Page 100 of Catch a Kiwi
I hadn’t said it loudly—I had that much self-control, at least—but she glanced around, her eyes wide, before her startled gaze landed on mine again. I smiled, took my last sip of wine, and shrugged. “You did ask.”
“Is that a …” She stopped, breathed, and went on. “Is that a technique?”
“Bloody hell.” I had to laugh. “No. I don’t have that much polish, or haven’t you noticed?”
“So you don’t normally take women you’re interested in to look at fabulous art and murmur sexy things to them in the dark over very expensive food and drink?”
Now, I was frowning. “I bought the bloody thing, didn’t I? Here’s something you could consider. I don’t normally have to buy expensive art for a woman to sleep with me. They seem to think my good looks and sterling personality are enough.” I eyed her narrowly. “And don’t say the money. I hear it coming. Don’t say it.”
She laughed and squeezed my hand. “I won’t say it. I’m asking because—well, it worked. And I wanted to be sure it wasn’tmeantto work.”
I wanted to bang my head against the table. I didn’t,because I still had some measure of self-control. Barely. “Of course it was meant to work. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant for you.”
“Oh. Then … could you tell me some more? Or—you know what? Could you tell me some more in the car?”
43
SELFISH
Summer
It didn’t happen that way.
I knew that all those things I’d said were still true. But … murimuri aroha. Where it feels so heart-achingly good that it touches you all the way down deep. When you know it has to end, but you need this moment, this man, past all bearing. And you tell yourself you can handle it.
In other words, when you lie. Not that I knew I was lying, not then. This was brand-new territory for me.
That was why, though, when I walked through the restaurant and into the lobby of the boutique hotel with Roman’s hand on my lower back, feeling all the possessiveness and the urgency of it, and he said, “We could just stay here,” I turned, looked into his dark face, and said, “Yes.”
I’d never done this. Not once in my careful life. Standing at the desk while Roman found that, yes, there was indeed a room open, while he handed over his credit card and collected his keycard, nodded, and turned away. Feeling him take my hand like he needed to, and seeing his other hand push the lift button. Not his finger. His whole hand, like heneeded that lift to be herenow.Cool and controlled on the outside, and not a bit that way inside.
When the lift doors closed behind us, I knew I’d been right, because his arms were around me, I was rising to my toes, and his mouth was on mine like all he wanted was all of me.
I’d said I didn’t want possessiveness. I wanted it now. The lift doors opened, and Roman didn’t let me go. He walked us down the hall like that, me moving backward in my heels, his hand in my hair, my hands on his face as he kissed me, deep and hard. No chance to think, because I was in the sea again, and the waves were thundering over me. He got the door open somehow and pulled me inside, I felt the brush of the keycard against my bare leg as he dropped it, and my hands were on that white dress shirt, tugging at the buttons.
He didn’t bother with my buttons. He pulled the dress straight over my head. Then he said, “Fuck me.” Not a command, probably, because it was a groan. I wasn’t paying too much attention, though, because I was still working at his shirt, undoing buttons, my mouth going to his chest like I needed to kiss it, because I did. My hands splayed across that broad expanse, then stroking down his sides, over the shifting planes of muscle in his back.
When he stepped back, I let out a noise of protest. He said, his voice hoarse, “Let me look at you. Let me—” A tug at my hair, and he was tossing the comb on the dresser, then running his hands down my arms and back up them again. Not going for my breasts, not yet, but he was sure looking.
He said, “I think we’ll leave these on for a while. Come over here.” His hand around mine, but I hadn’t even got his shirt all the way off. I hadn’t …
His hand pulling me down to the carpeted floor in front of the bathroom door. In front of the mirror. His dark voicesaying, “Get on your knees.” The sight of him dropping to his own knees behind me, white shirt open over his chest.
I said, “I need to see you, too. I need to …” Then I stopped, because his hand had pulled back my hair, and his mouth was at the side of my neck. Pulling me back into him with the other hand as his mouth worked at my tender skin, and …oh. I would have closed my eyes, but I couldn’t. I was watching my back arch, watching his hand splayed over my belly, then moving up. Watching him watch me as his hand drifted over my breast in the bra I’d bought for this date with too many of his four thousand dollars, telling myself,This wasn’t part of the deal. Hair, makeup, dress, shoes. Not semi-transparent lingerie.How could I resist, though, when I hadn’t worn anything pretty in so long?
The sweet, simple bra in palest blue lace. The matching lace thong. And the thing I really, really shouldn’t have bought. Floaty shorts of the sheerest flower lace, worn over the thong for no reason at all. Except for the way Roman was looking at my body in the mirror, and then moving back so he could look at them—look atme—from the back.
He didn’t exactly whisper tender things. He groaned just one word. “Fuuuccckkk.” Then he was pulling off his shoes and socks and unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt. When I moved to take off my own high-heeled wedges, though, his hand came down over mine and he said, “No.”
“No?” I tried for some detachment. Some irony. It didn’t happen. “Why not?”
“Because,” he said, “I need you taller. For later.”
I would’ve answered, but his hand was under the shorts now, stroking over my bottom, and then both his hands were there. Sliding over my skin, then stroking my thighs. The outsides of them and then the insides, forcing them gently apart. He said, “I want to do all the things to you. I want everything. But I can’t wait any longer to?—”
I said, “Condom.” It was very nearly a gasp. That was how good his hands felt on my thighs, and we’d barely even started.
“We’re not there yet. Not by a long chalk.” His hands at my bra strap, then, and the drift of lace falling to the floor as I watched. The shorts sliding down my thighs, and the thong following after, so they were around my knees, and he was pushing me down. Pushing me onto my belly with his hand between my shoulder blades. “Arse in the air,” he told me, and oh, God, I was doing it.
