Blind Date (14 page)

Carter takes another sip from his glass and nods to my plate. “Something wrong with it?”

“Oh, no.” I glance up at him then back at my plate. “I just don’t feel particularly hungry.”

With the glass still in his hand, he fixes his gaze on me. I know because I can feel it—it’s as obvious as an icy blast of air at the height of summer. “You keep looking at the door.”

“The hallway,” I admit. “I kind of want to explore. Your house looks gorgeous.”

He reaches for a paper napkin from the stack and wipes the corner of his mouth. “You want a tour?”

“Oh—you don’t have to. I’m being rude.” I smile slightly and push a slice of chicken around my plate.

“Grab your glass.” He grins and gets up, his in hand. “Come on.”

I hesitate for a second too long, and he rounds the island. He grabs my hand and pulls me up, then releases me just to deposit my wine glass in my palm. “I guess I’ll come, then,” I say quietly, fighting my smile.

“Are you ready for the grand tour of Casa de Hughes?” he asks, walking backward out of the kitchen. His eyes fall to my feet and he holds out a hand to stop me. “Woah, woah. Those weapons have gotta come out of your feet. We have fifteen rooms to explore and there’s no way you can do that in those animals.”

“Those animals—”

“Cost more than a pedigree puppy, yeah, yeah. I know. Still. Off.” He stands in front of me until I sigh with resignation and bend down to pull them off my feet.

Safely off, I kick them to the side and meet his eyes. “There. Better?”

He grins and lifts his hand to the top of my head. “Wow. Those things are deceiving.”

“You realize I’m at the right height to do this, don’t you?” I lift one knee up.

He steps back. “Point made.” Our gaze hovers for a moment, both of us smiling, then he turns. “First stop on the Grand Tour of the Hughes House is the dining room that has been used approximately one point five times in the last two years.”

“One point five? How is that possible?”

“Once for Thanksgiving right after I moved in, then the following year when my mom designated me as the cook and I gave up after the turkey didn’t show up.”

“How does a turkey not show up?”

“I forgot to order it.” He grimaces. “That was the first year she told me I need a woman. I reminded her I have her and my sister, and that’s enough woman for anyone.”

I laugh quietly, looking around the room. “It’s dark in here.”

“Yeah. I keep meaning to do something with it, but like I said, it doesn’t get used.” He shrugs and closes the door.

My eye twitches. Oh boy, I want to take my camera and sketch pad in there.

“And the living room.” He opens the next door to a reasonably sized room about as well kitted out as can be expected for a man’s living room. Dark-colored sofas, a giant television, games consoles, you name it, it’s there. What I am surprised to see is an array of photos lining the exposed brick fireplace and even the windowsill. I really want to go forward and look, but I manage to stop myself. “And what my sister jokes is my bedroom, living room and dining room all in one, my office.” He opens a door across the hall and takes me into the biggest room I’ve been in.

It is literally massive. There’s a sectional sofa at one end complete with coffee table. A sprawling desk with comfortable leather chair. Shelves of reference books, including many cookery books, and stacks upon stacks of folders.

“You have recipe books,” I say slowly, reaching for one and pulling it from the shelf.

“I own restaurants.”

“But you forget to order Thanksgiving turkey?”

“Fuck,” he hisses. “I hate cooking, all right? I can make cereal and that’s it.”

“You don’t make cereal. You put it in a bowl and pour milk on top of it.”

“You’re starting to ruin my elusive manner here, Bee.”

“You? Elusive? Not on your life, Carter Hughes. You’re as elusive as wasp around a group of teenage girls.”

His eyebrows arches in the way I’m rapidly becoming familiar with. “Mysterious?”

“Not so mysterious either,” I lie. “You’re like an orange just waiting to be peeled open.”

“That’s the oddest thing I’ve ever been called,” he muses. “Come on. There’s upstairs yet. Unless you want to see the spare rooms.”

Upstairs? Wait. I didn’t consider upstairs did I? “What’s in the spare rooms?”

“Absolutely nothing,” he admits.

“Then I’m good.”

He grins, and there’s something suggestive about it. “Upstairs?”

“I think I’m good.” I lift my wine glass to my lips.

“Bee… I can fuck you anywhere. The desk. The sofa. The wall. Taking you upstairs really isn’t going to make a difference.”

