Page 14 of Take Me Tender

He didn’t feel bad about it, because he was done with even the pretense of keeping his distance from her. Nikki was only growing more intriguing by the moment, arousing his curiosity almost as much as his sex. Both were equally demanding, and he decided at least one of them must be satisfied.

Six

A woman is never sexier than when she is comfortable in her clothes.

—VERA WANG, DESIGNER

“A deal is a deal,” Nikki muttered to herself as she readied for the restaurant opening in Jay’s guest bathroom upstairs. It was the exact wording he’d used on her when he’d announced earlier that they had a social engagement for the evening. And he was right, she’d agreed to play his girlfriend as part of her job as his private chef.

She just hadn’t considered it would mean playing his girlfriend to such a large audience. But she’d make it work, she would. After all, tonight’s event also gave her a chance to mingle and make contacts with others who could use her services. She’d need a new job at the end of the month, even if she managed to successfully play gay for the remainder of this one.

“You’d better not be in commando boots,” Jay called from the bottom of the stairs. Nikki inched up her ankle-length skirt to inspect the kitten-heeled sandals she’d borrowed from Cassandra. They were stable enough to provide her knee the support it needed, yet pretty enough to go with the dress that Cassandra had created.

Nikki had borrowed that, too. After Jay’s party pronouncement, she’d returned to Malibu & Ewe following lunch preparations. Surely the shop owner could direct her to a local boutique and save her from fighting the afternoon’s beach traffic to get home and back again with the right kind of partywear.

“I have just the thing,” Cassandra had offered. “It’s hanging in my office. I was planning to display it in the shop, but you can wear it first.”

“No! I couldn’t…The size—”

“Will be perfect,” Cassandra had put in. “I made it to fit my measurements, and haven’t you noticed we’re a similar height and weight?”

Now that she mentioned it, Nikki did notice, though the other woman had it way over her in the chest department. Cassandra had waved that objection away, too. “Won’t matter. You’ll see.”

And when Nikki did see the dress…Well, something so beautiful was harder to resist than a plate of homemade potato chips topped with crumbled, smoky bacon and melted blue cheese—the decadent concoction she’d promised Cassandra as payment.

So instead of scooting around Malibu seeking something suitable to wear, she’d sat on the shop’s deck and fumbled through more rows of her very first swatch of knitting. Cassandra had joined her when she could, and laughed as Nikki complained her stitches were reproducing like rabbits. In frustration, she’d taken to counting the number on the needle each time she finished a row. By the time she’d left the shop, she’d become confident enough to count the stitches only every other row.

“Nikki?” Jay’s voice traveled up the stairs again. “Just so you know, I found Fern’s mascara and I’m not afraid to use it.”

Nikki dropped her own tube of Maybelline into her makeup bag and pressed her top and bottom lips together, setting her twenty-four-hour lipstick. Her afternoon outside had left a pink flush across her cheekbones, and the highlights around her face appeared a shade lighter. She’d taken her hair out of her usual working braids, and it waved in a tousled tangle around her shoulders.

With one last adjustment of the spectacular dress, Nikki reminded herself she had a job to do. Making Jay happy on the social circuit was as much her obligation as it was to make him breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “A deal’s a deal,” she murmured to herself once more.

She ignored the twinge in her knee as she made her way to the top of the stairs. There, she paused a moment, her hand gripping the railing for support before taking the first step down.

Jay was slouched against one of the banisters below, his hands in the front pockets of black linen trousers. He wore a white, thin cotton shirt with a thousand tiny pin-tucks in front. It looked like something a Miami drug lord would wear if you transferred him to Malibu and made him a golden-haired surfer.

He glanced up, froze, then his spine straightened as he slowly turned to stare at her.

She felt her sunburn heat and flow down her neck. “It’s Cassandra’s dress. She…she said it was okay for tonight.”

“Christ,” he said after a moment. “Well, at least I can be fairly sure you left your strap-on at home.”

