Mutely, she shook her head. While he’d been busy selecting a truffle, Natasha seemed to have noticed that Damon was almost naked. Except for his loose, hip-riding pants, he
was
naked. He’d forgone his usual boxer briefs tonight, deliberately opting to wear as little as possible now that he no longer had to strive for decorum or show respect for Paul’s primacy here.
Because Paul didn’t have primacy here; tonight, Damon did.
To prove it, he swept his gaze boldly over Natasha’s body. He took in her long, soft-looking legs and her scantily covered thighs. He looked at her hips and her nipped-in waist. He gazed at her breasts and her shoulders, at her face and her hair... .
He swerved back to her breasts, drawn to the faint shadow of cleavage there and the unmistakable beading of her nipples displayed by her tiny, lightweight gown. Natasha’s robe had fallen open during her truffle-eating escapade, Damon noticed, and the garment beneath it wasn’t much more than a silky scrap of floral fabric. Those skinny straps at her shoulders would probably snap if he looked at them too roughly. He approved. He intended to try out his theory at the earliest opportunity.
But first ...
“If you don’t eat it,” Damon said as he offered her the chocolate again, along with a smile, “I will. Last chance.”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry anymore.” With that said, Natasha seemed to belatedly remember something. She snapped her gaze away from his naked, water-beaded torso, then jerked upright. She draped herself in a suggestive pose. “I mean,” she added in a throaty voice, “I’m not hungry ... for more truffles.”
She was one lascivious eyebrow-waggle away from performing a full hip-swinging, eyelash-batting, ribaldry-packed Mae West routine. This, Damon realized, was Natasha actively being sexy for him, just the way she’d done while sashaying away when they’d met at the bathroom door tonight. While he liked that she was taking the initiative, he couldn’t help feeling that she’d been even
more
irresistible when she hadn’t been trying so hard. Just by being herself, in all her serious and gawky and openhearted and silly glory, Natasha was ... amazing. And sexy.
“I’m hungry,” Natasha purred, “for
you
.”
With a wobbly smile, she lurched upright. She teetered. Her robe slipped off one shoulder, revealing pale skin and the utter flimsiness of her gown’s strap. Experimentally, Damon scowled at it. Sadly, it didn’t cooperatively snap—as he’d imagined it might—beneath the force of his glare alone. He’d have to be more proactive than that. He’d have to kiss Natasha’s bare shoulder, slide his fingertips under that strap, lower it until her gown followed its inevitable trajectory and bared her breasts, too ... .
Damon imagined them, naked and pert, waiting for his hands. He pictured himself touching her, cupping her breasts, slowly rubbing his thumbs over the soft pink crests of her nipples as—
“I want
you
, Damon,” Natasha said, tipsily crashing into him. She pushed her hands on his chest to steady herself, peered in confusion at her palms and spread fingers, then did it again. With woozy intensity, she caressed him. “Mmm. You feel good! And tonight, you’re safe! I can do
whatever
I want with you.”
She was, Damon realized, a little bit drunk on Guinness.
She was also under the impression that he was “safe.”
“I’ve never been accused of being ‘safe’ before,” he said with amusement. He was anything but that—especially now that he knew Natasha was free to be with him. “And as far as doing whatever you want with me goes ... don’t I have any say in that?”
“Sure!” She gazed at his face. “You can say yes. Hey, you shaved.” She rubbed her hand on his jaw. “Feels nice. Too much stubble isn’t good, you know.” She broke off, delivering him another vaudeville-worthy leer. “It chafes your thighs.”
“My thighs?”
“
My
thighs. If you had your head between them
before
you shaved, it would feel
so
...” On the verge of completing that titillating statement, Natasha spied the chocolate in his hand. He’d forgotten to set it aside. Her eyes brightened with glee. “Hey! That’s my other favorite kind of truffle.”
She grabbed his hand. She steered it to her mouth. She gobbled the truffle from his fingers with tipsy enthusiasm.
Then, to Damon’s open-mouthed astonishment, Natasha
licked
the leftover melted chocolate from his fingertips. She moaned with enjoyment, then moved on to lap up another pesky chocolate smudge from a different finger. By the time she popped his whole index finger in her mouth to suck up
all
the sweetness there, Damon suddenly wished chocolate had a much lower melting point.
