Flirting in Traffic (6 page)

The thought pricked at her pride and made her draw up short just feet from the door.

“You know,” she began with a condescending smile. “I had a really great time last night. But I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression. I’m not interested in anything permanent.”

“You drive a red sports car with license plates that read
SXKITN69
. Apparently you’re the publisher of a magazine that my brother has decided is the holy bible for hooking him up with women that are as single-minded in their expectations as he is. You had sex with me on my foyer floor after dancing with me once at a bar. Why the hell would I think you were interesting in anything
permanent
?” he deadpanned.

Esa closed her slack jaw with a click of her back teeth.

“Of course you aren’t,” she said after a moment. “It’s just… Well, why did you show up here then?”

He leaned down until she felt his warm breath ghost her forehead. His scent—a mixture of fresh air, the spicy remnants of his aftershave and the well-recalled singular smell of his skin—pervaded her awareness. Her nostrils flared as though to capture more of his essence greedily.

“I told you,” he said gently but firmly, as though he was indeed dealing with a recalcitrant five-year-old. “We have business.”

“You want to…to…hook up
again
?” Esa asked, embarrassment heating her cheeks at using that particular phrase in reference to herself.

He frowned. “What…you stick religiously to the definition of ‘one-night stands’, is that it?”

“Of course not, I just—”

“Look, the last thing I’m looking for is anything serious either so stop acting so jumpy. But the fact of the matter remains. I wasn’t finished with you last night.”

Esa met his stare, stunned by his quiet intensity.

Why had she fabricated that particular lie about not wanting anything permanent in a relationship? He already thought it of her, but it made her sound so unappealingly mercenary to have actually
said
it. And she suddenly wished—very, very much—that Finn Madigan would have gone to so much trouble in order to locate regular, boring Esa Ormond instead of the silly fantasy she’d created for him.

Now that she’d lied though, she felt foolish for taking it back. Especially since he’d indicated he was just out for a no-strings-attached good time.

Her gaze dropped to the hard line of his well-shaped mouth seemingly of its own accord. Still, there were so many benefits to the fantasy. The imposter woman had been allowed to kiss Finn’s lips, to taste his smooth, golden skin…to burn beneath his long, lean body.

“What are you thinking?” he rasped.

Esa jumped. Had he just moved closer to her? The mouth that she’d just been fantasizing about was now only inches away from her own. She licked her lower lip nervously and froze when she watched his vivid blue eyes trace the movement.

“I-I was wondering if you thought one more night would do the trick?” she croaked.

Finn blinked and met her stare. His slow smile made heat unfurl in her lower belly. “If you promise to stay put and let me have my way with you all night…it just might.”

Esa swallowed convulsively.

“So, do you ever allow one of your lovers to actually take you to dinner?” he asked.

Esa started out of her Finn-induced trance at that. Did he really think she was
that
promiscuous? A bitter defense rose to her tongue but she stilled it when she saw how his eyes glowed with arousal as he stared down at her mouth. Obviously Finn
wanted
her to be a loose, unprincipled sort of woman, so what right did she have to deprive him of his fantasy?

Never mind the fact that it was beyond thrilling to have him look at her like he was about to eat her up in one bite.

“Occasionally. A girl’s got to keep up her energy,” she informed Finn as she watched him through lowered eyelids. She wasn’t sure if he bought her seductive act or was just laughing at her when his white teeth flashed in his tanned face. Her heart seemed to pause in her chest when he ducked his head and used those sexy teeth to nip at her lower lip, gently prying her open.

When his attack came, however, it was anything but subtle.

He cut off her shaky moan by covering her mouth, penetrating her lips with his sleek tongue and kissing her hard and thoroughly. The lights that flashed behind her eyes looked like colorful blooming flowers. When he released her from that total onslaught on her senses her eyelids remained closed.

“Who taught you how to kiss, anyway?” she mumbled.

He took his time answering her question as he tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “Let’s see…that probably would have been my cousin Dina.”

She opened one eye. “Kissing cousins? Isn’t that a bit of a cliché?”

His low, rumbling laughter made her want to press her cheek to his chest and absorb the experience with another sense organ besides her appreciative ears.

“She’s only a cousin by marriage, but then again just about everyone in Bridgeport is and the ones who aren’t are the real thing,” Finn said, referring to the South Side neighborhood where he grew up. He grabbed her hand. “Come on. How about a picnic? It’s a nice day. We might as well enjoy it while we get you fueled up for action.”

Esa opened up her mouth to protest his crudity—sex kitten act be damned—but then she noticed the gleam of mischief in his blue eyes. Her already escalated heartbeat skipped into double time as he pulled her out of Rachel’s office.

