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“Penny for your thoughts,” she teased, pausing at another intersection as they wove farther away from Ocean Drive and deeper into the heart of downtown South Beach.
He smiled, drinking in the scent of her as they stood in the steamy darkness. “For once I’m not thinking, Carly,” he lied. Well, almost. “I’m doing.”
She chuckled, merrily, using the light post to launch herself into another deserted intersection as her funky, fashionable condo rose from the lackluster skyline in the near distance. “Is that supposed to be some kind of compliment?” she teased, dancing just out of reach as Rahm raced to catch up.
He didn’t race too fast, though, preferring to walk just behind her, the clatter of her heels on the cobblestone pavement, the shimmer of her legs, bare beneath the spray of her funky black dress, the promise of soft, pink panties dancing just out of reach and, beneath those, the luxuriant ginger bush Rahm was so desperate to tempt and tease beneath his trembling fingers and probing tongue.
She paused near a condo sign, her condo sign, turning coy and provocative as she ran her long, pale fingers along the security gate beside it. “Well,” she purred, their eyes meeting in the sultry dark beneath the glow of her building’s sign, which read The Atrium. “I appreciate the walk home.”
He felt the sudden sting of rejection throbbing in his gut, an unusual and certainly uncommon sensation. “I enjoyed it,” he said, inching closer to take her hand. “But I’d enjoy making sure you were safe inside your apartment even more.”
“That’s okay,” she said, and despite the firmness in her stance even Rahm could note the uncertainty, even reluctance, in Carly’s voice. “It’s a pretty secure building and, Rahm, from the hungry look in your eye, I think I’d feel a whole lot safer on the other side of this gate.”
He laughed, openly and honestly, a rare sound in its own right. “Am I so obvious?” he asked even as she opened and, before he could advance, closed the small gate between them.
“Trust me,” she said, inching closer to reach a soft, pale hand between the bars. “I’m a little hungry myself. I suppose this gate is here to protect us both.”
He took her hand, feeling the desire warm and beating just beneath the skin. “From what?” he asked, almost breathlessly, as he struggled between the dual sensations of frustration and desperation.
“From each other, I suppose,” she said, squeezing his hand and releasing it all in the same, quick motion. With that she turned, high heels clicking on the concrete as she approached a brightly lit lobby where a liveried doorman opened the door for her and greeted her warmly.
Seven
“Hold up, hold up, hold UP!”
Avery Hightower waved her cinnamon dusted frappucino cup for emphasis. “You ditched us for some drop dead sexy stud, stiffed us with the check for three mojitos and didn’t even get so much as a kiss goodnight.”
Carly chuckled good-naturedly, reaching in her wallet for a crisp fifty dollar bill. “Will this cover it?” she asked, watching Avery snatch it in her short, stubby fingers.
“It will more than cover the tab,” said the cheeky personal assistant, slipping the bill inside her purse before Carly could change her mind. “And I’m keeping it just to teach you a lesson.”
“Let me guess,” surmised Carly, toying with the handle of her oversized cappuccino mug. “The lesson goes a little something like ‘Hos before Bros,’ am I right?”
Avery wrinkled her nose, as if the quaint saying was already outdated. “More like what a wasted opportunity,” she sighed instead before inhaling another straw full of her frozen caffeine concoction.
Carly shrugged, clearer headed now than she’d been the night before when, somehow, she’d managed to summon the willpower not to ask Rahm up to her apartment to do all the wicked, dirty, nasty things she wanted him to. “I dunno,” she purred, still feeling frisky after her electric walk home with the Persian hunk with the predatory swagger and cocky leer. “The look on his face when I literally shut the gate on him was worth not getting to first base, Avery.”
Avery groaned as if Carly was speaking another language. “But what’s the point, Boss?” she asked, using her pet name for Carly who was, technically, her boss. “I mean, why deny yourself a night of pleasure when it’s literally walking you home?”
Carly shrugged, finding it hard to argue with her assistant, who at 23 was only eight years younger than her boss. “Haven’t you ever heard of playing hard to get?”
Avery blanched as if she’d bit into an actual coffee bean while sucking on her diminishing frappucino. “Those games don’t work anymore,” she pronounced with all of her lifelong experience.
“So what does?” Carly asked, genuinely curious.
This time it was Avery’s turn to shrug. “I dunno,” her PA replied less than helpfully. “I guess when I’m into a guy, he gets to be ‘into’ me, if you know what I mean!”
“Avery!” Carly teased, wagging a motherly finger even as she wished, somewhat jealously, she could live by the same credo. Sure, it had worked back in college, but now that she was a responsible adult, with a corner office and mortgage and life insurance and everything, she felt somewhat guilty every time she had a one night stand.
And besides, with Rahm, it was more complicated than that. Perhaps if all they’d done was meet at a bar, she might have indulged in a night long fluid swap back at her place. But they hadn’t. They’d met doing business, and thus Rahm was immediately and, she supposed, permanently a rival. She wouldn’t never think of “giving” up anything without a fight, not even a romp in her king size bed.
Even if she wanted to, Carly couldn’t “give in” to Rahm without a series of compromises and qualifications, like any good negotiation. A kiss here, a lacing of fingertips there, a purr or a moan, each would be doled out in good time.
That is, if he ever called her again!
“So what’s your game plan now?” Avery asked knowingly, as if reading her mind.
“Now?” Carly countered, another old negotiating tactic designed to buy herself enough time to come up with an answer.