He also wished Natasha wasn’t quite so drunk. He couldn’t seduce her properly if she wouldn’t even remember it tomorrow.
“Exactly how much Guinness have you had?” he asked.
“Mmm.” Her mumbled, incoherent reply vibrated against his finger. He felt that vibration all the way to his groin. There, it awakened his already aroused instincts to take what Natasha was offering and make the most of it. His pants suddenly felt a lot less loose ... especially once Natasha gave another, “Mm-
mmm
.”
Energetically, she swiped his finger clean with her tongue. Damon couldn’t help drawing a sensory parallel between the way her mouth felt—and looked—on his finger, and the way it would look if she grabbed his cock, lowered her head, took him in—
“About twice as much as usual,” Natasha answered, having casually quit sucking his finger. She gave him a sparkly-eyed look, then daintily dabbed her finger at the corner of her mouth as though she’d just enjoyed a delicacy. She smiled. “Which means two.
Two
big bottles of Guinness.” Helpfully, Natasha held up two fingers in a V shape. “But that doesn’t mean I’m
drunk
, Damon. I just wanted to cut loose a little. You know—to have fun! To make the most of having you here, before you pick one of those farmers market floozies instead of me.” She gave a mighty frown. “You know it’s going to happen, because—”
“It’s not going to happen.”
Damon didn’t want to have this conversation. He
really
didn’t want to hear Natasha liken him to her bastard ex-husband, Paul, who must have told Natasha he’d chosen Juanita over her.
He also didn’t want to be reminded of what a jerk he’d been all these years. That only made Damon remember how he’d neglected Natasha without meaning to. Because after all, she’d had a
baby
without him noticing! In hindsight, he
did
recall a long stint they’d spent working remotely, with Damon traveling to open all those international Torrance Chocolates boutiques and Natasha staying behind to “run things” in San Diego; that partly accounted for his obtuseness, as did the fact that she’d deliberately hidden her private life. But Natasha had also endured the breakup of her marriage without Damon detecting a single ripple in her outwardly composed and cheerful demeanor.
It was almost as though, by shutting off his romantic feelings for Natasha on her first memorable day at Torrance Chocolates, Damon had inadvertently become oblivious to the rest of her, too. There had to be a way to make up for that.
Once he found it, he was going to do it. Immediately.
“—because you’ve never even looked twice at me until now,” Natasha rambled on, “and now you’re only doing it because you need me to help you, and that won’t last long because I can tell that your good luck is on the rebound already, which means the clock is ticking, and I have to get busy making you do what I want before I lose my chance.
That’s
why I had two bottles!”
Only one part of that semi-slurred declaration seemed relevant to Damon just then. Only one part was actionable in that moment. “So what do you want?” he asked, feeling a sizzle of anticipation as he did. “What do you want to make me do?”
“First?” Natasha raised her face to his. “Kiss me.”
It sounded like a good idea. And because Damon felt sorry for the way Natasha must have felt when her marriage had broken up, and because he knew damn well that
he
hadn’t been there for her when it had happened, and because now he knew that he’d let her down unforgivably then and so many times later, Damon decided to add a little something extra when he agreed to Natasha’s demand—when he cupped her jaw in his hand, pulled her closer, then brought his mouth to hers.
He added
love
to the mix when he kissed her again. Because he
did
love Natasha, Damon realized in that crazy, mixed-up moment of kissing and breathing and clinging and hoping. He loved her in the way he used to love parties and tequila. He loved her irrefutably. Irresistibly. Irrationally. And exactly like those intoxicating activities had done, kissing Natasha made him feel drunk with possibility ... with ravaging hunger for more.
There had never been enough of anything to satisfy him, Damon realized in that moment. Because you could never get enough of the things you didn’t truly want and didn’t genuinely need. You could never get enough of substitutes for the real things in life. But with Natasha, Damon
did
want. He
did
need.
With Natasha, there was hope for more, he realized as he held her. There was hope for everything—hope that if he kissed her again, if he brought his other hand to her other jaw and held her steady while he opened his mouth still wider to kiss her and kiss her, everything would be all right somehow.