Dangerous.
The alarming sort, warning-was-not-sufficient, run shrieking for the hills and hide all the valuables—most especially your heart—kind of downright dangerous.

That’s
what Finn Madigan was.

She had to admit, Finn knew how to do a picnic right. They’d stopped at a French restaurant on Walton Street where the man standing behind the empty bar greeted Finn by name. When Finn explained what they planned the middle-aged gentlemen—who appeared to have a genuine French accent—bustled about preparing their outdoor feast. He’d made eye contact with Esa when he drew down a bottle of Bordeaux from the wine rack, and winked.

“He really likes you, doesn’t he? You must come here a lot?” Esa had whispered to Finn.

He’d shrugged. “I used to come several times a week.”

“Don’t you anymore?”

Finn had shaken his head. “Nah. I used to work across the street. Now that I’m at 63rd and the Dan Ryan it’s a little far to drive for lunch, even for Paul’s food.”

Esa had opened her mouth to ask him more about his previous job but Paul called out at that moment, holding up a partial round of cheese. Finn nodded his approval and Paul added it to the paper sack already filled with a crusty loaf of bread, a package filled with marinated olives, a bottle of wine, a plastic wine opener, cups, napkins and two enormous fresh peaches.

After parking Rachel’s car in the parking garage at Finn’s condo, they’d strolled lazily down Lake Shore Drive to Millennium Park. Since the day was so beautiful and the park was fully decked out in brilliant autumn regalia, they’d walked a bit before settling down to eat lunch.

They’d paused to watch a group being supervised in park-sponsored pumpkin carving. One particular pair of participants had caught Esa’s eye—a five- or six-year-old chestnut brown-haired girl accompanied by what appeared to be her grandmother. The older lady had successfully traced the pattern for the jack-o-lantern onto the pumpkin but she was wincing in discomfort as she tried to use a razor-type knife to carve out the meticulous design.

“No, it’s too sharp for you, Melissa,” Esa heard the grandmother tell the girl gently when the child tried to take the knife from her.

“Do you mind?” Esa asked with a friendly smile at the gray-haired lady as she nodded toward the hand that held the cutting tool.

The older lady looked confused by Esa’s request but she held up her hand nevertheless. Esa took the woman’s thin hand and removed the knife. Her fingers expertly massaged and soothed the arthritis pain that was clearly plaguing the elderly lady’s hand while she tried to enjoy a golden afternoon with her granddaughter.

The woman was grinning broadly by the time Esa released her hand a moment later. “Thank you!” She flexed her fingers and her smile widened. “It feels so much better. You have a gift there, young lady.”

Esa returned the woman’s smile. “It was my pleasure. You two ladies have a wonderful day.”

“What was that all about?” Finn asked when he reached her side.

“What? Oh,
that
? I’m good at massage. I get a lot of practice, you know,” she explained with a sultry look. His return appraisal was frankly suspicious.

“Is that your way of telling me that your bedmates are usually in their seventies and suffering from arthritis?”

“You’d hardly fit the bill if that were true, lover,” she teased.

The red-blooded male in him couldn’t resist the heat in her brandy-colored eyes. He spread his hand on her lower back just above her right butt cheek. When he applied a slight pressure Kitten slowed and came to a halt.

He leaned down and planted a slow, hot kiss on her lush lips.
Christ,
she tasted good. When he realized that he’d turned her in his arms so that he could reexperience firsthand how well she fit against him, and that his cock had stiffened to full readiness with record-breaking speed, Finn regretfully broke their embrace.

When he lightly urged a dazed-looking Kitten to keep walking, he had to take several deep breaths to regain his equilibrium. He’d have to watch himself. Her taste did strange things to his body chemistry. He was supposed to be having a little fun with a sexy woman to get over Julia and pull him out of the dumps he’d been in since his father’s death. At the rate he was going he was going to become thoroughly addicted to Kitten’s sweet mouth—not to mention the rest of her succulently curvy body.

Whoa, he definitely needed to apply some brakes here. He reluctantly removed his hand from the enticing swell of her upper ass and grasped her hand instead. The dreamy, goofy look on her pretty face as she stared blankly into the distance reeled him back in to her sexy snare quicker than he could blink. Made him feel like a king that his kiss made her look that way—

“It looks like the sails of a ship unfurling,” she murmured dreamily as they walked and she stared at the stainless steel curves of the Pritzker Pavilion, the enormous outdoor band shell that was the centerpiece of Millennium Park.

