Page 28 of Café Diablo

“Edwin!” She scolds. “It’s not like I wasn’t just spread eagle on your desk ready to come and you hadn’t even touched me yet!”

That flush of pink—anger and embarrassment—rushes over her neck and cheeks, and she has a point. We werebothwound up and sprung.

“Now, go use the restroom,” she insists, finding a box of tissues on a nearby table to deal with the pastry mess. “I’ll be gone when you come back out, and you can go back to your normal work-a-holic program.”

“Okay!” I bark, but then I catch myself, knowing she’s just trying to help. I soften my tone. “Thank you,” I say quietly, before heading awkwardly toward the bathroom.

“Don’t thank me,” she sasses back, that flirty quality inching back into her tone. “Just have your secretary invoice me for my ten minutes and go back to business as usual.”

A naughty smile hitches half of her mouth and I shake my head, letting her have that one. “You can’t afford me,” I say when I get to the bathroom, and she smiles.

“I didn’t say you aren’t worth every penny.”

I shake my head and disappear into the restroom. This woman is going to be my bloody downfall.

When I come out ten minutes later, my office is empty and the mess on the floor is gone. It’s almost as if it didn’t happen, except for the black box still sitting on the desk and the small note taped to the front of it. It’s from Olivia, and it says:

Thursday

8pm

Zelda’s Secret (it’s a bar!

If you want to finish what you started.

Which I do.

Damn her, I do.

12

Olivia

Idrive my Vespa out of the city, zooming around corners and shooting in and out of traffic, letting the wind slash through my hair as my whole body buzzes. I didn’t just do that—up in Edwin’s office—did I? I didn’t frost my own yum-yum and invite him to—

Oh my God, but the look in his eyes!

He was going to taste me.

He was wearing that sexy-as-hell don’t-fuck-with-me lawyer suit, and he had the sunlight haloing him with all that delicious tawny-gold hair back-lit and gorgeous. And then, sparkling behind him, through that picture window was the ocean in all its glory, the Waikiki bay glittering and cheering him on. He hadn’t even touched me and I was ready to explode. I mean, his lips were ghosting against my skin in such a way that—damn!—I’m never looking at him the same way again.

I’ve never done anything like that before. Never so overt. Not on someone’s desk, in their office, with the sunlight blazing me with its warmth.

I’ve never been so bold and taken a risk like that. I don’t know what came over me, but I was on fire.

Iamon fire.

My core clenches as I clamp my thighs against the sides of my moped, trying to keep myself from reeling off the deep end. The flash of air and quickness as I shoot through the streets creates a rocketing buzz between my legs. It helps, but honestly the thunder of my scooter is barely enough to satiate the overwhelming slickness that has me overheated.

Edwin Voss is an itch I can’t help but scratch. It was one thing to feel him deep in my throat, where I was in control. It’s a whole other brand of torture to be the one open and vulnerable—waiting for the lash of his tongue.

Man, he’s addicting: frustrating and infuriating and poking all my buttons. Then, vice versa, I’m agitating him to see if I can get him to flush a new undiscovered shade of fuchsia—which it turns out, he can! All it takes is a little tart and frosting to completely unravel that man. Except, my lower regions were just as flushed and needy, ready for that wicked oration on finance law he kept threatening me with.

God, Edwin must think I’m a heathen. Or in the least, some sort of crazed sex addict. I’m still reeling from the fact that I was so unabashed and forward—heck, not just forward, but obscene! He’s never going to show up on Thursday. Turned on or not, a nice, respectable man like Edwin Voss doesn’t choose to spend his time with an unsightly heathen like me—not unless he’s forced into the situation likebothof our encounters have been.

I should feel ashamed. That’s what our anti-sex culture would say. I’m the wicked slut, the damned loose woman, and I should be guilty and humiliated for what I’ve done. And even though I am shocked by my own brazenness, shame is the last thing that follows. I’m more embarrassed for the position I put Edwin in than my own supposed loose morals. I actually feel powerful. Sexy. Creative.

Alive.

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