I cough, swallowing my wine wrong. “No, no, I got that,” I croak out, patting my chest. “I was just… Well. I don’t need to see upstairs.”

Carter tilts his head to one side and studies me. His bright green gaze is unnerving, and I shudder under his gentler-than-usual scrutiny. “All right,” he says slowly. “No bedrooms. Another room. If I’ve got you figured out, Bee Donnelly, I sense you’ll appreciate it.”

“What is it? Like a spa or something?”

He laughs, holding out his hand. My eyes narrow, and I glance at his hand. He makes a ‘come here’ motion with his fingers, not moving any closer to me.

“How do I know you’re not going to drag me into your bedroom and have your way with me?”

“If I planned on that, your skirt would already be around your hips and my cock would be buried inside you,” he answers matter-of-factly. “And yes, I understand we have yet to get to your important business, but I’m curious.”

I swallow. “Curiosity killed the cat, Mr. Hughes.”

“Then I must be the cat, and you the curiosity, Ms. Donnelly,” he responds in a low voice, stepping toward me. My heart thuds. “Because I’m damn sure you’re gonna kill me.”

“All right,” I whisper. “Show me how well you think you know me.”

And then I place my hand in his.

Carter’s fingers close around mine. He tugs me out of the room and toward the winding staircase. As we go up it, I realize it’s a gentle spiral, and both the little girl in my soul and the designer in my heart sing their way up to it. If I weren’t holding my wine glass, my fingers would be brushing the gorgeous wooden banister that follows the curve of the stairs. As it is, I settle for my eyes running along it.

At the top, we come to a spacious hallway, much barer than the rest of the house. Unlike downstairs, the doors are all open up here, and I can spy four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a room I can’t quite make out.

“The master bedroom with its private bath and walk-in closet are at the end of the hall,” Carter tells me, motioning toward it with his glass. “The others are all spares—I keep them for my family. Mom lives in California and comes to visit every couple of months,” he explains. “But that’s not what I want to show you.”

“I’m starting to think you really do have a sex chamber with whips and chains on the walls,” I say hesitantly, looking at the slightly ajar oak door behind him.

He laughs. Loudly. Still holding his wine glass, he touches one finger to my lips. “I think the lady reads too much.”

“There’s no such thing as reading too much. That’s like saying someone breathes too much.”

“I have to agree.”

His words surprise me, but not as much as what’s behind the door does.

Oh, my heart.

I can’t help the gasp that leaves my mouth. Oak bookshelves line two of the walls, built around the windows on the outside wall. Those small, square areas let an abundance of natural light into the room, and that light falls on the two huge couches that surround the fireplace right in the middle of it all. The open-brick chimneystack is stunning, offsetting the rich oak perfectly. The deep red rug that sits in the center of the dark brown sofas, peppered with red and cream cushions, is a stunning burst of color.

My hand falls from Carter’s as I step past him and into the room.

Books.

Shelves.

Everywhere.

“This is nothing like the rest of the house,” I breathe. “It’s amazing.”

“It isn’t much,” he says, following me in. “Izzy loves to read, and the first time she came here, she told me in very colorful language that it was sacrilege that I had a house this size without a library.” He shakes his head. “She’s a walking fairytale, my sister. Still, I had this put in. I believe she slept in here for two days the first time she saw it.”

“I don’t blame her.” I run my fingertips along a shelf, and he steps up behind me. Without a word, he takes the wine glass from my hand, and I can’t even thank him I’m so amazed.

He has the classics—all of them. American and British. The stories that are the very core of mystery and romance and adventure. Pure escapism within the pages that are bound by thick, leather covers.

That’s all books are. Escapism borne of wonderfully crafted words that describe far off lands. Sentences that ask and answer within seconds. Paragraphs that slay dragons and ride horses into the midnight sky. Chapters that describe the sensation of pounding hearts and consuming desire, each feeling chronicling the incredible sensation of falling in love.

I run my fingers along the spines of each book, old and new, classic and modern, as I walk the length of the room. The shelves are ceiling high, each one filled and overflowing.

“It’s a Belle library,” I sigh, ducking down to the shelf below.

“A Belle library?” Carter questions, putting both wine glasses on the coffee table.

“In Beauty and the Beast? The ladder?”