“That’s a good description, actually,” Finn said as he glanced at the pavilion, glad to focus his attention elsewhere than on Kitten’s big, sexy eyes and lust-flushed pink cheeks. “A ship’s beauty is a consequence of its function. Frank Gehry, the architect, might have pushed the aesthetics a bit to get the effect for the Pritzker Pavilion but everything on that band shell serves a purpose. See that?” he asked as he nodded at the intricate trellis of stainless steel pipe that domed the open air seats and lawn.

“It’s the lighting system, isn’t it?”

“There are lights on it, yes, but the entire structure is primarily a very sophisticated sound system. Gehry designed it to distribute and enhance the sound from the stage across the huge area of this lawn. The audience gets amazing sound from the stage but the entire structure, including the bridge over there,” he nodded at the stainless steel bridge that serpentined across Columbus Drive, “was also designed to keep urban sounds
out
of the park.”

“Awesome,” Esa muttered as she studied the modern structure. Her speculative glance transferred to Finn. “How come you know so much about it?”

“How does a guy who breaks up concrete at the side of the road know anything about world-class architecture and engineering, you mean?”

“
No
,” Esa retorted, clearly stung by the sarcasm he hadn’t successfully kept out of his tone. “I didn’t mean it like that at all. I guessed from some of the stuff I saw in your condo that you knew about architecture and design and stuff. I was just wondering where you learned it.”

“Building viaducts and roads might not be pavilions and bridges but they’re all in the same ballpark.” He glanced once more, longingly, at the ultra-sleek structure. “We can’t all have the high-profile gigs,” he added in a flat tone that didn’t invite further inquiry.

He was glad that Kitten didn’t pursue the matter when he briskly suggested that they go eat their lunch.

Their picnic was delicious, especially spiced as it was with Finn’s warm, amused glances as she consumed it with relish.

“It must be at least eighty degrees. I was thinking about…” Finn stilled when Esa reached out and spontaneously wiped a stream of peach juice from his chin. Her eyes snapped up to meet his gaze when she realized what she’d done.

“Giving the fountain a try myself, I’m getting so warm,” he finished huskily.

“Sorry,” Esa said as she removed her fingertip from his skin. She took another sip of wine to calm her nerves.

For the most part, she found Finn to be an easygoing, fun companion. He had a rich supply of entertaining stories, which usually involved some colorful character from his large extended family winding up in some improbable and inevitably hilarious situation. Esa realized that she’d just spent almost two hours with him, however, and wasn’t that much closer to knowing about Finn the man, except that he obviously loved his family like nuts.

It only made him exponentially more attractive to her. Not that he needed the extra help in that arena.

“There’s nothing to apologize for. I grant you free rights to touch me anytime you like.” He grabbed the hand that had just been stroking him, pressed his thumb into the center of her palm so that her fingers uncurled and bent his golden head to plant a warm kiss where his thumb had just been.

Esa shivered despite the heat that flooded her.

“Is that right?” she asked with forced casualness as she firmly extricated her hand from his grasp and leaned back in the grass. She reached into the paper sack and grabbed her peach in order to busy her hands while he studied her through narrowed eyelids. Despite her ease with Finn, her intense sexual attraction to him made her wary. Her body had never responded so wholeheartedly to any of her serious boyfriends in the past. It confused her to the point of feeling downright threatened that a weekend fling evoked such a reaction from her.

Although Esa had never been a very accomplished tease, she found it surprisingly easy to flirt with Finn. Every time she began to do so quite naturally, however, an alarm started blaring in her brain, warning her that she was behaving precisely in the shallow, promiscuous manner that he expected of her. Resentment would inevitably follow.

Why did men always have to be so predictable in the type of woman they wanted?

“Yeah, that’s right,” Finn replied. His handsome mouth twisted into a frown before he took another bite out of his peach, unashamedly letting the juice run down his chin again for a few seconds before he used his napkin to wipe it off. “I’ve never known a woman who runs as hot and cold as you, Kitten.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Esa replied airily as she watched the children splash and frolic in the fountain.

“Yes you do. You’re giving me ‘come and get me looks’ one second and throwing poison darts at me with your next glance. Do you want to be here with me or not?”

Esa’s lips fell open at his forceful question. “Yes,” she replied honestly before she had the chance to censor her answer.

“Good.” Finn paused before he resumed chewing a mouthful of peach slowly. “I apologize for that…earlier.”

Esa’s mouth fell open in amazement. “What are you talking about?”

“When I got so defensive about my job.” He set the juicy peach on top of a paper sack and wiped his hands on the grass with an impatient gesture. “My fiancée just recently left me because I decided to sell my shares in the engineering firm I’d started downtown and run the family construction business after my father died. I guess I’m still a little sore about it. Didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

Esa swallowed and set down her own peach. Something about the flat, emotionless quality of his voice made her want to reach out and touch him, comfort him. Jeez, he was fresh out of a breakup from a serious relationship with a woman who sounded like a real loser. How could she have left him during such a difficult time in his life?

