Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PINEAPPLE
By the time she walks into the Citrus Room, I know two things with a certainty that can’t be denied.
The first is that Pizza came here intending to argue.
The second is that she dressed to lose.
She stops just inside the private dining room, one hand still on the brass handle, and for a second all the noise from the bar below seems to fall away.
The place is dim in all the right ways, candlelight catching on polished glass, low music threading through the dark, the city spread out beyond the windows like a tray of jewels someone forgot to cover.
It should have been elegant. It should have felt neutral.
Instead it feels like a setup, and she knows it.
I can see that much in the way her spine goes tight and proud even while her body gives her away in a hundred smaller ways.
Her hair is down. Just as I asked.
That alone almost ruins me.
Dark waves spill over her shoulders and down her back in a way that makes her look softer than she did at the red carpet event, though there is nothing safe about the effect.
The wine-colored silk she chose skims over every curve like it was made to be looked at too long, all rich shine and subtle movement and I am lacking the kind of restraint that makes a man think about what he wants to ruin first. Her mouth is painted a dark, edible shade that already has me thinking about biting it.
Her breasts rise on one careful breath, then another, and I have to sit very still for a moment to keep the hunger off my face.
She closes the door behind her and looks at me as though she would like to throw a plate.
“You look smug,” she says instead of hello.
“You look gorgeous,” I say instead of anything to address the bratty girl trying and failing to win this fight.
Her eyes narrow, though the flush that moves high along her throat tells me the compliment landed exactly where I wanted it to. “That is not the response of a repentant man.”
“Did you come here for repentance?”
“No,” she says, and then seems to realize how quickly she answered. “I came here because apparently I’ve lost all survival instincts.”
I lean back in my chair and let myself enjoy the sight of her standing there, all sharp edges and soft silk and that beautiful, humiliating tension she carries when she is trying very hard not to let me see how much she’s already feeling. “Sit down, sweetheart.”
The words land.
I watch them do it.
She does not move at first, though her pulse jumps at the base of her throat.
Then she crosses the room with the sort of measured grace women use when they are trying to reclaim control through posture alone, and lowers herself into the chair across from me.
The slit of her dress shifts just enough to give me a long look at one smooth thigh, and the sight of it sends a mean little pulse straight to my throbbing member.
“You do realize,” she says while reaching for the water glass, “that I’m still furious with you.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“That is not charming.”
“It isn’t meant to be.”
Her mouth tightens, though I can see the effort it costs her.
The server arrives then, blessingly oblivious, and the next several minutes disappear into bubbly prosecco, menus, and the sort of refined small talk people use when both of them know dinner is a prelude to something much less respectable.
She tries to talk about the press first—of course she does.
She is still Pizza, still trying to wrap all the raw parts of this in something orderly and sensible so she can look at them without admitting how much they matter.
“My publicist has called four times,” she says.
“There’s a woman on a culinary panel who referred to you as ‘the decline of standards in fruit form.’”
I laugh. “That one’s almost flattering.”
“You would say that.” She rolled her eyes so far I was almost afraid they’d gotten stuck there.
“It got me a better table.”
She should not smile at that, but the corner of her mouth twitches anyway.
I let the conversation run a little longer than I need to, because part of seducing Pizza is letting her believe she still has some say in the pacing of the thing, even while every look, every pause, every silence is being arranged around her like a hand at the small of her back.
We order. We drink more wine. She grows warmer by degrees.
Her posture loosens. The silk at her chest shifts with each breath, and every time she reaches for her glass, her fingers brush the stem like she is trying very hard to channel all that restless energy somewhere harmless.
It isn’t working. I can tell by the way she looks at me.
At first she tries not to. Then she tries to do it quickly.
By the time the appetizer hits the table, she has given up on pretending entirely, and her gaze drifts to my mouth, my shoulders, the open collar of my shirt, then lower, where my body has become a problem I am no longer interested in disguising.
“What?” I ask.
She blinks, caught. “Nothing.”
“You were staring.”
“I was evaluating your character.”
“Through my abs?”
Her cheeks go pink. “You make it very difficult to have a normal conversation.”
I cut into the appetizer and drag my eyes over her slowly enough to make the point. “Normal is overrated.”
That does it.
Her breath catches. I notice because I have spent the whole evening watching for it, waiting for the exact moments her control disappears and the truth starts showing through.
There is an abstract art piece on the plate between us, just enough to have a bite each, and I should be paying attention to that or the spiel the waiter is giving about said appetizer.
Instead all I can think about is how much Pizza would hate knowing the sight of her mouth drawing a sip of wine has me thinking of how good it would feel to finally have those plump lips wrapped around my thickness.
“You’re doing it again,” she says.
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like that.”
I smile. “Like what?”
“Like you already know how tonight ends.”
There it is. A challenge, offered with all the false confidence of a woman who knows very well she is handing me a weapon anyway.
I set down my glass. “You tell me.”
The server reappears. The entrées arrive.
She is spared having to answer, though I can feel the charge of the unfinished line humming between us all through the next course.
It gets worse after the next glass of wine.