And it was. It was better than all right. Feeling buzzed and urgent and weirdly overheated, Damon kissed her again.
He slid his hands to the back of her head, tangling her silky hair, losing himself in her warm, wet mouth, knowing that this was more than just a kiss. It was a beginning. It was him telling her that he needed her, that he
wanted
her, that he recognized her wicked Mae West and met her with his best Cary Grant, note for note.
Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?
So Damon did. He saw Natasha through all the wonder and solemnity and extra-hot passion she aroused in him. When he finally leaned back, Natasha was gazing at him with stars in her eyes. Or maybe that was all the stout she’d drunk. Either way, she looked pretty and sexy and enthralled. While Damon was accustomed to pretty women looking at him, and sexy women propositioning him, and all women liking to be with him, what he
wasn’t
used to was having all those things at once from Natasha.
The effect almost bowled him over. He’d waited much too long to experience this. Next to this, everything else felt meaningless. All he wanted was Natasha, in his arms, smiling at him and touching him and—
“Second,” she announced, “undress me.”
Damon’s whole body leaped with readiness. It wouldn’t take much to undress her; already her clothes were threatening to fall off. It was almost as though the universe wanted them to be together this way—wanted them to love and be loved, together.
“Third,” she demanded impatiently, “make love to me!”
“Any time.” Damon smiled. He stroked her cheek. “Anywhere.” He paused. “But you seem a little tipsy, and I—”
I
want to stop being an inconsiderate jerk and become a good man.
For you
.
Before he could tell her that—before he could do so much as take a breath and organize his thoughts—Natasha did it for him.
“Right now,” she clarified with a nod. “Right here.”
To emphasize her point, Natasha rubbed herself against him, full-body style. She clapped her arms around him, then gave his ass a lusty squeeze. “Maybe you’re confused,” she said, nuzzling his jaw. “If you won’t undress
me
, I’ll have to undress
you
.”
Her fingers grappled with his drawstring pants. Drunkenly, Natasha weaved sideways, squinting at the knot he’d tied. Damon closed his eyes, trying to resist a powerful urge to help her undress him.
The old selfish him would have taken advantage of Natasha, Damon knew, regardless of her drunken state. The old live-for-the-moment him wouldn’t have hesitated for a nanosecond.
Now, Damon
was
hesitating. It wasn’t that Natasha wasn’t willing. She was. It wasn’t that
he
wasn’t willing. He was! He could barely think straight because so much blood had rushed to his groin, ably proving his readiness. It wasn’t that Damon hadn’t yet double-checked to make sure Milo was fast asleep.
Because he had. Milo was.
The coast couldn’t have been more clear.
But Damon was trying to behave, he reminded himself. He was trying to be good. He was trying, for once, to do the right thing where Natasha was concerned. But all at once, Damon wasn’t sure what the right thing was. Love her? Leave her alone? Make her a sandwich? Now more than ever, he wasn’t at all lucid.
“I’ll have to undress
you
!” Natasha repeated with over-the-top, bawdy zeal. “Just as soon as I figure out this weird zipper.” She frowned at his drawstring ties. “Unzip, damn it!”
Her command was about as effective at undressing him as Damon’s glower had been at breaking her flimsy strap.
With a gentle smile, Damon took her hand. “You should probably wait until later to make me your love slave,” he said. “Because right now, you seem a little intoxicated.”
“No, I’m doing it
tonight
,” Natasha insisted. “Anyway, you’re already my love slave.” She sounded proud of that. “You already did the first thing I asked.” Teasingly, Natasha walked her fingers up Damon’s chest. She stroked him there. “You kissed me. It’s only a matter of time before you do
everything
I want.”
“Nope.” Damon felt committed. This was important.
Natasha
was important. Starting off on the right foot was important. He could wait until she was a little less likely to forget the whole incredible experience. He hauled in a fortifying breath. “Not tonight. Tonight, I’m putting you straight to bed.”
“But
that’s
what I
want
you to do!” Wavering in his arms, Natasha beamed at him in overt, tipsy triumph. “See?
I’m
in control of you now. I’m
excellent
at being in charge.”