Beautiful Stranger (6 page)

The restaurant was dim, practically empty, and smelled amazing. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten anything more substantial than a granola bar. My mouth watered and, for a moment, I forgot that I was supposed to be on high alert.

I’d moved here to start fresh. Starting fresh meant putting my career first, finding
myself
—not falling into another messed-up Stepford relationship. And that settled that. I
would
get my lunch there, but I would do it after telling Max he needed to never, ever come into
my workspace like that again. And that when I put his hand under my dress just now it was a total accident. Complete slip. Unintentional.

“Sara?”

My name was a quiet, erotic sound in his accent, and I turned toward his voice. He was in a booth in the corner, peeking around a tall menu in his hands. He lowered it, clearly surprised, but then he smiled and I wanted to smack him for how jittery that made me feel. His features were even more prominent in the low shadows of the restaurant. He looked even more dangerous.

I walked to his table and ignored the way he moved over to let me in beside him. His hair was cut short and left longer on top. It fell forward when he moved and I wanted to reach out, see if it was as soft as it looked beneath the cone of overhead light. Damnit.

“I’m not here to join you,” I said, straightening my shoulders. “I just needed to get a few things straight.”

He spread his palms out in front of him. “By all means.”

Taking a deep breath, I said, “I had the most fun I can reasonably remember with you at the club the other night—”

“Likewise.”

I held up my hand. “But I moved here to start over. I wanted to do something crazy and I did, but that isn’t
who I am. I love my job and my colleagues. I can’t have you walking into my office to flirt with me. I can’t ever act like that at work again.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “And I can’t believe you kept that video.”

He had the presence of mind to look contrite. “I’m sorry. I really did intend to delete it.” Leaning forward on his elbows, he said, “The thing is, I can’t seem to stop watching it. Watching that is better than a shot of fucking whiskey for my nerves. Better than even the filthiest porn.”

A low hum spread through my belly and between my legs.

“And I suspect that you like hearing that. I also suspect that the wild Petal I met at the club is a much larger part of Sara Dillon than you like to think.”

“She’s not.” I shook my head. “And I can’t do this.”

“
This
,” he said, “is simply a meal. Sit down with me.”

I didn’t move.

“Come on.” He sighed quietly. “You let me fuck you on Saturday, you put my hand beneath your clothes a few minutes ago, and now you won’t join me for lunch. Do you always make a point of being so confusing?”

“Max.”

“Sara.”

I hesitated for a long beat before I slid into the booth beside him, and felt the radiating warmth of his long, solid frame next to me.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

I looked down at the simple black dress I wore. My bare legs peeked out below the hem and just above the knees. He ran a finger from my shoulder to my wrist and my bare skin broke out in gooseflesh.

“I won’t come to your office again like that,” he said, so quietly I had to lean a little closer to hear him. “But I do want to see you again.”

I shook my head, staring at his long fingers on me. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

When the waiter stopped at our table, Max’s fingers lingered on my hand, and when I was unable to think of anything to order, he chose meals for both of us.

“I hope you like prawns,” he said, grinning.

“I do.” His hand on mine, his leg so closely pressed to my thigh, what did I want? I didn’t want to be continually distracted by a force of energy like Max, but I remained unable to pull out of his orbit. “Sorry, I’m a little distracted.”

His other hand crossed over his body and slipped below the table. I felt the light brush of fingers along my thigh. “Distracted by me? Or by work?”

“At the moment, you. But I
should
be distracted by work.”

“You have plenty of time for that. I’m going to wager your assistant sent you out to eat.”

I leaned back to look at him. “Spying?”

“No need. He looks like a busybody, and you look like you rarely remember to take lunch.” His fingers pushed the hem of my dress up higher, higher, higher to my hip bone. “This all right?” His accent dropped the last bit of his sentence into a whisper.

It was more than all right, but my heart pounded with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Once again, I was letting him completely take my reason away, hide it in this dark corner where I couldn’t find it.

“We’re in a restaurant.”

“I’m aware.” He slipped beneath the soaked lace of my panties and slid his fingers over my clit, dipping down into my wetness. “Good God, Sara. I’d love to spread you on this table and have
you
for lunch.”

For a brief pulse, my skin ignited. “You can’t say things like that.”

“Why? We’re the only people in this place besides that old man in the corner, the waiter, and the cook in the back. No one can hear me.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“I can’t say things like that because of what it does to you?” he asked.

I nodded, unable to say anything when he slipped two fingers into me.

“We have maybe ten minutes before our food comes out. Think I could make you come that fast?”

It wasn’t as if he didn’t already have two fingers deep
inside me, but for some reason when he put it like that, I grew hyperaware of where we were. It was a torment: the knowledge of what I
should
do in a quiet restaurant like this—sip my tea, eat my lunch—and the desire to do something completely unlike me: have this man finger me where anyone could walk in and see.

It was the same crazy fantasy from the club, all over again: the potential of being caught with this beautiful, strange man, and getting away with it.

He began to move his thumb in small circles, but kept his fingers pressed deep, unmoving. His arm barely shifted above the table, but below where the tablecloth hit our hips, an explosion was building.

