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Once I’m through all the numbers on the list she gave me, I lean back in my seat, fingers laced behind my head. I can feel her eyes on me, and it’s a challenge to keep my eyes on the door.
“If dinner’s still on the table, I’m up for it,” she says in a controlled voice, as if she had to practice the sentence in her head numerous times before saying it out loud.
“Okay,” I say, still looking ahead. “Seven o’clock. I’ll pick you up.”
“Okay,” she says, sounding slightly defeated.
That’s when I drop my hands to the desk and lean toward her. “Wear something nice for me, hmm?”
The corner of her mouth twitches as she holds back a smile. “A burlap sack?”
I give a small shrug, dipping my head to lean in closer to her. “You’d look nice in anything, Talia.”
She arches a perfect brow in a challenge. “Even a clown suit?”
“How did you know I had a thing for clowns?” I feign seriousness, and that gets a laugh out of her. It’s the most glorious thing I’ve ever heard becauseIwas the cause of such pleasure.
“I think I’ve got a suit laying around,” she says, still smiling. But it fades with the slowness of her inclining head, and I think she might finally kiss me. She draws closer until our lips are barely touching, then she freezes, and I feel her smile. “Do you think I’m that easy? That a massage and a few jokes are going to get me in bed with you?”
I can feel her lips grazing mine as she talks. I think this challenge with her might be the most frustrating, and the sexiest thing I’ve ever been involved in.
“It got you to say yes to dinner, didn’t it?” I pull away, my lips feeling desperate and cold. I don’t look at her to see what her reaction is. I simply turn back to my work and let her stew in the challenge lingering between us.
Chapter Nine: Talia
There’s a palpable tension between us that makes me want to come undone. Kay’s hands on me have put an unsmotherable heat in my core that I can’t put out, no matter how many times I repeat to myself that I hate him. The feeling has continued to burn throughout the evening, up until the final minutes leading up to our date tick by.
It only makes it worse. It only makes me want him more.
I focus on applying my mascaraperfectly, leaning over the counter to get closer to the mirror, lost in thought about this Kay debacle. After playing up my challenge so heavily, I know I can’t cave. But when I think about his eyes on me as he smoothed out the tension in my palms and in my shoulders…
He stirred something in me I didn’t know I needed, or wanted. I won’t be begging him anytime soon, but I’m tempted to relinquish the standing rule thathemust begme.
Something’s seriously wrong with me…
I’ve so clearly laid out my defiance. I’ve played hard to get. The moment’s already gone, but I regret that I didn’t kiss him.
Something tells me he won’t have to get me to give in to him. My resolve has always been one of the things I’ve prided myself on, my self-control unshakeable in the face of the whims of men. A simple comment couldn’t make me fold, and a flirty touch did nothing. It’s reflective of the scarcity of my past lovers, few and far between. The closest thing I’d had to sex in the last year was a bad date where I ended up making out with a guy in his car just to feel something.
It didn’t work. Most men have never enticed or intrigued me. Never enough to make me feel the way Kay can.
I apply a light amount of dark pink lipstick.
The men of my past were never enough of a challenge, but now it’s left me with little to no experience sexually. I had one boyfriend in high school who only ever got to hands-in-the-pants stuff. I dated a guy in my early twenties who I lost my virginity to, but even with my little experience, I’d knownthatsex was bad. I’ve never given head and I’ve never received head worth writing home about.
I release a shaky laugh at my own rambling thoughts and drop my lipstick back into my makeup bag.
I shake out my hands, staring at myself in the mirror. My head’s all scrambled. Kay Beckett is picking me up in ten minutes. I’m letting Kay Beckett take me on a date. This challenge is about to make me burst, and there’s a part of me that knows I’m going to get into trouble tonight.
It’s probably the dress I picked out. It screams trouble. Short, tight, black, with heeled, calf-length boots to match. I tuck my hair behind my ears. It makes me look sweet, but also brings out the harshness in my eyes with the best eyeliner job I’ve ever done. I untuck my hair. Too disheveled. I tuck one side. That seems right.
Placing my hands on my hips, I do a poor attempt at a pose, and immediately feel embarrassed, walking away from the mirror with a scoff.
Nico cuts me off in the doorway with a meow.
“Don’t judge me, Nico.”
He says nothing.
