that you want me and it scares you.”

“I could never...” she said, dropping her eyes, lowering her chin towards her chest.

I placed my hand against her cheek, my pinky finger pressed lightly against the bottom of her jaw, and lifted her face so that she looked at me again. “Just give in. I promise you’ll like it.”

Then I tried to kiss her. Her eyes started closing, her lips started parting. They trembled a little and I knew that somewhere she did want me. My heart sang in my chest, my blood suddenly boiling in my veins.

It felt right. It felt more intense than anything I’d felt for a woman in a long time.
Since I first met Stacey
, I thought, and all the ones before her that were like her.

It gave me pause. A pause long enough for Quinn to snap herself from her own spell. She grabbed my wrist and tore my hand from her cheek.

“I hate men like you. You think that because you’re so hot and so successful that no woman could possibly resist you. Don’t you remember what I said when we came in here? It’s not going to happen. Never.”

She turned to go, to storm out. I knew I couldn’t let her, not now. She got to the door.

“Quinn, wait. Please,” I said.

And by some miracle she stopped in the doorway. It was the professional in her, I knew. The part of her that insisted she do a good job at everything.

Although it didn’t surprise me too much. I wasn’t stupid. I knew this sort of job could make or break her whole career. I knew she had a lot riding on this. I just needed her to stay a little longer, and I needed to use the tools I had available.

“Yes?” she said, looking back at me but not leaving the doorway.

“Stay a bit longer.”

“I shouldn’t,” she said, “It wouldn’t be professional of me.”

“I won’t tell your boss if you don’t,” I shot back. “A few minutes is all I ask.”

She shrugged and shook her head, giving in. I brushed past her and led her upstairs to the third floor with its large living room and great view. I could see her admiring the place.

“This is really nice,” she said. She ran her hand along the breakfast bar and stopped to admire a piece of abstract art I had on the wall. Then she went over to the windows and looked out onto the street.

She nodded. “Yup. Nice. Mr. Ward, I’m happy you like my work so far, but I really think I should go now.”

I leaned against the banister, not blocking her way, but not inviting her to go, either.

“You should? Why? Are you afraid something might happen if you don’t?”

“No,” she said, getting that determined look on her face again. But now I knew that somewhere inside she did want me. She felt that draw other women felt around me. She was just better at resisting it.

Whoever thought that could be such a turn-on?

“So stay, then. Prove yourself right,” I said. I pushed away from the banister, moving so that I stood closer to her.

“No promotion is worth this,” she said, almost under her breath. I still made it out. “I’ll show myself out. Thanks for the coffee.”

She started for the stairs, but before she got there I spoke again. “Wait, just one more thing.”

Before she could ask what I reached out and plucked at the pins holding her bun in place. She let out a startled gasp as her hair tumbled in waves to her shoulders.

Having it in a bun all day like that made the ends curl up just so. It framed her face, making her look more feminine. The fair hair bringing those dark freckles out even more.

The throb inside of me turned into an ache.

“Hey!” she said.

“Just like I thought,” I said. “You’re beautiful, Quinn.” I offered her the bobby pins. I had to take a deep breath to steady myself. I found her intoxicating. I had to have her.

Q
UINN

He held the bobby pins out to me. The ends of my hair brushed against my ears and tickled at my neck.

I didn’t know how to feel. Mortification kept trying to well up from the pit of my stomach. But the way he kept looking at me stirred heat within me instead. I couldn’t deny that I was attracted to Ward. That I wanted him.

But I knew that I shouldn’t. He was exactly not my type. He would be so bad for me, and I wouldn’t exactly be good for him, either.

The woman inside me still yearned for him, though.

And his words still echoed in my head.
You’re beautiful.
And that’s how I knew it was all some game, because I wasn’t.

“No,” I said, taking the bobby pins back and squeezing them in my palm. “I’m not.”

I had to admit that it was even nicer up on this floor then on the first two. The couches, the art, the window, it all encouraged me to stay awhile.

When I first came up, though, I caught the hint of something. Some expensive perfume that just dripped sex. He’d had another woman up here not so long ago. Other women, plural, probably. They threw themselves at him and he was always there catch them.

I wished he’d just let me slip on by.

Smelling that had made me want to go, made me remember who he really was. But why did he keep looking at me that way?

“I think that you’ve been around me enough to know that I don’t pull my punches,” Vaughn said. “And you, Quinn,
are
beautiful. I noticed that the first time I saw you.”

He closed the distance between us so that I saw almost nothing but his face looking down into mine. I couldn’t stop my body from responding to the proximity. My heart thumped, my mouth went dry. A warm tingle ran down through me.

“No, I’m not,” I repeated, shaking my head.

He didn’t say anything else. He put his hand to my cheek again, steadying my head so that I couldn’t contradict him by shaking it anymore.

This time when his face descended closer to mine I didn’t stop it. I parted my lips to deny him again, but before I could he fitted his mouth against mine.

The first thing I felt was the prickle of his stubble against my skin. Then electricity filled and suffused me, from my scalp to my toes.

I remembered thinking,
He really
is
a good kisser
. His mouth was warm on mine. His lips gentle yet insistent. My eyes drooped closed before I could stop them, and my calves tensed, trying to lift me higher so that he might kiss me more easily.