“Fabio, Fabio! We can’t keep doing this,” she said, breathless, her heart banging against mine. “I run this place. I can’t be perceived as the office slut. Losing my employees’ respect is as bad as losing the business. We need to have some ground rules.”
She should have thought about that before she tried to play my game because my dick wouldn’t listen anymore. I kissed the tip of her jaw, her chin, the length of her neck lightly, careful not to tickle her, not yet. “What fucking rules?”
“No kissing in the office.” Her rasp was making me crazy. How could a woman still drive me crazy after the hundreds I’d had? A woman so different from my world, a woman I met a few days ago?
“I can skip to the good part.”
She gasped. “No anythingyou knowin the office.”
“Then where?”
I could swear I heard her heart skip a beat. “Where, Gabriella?” I repeated. “Where do you want me toyou know?”
“I don’t know. Just…not here…and not today.”
Are you shitting me? I haven’t had sex for whole five days since I met her. It was the longest time I haven’t been with someone in ten years. My balls are about to explode because of her, her beauty, what she’s doing to me, what she’s making me feel. And she’s giving me this bullshit?“Why not today?”
“Because I’m not really into blackmail, Fabio. I can’t sleep with someone out of fear.”
Her expression was so serious I felt like an asshole. Did she really think I’d coerce her to sleep with me? She was smart enough to know I wasn’t. I’d promised her, and I wasn’t a guy that needed to force a woman to spread her legs.
“Please don’t look at me like I wounded you. I’m not accusing you of anything. I know that evenyouaren’t that much of a dick, and I’m really grateful to what you’re doing for me. But until the situation at work is resolved, part of me will feel bad about doing something I’m not a hundred percent sure about.”
I took a shaky breath and rested my forehead on her shoulder.Nice cockblock, Lady Brighton.
If she jumped into bed with me now, tomorrow she’d regret it. Things we’d be even more awkward between us. She wouldn’t know what to say or feel except the obligation she had to endure me until she was off the hook. Then, not a second later, she’d kick me out and move on, wanting nothing to do with me ever again.
That wasn’t the plan. Not my plan anyway. I was nowhere near ready to let her go.
I kissed the apple of her cheek and stepped back. “Do you like gelato?”
Her lashes flapped. I must have been confusing the hell out of her. One minute I was kissing the fuck out of her lips, finding my way into her skirt through blackmail, and the next I was asking if she liked gelato. “Yes,” she answered, dumbfounded.
I interlaced my fingers with hers, loving the feeling of them between mine. “Good. I know a place.”
CHAPTER33
Gabrielle
He drove us to Amsterdam Avenue to a new restaurant half of New York was raving about but I didn’t bother visiting because eating alone sucked even at the best restaurants in town.
When he ordered a mafaldine pasta with beef Bolognese and a decadent burger topped with cremini-pancetta jam, truffle cheese and aioli, I was going into carb shock just by looking at them. “Are you fucking kidding me? How do you eat like this and look like that?”
“I’m Italian. I’m immune to carbs.” He shrugged as if saying, “Duh.”
“Oh yes. That makes a lot of sense. Silly me.”
He did the duh shrug again. I fought so hard not to stuff his face in the pasta sauce.
I buried my nose in the caesar salad, adding extra oil and vinegar to muffle the delicious smell coming from his meal.
“You know you’re not a rabbit, yeah?” he mocked. “You should eat human food.”
“But I’m not Italian.” I forked the lettuce. “Or twenty-six.”
“You’re not fat either. You’re hot. Eat something.”
“I am eating something.” I licked my lips as he got his mouth all red with the mouthwatering sauce. I’d always thought watching men eat was a traumatizing experience. But what I was watching now was something else entirely unless traumatizing meant getting jealous of a ribbon-shaped piece of pasta getting devoured with ultimate passion by lips that gave sin a new meaning.
