Chapter 3
“I can’t hold my tequila worth a damn,” someone beside Cynthia said, “but can I join you?”
The faint beginnings of a tequila-induced fog in Cynthia’s brain parted like the Red Sea for that voice. The smooth, rich timbre was satin against her auditory nerves, but when his words sank in, she rolled her eyes and turned to face bachelor number five. Or was it six?
Lively dark brown eyes, brimming with amusement and humor, met her gaze. Cynthia’s eyes widened as she took in his warm, golden skin and playful half smile on really nice lips that no man deserved in a fair world.
Huh. Maybe the beer goggles were finally kicking in.
Cynthia gave her head a shake. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“Hear what?”
She gestured at herself with an impatient wave of her hand.
“Your lame pickup line about how good I look. Or how nice I smell. Or if you can ‘see my keys because I’m turning you on.’?” With a sarcastic laugh, Cynthia spun back to the bar and rolled the empty shot glass between her hands.
“Go ahead, tell me I’m beautiful and then toddle off. ”
He was silent at first, prompting a thin, cold sensation that felt suspiciously like disappointment snaking down her spine. When she risked another glance at him, he was watching her with a thoughtful glint in his narrowed gaze.
“What?” Cynthia asked, tugging at the left strap of her dress self-consciously.
“Well, obviously I need a second. I don’t want to waste the opportunity.” There was zero sarcasm or defensiveness to his tone, and Cynthia swiveled on her barstool to face him properly.
“Give me the best you can do,” she said.
To her ears, the words played back harsher than she had intended, a depressing indication that when it came to flirting, she was woefully out of practice.
Teasing and coy digs were not the mark of an aspiring CEO who relied on working overtime and detailed project charters to get what she wanted.
But, to her relief, he responded to her challenge with a low chuckle that rasped like the wrong side of crushed velvet against inquisitive fingertips, and Cynthia found herself leaning forward.
“Okay, fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “?‘I’m also just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her to notice him.’?” With a lopsided smile, he added, “I had to wordsmith it a bit.”
The words were so familiar that the last of the buzzy mist clouding her mind cleared away. “Wait…Where have I heard that before…?”
He accepted a beer from the bartender and tipped its open mouth toward Cynthia. “Would you prefer ‘To me, you are perfect’?”
Cynthia’s head tilted to the side as the words rolled through her, just unfamiliar enough to be out of reach.
Or perhaps it was the speaker’s darkly fringed gaze upon her that was throwing her off, the sparkle in his deep brown eyes that was shifting the ground underneath her.
He met her stare head-on with humor and blatant curiosity, which sent a new feeling through her, hot on the heels of her confusion.
Exhilaration.
“You did not come up with those yourself,” Cynthia said, pleasantly surprised to hear the note of playfulness lacing her words.
He made her wait as he took a long pull from his beer bottle, leaving her nothing to do but trace the arch in his throat with her eyes. Long, graceful muscles worked with every swallow and Cynthia’s mouth dried, suddenly parched.
Ordering another drink, however, was the last thing on her mind.
When he met her eyes again, his smile was blinding. “It feels too soon for ‘I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly,’?” he said.
Cynthia let out a delighted gasp. “You stole those from movies!”
Their shared laughter faded as his eyelashes lowered, his eyes sweeping down her red dress before lingering where the hem had ridden up several inches above her knees.
Heat and appreciation flared in his eyes when he raked them back up to her face.
His perusal was so direct and so unapologetic that Cynthia’s cheeks flushed, but she had zero desire to look away.
“It was worth a shot,” he said, his smooth voice dropping to a husky pitch.
“It was a good try…” she murmured, submitting him to the same once-over he’d given her.
He was wearing a charcoal-gray suit that hugged wonderfully broad shoulders and even broader thighs, a welcome change from baggy Tommy Bahama and other atrocities she’d borne witness to that night.
The white shirt he wore beneath his suit was a little rumpled where it was loosened at his throat, like he’d gratefully tugged off a tie after a strenuous day.
The thought of him loosening his collar, the tension in his body as he worked to pull the confining material away, stirred a tight, delicious heat in the pit of Cynthia’s stomach. He had sexy collarbones.
