I’m In No Mood For Love

Which proved, yet again, woman did all the work in a relationship. “You mean downward-facing dog.”

“Yeah. You know that one?”

Clare ignored the question. “So, the yoga instructor had to bend herself all around to please you. I imagine she had to rock your world in and out of bed, but what did she get out of the relationship? Besides toned abs and buns of steel?”

He grinned like a natural-born sinner. “Out of bed, she got dinner and a movie. In bed she got multiple orgasms.”

Oh. Okay. That was good. She had never had a multiple orgasm. Although she thought she may have come close once.

He shoved one shoulder into the door frame. “What? You don’t have anything to say?”

Really, though, she wasn’t greedy. It had been so long, she wouldn’t mind just having one. “Like?”

“Like a relationship is not just about sex and a woman needs more than multiple orgasms.”

“Yes. They do.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “We do, yes. And a relationship is more than sex.” She looked back at him standing there like a hunk of the month. She was allowing him to get her sidetracked with thoughts of orgasms. She’d come into the pantry to find crackers or something…

He pushed away from the frame and closed the door with his foot.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He moved forward a few steps until she had to tilt her head up to look up into his face. “Apparently, I’m stalking you.”

“Why?” He was doing that thing again. The thing where he sucked out all the air in the room and made her feel light-headed. “Are you bored?”

“Bored?” He took several moments to consider the question before he answered, “No. I’m not bored.”

Thirteen

Sebastian was far from bored. He was intrigued and interested and very turned on. It wasn’t his fault, though. It was hers. He’d read her second book, The Pirate’s Captive, and was shocked by how much he’d enjoyed it. It was a real swashbuckler filled with high seas drama and lots of “wenching.” Any woman who could write hot wenching like that had to be hot in bed.

Clare. Clare Wingate. The girl with the thick glasses who used to follow him around and annoy him a lot had turned out to be as interesting and intriguing a woman as she was beautiful.

Who would have thought?

After his cold shower, he’d sought her out to ask her if she wanted to escape the party and have a late lunch with him downtown somewhere. Somewhere public where he wouldn’t be tempted to kiss her as he had the day before. But she’d started talking about men eating women like Lucky Charms and Tasty O’s, and that had started him wondering if she was magically delicious, and here they were. Shut inside the pantry.

“Then why are you stalking me here?” she asked.

He slid his hands up her arms to the shoulders of her fuzzy sweater. The height of her shoes brought her mouth just below his. “Remember when we hid in here and gorged on Girl Scout cookies? I think I ate a whole box of Thin Mints.”

She swallowed hard as her amazing blue eyes stared up into his. She blinked. “You followed me in here to talk about when we used to eat cookies?”

He brushed his hands across her shoulders to the sides of her warm neck. Her pulse quickened beneath his thumbs. “No.” He tilted her chin up and lowered his face just above hers. “I want to talk about eating you like a Tasty O.” He continued to look into her eyes as he said, “I want to talk about all the things I want to do to you. Then we can talk about all the things I want you to do to me.” All the things he’d already thought of her doing to him.

She raised her hands to his chest and he thought she might push him away. Instead she said, “We can’t do this. Someone will walk in here.”

He wondered if she realized that her only objection was that they might get caught. He smiled. Her red lipstick had been driving him crazy, and he brushed his mouth across hers. “Not if we’re very quiet.” He pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “You don’t want Joyce to walk in on us. She’d be horrified to find you in here kissing the gardener’s son.”

“But I’m not kissing you.”

He chuckled silently. “Not yet.”

She sucked in a breath and held it. “Your father could find us.”

He brushed his thumb across the soft skin of her jaw as he continued to tease her mouth. “He’s taking one of his twenty-minute naps that usually last an hour. He won’t ever know.”

“Why do I let you do this to me?” she asked through a sigh.

“Because it feels good.”

She swallowed and her throat moved beneath his hands. “Lots of things feel good.”

“Not this good.” Her fingers curled into his sweater. “Admit it, Clare. You like how this feels as much as I do.”

“It’s only because…it’s been a while.”

“A while since?”

“I’ve felt this good.”

It had been a while for him too. A while since he’d thought about a woman as much as he did Clare. Especially since he wasn’t even having sex with her. He tilted her face up a little more, and while his mouth lightly touched hers, he waited. Waited for the last sweet moment of hesitation. The moment right before she lost the battle with herself and melted into him. When she was no longer the perfect Clare. No longer hiding behind bland smiles and rigid control. The moment right before she turned soft and passionate all at the same time.

He felt the hitch in her breathing and the press of her fingertips into the weave of his sweater the second before her hands slid up his chest, leaving a trail of fire to the back of his neck. Her lips parted with a barely perceptible ahh, and she was his. Her acquiescence excited him almost as much as her fingers combing through the back of his hair. It raised the flesh on his back and chest and turned the interest in his pants as hard as rock.

He kept the kiss light, taking his time to taste a hint of mint on her breath and feel the soft warmth of her mouth. He let her set the pace and settled into a hot, wet kiss that was as excruciating as it was sweet. He felt her passion grow and build. He felt it in her touch and heard it in the little moan in her throat.

She pulled back, her breathing rapid, her eyes wide and dilated. Her hands gripped his shoulders and she said just above a whisper, “Why do I always let this happen?”

Frustration clawed at his chest and between his legs. His breathing was only slightly calmer than hers. “We already covered that.”

“I know, but why with you?” She licked her wet lips. “There are lots of other men in the world.”

He pulled her against his chest until her breasts were pressed into the front of his sweater. “I guess I make it feel better than those other men.” Talk time was over, and he lowered his mouth once again. There was no hesitation in her this time. Only passion, hot and fluid and every bit as needy as his own.

He placed a hand on her round behind and shoved one knee between hers. He settled her against the hard ridge of his erection, turning his desire for her into a hot greedy thing he could barely control. Her kiss turned wetter and hungrier, and he gave her what she needed.

She’d been wrong about him. He didn’t want a woman to bend herself around for him. Although there was nothing wrong with rocking his world in bed. Or out of bed. Or in the pantry. At the moment Clare was doing a really good job of it. He slid his hand from her behind to her waist and slipped his fingers beneath the bottom edge of her sweater. Her skin was soft, and he drew a circle on her belly with his thumb. She moved against his erection and he fought the urge to push down her pants and have sex with her right there. On the floor of the pantry where anyone could walk in, satisfying his lust between her soft thighs and easing the razor edge of desire that twisted and turned low in his belly and added a slice of pain to the pleasure.