Blaine from across the restaurant table once their waiter had presented a bottle of Chianti and left to place the entrée order.
Her serious tone didn’t come close to matching the rest of her. In a clingy, scoop-necked top in his favorite shade of blue and black hot pants, her trim body was pure dynamite. Open-toed black heels revealed toenails the same shade of soft pink as her lips. Her mouth always looked extremely kissable. Something about the way she’d styled her hair into soft curls stepped up the sweet and downplayed the sinful appeal of her face, and had him more anxious than ever to taste her lips.
He should have insisted he pick her up at home so that he could have given her a mouth-to-mouth greeting. Her logic for meeting at Valerio’s was too sound to refute. Unfortunately, the restaurant was too tasteful to allow for the kind of kiss, and likely groping, that would ensue the moment their lips met. He’d just have to be a big boy and wait an hour or two.
If he were patient enough, he might be rewarded with the kind of kiss that didn’t have a thing to do with his mouth.
His pulse stirred with the thought. Not about to let his cock follow suit, Blaine teased, “Eating in a nice restaurant? Surprisingly, I do get out of my cave from time to time.”
She laughed. “No. I meant us. Being out on a…nondate.”
“It’s no different than eating together in Pinnacle’s lunchroom.”
Courtney’s eyebrows rose as she glanced from the low-lit crystal chandeliers to the marble wall sconces that sprayed forth trailing greens and small, white heart-shaped flowers to the servers moving about in tuxedo uniforms. Looking back at him, she smiled wryly. “I’d say the ambiance is just a little different. Besides, I didn’t mean now so much as what’s going to happen later.” Anticipation flickered in her eyes. “When we have dessert.”
Normally, he didn’t rely on euphemisms to get his desires across. Back in his office, with the door wide open, he hadn’t felt comfortable talking frankly. Now, he couldn’t help but taunt her a little with the idea it really was only dessert he had in mind. “I just hope you like it. After what happened at lunch, I made sure to veer away from anything chocolate.”
Her mouth fell open a half inch, freeing a low gasp. “You mean we’re actually going to—Nothing. Never mind.”
Courtney lifted her wineglass to her lips, sipping at the Chianti. Attempting to hide her displeasure was the truth of it, Blaine knew. He considered letting her off easy by leaning across the table and whispering what he planned to do with her once they got back to his place in details so explicit she would be left squirming in her seat, wet with eagerness. Before he could say or do anything, their waiter reappeared.
The dark-haired guy set a loaf of Tuscany bread and a short crock of olive oil on the table. With a clap of his hands and a cheerful, “Piacere. Enjoy,” he left them again.
Courtney set her wineglass down and eyed the bread appreciatively. “I have a huge soft spot for homemade bread and that smells incredible.”
Blaine pulled the wooden breadboard toward him. He sliced and buttered her a generous piece of bread, and then watched as she attacked it with gusto. He’d be the first to admit he could be vain about the women he chose to spend time with. It never bothered him much if so many of them relied on eating tiny portions of food as a way to stay slim. But then, he also never found himself smiling over the sheer bliss one of those women found in something as simple as bread, the way he was doing with Courtney.
Her happiness came out as an elated murmur with her next bite. How much that murmur sounded like the one she made as she climaxed had him quickly slicing and buttering a piece of bread for himself and stuffing it into his mouth.
The bread all but melted in his mouth, the baked-in seasonings enlivening his taste buds. A moan of pure contentment escaped before he could stop it. Not only was the bread delicious, but he hadn’t taken the time to indulge in a high-quality meal since returning from Iraq, and the food over there had been basic fare at best.
“Good, huh?” Courtney’s voice was edged with amusement.
Setting the bread on a side plate, he looked across the table. While there was humor in her eyes, there was far more desire. The kind of red-hot sensuality that threatened to harden his cock. If he suggested they leave now, to go back to his place to have each other for both the main entrée and dessert, she was likely to say an emphatic yes. But she was enjoying her food, the wine, and she looked too charmingly appealing with her hair curled and those soft pink lips to mess them up quite so soon.
“Excellent.” Blaine took a drink of wine as he sought out conversation not likely to have a stimulating effect on his body. “For the record, I don’t let my nondates pay for dinner.”
“The point of us coming here was so that I could buy you dinner. But since you probably make a buttload more money than I do, I’ll forget the point.”
His income wasn’t a topic he discussed with his lovers. Since Courtney had access to the billing rates of every Pinnacle employee, he didn’t bother to deny the observation. “I did pick up a nice chunk of pocket change working abroad.”
“Is that why you went over there? For the money?”
“Money isn’t an issue. Like you said, I bring in a decent wage at Pinnacle, and I don’t have a wife and kids to support so a good share of my paycheck goes directly to savings.”
“Then what would propel a person to thrust themselves into such a dangerous place?”
“The whole country isn’t dangerous, just certain parts. Where I went was more of a high-risk zone, though.” His gut roiled with the memory of the trip in and out of the rebuild area. He’d seen things so horrific they would be forever embedded in his mind and that he wouldn’t share ever, let alone while eating. “Once the convoy arrived at the construction site, we couldn’t go outside the designated parameters. Then there are the rodents and insects. Damn camel spiders are bigger than my hand.”
Instead of shuddering, the way most of the women he spent time with would do, Courtney smiled brazenly. “Let’s not forget about the heat.”
“Not possible.” Blaine smiled back, thankful for the reminder of a far more pleasant experience. Thoughts of chilling her sex with ice and then warming her up again with the glide of his fingers inside her pussy did rile his testosterone, but it also eased his gut enough to allow him to continue the conversation. “There are days I feel like I’ll never get clean again working on the construction sites around here. Over there, it’s like a dust bowl. You don’t just end up with that shit in places you didn’t even know you had. You can feel it in your lungs.”
“Yet you volunteered to go over there, not even caring about the money factor.” Admiration shone in her eyes. “Where I come from, that’s called noble.”
“More like intrigue, and might I remind you I didn’t care about the money factor—but I still took every dollar they paid me.”
The admiration didn’t dissipate. If anything, she looked impressed by his honesty. “Which part intrigued you?”
He talked about his family with his lovers as seldom as his finances. Courtney could find out about his background almost as easily as she could learn his salary, so he answered truthfully. “My younger brother’s a sergeant with the Army. His unit was called over to Iraq when the war first broke out with an expected year-long tour of duty. They ended up staying an extra three months. Then when he did come home, no more than a month had passed and he was raring to be deployed again. A short while later, he was right back into the heat of things. He’s on his third tour now.”
“You went over there to figure out why he’s always so anxious to get back.” The words were a statement not a question, and another testament to her astuteness.
Blaine had appreciated both her work ethic and her ass for over two years. Now he found he was also appreciating the woman beyond her job and looks. “Pretty much. I ended up only getting to see him for about an