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Her eyebrows arched, but she took another bite of salad instead of replying. It seemed safer to eat the sweet-tart vinaigrette salad than discuss his expertise in fake breasts and lips.
“Can I have a word with you alone? In private?” Wolf suddenly growled into her ear.
She turned toward him, apple and cheese skewered on her fork. “Why?”
His dark eyes snapped with fire. “Alone,” he repeated. “In private.”
Wolf stood up, pushed his chair back and took her by the elbow.
With his hand on her lower back, he pressed her through the restaurant and down the hallway until he found a small alcove by the pay phones.
“What are you doing?” Wolf demanded, turning on her. “What game are you playing?”
Alexandra shook her head, nonplussed. “Game? There’s no game. I was having dinner, talking to Will—”
“Will’s pathological. He has to get in every woman’s pants.”
She jerked her head back as if slapped. “Well, he’s not getting in mine, and we were just exchanging a few words. Pleasantries, that’s all.”
Wolf’s features tightened. “He was looking at you as though he’d devour you any moment.”
“If you didn’t notice, I was devouring my salad.”
“You’re supposed to be devouring me.”
Alexandra gasped with outrage and shock. Her jaw dropped, her eyes grew wide. And then she snapped her jaw closed and came out swinging. “Sorry, Wolf, but I’m afraid I don’t have the experience!”
She gave him a shove, her hand connecting with his chest, and she’d pushed at him so hard her wrist did a painful little snap, but he didn’t budge.
Wolf felt her hand hit his chest, but he didn’t move a muscle. He couldn’t. He was wound too tight.
No one and nothing got under his skin, not anymore. He wanted to believe that, but since meeting Alexandra Shanahan, she’d lived under his skin.
His gaze swept her face. “What do you mean that you haven’t the experience?”
Her dark blue eyes snapped at him. “I mean that I’m not an actress and I haven’t devoured lots of men and I can’t do whatever it is you want me to do.”
“Are we talking oral sex or intercourse?”
He watched, fascinated, as a wave of color stormed her cheeks.
“And that,” she choked out, tendrils of hair falling around her face, “is none of your business.”
“Just like my sex life is none of your business.”
“That’s because you have one and I don’t!”
He leaned toward her, trapping her between the pay phone and the wall. “You could.”
Another wave of color surged through her cheeks, darker, hotter than before. Her blue eyes shimmered. “It’s not in our contract,” she said through gritted teeth, nose in the air, cocky as a little girl in a denim skirt and cowboy boots.
“No,” he muttered, “but this is.” He closed the distance between them with one aggressive step.
Alexandra’s heart thumped wildly and she pressed backward, her hands behind her, knuckles tight against the wall. He loomed over her, so tall, so big, so much more powerful, and it wasn’t even his height that made him strong or his frame but the force inside him, that fire. He was alive and intense, engaged and aware.
She didn’t want him to kiss her, didn’t want him anywhere near her. But once his head dipped, it was like last night at Casa Del Mar’s Veranda lounge.
Bolts of electricity shot through her, and that was even before his mouth completely covered hers.
And then when his lips did take hers, she felt the electricity again, hotter, brighter, sharper.
He felt good. He felt amazing. Unreal.
Her mouth softened. The pressure of his lips increased and her heart raced, fast, faster, as fire and hunger whipped through her.
She groaned as he parted her mouth with his tongue, groaned again as his tongue flicked the inside of her inner bottom lip, tasting her, teasing her, making her want more of him.
This wasn’t a kiss, she realized, dazed. This was his first step in seducing her, taking her, and he intended to do it. Despite the contract.
But would that change when he realized she really was as inexperienced as she said?
Back at the table, Wolf sat with his arm draped over the back of Alexandra’s chair. And her chair was close to his—so close that no one could mistake his actions for anything but a sign of possession.
He was claiming her, marking his territory, letting the other men know to stay away and letting other women know he was taken.