“I might be willing to let you try again,” she finished.
He grinned and tipped his drink to his mouth again.
Cynthia’s eyelids lowered to half-mast as she tracked the path from his pursed lips to the sharp line of dark stubble along his jaw.
His beard was short and shaped with angular precision, and the skin on the pads of her fingers tingled.
Whether it was the neatly trimmed roughness of his facial hair or the alluring texture of his voice, she suddenly itched to touch something.
Him. The realization hit her like an electrostatic shock and with it came just the right hit of endorphins to send a tingle into her core and pull her inner thighs closer together. I want to touch him.
“?‘As you wish,’?” he said. “I’m Rohit, by the way.”
The reference to one of her favorite childhood movies pulled Cynthia off her seat so she stood between his spread legs, loving how he immediately leaned a fraction closer. He smelled good, too. “Cynthia.”
Rohit cocked his head at her empty shot glass. “So, can I buy you a drink, Cynthia?”
She let her gaze flit to his slightly parted lips before settling on his eyes again.
His pupils dilated, laser focused on her with a hunger that charged Cynthia with the confidence to pull the near-empty bottle from his hands and place it on the bar with a resolute clink .
The disappointments from earlier that evening tucked themselves into the deep recesses of her brain as a slow, catlike smile curved her lips.
For the first time that night, she felt like herself.
Or perhaps, a heightened version of herself: bold to the point of dramatic, assertive and unafraid.
She was surrendering to her primal instincts, and it felt damn good. Cynthia leaned forward, dropping her voice, careful to not let any part of her body touch his. There’d be time for that later, and the anticipation sent another wicked jolt through her.
“It’s my turn,” she said. “How about I show you my keys and we get out of here?”
At any other time, Rohit’s modest choice of hotel accommodation would’ve given Cynthia pause.
The cozy, bumblebee-inspired lodgings of Marta’s Honeycomb Inn seemed far too wholesome for a man whose slow, precise hands seemed hell-bent on exploring Cynthia’s body until every square inch of skin transformed into an erogenous zone that practically sparked under his hot, curious touch.
In that quaint room of old-fashioned, heavy wood furniture and soft, lemon-yellow wallpaper, he made no move to discard his suit, no matter how urgently she pressed herself against the firm planes of his body.
Cynthia palmed the lapels of his suit. “Take your clothes off.” The urgency underlying the breathless command surprised her. There was no mistaking the want in her voice, but the note of neediness was one she’d never heard slip from her lips before.
Rohit’s hands moved from where they’d been caressing the underside of her jaw to her waist in a firm grip, as if he was grounding himself.
“No,” he said, softening the rebuff with a sweeping brush of his lips against hers.
“If I take them off, it’s going to be all over for me, and I want to make you come first.”
At that dark promise—laced with such honesty and frankness—the cloying décor of Marta’s Honeycomb Inn faded away completely.
It was a first for Cynthia, tuning out her surroundings and thinking only of the sweet, thrumming ache building deep in her core, demanding relief.
How could she not slide closer to the man whose intense, full-blown pupils drank in the sight of her—and only her—with a reverence that promised to meet her every demand between the bedsheets as effortlessly as he had in the bar?
The tequila buzz had worn off, but Cynthia’s brain hummed with a new kind of intoxication she’d never experienced before.
She pushed onto her tiptoes so her lips brushed his soft earlobe as she whispered in his ear, “But I want you inside me now.”
Rohit’s body went still, his hands becoming dead weight against the curve of her waist, prompting a jarring rush of blood to pound against her eardrum.
Suddenly, Cynthia’s neediness embarrassed her.
What had prompted her to say that? She had no idea what she was doing, had never hooked up with a near stranger like this, never mind one she’d just met at a bar. A bar! What was she doing?
Although she’d never been particularly talented at reading people, Cynthia tried to search Rohit’s face, but his chin had dipped downward, his eyes on the sliver of space between their chests.
Great. She’d ruined the moment. Cynthia shifted backward, ready to pull away, but Rohit’s fingers tightened at her waist, anchoring her to him, and with that one little act of resistance, heat—and hope—crept forward again, spiraling outward from the delicious burn building in her core.