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“I guess that’s what you could say she was.”
“You never leave your penthouse. Where did you meet a ballerina?”
“At a fundraiser thing. I didn’t want to go.” He shrugged. “It turned out okay, I suppose.”
Great. That was just great. “What did the other one do?”
Dane was starting to look confused. “What does it matter?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, thinking of all the potheads and would-be DJ’s I’d wasted my time on. “Just tell me.”
“Well, she’d just emigrated here from France. She was an executive at Chanel.”
“Chanel.” I stared at him. “The designer, Chanel.”
“Right. I met her at a fundraiser, too.”
“Let me get this straight, Scotland,” I said, my voice probably too loud for the quiet restaurant. “You left your penthouse exactly twice in the last seven years, and the first time you managed to meet a ballerina from the Joffrey, and the second time you managed to meet an executive from Chanel. And both of them liked you enough to date you.”
“Something like that,” Dane said. He definitely sounded uncomfortable.
I hit the button on the table, and when the server appeared, I said, “Sake. I need sake. And bring the first course.”
“I don’t get it,” Dane said when the server left again. “Who cares who they were? They’re both long gone.”
“Sure,” I said. The server came in with the sake, and when she poured it I took a large, fiery sip. “I had a law school dropout ghost me, and even though you’re a hermit you dated a French Chanel executive and a woman who weighs a hundred and ten soaking wet and can bend over backward.”
His eyebrows rose. “Are you jealous?”
“I am not jealous. Absolutely not.”
“You seem jealous.”
“No, I seem very large and very poor. That’s not the same thing.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but the server came in with the first course. She put several small dishes in front of us—sushi, seaweed, roe, ginger, wasabi. I kept my eyes down until she left, but I could feel Dane’s gaze on me, steady and unwavering. When the server left, I took another bolt of sake, feeling it burn my throat.
My stomach turned. I wasn’t hungry. I had no idea what was wrong with me.
Without a word, Dane stood. Ignoring the food, he circled around the table, coming behind me. He sank to his knees, his thighs bracketing me, his chest against my back.
I jumped as if I’d been burned. I felt his breath land softly against my neck. “You’re wound tight,” he said.
I made a choked sound. Every nerve in my body was firing, ripples of sensation moving over my skin. Dane was warm against me, his chest and stomach hard, his body hot through the layers of our clothes. Except for the kiss last night, when I’d felt all of him, I hadn’t touched Dane in so many years. I hadn’t even shaken his hand.
My brain told me to pull away, but my body wasn’t having it. My body leaned back into his of its own accord, seeking the long-lost familiarity of Dane. A shaky breath left my lungs as my shoulders relaxed back, as I breathed in his scent, as my kneeling legs eased open to press against his.
His hands came up and he put his palms to my shoulders, then moved them down my bare arms. I was already wet at that single touch, the slide of his palms over my skin. The throbbing deep in my belly that I knew so well started up, thrumming inside me. The same feeling I’d had so many times around Dane, including that first night when I got into bed with him. It was mindless hunger, primal and hot. From the very first, I had always been hungry for this man.
“What do you want me to say?” Dane said softly, moving his hands to my breasts and cupping them knowingly through my dress. “Do you want me to say that those other women weren’t you? Because they weren’t, Ava. They weren’t even fucking close.”
I shivered, the movement obvious against him. His response was to let out a breath that was laced with pain and to move his hands down to the hem of my dress, slowly pushing it up. Between his muscled, dark-clad thighs, my own pale thighs appeared, inch by inch.
I should stop this. We were in a restaurant, with people w
ho could hear us in the other private rooms. There were servers somewhere outside the sliding door. We were nearly in public, and what was he going to do? Fuck me? Dear God, let him fuck me.
“Dane,” I whispered.
