Chapter 4
Noah
As the sundisappeared below the horizon, I drove her to my place. We’d had one drink each, we’d eaten our fill of great food, and Emma seemed to be unwinding. She had put her big sunglasses away and was leaning back on the expensive leather seat of my very nice car.
The air between us was heavy with expectation, even in the silence, and that was fine with me. I hadn’t anticipated getting a woman into bed in what felt like a million years. I was definitely going to enjoy this one.
“We’re not going to tell anyone, right?” she said, and I knew she was thinking the way I was.
“Hell, no,” I said.
She smiled, an almost-mischievous smile. “I don’t know who everyone would worry about more, you or me.”
“Well, I could definitely crush your tender emotions with my callous, not-serious ways.”
“True. And I, the man-eater, could rip you to pieces.”
I snorted. No, she couldn’t.
Well, maybe. I was game to find out.
I pulled into my driveway and got out of the car. Emma got out, too, looking my house over from top to bottom in a way that was similar to the way she’d looked at me. “This is nice,” she said.
It was. My house wasn’t huge—it was a three-bedroom place in a quiet neighborhood on the west end of Griffith Park—but it was decent. I kept it up, had it painted regularly, had renovated the building and the grounds. It was my place, had been home for the past ten years, and when it came to my house I spared no expense. “It’s the only nice thing I own,” I said.
Emma looked at me, confused. “What?”
“Nothing.” Of course, she’d already said I was rich. I was a Tower VC partner, so I should own a lot of nice things. There were a lot of things people didn’t know about me, and I liked it that way. “Come inside and I’ll show you how nice it is.”
We walked through the main room, the wide-open space with a few sofas, a bookshelf, gleaming wood floors, and a high ceiling with heavy beams. Off the main room was my kitchen, where I poured us a glass of chilled wine. I knew she liked the place, and the wine, because she quickly slid off her heels and wandered the room in her sexy bare feet, her calf muscles slender and tight as she walked.
“You still think L.A. sucks?” I asked her back, letting my gaze stay on her legs and the tight line of her ass under her pencil skirt.
“Not quite as much as I thought,” Emma admitted. She turned. “I guess you’re going to show me the bedroom next?”
Show her the bedroom? What was I, an amateur? “Actually, I’m going to show you the best part of this house. Follow me.”
I led her to the side doors, which were covered with California shutters. I unlocked them and swung them open. I held my hand out to her. “Come on.”
She put her hand in mine. The touch between us was electric. I’d expected that, but I still wasn’t quite prepared for it. I liked the feel of her, the look of her slender hand against my uneven knuckles, the result of too many fistfights as a kid growing up rough on the streets of Chicago. I led her out onto the deck.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
The deck behind my house was nothing short of amazing. It ran the entire length of the back of the house. Beyond it was nothing but trees, scrub, and the slope of the hills and Mount Hollywood. Looming beyond that was the Hollywood sign itself. There wasn’t another house in sight from this angle, not a single building. It was getting to full dark now, and the sky was like a velvet blanket, the stars only faint pinpoints of light.
Emma walked out, taking a deep breath, and sat on one of the soft chaises I kept on the deck. “Jesus, this is beautiful,” she said.
“I practically live back here,” I told her. I slid off my dark brown leather jacket, draping it over the back of a chair. “It gets hot during the day, though there are patches of shade. But in the morning and the evening, there’s no better place. At night, too. I sit out here for hours.”
“I can see why.” She looked up at the sky, her eyes drifting closed. She looked good here, relaxing on my deck. She owned it like she owned every place she went.
I walked behind her and traced my fingers lightly over the twist of her hair, figuring out where the pins were placed. Then I tugged one free.
Her voice was lazy, her eyes still closed. “What are you doing?”
“What I’ve wanted to do all night.”
“Unpin my hair?”
Seduce you. Get you naked. Run my hands over you, anywhere you’ll let me.“Yes.”
“I suppose it’s—oh.” The sound came from her throat as I pulled another pin free. Her hairdo wasn’t that complicated, but it was wound tight, pinned flush to her scalp. How she put up with it, I had no idea.
“Was this hair for the meeting?” I asked her, keeping my voice low in the quiet of the night.
Emma’s eyes stayed closed as my fingers worked over her scalp. “I was trying to impress Catharine.”
“Catharine isn’t that easy to impress.”
Her eyes fluttered open. “You know her?”
“We work in the same circles. I did a deal with Lodestar a few years ago, though not directly with Catharine. She’s a smart lady.”
Emma sighed. “Please tell me you haven’t slept with her.”
“Not even a little bit. She should have liked you. How did the meeting go so wrong?”
A frown appeared between her eyebrows, but I had pulled the last part of her hairdo free, and I ran my fingers up the back of her neck and through her hair. She arched instinctively into my touch like a cat, forgetting to be annoyed. “What went wrong is that my recruits are a bunch of horny idiots lately, and they’ve been hiding it from me.”
I stroked over her temples, and she practically purred. “Horny idiots?”
“Yes. Not just horny, but lovesick. Hooking up with executives, and then actually falling for them.”
“You mean Samantha?” It was hard to imagine Emma calling her own sister a horny idiot.
Emma’s eyes drifted closed again. “Samantha isn’t the problem. She’s my sister, and Aidan is Aidan, and now they’re married. I could have gotten past that. The problem is that Samantha seems to have given my other recruits ideas.”
Ah. I could see why that would be a problem. “And Catharine knows what your recruits have been up to.”
“Yes, because apparently Catharine knows more about what goes on in my business than I do.” Her expression grew tight, despite the gentle way I was touching her. This was a sore spot. “My judgment is failing,” she said.
“I doubt that. You’re going through a rough patch. Every business has them.”
She opened her eyes. “How do you know? You don’t even know me.”
“I’ve been a venture capitalist for over a decade,” I said. “I’ve dealt with dozens of businesses, maybe hundreds. You’d be amazed how many of them are run by people who are riding a wave of good luck and have no plan.” I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see me behind her in the dark. “Those businesses don’t last. Yours has.”
“Are you flattering me to get into my panties?”
I smiled to myself and came around her chair, lowering myself down on my heels at her feet. “No, because I don’t need to flatter you to do that.”
I picked up one of her bare feet and ran my hand under the soft, strong arch, then over her ankle. I stroked up the back of her calf. Her muscles flexed briefly, and then she gave in, easing into my touch. With the palm of my hand on her skin, I told her everything I needed to say: Trust me. Enjoy yourself. Feel good. I’m not asking anything else of you. We were on the same wavelength, she and I. We both wanted this; we both knew it. There wasn’t anything else to say.
When my hand moved past the back of her knee, around her thigh to push up the hem of her skirt, she dredged up a half-hearted protest. “Noah, we’re outside.”
“No one can see us,” I said. It was true. We were in the dark; I had no neighbors on this side of the house. And bordering this section of the deck was a trellised half-wall that would have hidden us even if someone happened to be standing in the trees below. I slid her skirt up higher. The skin of her thighs was firm and warm, perfect, and I felt my cock throbbing impatiently between my legs. I pushed her knees further apart.
I brushed both hands along the insides of her thighs now, letting her skirt ride higher and her legs fall open. She was wearing black panties, the underwear of a practical businesswoman. I let myself breathe her in, the warm musk of her.
Emma took in a breath, then let it out. “Noah,” she said, “I want this. I want to feel good.”
I looked at those practical black panties and smiled. “You will,” I said. “Just try not to wake the neighbors.”