Manwhore +1 (Manwhore, #2)(34)
I don’t know if he likes my little strapless blue dress, the pink-painted toes displayed by my pumps, or the long slit on the side of said long dress. All I know is that my skin has broken out in goose bumps because of his nearness. And as he settles down across from me and his eyes take a slow, delicious trek up my body, there’s a little bonfire in my stomach.
I check him out too, because his tuxedo loves him so thoroughly it’s an instant aphrodisiac to watch them together. God, I’m this living, wanting, throbbing ache now.
“Hey,” he says, his eyes just a little bit liquid. “You look beautiful.” His eyebrows pull low then, shaping a perfect frown. “Though I was supposed to buy you a dress.”
“No,” I deny, smiling and shaking my head firmly.
“Yes,” he grins. “Stop saying no to me.”
Jesus. He looks at me with his green, green sparkling eyes, and I’m gone, gone, totally gone.
“I said yes to this black tie,” I counter.
I’m not supposed to feel shy right now. If there is a man who knows me, it’s this man. But he’s so masculine and looking at me as if I’m so female, he has the ability to make me feel so young and so terribly fragile.
“I bribed you with wine, I’ve come to know your vices,” he gruffs out teasingly. Then, he reaches out to take my hand and draws me across the car, to his bench. He chucks my chin when I’m settled down. “Your every vice,” he adds, deathly sober now.
“Do you?” I playfully say. “You don’t know them all. If you did, you’d be kissing me.”
He steals a heavy-lidded look at my mouth and I get a delicious little squeeze in my lower body when I realize he is going to kiss me. “But if you kiss me, you’re going to mess up my lipstick,” I say, but he’s already curling his strong arm around my waist and slowly, surely, dragging me flush to his side.
“Your lipstick will look great on me.”
“Sin!” I throw my head back and laugh.
He trails his thumb along the curve of my neck. “That laugh of yours,” he tells me quietly.
He says it as if it’s his greatest discovery.
A hairsbreadth from my ear, he whispers, “I can think of over five feet of you that I can kiss without messing your lipstick.”
Suddenly trembling in anticipation when I recognize the look in his eyes, I let him brush the shawl off my shoulders, laughing faintly and chiding “Malcolm” as he eases my hair aside to reveal the curve of my neck and shoulder.
He rubs his thumb along my collarbone and looks into my eyes as he continues to gently fondle my skin. He kisses the roundest part of my shoulder, his lips caressing up and down, side to side, before he sets a second kiss upward, heading toward my neck.
“Rachel,” he whispers, so thick and raw, trailing his fingers to the R necklace resting at the base of my throat.
I’m acutely aware of his fingers shifting the small, gold letter aside. Then his warm fingertips are lifting the metal so he can press his lips into the delicate nook where my pulse is fluttering wildly. I’m mad with lust under his moist breath on my skin, the space between his thigh and mine, the deliriously slow path of ghost kisses he drops on his way up my neck, toward my jaw.
“I lose,” he says when he reaches my mouth.
I’m confused. I’m bewildered by his meaning. He’s definitely not falling asleep—his stare is as alert as ever. But he said I lose and I can see that he’s really determined to lose somehow. Determined to lose against whatever it is he’s fighting. He looks completely unapologetic too.
“I lose,” he repeats.
My eyes widen when he reaches out and brings me over to his lap and every bit of Malcolm is surrounding me, enveloping me, maddening me. The dark gleam in his eyes is completely serious, completely unlike the times he teases me. Jaw set, he curls a hand around my nape and pulls me to the wall of his chest, so close that all that’s between us is my dress and his shirt.
His eyes are fastened to my mouth now and OMG, I’m so breathless when he brushes his lips across mine.
“Do you think it’s this intense between us because of what happened?” I whisper.
His lips feather across mine again. “I don’t know . . . but I’m pursuing it. I’ll take this fire any day over the ice I live in.”
His chest is rising slowly, and I’m starting to pant. I’m trembling all over. My heart is beating madly and I’m holding my breath, waiting for what he’ll do next. His warm hands, his strong chest, his soft mouth suddenly pressing to the corner of mine. I catch a sob as he sets the ghost kiss right there, right where I need it, where I love it, where it branded me from the first time.
The lipstick doesn’t matter anymore, nothing matters.
I open my lips, but he drags his mouth up the side of my face and exhales slowly, fisting a hand in my hair as he holds me to his chest. I don’t move a muscle. If he’s giving me time to protest, I can’t. I just can’t. I missed him so much, a ball of emotion is forming in my stomach and my throat and my heart.
His delicious scent is killing me. So familiar I’m high.
His hair tickles the side of my face as he goes to the other corner, and I can smell his soap, and when he sets his lips fully on mine, I quiver. He slips his tongue lightly into my mouth, as if testing my resistance.