Her free palm slid over the soft, knitted fabric that covered her left hip. He was right—if crude, as usual. Cassandra’s dress didn’t leave room for anything besides the skin it covered.

“What…How…” Jay broke off and made a vague gesture, his gaze still glued to her form as he slowly ascended the staircase. “Is that thing truly going to stay on?”

Nikki shrugged. Most of the dress was a delicately knitted tube of a lightweight, seafoam-colored yarn. She’d had to step into it and shimmy the garment up the length of her body, then dip her head to slip the keyhole in front over her neck. It was halter-style, but the keyhole dipped halfway down to her belly button. A string running beneath the blue-and-seafoam crocheted cups that were the bodice tied at the center of her body, leaving plenty of exposed skin above, below, and between them.

On Cassandra, with her more generous breasts, the dress would present a wealth of naked flesh. With Nikki’s more modest cleavage—well, she felt plenty bare, thank you very much.

Jay reached the step below hers, leaving them eye to eye. But it wasn’t her face he was surveying. “Christ,” he said again. “You’re not actually wearing that dress, you’re drizzled in it.”

Drizzled. There was a word that fit. With Jay’s focus on her, with the heat of his body so close, everything inside her melted. Her hand tightened on the banister and she hoped he couldn’t see beneath all that naked skin to the way her blood was moving like heavy sugar syrup through her veins.

“What are you doing?” she asked, as he put a finger beneath her chin to nudge it higher.

“Those amazing eyes of yours,” he said, gazing at them now. “When I look into them I don’t know whether I’m going to sink or fly.”

Oh, God. Everything female inside of her went more liquid, even as she tried to move her mouth into a sneer. “Does that line work well with the hetero chicks?” I don’t know whether I’m going to sink or fly. As it echoed in her head, both of her knees felt weak. “Because it seems just short of ‘What’s your sign?’ to me.”

“Shut up, cookie.” His head drew nearer. He was wearing a subtle, spicy scent that seemed to drug her with each inhalation.

She closed her eyes as if that would keep him away. “Jay—”

“Just shut up,” he said against her mouth.

It was that first, movie-theater type of kiss all over again, tender and warm. She could have resisted aggression or turned her cheek to blatant seduction, but this was something else altogether. This was a timeless, all-the-hours-in the-world kind of mouth to mouth that lured instead of demanded, that showed more patience than outright passion.

The melt happened all over her, all over again. Her lips softened against his and he licked across her bottom one, then tugged it gently with the edges of his teeth. She shivered, and his palms closed over her wrists then slid to her shoulders and drew her against him.

Her mouth parted—for air? to protest? to plea?—but he didn’t give her time for any of that before he slid his tongue inside. At the silky touch she shivered again, and liquid warmth rushed between her thighs.

He slid one large, heavy hand to the small of her back, and heat prickled across her flesh. His mouth tilted to adjust the fit of their lips even as his tongue circled hers, dizzying her with desire.

More vertigo made her head spin when he retreated from the kiss, only to draw his lips along the edge of her jaw. She swayed closer, and then she froze as she felt his fingertips graze the bare skin of her midsection that was left naked by the deep keyhole of the dress. At the slight stroke, her nipples tightened in an aching rush that was mirrored by another wave of wetness between her legs.

Her instant response made her giddy with both embarrassment and excitement. She shouldn’t react to him for so many good reasons…but right now she couldn’t remember what any of them were.

Her head fell back as he continued to explore her neck and shivers had her body quaking inside and out. Oh, God. Arousal had never been like this before, this quick, this intense, this uncontrollable, not when she was drunk on sadness and vodka at fifteen, and certainly not on the rare occasions since, when she’d forced normalcy on herself and taken a man to bed.

With her goose bumps leading the way, Jay’s drifting hand trailed upward, tripping over the narrow string that kept the cups of the bodice from springing outward. His mouth moved back to hers as he twisted one forefinger in the crocheted string. He thrust his tongue between her lips, sure and hot, and at the same time he tugged on the cord, pulling together her breasts as if they’d been palmed by unseen hands.

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