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She said, “We probably … shouldn’t.”
He barely heard at first, because he was feeling the petal-soft skin of the top of her breast under his fingers, watching her shudder, and thinking about what he wanted to tell her next. Then the words finally soaked into his brain, and his hand stopped.
“Ah … no?” he managed to say. “OK.” He pulled his hand out from under her turtleneck, sat up, and adjusted himself, because he wasn’t what you’d call “comfortable.” Before, it had been the good kind of discomfort, the ache you knew you’d be soothing tonight inside the glove-soft, shock-warm, impossible tightness of a woman’s body. Where it would get so much worse, because it was getting so much better, and then it would get so much better than that, a mouth-opening, eyes-closing, brain-blind rush all the way to the soles of your feet.
Yeah, he wanted to feel that. Didn’t mean he was going to get it, because she was sitting up, too. Not struggling to do it, despite her awkward position, because Quinn had some serious core fitness. He’d felt the springiness of muscle when his hand had been at her waist, and all he’d wanted to do was look at it and kiss it and feel it some more. Why was it even hotter to think about making a powerful woman lose all control?
Oh. Wait. He wasn’t going to be doing that, either.
She said, “We should discuss it, at least.” And pulled down her jumper.
He blew out a breath. “Right. Or, you know, you could just say ‘No.’”
“I don’tnotwant to,” she said. “How could you think that? Isn’t it obvious? But it’s clearly just histocompatibility, or histo-incompatibility, or whatever, which doesn’t mean the outcome will be satisfying for you, and if it isn’t—or if it isn’t for me, but I suspect that won’t be the case, because it’ll work for me if you do those things, with your mouth and hand and all, unless all that stuff you saidwasjust dirty talk—is that what dirty talk normally is? I don’t think anybody’s ever done it to me before.”
“Right,” he said. “I need another glass of wine for this. How about you?”
“I shouldn’t,” she said. “Not with the way you smell and all, but …”
He said, “I have so many questions. Wine, or no wine?”
“Yes. I don’t have to finish the glass, right?”
“That’s what I always tell myself.” He was having a hard time not laughing. He was also frustrated as hell, and bloody uncomfortable in the groin department. It had been a wee while since he’d been that hard for that long and not been able to do anything about it.
“You don’t,” she said. “You’re fully responsible for two young children, you feel that responsibility every day, and you get up early every morning. There’s no way I believe that you drink too much.”
“Well, since I don’t have that kind of X-ray vision about you,” he said, taking a good drink of that wine, which tasted almost as good as Quinn smelled—
Wait.
“I want to ask for the end of that sentence,” he said, “the one about, what if it isn’t satisfying for me, as you’re clearly rubbish at it, though you’re pretty sure it’ll be satisfying for you, what with my dirty talk and all—”
“Which I still have a question about.” She was trying to finger-comb her hair into place in a very non-Quinn way, sipping at her wine, and sitting up as straight as you could sit on a squashy couch meant for lying down on.
Over a warm, willing woman.
“I’m not getting distracted by that,” he said. “Not yet. What was the part about histocompatibility?”
“That means—” she said.
“I know what it means. My wife was a PhD in medical laboratory science. The kind of woman who reads scientific journals in bed.”
“She was?” Quinn blinked some more. “I thought she was, well, more of the … I don’t know. Great mum, from what the kids have said, but also very sexually appealing, obviously, because—you.”
“Me?”
She waved a hand. “The way you are, all tough and manly and sure. And extremely sexually attractive, of course.” When he must have stared at her, she said, sounding a bit cross, “That can’t be a surprise to you. I’ve been hearing about you since Day One. Nobody could believe I went out with you. They believed that it didn’t work out, though.”
“When?” he asked. “When didn’t it work out?”
“After you kissed me and then that was the last time?”
“Why do you imagine I’m on this couch with you?”
“Well,” she pointed out, “I live here.”
He actually banged his head against the back of the couch. It didn’t work, so he did it again. Still no joy. “I can be alone with a woman without having sex with her. And, yes, my wife was a great mum, and sexually … sexually compatible with me, and brilliant, and a scientist. All those things can be true. And I know what histocompatibility means. Means that you like how the other person smells, because they’re a suitable mate for you, genetically speaking, and their scent makes them more appealing so you recognize their suitability. Even I can grasp that.”