Alexandra, he noticed, didn’t like it.
“You might as well put a Sold sign on me,” she said through gritted teeth.
“That’s not a bad idea,” he answered, smiling faintly at her pink-cheeked indignation. He’d never met a woman who blushed so much—or made a simple blush so alluring.
Studying her profile, he found it hard to believe she was as inexperienced with men as she claimed. How could she be when she was so ridiculously pretty?
He looked at her thoughtfully, almost clinically, trying to understand what it was about her that made him want to put that Sold sign on her.
Maybe it was that leggy tomboy stride of hers, or her mouth that was endlessly expressive, sometimes set, sometimes pursed, sometimes smiling most beguilingly.
Wolf didn’t know which he liked better—that full mouth with the tiny indentation in the bottom lip or the midnight-blue eyes set so wide beneath winged eyebrows.
Or her sharp mind and sassy tongue.
His sardonic smile stretched.
She was a breathtaking combination of girl and woman, funny, sensitive, proud, uncertain. Unlike the women in Los Angeles who pursued him, women who blatantly advertised their interest and availability, Alexandra didn’t project her sexuality. It was hidden, secret, and yet when he kissed her, she became a different woman.
She became his woman.
It was as simple as that.
Later, as they drove from Spago back to Alexandra’s house, she sat as far as she could from Wolf in the snug sports car and kept her eyes firmly fixed out the passenger window.
Wolf had reached a whole new level of despicability. He’d shown his true colors, behaved like a member of the animal kingdom more than once.
“You’re still upset about the kiss,” Wolf said.
His nonchalance only antagonized her further. “Everyone noticed your behavior at dinner.” She threw him a disgusted look. “You kept your arm on my shoulder throughout the meal as though you were afraid I’d bolt away any minute.”
“I wasn’t afraid you’d run away. Your heels are far too high—”
“Wolf, don’t play the charming-Irishman card right now, okay?”
“And I like touching you,” he continued smoothly as though she’d never interrupted. “You’re my girlfriend. It’s my prerogative.”
“And that’s how it felt, too. It was your prerogative to touch me. Your prerogative to kiss me. Your prerogative to do whatever you damn well pleased.” She finally turned to face him. “Next time why don’t you just pee all over me like an alpha wolf should.”
He’d pulled up in front of her house, and turning off the engine, he flashed her a lazy white-toothed grin. “Hmm, kind of kinky for a girl without much experience, but if that’s what you want—”
Alexandra threw the door open and jumped out of the car before she had to listen to another word.
And as she undressed for bed, peeling the smart, sexy black dress off, Alexandra wanted to scream with frustration. Spending time with Wolf was hard, far harder than she’d even imagined. It wasn’t just one thing, it was everything. He wasn’t just physically gorgeous, his personality was huge, his charisma larger than life.
He was far more than she could handle, and she’d known it, she’d known it from the beginning, but she wanted that promotion. She wanted it badly.
And unless you’d been a little girl who’d grown up o
utside a small town, you didn’t appreciate that for girls in small towns opportunity meant a job at Wal-Mart and success meant one day owning your own car free and clear. Unless you’d been the only girl in a family of overbearing brothers, you didn’t understand the value of dreaming, and dreaming big.
Unless you’d listened to the sound of television late into the night, the canned laughter on TV shows and overly loud commercials the only sound in your house after everyone else had gone to bed, you didn’t know the definition of escape.
You didn’t know how important it was to get away and become someone else, something better, something more.
But Alexandra knew all these things, had lived all these things, and she decided years ago she’d have a different life than her mother, her father, her brothers. She’d do it differently than the people who seemed to just get swept along by life.
She wouldn’t be swept along. She’d do the sweeping.
She wouldn’t ever make anyone take care of her.
But Wolf Kerrick seemed determined to change all that. In fact, if she let herself really think about it, it felt as though Wolf Kerrick was sweeping her.