By dessert, the room has changed around us.
Not the room itself, not really. The walls are still dark, the candles still throwing soft gold over the table, the city still glittering outside.
What changes is the pressure. It has built all evening, one look and one quiet little command at a time, until now she is sitting across from me flushed and irritated and trying not to squirm every time my voice drops.
I have not touched her once.
That is the part I’m proudest of.
“Why are you smiling?” she asks, suddenly suspicious.
“Because you haven’t crossed your legs all night.”
For one beautiful second she looks like she might die on the spot.
Then she sets down her fork with exaggerated care. “You are impossible.”
“No,” I say softly. “I’m observant.”
Her chest rises. Falls. Rises again.
She is losing ground.
I stand and cross to her side of the table before she can decide whether that thought should comfort or terrify her.
She goes still at once, all awareness and anticipation and that bright, furious heat she wears so well.
I stop behind her chair and set one hand lightly on the back of it, not touching her, not yet, just close enough that my presence does all the work for me.
The room below us is still full. Through the partial glass partition, a handful of people at the bar could turn and see us if they cared to. The thought is not lost on her. I can tell by the way her thighs press together, by the way her shoulders go tight and her breathing changes.
“Stand up,” I say quietly.
She looks up at me over her shoulder, scandal and want fighting openly in her face now. “Now?”
The question goes straight through me.
“Yes,” I say.
For one long beat, I think she may refuse just to prove she can. Then she rises. I take her napkin from her lap and set it on the table, my fingers brushing her thigh for the briefest second on the way. The contact is nothing. The reaction it gets from her is not.
“You’re enjoying this too much,” she whispers.
“You’re enjoying it enough for both of us.”
Her eyes flash. “Cocky.”
I step closer until the front of my body nearly touches the back of hers. “Hands on the table.”
The room disappears.
She hesitates, not because she doesn’t understand me, but because she does.
Her palms flatten slowly against the white cloth, fingers spreading beside her untouched dessert plate, and the sight of it nearly undoes me.
That is what I wanted. The choice to obey.
Her silk dress clings to the line of her back, her ass, the soft curve of her hips, and I can already feel how quickly this could get out of hand if I let it.
Good thing I intend to.
I lean down until my mouth is close enough to her ear that the next words are for her alone. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”
She swallows. “You say that like you expect me to.”
I let my nose brush lightly along the side of her throat. “I say it because I mean it.”
Her eyes drift shut for half a second. When they open, they are darker.
“I hate you,” she says.
“No, sweetheart.” I let my hand slide from the chair to her waist at last, broad and warm over the silk. “You hate that your cooter is cooing for me.”
The breath that leaves her then is so soft no one else in the room would hear it.
I do.
My hand stays at her waist while my mouth finds the place beneath her ear, and I kiss her there once, then again, slow enough to make the whole room disappear.
Her fingers curl against the tablecloth.
Her spine arches a fraction. When I let my teeth drag very lightly over her skin, the sound she makes is tiny and wrecked and infinitely more satisfying than the applause from the gala ever was.
“Pineapple—”
“Use your words.”
“You cannot do this in public.”
“Can’t I?”
My hand tightens just enough to remind her who is standing behind her, who has spent the whole evening pushing her one inch at a time toward this exact edge. Then I let my thumb sweep once over her stomach through the silk, right where the line of her dress hugs the soft lower curve of her body.
“Tell me you don’t want it,” I murmur against her throat.
She doesn’t answer.
I kiss her pulse. “That’s what I thought.”
By the time I straighten, she is trembling.
I feel it in the way her body has gone taut and yielding all at once, in the way her breath keeps coming short and erratically.
I have pushed her right to the limit of public indecency, and I know exactly how much harder one more touch would hit.
I could keep going. I could bend her over this white tablecloth and eat the last of her dignity for dessert instead of the mousse dotted with gold flakes patiently waiting on the cool white plates in front of us.
The fantasy comes easy and mean and hot, full of her wet crevice opening under my mouth while she tries not to moan loud enough for the room to hear it.
I don’t do it though my mind is urging me to say fuck it and dive right in. .
Not here.
I am better than my impulse—barely.
I smooth my hand once over her waist, then step back just enough to let her breathe. “Pick up your purse.”
She turns and stares at me, still flushed, still worked up, still looking like the sort of well-bred woman who should never have agreed to dinner with a man like me. “Why?”
“Because I’m ordering an car.”
Something in her expression changes at that. “To where?”
I smile, slow and wicked and no longer pretending otherwise. “My place.”
She should say no. She should slap me. She should deliver some cutting line about how men like me overestimate ourselves and women like her do not leave expensive restaurants half-dazed to climb into cars with obvious trouble.
Instead her eyes drop briefly to my mouth, then lift again.
“That is a terrible idea,” she says.
“Probably.”
“You’re very pleased with yourself.”
“Not yet.”
Her breath catches all over again.
I take out my phone and order the car while she stands there trying not to look like a woman one hand from disaster. When the confirmation pings, I slide the phone back into my pocket and hold out my hand.
“Come on, sweetheart.”