Nicole liked champagne, sure enough, but each bottle tasted a little different, a little sweeter, tarter, or citrus-y-er.
“You’re going to have to carry me upstairs,” she told Kingston.
His smile, a little fuzzy from the champagne, sharpened. “Promises, promises.”
“Yeah, well, word to the wise, put pressure on my tummy at your own risk. I have overindulged oneverything.This is too much.”
Later, she would believe the champagne made her say it.
And him.
Nicole sighed. “Look, Kingston, I have to ask, are you maxing out your credit cards to stay at places like this, and at the Four Seasons in SoCal, and the plane, and that resort in Carmel, and the sporty rental cars?”
He smirked a tad and glanced up at her. “Don’t worry about it.”
Nicole continued, her voice low so the richie-riches around them wouldn’t hear her. “We can eat at a taco truck because I know all the good ones in Oceanside and Carlsbad, and you can crash at my place when you’re in SoCal. You don’t have to takeme to fancy places. You don’t have to do all this.”Her breath caught, but she pressed on. “I like you foryou.”
She saw the moment her words hit him.
He froze.
Kingston had just reached for his tall glass of champagne and was on the verge of lifting it, and he froze.
His watch was half-peeking out of his shirt cuff, which was just a half-inch of pristine white below the dark sleeve of his suit jacket, and it twinkled like the crystal around them.
Two quick heartbeats later, he lifted the glass and sipped, then set it down.
The base of his crystal glass rang as it tapped the bread plate.
Kingston looked up at her slowly, his blue eyes so still that Nicole had an intuition flash that she was about to be broken up with, but he said, “I love you, my little engineer. You have absolutely enthralled me. Be reassured, I am not ‘maxing’ out my credit cards, but I would, to give you anything you wanted. I am all too aware that I am teetering on the brink of destroying everything I have because I would rather lay it at your feet than do what must be done.”
38
Candlelight
NICOLE LAMB
In the elevator, Kingston spun Nicole around again, pressing her back against the wall in an echo of a moment months before, but this time, his kiss was gentle, savoring, and she was wet-plaster flat against the wall as she gave herself up to him kissing her.
When they’d been sitting at the table, Nicole had drawn a breath to say it back to him, but Kingston had already stood up and holding out his hand. “Come.”
“Kingston, I—wait.I’m trying to say?—”
“Upstairs,” he said, still smiling. “Now.”
Her resistance was washed away by his words, the champagne, and her whirling thoughts.
Through the lobby, “Kingston, wait. Stop.”
“Keep walking.”
And she did.
Because he told her to, and he’d conditioned her to, she thought later.
In the elevator, her heart was full to bursting, but he kissed her so thoroughly but gently, that her soul hungered for him and her body was ravenous?—
Her mind lived only for the touch of his lips, his hand pinning her wrist to the wall above her head, his other hand on her waist, steadying her.
