“Say more.” She was trying to hide that she was barely able to breathe under the lazy way he scanned her features. “I’m the mousy one so I’m usually overlooked.”
“Who are you comparing yourself to? Your sisters?” He shook his head in refutation, fingers shifting to twine with hers in a way that felt very intimate. Now his thumb stroked at the base of her thumb into her inner wrist. It was deeply distracting. Arousing.
“How…um… How would you know?” Her suspicions reared. “Have you met them?”
“No.” There was no subterfuge in his expression as he continued making love to her hand with his innocuous touch, sending signals into her chest that made her breasts tingle. “But I can’t imagine there’s any way to improve on perfection.”
A bubble of incredulous laughter escaped her. She flushed with pleasure, though. “Your efforts to seduce me are working.”
“I prefer to think of it as an invitation. It’s up to you whether you accept. Free will and all that.” He shifted his glass aside so he could use his other hand to reach across and brush a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. His fingertip caressed her ear and the edge of her jaw. “Would you like to order something to eat? Before we get drunk on champagne?”
“And each other?” It was a corny thing to say, but in her case, it was becoming all too true. She was losing her appetite for food and was no longer thirsty for champagne. She was falling into lust for the first time in her life.
“Mmm,” he agreed in a rumble. “You’re certainly intoxicating.” He brought her hand to his mouth and nuzzled his lips into her palm.
Every bone in her body melted.
This wasn’t the adolescent inquisitiveness that had driven her to kiss boys who were nothing but bravado and hormones. It wasn’t the romantic infatuation that had drawn her into the bed of a dishonest man. This was something exciting and enthralling. A pull that was filled with promise. Withneed.
She had agreed to have a drink in a seize-the-day impulse. It was another step toward coming out of her self-imposed exile. She had already been high on being chosen for her merit, not her connections. This was another octave of that. He knew nothing about her except what she’d told him. It felt good to be desired purely for herself.
It felt good tofeel. For the first time in a long time, the numbness of betrayal was falling away. She felt feminine and desirable and brimming with her own sexual power. She felt like indulging herself.
“Why don’t we take the champagne to your room?” Her voice thickened with a mixture of shyness and the eroticism that was taking her over. “We can order food later.”
“That is an act of free will I can get behind.” He kept her hand as he rose and drew her from her chair.
Chapter Two
Joaquin Valezquez didn’tmake a habit of picking up women. Which wasn’t to say it had never happened, but he was a busy man who couldn’t afford distractions, especially today.
Thirty minutes ago, word of yet another one of his father’s financial overextensions had reached him. Joaquin had left his team finishing out his presentation to a tech mogul and called his father on his way to the hotel. Just hearing Lorenzo’s voice made his skin crawl. Trying to workwithhim was like trying to reason with a swarm of murder hornets. Every time Joaquin swatted at one damaging sting, another threatened from a new direction. Nothing about it was pain-free.
Brooding on the fact he had to find a more permanent way to keep his father from destroying the legacy that belonged to his brother’s children, Joaquin had stepped into the elevator that opened as he arrived in front of it.
His mind had been on the calls he had to make. The plans that needed hammering out. There had been rumbles among the board of LV Global that they would be willing to vote Lorenzo out if Joaquin stepped in as CEO.
Joaquin would rather go back to scrubbing toilets for drunk tourists than take over LVG, but someone had to. He needed to call a headhunter and his sister-in-law. Others.
Despite his preoccupation, his libido had absolutely noticed the woman who seemed to be waiting for the elevator. She was well dressed in a casually tasteful way. Her smart jacket and designer trousers made the most of her figure without beingblatant about it. She struck him as a sophisticated woman who was establishing herself in a professional field. Her dark brown hair was in a tidy roll at her nape. Her profile was a graceful line that belonged on the kind of pink brooch his grandmother had once worn.
When a huge smile arrived on her face, she was incandescent.
His cloud of distemper had lifted. He asked if she was going up.
She met his gaze and his breath stopped. She was genuinely beautiful. Her makeup enhanced a wide mouth and high cheekbones and long brows that delivered an impression of intelligence and directness. Confidence.
As she looked at him, her bright blue eyes took on a gleam of interest that was deeply gratifying when he was in such a foul mood.
She’d said something funny as she joined him. He’d already forgotten what it was because she seemed to offer a lot of throwaway remarks that kept him on his toes.
Siobhan. Her name was as charming as the rest of her. She seemed both open and closed, playful yet careful. Empathetic without offering pity. She was lovely to look at and sensual in the way she appreciated her first taste of wine. When he took her hand, her pulse skipped under his touch.
That had been as enticing as a flick of a ribbon to the desire prowling like a jungle cat inside him. He was wound up and longing for a chase and a capture and a wrestle.
As he opened the door of his suite for her, she carried their half-full glasses inside, offering him a whiff of vanilla and oranges from her hair as she passed.
He let the door fall closed and set the ice bucket on the coffee table, then dropped his phone beside it. He joined her at the window and took back his glass.
