what everyone else talked about when they chattered on about Paris and its ambiance.
“Screw it,” Nichelle muttered. “Let’s just go out. Okay?”
Wolfe chuckled. “Okay. Just give me about fifteen minutes to change and make a quick phone call.”
“Good.” She headed to her room.
Like their offices, her hotel room was just like his. No surprises, although it seemed that she was already going to be spending more time in his room than in hers. They tended to take turns monopolizing one of the other’s spaces. His room actually had the better view.
Nichelle exchanged her tights and loose blouse for jeans and a thin cotton blouse with a string tied at the throat. She tucked a few things into a small purse and was ready to leave the room within ten minutes when the open laptop caught her eye, a new message on her email screen. Then her cell phone chirped with a message. It was from Favreau.
My apologies. I have meetings for the rest of the afternoon but have the next two hours free. Are you ready to impress me? My offices in 30 minutes.
Damn. Nichelle’s fingers tightened around the phone. But she took a breath. She knew the proposal for Favreau backward and forward but dammit, she had been excited about taking advantage of the Parisian sunshine. Phone in hand, she slipped through the door between her room and Wolfe’s.
“Favreau just sent an em—” She almost swallowed her tongue.
Wolfe was naked. He stood in the middle of the room covered in nothing but the light pouring through the windows. A pair of briefs dangled from his hand, as if he was giving some thought to pulling them on, but he didn’t move a muscle when she walked into the room. If anything, he stood even straighter to give her more to look at.
Oh my God... Nichelle’s mouth went dry, and her eyes widened.
His body was angled slightly away from her, a hip and shoulder in her direction, intriguing shadows swimming over his skin. And he was breathtaking. Literally, she could not catch her breath, staring at what she’d never seen before. A man who was beautiful to look at, true. But, having him tucked firmly in the realm of family, she’d never have thought to wonder at what lay beneath his designer suits and expensive jeans. But now she knew.
After the first hot and consuming glance, she dropped her eyes.
His feet were big. The bones strong but delicate-looking at the same time. Narrow ankles, muscled calves. But instead of keeping her eyes low like she should have, she looked up.
Wolfe had solid knees with scars on them from his childhood spent climbing, and sometimes falling out of, trees. There was a mole on his muscled thigh, the blemish like a drop of cocoa on the thickly cut flesh. She lingered over it, taking her time to visually devour the body she had missed for years.
His thighs were big enough for her to sink her fingers into. Spread wide, they allowed a clear view of his long and heavy sex. Nichelle swallowed and blinked as his body started to respond to her gaze, thickening even more before her eyes, rising toward the slats of muscle in his belly. She yanked her gaze up to his wide chest, pectoral muscles, tiny button nipples that she suddenly imagined flicking with her fingers then soothing the brief hurt with her tongue. His arms bulged with muscle. His shoulders were firm enough to easily take the weight of her legs, her thighs.
Nichelle gripped her phone and apologized stiffly past her throat that was dry as a desert. “Favreau wants us at his office in thirty minutes.” Then she very carefully turned and walked back to her room.
* * *
Wolfe stood with his briefs clenched in his hand long after Nichelle went back to her side of the door. His whole body was a fist. Tight, hard and aching. He’d been frozen while she looked at him, aware of her cool gaze on his body that suddenly felt too hot. He had hardened helplessly under her intense scrutiny, the blood rushing inexorably south.
He called himself ten types of fool for allowing her to see his physical reaction to her. But that was what he got for not taking advantage of what had been offered to him a few days before they’d left for Paris.
Anise, a woman he’d met while on a business lunch in the Gables, had texted him with a classic booty call invitation. He’d wanted it. He’d wanted her. But when, at the family dinner, Nichelle looked at him with disapproval, as if it would have been the worst sin for him to leave his parents’ house to sleep with some woman he’d only just met, he reigned himself in. He ended up spending the rest of the night and most of the next day with his parents.
Since then, he’d been too busy with work, getting ready for the Paris trip and working with Nichelle on the Quraishi proposal. He hadn’t made time to seek sexual relief from anywhere else, and by the time he’d gotten on the plane for Paris, his body was more than aware that it was suffering through an unintentional dry spell.
He stumbled to the nearest open window and breathed deeply of the cooler air flooding over his bare skin. He had to get it together. They had a meeting in less than half an hour.
Somehow, he got dressed and met up with Nichelle in the hallway outside their shared rooms. Wearing her business clothes like a suit of armor, she acted as if nothing had happened. They made it to the meeting with Favreau on time and worked together to convince the idiot to spend his money with them, then they left for the hotel.
Strangely enough, it wasn’t awkward. They talked business in the taxi on the way to the meeting and back. Then, at the hotel, they went their separate ways. There was no more talk of them exploring the city together. Nichelle went for a walk, and Wolfe left for the hotel bar and a double whiskey.
He’d been to Paris before, each time on business. It was just another city for him, with none of the magic that most of the women in his family thought it held. The Eiffel Tower was nice. The brie was pretty good. That was it. Still, he’d been looking forward to sharing the city with Nichelle and learning more about it. But his erection had perked up and ruined any chance of that.
At the bar, he quickly knocked back his first glass of whiskey. The second glass went down even easier than the first, and after the third he was feeling relaxed, easygoing. He reached for his phone and dialed a familiar number. It only rang twice before his best friend picked up. It was still morning, just after nine, in New York.
“Hey,” Garrison greeted him. “I thought you were in France this week.”
“You thought rightly, my friend.” He kept his voice low, aware of the French dislike of audible public conversation. Even though it was barely three in the afternoon, the hotel bar was far from empty. “I’m calling you from a very French hotel right now.”
“Everything going well there?”
Wolfe grunted. “Yeah. Well enough. We got the client we came here for at least.”
“You don’t sound that pleased about it.” Faint noises came through the phone, a low voice from nearby.
“The guy is a prick but— Wait, am I interrupting something? If you and Reyna are still getting your honeymoon on—” Wolfe named his best friend’s new wife, a woman he’d met a handful of times, the most recent being at their wedding where he was best man.
“Then I wouldn’t have answered the phone,” Garrison cut him off.
Wolfe smiled, swirling the whiskey in his glass. “I would’ve been disappointed in you if you had. The grapevine says wives don’t take kindly to that sort of thing.”
“For once, the grapevine might just be on to something.” Garrison paused. “You doing good?” A hint of worry crept through the phone. “You seem a little agitated.”
Was he agitated? Wolfe shifted in his chair and tilted his head back to stare at the ornate ceiling with the pale cherubs and half-naked goddesses, the European idea of public art. He swept his tongue across his front teeth, tasting the question he was about to ask. “When did you know you wanted Reyna?”
A huff came through the phone,