Sinful Desire (Sinful Nights, #2)(36)

“Have I mentioned you look good enough to eat?”

“It’s the oranges, isn’t it?” she asked, running her fingers along the pattern on her dress.

“You had cherries on your dress when I met you. Now oranges. What will it be next time?”

“Do you like peaches?”

“I love peaches. I love peach ice cream. I especially love peach pie.”

“Then maybe I’ll have peaches on me next time,” she said with a sly look in her eyes.

He laughed then tapped the steering wheel as he turned onto a two-lane road at the base of the mountains. “So what’s the deal with you and this car?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is this like a James Bond thing you have going on?”

She laughed and shook her head. “He doesn’t drive this model. Lately he’s been driving the DBS. This is a Vantage GT.”

“I know. It just seems very Bond.”

“Maybe I’m a spy,” she whispered in a sultry voice, winking as she spoke.

“Are you a good spy or a bad spy?”

“I’m whatever kind you want me to be,” she said, and the innuendo in her words heated him up. The notion that she’d play whatever role he wanted intoxicated him.

But then, everything she did turned him on, it seemed. His attraction to her ran red-hot, and burrowed deep into his body. It operated on some kind of elemental level that at times he felt powerless to resist or deny. His fingers gripped the wheel harder as lust thrummed through him.

But even so, he remained curious about her. The woman who generated all this heat in his blood. He wanted to understand her. “What I mean is,” he said, trying again, “what’s the story with you and this fancy car, and the gorgeous building you live in, and the way you dress like you stepped off the pages of a magazine?”

“The answers are simple. I give a lot of my money away, and I give all my time away. But I still like having nice things. And I like to reward myself for hitting milestones in charitable fundraising. Like this car—it was a gift I gave myself after my first big event. And this dress I picked up when I started working with the children’s wing. Besides, I like dressing nice. Is that a crime?”

He shook his head. “Hell, no. You wear it all well. Do you like being pretty?”

She laughed lightly. “I’m glad you think that about me.”

“Answer the question,” he said firmly, since she’d just danced around what he considered an immutable truth of the universe—she was beautiful.

“Ryan,” she said, and he heard her embarrassment in her tone. He was having none of that.

“Sophie,” he said in a firm voice. “You’re gorgeous. Don’t deny it. Now tell me, do you like being so gorgeous?”

“To you—yes,” she said, managing once again not to answer completely. But her answer was completely satisfying.

Briefly, he ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “Stunning. You are f*cking stunning.” He turned his eyes back to the road that curved up into the hills. “Even in that hoodie and hat picture you sent me.”

“I told you I was a nerd in college. I mean, total nerd,” she said, slicing her hands through the air for emphasis. “I had a weird haircut. I died my bangs blue. I was bent over a desk coding all the time.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing you bent over a desk.”

She shot him a naughty grin. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“Did you like having blue hair?”

She shrugged. “I did it to fit in. There’s a certain geek culture, and I had to work hard to conform to it. Already I had a strike against me being a woman, so I tried to at least look the part of a computer nerd.”

If she hadn’t sent that photo he’d never have believed it. “And now that you’ve left that part of your life behind, you embrace this other side of yourself,” he said, gesturing to the pinup dress and high heels and the styled hair.

“Exactly,” she said, her eyes lighting up.

“Was that part of you untended to? The woman in you?”

She scoffed. “For many years,” she said, almost to herself. He was about to follow up and ask what she meant, but she kept talking. “But there are always parts of ourselves that we don’t take care of. I could ask you the same. Are you the same person you were when you were in the army?”

As he hugged the side of the road on a turn, he eyed his tailored pants, button-down shirt, and leather shoes. “Well, I don’t wear fatigues anymore,” he said drily.

“Did you wear fatigues then? Were you actually in battle?” she asked, worry in her tone.

“I did wear fatigues. But I wasn’t on the battlefront. I was in Germany. Stationed in Wiesbaden. Not far from Frankfurt.”

“I know where Wiesbaden is,” she said quickly, a flicker of excitement in her eyes. “I’m having some work done on a new car at a custom shop in Rüsselsheim, not far from there.”

“Yeah? What kind?” he asked, figuring she’d say Audi, BMW, or Mercedes—luxury autos with high-end options for the discerning buyer. Like Sophie.

“It’s a Bugatti,” she said breezily. “I’ve always wanted one.”

His jaw dropped. There was no hotter make or model of car to a Top Gear fan than a Bugatti. “Yeah, me too. You’re really getting a Bugatti? I thought they were made in France.”