I’m the thickest I’ve ever been when she nods without pause for thought. She truly appears not the least bit confronted by my terms, which adds to my fascination. She doesn’t seem like the type of woman to sleep around. It seems as if she is so blinded by the spark igniting between us, she’s taking as many risks as me.
Needing to leave before I prove to her that she should always follow her intuition, I step closer to her, curl my hand around hers, raise it, then place a business card for a new dance club I recently opened in the heart of Ravenshoe into her palm. “Meet me here Saturday night at ten o’clock.” Incapable of leashing my natural dominance, I add, “Make sure you wear a dress. Panties are optional.”
There are no rooms at the Dungeon. Only my office, which I plan to test the durability of my desk for hours once she arrives Saturday night.
After taking a moment to suck in Isabelle’s sweet smell that makes it seem as if we’re not in the middle of a stinky washroom, I pivot on my heels and stalk to the door. I’m almost all the way there when Isabelle loses the ability to hold in her gasp of frustration.
My shrewd head tells me to keep walking, but like many times tonight, I ignore it.
I spin around to face Isabelle, my footing a little unsteady from the heat sluicing my smarts. Once I’m facing her head-on, I tell her exactly what is on my mind. “Believe me, there’s nothing more I’d like to do right now than find outwhat you look like underallthose clothes. But if I start, I won’t stop.”
My hands ball into fists when she mumbles under her breath.“Who said I wanted you to stop?”
You have no idea how hard it is not to ravish her right now. I wouldn’t hold my desires back if there weren’t a massive obstacle standing in my way. “Are you on your period, Isabelle?”
She gasps down a shocked breath as her eyes bulge out of her head. “W-w-what?”
Her stuttered response answers my question on her behalf. “That’s what I thought.” I fight the urge to step closer to her. My internal conflict is heard in my voice when I advise, “There’s no way I’ll only be able to sample half of you, Isabelle. I want to tasteallof you.”
The sound of her knees knocking together is the equivalent of liquid gold to my ears. It thickens the blood congealing my heart before it drops several inches lower.
I watch her for the next severalseconds, my gawk intense and fire-burning before I spin back around and dart out of the washroom quicker than I entered it. If I don’t leave now, I’ll test more than a theory that sexual endorphins can overtake fear-induced chemicals. Hugo has an obvious dislike of blood during sexual exertion, but even he can’t deny his interest in discovering if a woman’s cycle alters the strength of her climaxes.
I scrub at my chin housing the expected five o’clock shadow for this time of the day while sidestepping the air hostess responsible for taking care of my section of the plane. Even with my hands staying well away from Isabelle—much to their dismay—I can still smell her sweat-slicked skin on mine. That’s how bristling the heat bouncing between us was, and it has me more than eager for the next fivedays to race by in a nanosecond.
After slotting into my seat, my smirk much too convincing of my happiness for my liking, I signal for the stewardess to bring me another whiskey. She’s quick to jump to my command, but the abrupt placement of my glass onto the side tray of my seat exposes how truly lucky I am. If Isabelle hadn’t bumped into me when she did, I could have had another Theresa on my hands by the end of my flight.
I show my appreciation for Isabelle’s clumsiness with a smile when she returns to my side mere seconds after the stewardess stormed off in a huff.
“Isabelle,” I greet her, smirking more when her name rolls off my tongue in a throaty purr.
She tries to brush off the quiver rolling down her spine by returning my greeting with a formal salutation before she scoots past me and plops into her seat. The bob of her knee matches mine when she drinks in the brilliant blue sky. However, the gnawing of her lip is solely her. I don’t think she realizes she’s doing it. Her bite isn’t painful. It reflects more a nervous twitch than a wish to have her lip bitten.
I almost choke on a mouthful of whiskey when Isabelle suddenly jackknifes away from the window and blurts out, “How did you know I was on my period?”
I take a moment to consider a response before hitting her with straight-up honesty. She doesn’t seem the type to appreciate lying, so I’d rather not have her on the backfoot from the get-go. “Other than the fact your Kindle was open on a sappy Mills and Boons romance book and the two empty chocolate wrappers in your satchel, the tampons were the biggest indication.”
She smiles, loving my stumble over the word ‘tampons.’ I’m as masculine as it gets. I’ve fought bare-knuckled, swam with sharks, and have had tussles with mafia kingpins that would usually result in death, but even I don’t like discussing womanly products.
With her ego feeding off my unease, Isabelle says on a laugh, “They could have been my emergency stash.”
I shake my head in both denial and surprise. “Like guys who carry condoms in their wallets?” When she nods, I lean in close to ensure my next set of words is only for her ears.“Any guy who tells you he’s carrying a condom in his wallet in case of an emergency is full of shit. We only put a condom in our wallet with the full intention of using it the night we put it in there.”
“So, let me guess, the first thing you do when you wake up is place a condom in your wallet?” she asks before she can stop herself.
I throw my head back and laugh, loving the touch of jealousy in her tone. “Not every morning.” I hit her with a brazen wink, doubling the lust roaring through her eyes. “Just every second morning.”
She looks torn between vomiting and crying but tries to act unaffected by my inaccurate statement. “Did you put a condom in your wallet this morning?”
Before I can answer her, a cough sounds from above. I don’t need to look up to know the flight attendant is back. I can see her reflection in Isabelle’s massively dilated eyes, much less smell the putrid scent of a scorned woman from a mile out. Her burning skin exposes I hit the nail on the head when I said she would be the equivalent of a Theresa Veneto. My interactions with Theresa years ago still have me balancing precariously on a tightrope, so I’m more than eager to avoid another ruinous tiptoe.
Isabelle’s eyes bounce between me and the prong in my backside when I answer her question as if we were never interrupted, “No, I didn’t.” I louden my voice to ensure the flight attendant doesn’t need to strain to hear me before continuing, “Why do you think it took me so long to join you in the bathroom?”
My third whiskey for this flight is placed down as abruptly as the second one before we’re once again left alone.
Either too shy to talk openly about sex in front of an audience or needing a second to compose herself, Isabelle waits for the hostess to disappear into the galley of the plane before asking, “So even if I weren’t on my period, we wouldn’t have done anything?”
The disappointment in her tone has me wishing it was 9:55 p.m. Saturday.