“Ohh. That.” He tilts his head to the side. “I guess so.”

“It’s amazing.” I smile. “Good job.”

His eyes are on me for the split second it takes him to cross the room. “I knew it,” he says to me.

“Knew what?” I look up at him, my lips pulling into a small smile.

“You’re an orange waiting to be peeled,” he throws my own words back at me. “And I think I just did it.”

Slowly, I stand, keeping my eyes on him. “I don’t get it.”

“You.” He pushes some hair from my eyes, his fingers lingering on the side of my face. “The night we met, you made it so clear you don’t want commitment. Why?”

“Why don’t you?”

“That’s not the conversation we’re having.”

“We’re not having any conversation.”

“You’re a romantic at heart, aren’t you, Bee? You’re not so different to everyone else.”

“I have no idea where you’re going with this conversation,” I breathe, stepping back. “What does who I am inside have to do with you, Carter? Your aversion to commitment is stronger than mine.”

“I have an aversion to relationships because women tend to look at me and see a meal ticket. They see diamonds and expensive things and flash cars and vacations. I’m not averse to commitment, Bee. I’m simply averse to it with the wrong woman. That doesn’t make a commitment-phobe. That makes me smart.”

“Maybe I’m averse to commitment with the wrong guy. I hardly need someone to depend on and look after me, but I don’t want someone that needs to depend on me.”

“I know what’s inside these pages. I may never have read them, but look.” He pulls one from the shelf. “
Pride and Prejudice
. Everyone knows how that ends. Eventually the pride and prejudice doesn’t matter and love prevails.” He puts it back on the shelf and pulls out
Jane Eyre
. “Eventually Jane and Mr. Rochester fall in love.” He replaces that and walks past me to a shelf with more modern books. “
Fifty Shades of Grey.
Ana and Christian. They fall in love.
Cinderella. Rapunzel.
All the classic fairytales, Bee. They all end in love and happily ever after.”

“Make your point, Carter, because I don’t see it.”

He pushes the gray book back into its place and walks to me. He stops, right in front of me, towering over me by several inches. “Maybe,” he says, gently touching his hand to the side of my face. “Maybe you’re less about the aversion and more about the dream.”

I push his hand away. “And maybe you have no idea.”

His green eyes are piercing. And they do. Pierce. Right down to my bones, to my very soul; the same soul that’s yelling at me for arguing what I know to be so very true.

I believe in love. True love. Whirlwind, consuming love. I believe it exists for everyone, and I’ll be damned if I’ll settle for anything less.

He’s right.

My aversion to commitment is more about a dream of what could be, more than anything else.

“Ever thought that one day you could be so averse to what’s in front of you that you could skip right over what you want?” Carter asks, closing the distance between us once more. “That could be so wrapped up in perfection that you’ll never appreciate flaws?”

“Okay, you’ve met my mother, and you’ve seen my office. There are flaws all up in that shit,” I respond, snorting. “This… is getting out of hand. Can we just go eat now?”

He shakes his head. “I’m still the cat. I wanna know.”

“Really? You wanna know why I’m holding out for the person that’s right for me?”

“That seems like a pretty apt description of what I wanted to know, actually.”

“Because there are too many people like you in the world, Carter.” I flatten my hands against my stomach and take a deep breath. “Too many people that can manipulate your thoughts and your feelings until you believe everything to be true.”

His smile drops. “That’s what you think I’m doing? You think I’m fucking manipulating you?”

“Do I think that, when I’m done with your restaurant, we’ll honestly never see each other again? Yes. I do. Totally. I know nothing about you, yet you make me feel a way I haven’t in a long time. You make me feel a hundred different ways that I shouldn’t.”

“Elaborate,” he demands, his eyes sparking. “If you think I’m manipulating you, tell me exactly how I make you feel and see how I respond.”

“Wanted,” I say quietly. “You make me feel wanted—and you make me believe that I am, too.”

“That’s because you are,” he growls. “I want you, Bee. Fuck—I want you more than anything. How can you think that isn’t true? It’s taking everything I have not to grab you and show you that’s true.”

“Then do it,” I challenge him, raising my chin. “Right now. Prove it. If you think you’re a fucking romance hero and you really want me, show me.”