And this all explained why he wasn’t interested in anything but a fun, no-strings-attached fling. Finn undoubtedly was looking for an escape from the recent-breakup-blues. Esa herself had engaged in a few similar, short-lasted euphoric affairs in her past. Sex could be a terrific balm to a scarred heart and wounded self-esteem, especially
great
sex.

Even though the realization that Finn was definitely unavailable in any emotional sense made Esa feel a little sad, she caught his eye and gave him a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. You don’t owe me any apologies.”

He grinned. “My mother would disagree. She drilled it in to me to apologize for my occasional rudeness.” He suddenly stood. “Come on, take off your shoes and let’s go for a wade in the water. My hands are all sticky. I want to rinse them off.”

Esa was doubtful about his order but she was grinning hugely by the time she walked into the shallow water of the fountain. “It didn’t think it would be so cold,” she told Finn between irrepressible giggles as she stood in the midst of dozens of capering children.

He paused in the action of rolling up the pant legs of his jeans and just stared at her for a second. Before she could guess what he was thinking he walked into the water with a determined expression on his face. He turned her around so that her back was pressed into his chest and forced her toward one of the two transparent fifty foot tower-fountains. Behind the glass bricks an enormous video screen scrolled through thousands of Chicagoan faces. Every five minutes or so one of the faces would purse its lips and a thick fountain of water would shoot from its mouth at the same time that sheets of water would flood down the towers.

Which, given the evidence of the shouting, jumping children that surrounded Finn and her, was about to happen at any second.

“
No,
Finn, it’s about to—”

The fountain gushed with water, sheets of it pounding off the glass sides of the tower and splashing onto Esa’s face.

Splashing onto Esa’s
everywhere.

“Oh!” she wailed as she clenched her eyes closed and water soaked her. When the fountain stopped cascading torrents a few moments later she opened her mouth to shriek a reprimand at Finn, but he stopped her by pressing his mouth to her ear.

“Sorry. I go a little nuts when I hear you laugh.”

Her eyes went wide at that sweet, sexy comment being whispered in her ear. She inhaled his scent. She forced herself to ignore the effect that he always had on her but she wasn’t very successful.

“I-I’m soaking wet,” she moaned. As miserable as she knew she
should
be by her predicament, she still couldn’t seem to focus on it with Finn’s long, hard body pressed against her backside.

“I know,” he said softly as he opened one large hand over her abdomen and pressed her back into his length. Even though Esa was drenched in cold water, heat flooded her cheeks. She clenched her thighs together tightly against a growing ache between them when he encircled her ribs, cradling the undersides of her breasts on his forearm.

“You don’t know anything,” she pouted halfheartedly. “You used me to block you from the water. You’re almost completely dry. That’s not fair.”

“You want to play fair?” he asked as he transferred his mouth to her neck. Esa leaned her head over to give him better access. He moved his forearm ever-so-subtly, stroking the tender, sensitive skin of her lower breasts. Her nipples pulled tight inside her bra. She turned her head, instinctively seeking out his warm, supple lips, wanting…no,
craving
them against her own.

“Yes,” she managed to say when he began to place warm, beguiling kisses on her lips. “But I want you to play fair too.”

“Fine,” Finn whispered. His blue eyes gleamed as he watched her and deliberately bit her lower lip with his white front teeth. Esa groaned and squirmed against him but he held her firmly. “Then come back with me to my condo so I can finish what you never let me start last night. We’ll both feel relieved afterward. Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Esa admitted before they came together in a quick, scorching kiss.

That’s exactly what she needed—relief from this raging fever that Finn had ignited in her body. She felt as if she’d never had much of a choice in the matter. What Finn did to her was like encountering a force of nature. Better just to let the fire blaze until it fizzled out of its own accord.

“Kitten…how come you taste so damn good?” he mumbled gruffly when he released her mouth a moment later.

“Uh, Finn?” she asked dazedly as she looked up at him.

“Umm hmm,” he murmured, his gaze still glued on her lips in a manner that made it difficult for Esa to concentrate. But this was too important to let pass.

“My-my real name is Esa. Kitten is—a professional name.”

He stared at her for a long moment, making her wonder if his piercing blue eyes were dredging the depths of her lying soul.

“Esa. That’s a pretty name,” he finally said softly. He grabbed her hand and led her out of the fountain.

Esa followed him eagerly.
Now
was all that mattered, she told herself. Didn’t she deserve a night of guilt-free, fantastic sex?

She’d deal with the inevitable damage come morning.