“Dinner and wine,” I repeat, “coming from the man who likes to”—I lift my index fingers—“?‘decompress’ with his colleagues?”
He laughs. “That’s rich, coming from the person who told me to ‘execute’?”—he mimics my tilted head and the wiggling index fingers—“when you wanted me to kiss you.”
“Right.” The memory of what followed amplifies the flutter in my belly, and I glance down at where I’m playing with the end of my fork. “All I’m saying is that you surprise me, Dr. North.”
“What can I say, Dr. Silberstein,” Lewis replies with a shrug. “We did establish that you like to jump to conclusions.” He presses his knee deeper into my thigh, and it sparks something in my chest, the way he pronounces my last name. Softly, teasingly, with the tinge of his American accent.
I wrinkle my eyebrows as he slides both of our plates off to the side. “Why, I thought that was you, Dr. North.”
“Is that so?” He sets his elbow on the table and rests his cheek against his knuckles. “Back to calling each other ‘Doctor,’ are we? The titles—do they do something for you?”
It’s neither the last names, I want to say,nor the titles. It’s all about you, and that softness that slips over your face when I’m being silly. It’s about the way the laugh huffs out of you when you catch the joke, the way you search for my gaze before you pinball it back to me.
Some of the sentiment must spill onto my face, because Lewis halts midway through picking up his glass and pauses to look at me over the rim. Cheeks growing pink, he takes a sip, and when he sets down his wine, he swipes his thumb to catch the drop of condensation sliding down the glass.
My eyes snag on the movement.Would he stroke me this gently as well?
He takes his time lifting his gaze back to mine, but when he does, there’s something captivating in his eyes. Alluring. Something that I haven’t cared about seeing in a man’s eyes in years.
An invitation.
“Frances,” he murmurs, and the tone of his voice is a gentle caress down my back. “Come here.”
I hadn’t realized how close we have pulled together as wetalked. With his bare forearms on the tabletop, he’s leaning forward, but it’s not close enough, so I push out of my chair. A faint voice in my mind observes what a phenomenally bad idea this is, but the wine and the warm lights and Lewis’s darkened eyes silence the voice.
I want this. He wants it. It’s straightforward, like nothing else ever is.
Under Lewis’s watchful gaze, I make my way around to his side of the table, leaning against the edge just inches from where he’s sitting with his legs sprawled out and crossed at the ankles. “Seems like it worked,” I say.
Tenderness tucks into the corner of his mouth. “What did?”
“You, seducing me over a romantic dinner.” My voice is decibels above a whisper.
He leans forward and touches my hip. “That was the plan all along. Before you got impatient on the hike.”
“We’re back to schedule now, so don’t complain.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” We both watch as his fingers spread over my ribs, as his thumb dips into the waistband of my shorts. The flutter in my belly turns into a throb between my legs.
“What’s phase two”—I exhale—“of that, um, plan of yours?”
He doesn’t move his hand. I try to bring him closer with a tilt of my hips, but his thumb stays where it is, hot and maddening on the edge of my hip bone.
Lewis lifts his eyes to mine. “You tell me.”
The unconcealed longing in his face sends my pulse staggering. I pull one foot over his legs, sinking into his lap as his arms curve around my waist. My fingers coil into the damp strands of his hair, and I angle his face up so I can dip my mouth to meet his. I taste him greedily; the wine on his bottom lip that prickles on my tongue, the vibration as he groans and twists his hands into my tank top. Want scorches throughme as he yanks me closer. His kisses are slow and a little dirty, tinged with a slip of his tongue, a graze of his teeth, and I find my hips mirroring his cadence with microscopic thrusts that have him grow heavy against me.
Lewis palms my lower back with one hand, urging me to grind into him, his other hand pulling up the hem of my top. His nails skirt over my abdomen, knuckles rippling against the underside of my breast. The echo of his touch is dulled by the fabric of my bra, and when I gasp into his mouth, he feels around my back for the opening.
“Not there,” I say, breathless. The lace bralette seemed cute when I took it out of my bag earlier, but now it’s all levels of inconvenient. “It doesn’t open.”
Lewis locks his hands around my thighs, before he lifts me off him and up onto the empty side of the table. He pulls my top over my head, and hooks his fingers into my bralette, but freezes there. “Is this okay?” he murmurs against my shoulder, his fingers tense against my ribs. “We can slow down,” he continues, sounding focused. Strained. “Watch a movie. Play board games. Whatever you want. Tell me what you want.”
“Fuck, no,” I rasp. “I hate board games.”
The feathery exhale of his chuckle hits my collarbone. “Alright, no Settlers of Catan then.”
“I want this. I want… you,” I say into his hair.