“You have no idea what you’re asking me to do,” he warns me in a low voice. “I don’t take this shit lightly, baby. I’m an asshole, but I’m not a user. If I have to show you how much I want you, I’ll be fucking damned if I can take that back.”

“I don’t care,” I return bravely. “I’m not a fucking pushover. I’m not a toy or a doll that can be stashed in a drawer or a cupboard until you’re ready for another play. You just stood in front of me and you told me that you want a woman who doesn’t look at you and see dollar signs. Newsflash, Carter, I don’t see that. I see an asshole, but I see one who makes believe I’m wanted.”

His jaw tightens, his eyes darkening.

“Prove it to me right now, or I’m walking out of that door, and believe me when I say you’ll never see me again.”

His movements are like a flash of lightning.

His hands in my hair. The bookshelves digging into my back. His bare chest against me. My lips crushed beneath him.

I can taste the lust on his lips.

It’s intoxicating.

The kiss is everything. It’s the verbal affirmation of the very thing I just demanded he prove, and I’m drowning beneath his determination. I’m drowning in his desperate exploration of my mouth.

“Believe it yet?” he rasps against me. “Believe that I’m not fucking lying to you when I tell you I want you?”

I stare into his eyes defiantly. “Kissing wasn’t what I meant.”

“Not all fairytales end as expected. Not everyone has a prince inside them.”

“Belle never fell in love with the prince. She fell in love with the Beast.”

He holds my gaze for one long, torturous minute, and then tugs me away from the shelves. His hand tightens around mine and he tugs me after him down the hall toward the master bedroom.

He kicks the door shut behind him, and I can barely register the blue and gray color scheme before he’s spinning me and grasping my waist. He clasps the zipper at the back and undoes it, then pushes on the waistband. It falls to my feet, and he grabs the hem of my blouse.

My heart is on double-time. My lungs are demanding oxygen quicker than I can breathe it in. I’m tingling everywhere as anticipation dances across my skin. I can barely control myself as Carter’s deft fingers work the buttons of my blouse until its undone and falling off my shoulders. Or maybe he’s pushing it off. I don’t know anymore. It’s feeling after feeling and each one is stronger than the last.

He stands in front of me, and I force my eyes from his chest, up along the stubbled line of his jaw and the chiseled ridge of his cheekbone to where his eyes are focused intently on me. His look is chilling yet heated at the very same time, and I suck my lower lip into my mouth.

His gaze drops as I release it, dragging my teeth across it as I do so.

As if that movement were a switch, Carter snaps.

His hands dive back into my hair, and in the same movement, he kisses me. His lips are hungry as they move across mine, and I grasp his sides to keep standing as he walks with me. The backs of my calves hit the bed and we fall in a tangle of limbs and dueling tongues.

Need rushes through me, and I grasp at his back as he covers my body with his.

This is nothing like the first time.

That was fun. Easy. Playful.

This is carnal. Raw. Desperate.

And dammit, as he pulls back and I gasp for air as his mouth travels down my neck, my heart pounds a little harder—for him.

Not for the lust. Not for the sex. Not for the undeniable feeling of being wanted. But for the man—whom I hardly know—that’s making me feel all these things.

And there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.

Carter tugs away my bra and immediately closes his mouth around one of my nipples. His tongue traces shapes over the hardened point as his thumb does the same to my other. Fuck me. It’s like they have a direct line to my clit. I’m hyper sensitive of every movement he makes as he switches his mouth to the other side and slides his hand down my body.

My skin burns wherever he touches me. It’s like every fingerprint he leaves behind is a flaming ring of fire that brands me. His mouth is the same. The teasing trail of kisses he peppers down my stomach as he leans back onto his knees has me writhing beneath him.

As his hands travel down, his fingers loop in the sides of my underwear and slide them down my legs. I bend my knees, and his grasp from panties to thighs is immediate. He wraps his arms around my thighs, holding my legs wide open, and yanks me down the bed.

His mouth is on me before I’ve had a chance to gasp, and holy fuck, yes, his mouth is on me.

His wicked tongue works my clit. Flicking and circling and rubbing with each kiss he covers my pussy with. I can’t stand the assault he’s unleashing on me, and I go from my hands in my hair, to grasping sheets, to winding my fingers in his hair. The only sound in the room is of my heavy breathing, interspersed with my helpless moans.