I stared at his arm, his dress shirt peeking out from his suit jacket, and could feel him watching my face, watching every single breath I took, every gasp and every time I bit my lip to keep from making a sound. His confident, firm touch built a heavy ache between my legs and I pushed into him, wanting more, and harder somehow. In the distance a dish crashed to the floor, but Max quietly moaning my name immediately eclipsed the sound.

Our waiter emerged from the kitchen and headed toward us.

“Look at you,” Max said, leaning to kiss my neck just below my ear. His breath was warm on my skin,
and I was torn between focusing on his touch and fretting about the man walking across the room toward our table. The combination of his touch and the fear of being caught almost made me fall to pieces.

As if he knew this, Max murmured, “No one in here knows you’re about to come all over my hand.”

I expected him to stop, to put his hands on the table, but Max simply stilled his thumb as the waiter stopped at our table, and refilled his water. Ice clinked against the glass, and a drop of condensation slid from the rim to the tablecloth, fanning out and growing larger and larger as more water fell. It was as if the glass were melting along with me. From above the table, it looked like Max had simply reached across his body and put his hand on my leg. He slid his thumb across my clit once, and I gasped.

“Your food should be out in just a minute,” the waiter said with a bland smile.

Max pressed his thumb hard into my clit and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out. He smiled up at the waiter. “Thank you.”

The waiter turned and walked away and when Max looked at me, with such barely concealed mischief, dizzying relief mixed with a vague stab of disappointment, and I felt myself fully melt in his hands.

“That’s it,” he whispered, rocking his palm against
me as he slipped a third finger inside. With this, he stretched me to the blissful edge of pain and I felt indecent, like I was doing something irrevocably filthy, but he just watched me crave more of it all. “Oh, fuck, Sara. That’s it.”

My nails dug into the leather cushion below me, and he risked being noticed by beginning to pump his fingers, his shoulders rocking. My head fell back against the booth and I let out the smallest moan, completely disproportionate to the shaking climax that tore through my body.

“Oh God,” I groaned as he prolonged it with his long fingers pushing even deeper. I turned to press my face into the shoulder of his suit to stifle my cry.

He slowed, and stilled, before kissing my temple, and then pulled his fingers out. Lifting his hand from under the table, he pressed his fingers to his mouth once, briefly, before wiping them on his napkin.

And then he licked his lips, watching me. “Your tongue tastes like candy, but your pussy tastes even better.” He leaned in and kissed me deeply. “I want it to be my cock inside you next time.”

Yes, please.

Jesus, who was this woman possessing my brain?
Because I wanted it, too. Even after what he’d just given me, I wanted to climb into his lap and take all of him inside.

Before that line of thinking could get me into even more trouble, my phone buzzed in my purse. I pulled it out: Bennett.

B
ACK FROM MY MEETING
. L
ET’S SIT DOWN AT
2.

The clock on my phone read one forty-five. “I have to go.”

“We’re establishing a pattern here, Sara. You come, you go.”

I offered him a half-smile, half-wince, but when the waiter came back with our food, I slid a twenty onto the table and asked him to put mine in a to-go container.

“I’d like your number,” Max said, stuffing the money back in my purse.

“Absolutely not.” I laughed.

I had no idea how this had unraveled. Okay, that was a lie, I knew exactly how it had unraveled—he’d started whispering in that hot accent and then fingered me—but I knew better than to let myself get involved with Max. For one, he was a player, and in no way did I want to go down that road again. And two, my job. It had to come first.

“I will eventually get it from Ben, you know. We go way back.”

“Bennett won’t give it to you without my permission.
Very few people want to punch my ex more than I do, but Bennett is one of them.” I kissed Max’s jaw, relished the sharp stubble, and got up. “Thanks for the appetizer. Delete the video.”

“I’ll consider it if you go out with me again,” he answered, eyes shining with amusement.

I exited and crossed back over Fifth, biting back a smile.

Three days after I’d given her an orgasm for lunch I wasn’t any less obsessed.

“So who are you bringing tonight?” Will asked absently, eyes on the folded copy of the
Times
in his hand.

The drive back to the office from the tailor had been silent up to this point, broken only by the sound of the engine and the occasional car horn or shout from the street. I continued to go over the files I’d brought—photographs from a new exhibit in Queens—as I answered, “Going solo, actually.”

He looked up at me. “You don’t have a date?”

“No.” I glanced over just in time to see his eyebrows inch up in surprise. “What?”

“How long have we known each other, Max?”

“Six years, I’d say.”

“And in all that time, have you ever attended a social function without a date?”

“I really wouldn’t remember.”

“Perhaps we could check Page Six. I bet they’d know,” he deadpanned.

“Very funny.”

“It’s unusual, that’s all. It’s our biggest event of the year and you don’t have a date.”

“It hardly matters, yeah?”

He laughed. “Are you serious with me right now? ‘Who is Max Stella taking?’ is one of the first things people ask when there’s a party like this.”

“I like how you play me up as the skirt-chasing wolf in contrast to you, all upstanding and virtuous.”

“Oh, I never said anything about being virtuous,” he said over the top of his paper. “I’m simply suggesting that people might wonder if you’re meeting someone there, that’s all.”

I turned back to my files as I considered this. In truth, I hadn’t made a date for the fund-raiser. I hadn’t made a date because I wasn’t interested in taking anyone.

Which was weird. Maybe Will was right. Ever since I’d met Sara, other women seemed predictable and tame.