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“Picking up a twenty-year-old at the bar was your excuse?” I tease back, though my voice reflects a certain nervousness.
His eyes flash. “You’re twenty?”
“Twenty-four,” I blurt, lying, watery-eyed. “Twenty-f-f-five in four weeks. Birthday soon. The wine’s making my head spin.”
Ben’s eyebrows pull together pensively as he stares at me like he’s trying to figure me out. “Twenty-five …?”
“Yeah. And what’re you? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”
To that, Ben only bellows out one solid, gutty chuckle, then takes another sip, perhaps to avoid answering the question.
I’m such an idiot. Why did I lie? Was I afraid he’d ditch me the moment he realized how young I was? Wouldn’t my young age be more of a turn-on than a turn-off?
This, right here, is proof that I have no business dating. I don’t know the first thing about anything, as is evidenced by my incessant bumbling and stupidity. I went home with a random guy. Okay, a very, very hot random guy. Now I’m guzzling his billion dollar wine and pretending to know what the hell my plan here is.
Am I seriously expecting to hand over my V-card to this man tonight?
More importantly, would he even want it?
“Eyes are bigger than your stomach,” he teases, eyeballing my glass.
I straighten up. “Speak for yourself.” Figuring myself to be committed to what I’ve poured, I grip the glass carefully, ready to lift it to my mouth. Then I realize that with the wine dancing right at the brim of the glass, I’ll probably spill it if I try to pick it up. So I bend over and carefully sip from the brim while it still rests on the counter. The wine burns as it goes down, gulp by gulp.
“Smooth moves, stud,” murmurs Ben, egging me on.
Something about his voice makes my cock flex yet again. I squeeze my legs together tighter and shake away all my dirty thoughts. Maybe the wine is keeping the thoughts ever there, like an evil friend with bad ideas. Does wine work that way?
“So what did you see when you looked across the club?” he asks me.
I rise from my awkward bent-over position, having sucked down another half glass of wine. I decide to make a joke. “I saw a man in a cheap suit,” I answer, lifting my eyebrows superiorly.
Seriously?
He appears amused by my insult. I don’t know whether I find that relieving or annoying, how difficult it is to ruffle him.
“Cheap?” He chuckles. “A two thousand dollar suit is cheap?”
I have to bite my tongue to keep from gawking. He has to be toying with me. There is no way his suit costs that much.
Six hundred dollar wine … big fancy apartment … Then again.
Blaming the liquid courage of a few gulps of wine, I decide to play right back with him. “I have high standards.”
The corner of his lip curls. “Guess I should’ve worn my three thousand dollar suit, then.”
I run the back of my wrist over my mouth, but it comes back dry. My eyes linger on his until I realize he’s not looking away.
His smile has faded, too.
I swallow. The wine, I’m late to realize, isn’t doing anything to calm my system like I thought it would. It just continues to spin my head around and around, and my heart races just the same.
And my eyes lock on his—on Ben’s.
He comes around the island and stands by me. His gaze is so intense, I feel myself shrinking in my shoes—while something else grows in my pants, tighter, tighter, throbbing and aching and desperate to be freed.
The closer he gets to me, the dizzier I feel.
He’s stunning. He’s a god. How can a man like that possibly be into me? I don’t deserve this experience—if that’s what I can call it. I don’t deserve—
Oh, God. He’s unbuttoning his shirt.
I breathe so heavily, I can hear my own breaths as they fill the space between him and I.
The buttons keep popping open, one by one, and his wicked smirk continues to melt me by the second. I feel heat coming off his body, the heat of his intent.
What is his intent?
His shirt slips off, but not easily. It’s a very muscular effort, yet he makes it seem smooth as a cat, considering how desperately his tight sleeves cling to his enormous biceps and thick, muscled shoulders.
This man is of a caliber I am not equipped to handle.
The panic comes to a boil within me. I can’t contain it. “Stop,” I beg him, the word jumping out of me like an alarm. “Please. Stop. I … I can’t. I—”
“Oh, I can stop,” he assures me. His hands drop to his sides almost lazily, his every movement slow and sensual. His white button shirt now hangs from one of his strong fists, balled up. His shoulders are cocked slightly to one side as he observes me with his fierce face and piercing eyes.
