Friends to Lovers (6 page)

“Don’t get me wrong.” Daphne guzzled half her glass in a single swallow. “Foreplay’s great. Love it.” Her gaze skittered around the room, looking everywhere but at him. Had she drank too much coffee this afternoon? She seemed all hopped up. “What I don’t like is all the gamesmanship leading up to a lip-lock.”

“I prefer to think of it as a dance.” He picked up the deep-purple fruit, feeling the contrast between the slightly sticky skin and its moist flesh. Slowly he lifted it, waiting until Daphne’s eyes latched on before bringing it to hover even with her lips. She’d swiped red gloss across them, and they looked as full and plump as the fig.

More often than he liked, Gib caught himself thinking wholly inappropriate thoughts about Daphne’s lips. As a friend, he respected her too much to consciously crave a taste of her luscious mouth. Sexy, smart-aleck Daphne. The only woman he’d ever encountered seemingly immune to his quick charm and quicker smile. But the lust snuck up on him unannounced, like fog stealing through the night. He’d have to be three days in his grave not to notice her earthy, sensuous beauty. So tonight he could partially give in to the simmering curiosity he’d ignored over the years, and have a little otherwise-forbidden fun with her.

Her lips parted, and he rubbed the fig along the bee-stung bottom lip until she opened enough for him to pop it in. “Well? Does it work for you? Are you ready to straddle me and go at it like a pair of minx?”

She finished chewing, eyes hooded. “Not quite yet.”

“Ah, well. My turn, then.” Gib nudged the plate toward her.

“What?” With the precision of a laser sight on a rifle, her gaze whipped back up to his face.

“You have to feed me. This is finger food. Be Daisy, a woman on the cusp of possessing the man she so greatly desires. Touch the food, all the while pretending that you’re touching me. Use the food to seduce me.” Knowing she’d never back down from a challenge, Gib leaned back in his chair with a smirk. “If you can, that is.”

The determined jut of Daphne’s chin told him she’d rise to his teasing bait. “Not a problem, Graham.” She lingered over his fake name, dropping to almost a whisper. Then she reached across him for the next card by two wine goblets. “‘Red Burgundy mixed with ginger, cloves, vanilla and sugar is known as the potent Hippocras aphrodisiac. Vanilla in particular is believed to increase lust.’”

“I am partial to vanilla pudding.” Gib swallowed a laugh. He could practically see the cogs turning in her head, trying to figure out how to make him crack. This felt more like a strategic chess match than a seduction. Either way, he was having scads of fun.

Daphne shifted until she knelt on her chair. She squinted for a second, as though trying to get a read on a wary target. After hitching in a quick breath, she picked up the goblet. “Tip your head back and close your eyes.”

“Why?” Last summer, after working nine days straight during the political convention, he’d fallen asleep on her couch during an
Iron Man
marathon. Her soft heart allowed him to nap there for four hours, undisturbed. Her wicked streak, however, woke him up by pouring a tumbler of ice water over his head. Gib was no fool, about to fall for the same trick twice. “Play nice, Daph.”

“It’s Daisy,” she corrected. Her shirt slid off one shoulder as she raised her arm to bring the goblet nearer. Suddenly there was a whole lot of creamy skin a breath away from his face. The long, perfect line of her neck, the hollow of her collarbone—on any other woman, he’d be unable to resist the urge to map a trail of kisses along it. Gib gripped the edges of his chair. Hard. And thanked God he’d spread a napkin over his lap. Otherwise she’d see about eight rock-solid inches of wholly unsuitable reaction to her proximity tenting his trousers. Now that he’d acknowledged—just for tonight—his attraction to her, the intensity of it overwhelmed him.

“Now close your eyes, or the dance is over.”

What did she have planned? Closing his eyes, he tipped his head against the high, tufted chair back and waited. A droplet of liquid hit the seam of his lips, and Gib flicked out his tongue to catch it. The rich darkness of wine swirled with spices warmed his taste buds. The feel of her finger grazing the tip of his tongue shot heat straight to his cock. Gib’s eyes flew open.

“Tastes good,” he said.

Daphne smiled, a Mona Lisa smile, both innocent and mysterious. Then she dipped her finger back in the wineglass and rubbed it against his lips once more. “Does it taste like lust?”

It tasted like eight kinds of trouble. Like there should be sirens blaring and red lights flashing. “Tastes more like Christmas, I’d say.” He sat up straight again, and she slid back onto her chair. Now he had space to breathe without inhaling the citrus scent of her. The scent as bright as her hair, and as cheerful as her smile. She so rarely wore perfume, not wanting to conflict with the aromas of all her flowers at work. Gib always noticed when she spritzed herself with the sunny scent. “But I wouldn’t want to pass judgment without its proper food pairing.”

“Good point. Let’s try everything once, make our notes for Mira and then we can go back to our favorites.”

“Did you pre-snack or something? This is dinner. I’m eating everything in sight, favorite or not.” He grabbed the nearest plate. Pushing Daphne to pretend-seduce him might have been a bit wrongheaded. This evening was supposed to be nothing more than a bit of playacting. There’d been no way to anticipate Daphne actually turning him on. Whatever she set her mind to, she accomplished. He’d always admired that mix of bullheadedness and perseverance in her.

“Here we’ve got goat cheese drizzled with honey on a baguette. ‘Honey was used by the Egyptians as a cure for impotence. Medieval honeymooners drank honeyed wine to sweeten their marriage.’”

“I don’t care how good it tastes. Mira can’t use this.”

“Why not?”

“Being forced to think about impotence and marriage in the middle of foreplay demolishes a man’s amorous intentions. You might as well stick his dick into a bucket of ice.” He jammed a piece of bread into his mouth. Once you overlooked the description, the flavors melted together into an amalgam of sweet, creamy tanginess.

“Why are men so allergic to the slightest mention of marriage?”

“Why are women so single-minded about the topic?”

Daphne popped a piece of bread into her mouth and chewed slowly. “Mmm, that’s good.” It almost came out a purr. Did she do that on purpose? Make sexy noises over a simple, three-bloody-ingredient hors d’oeuvre? Was her end goal now to drive him stark-raving mad with desire? Damned if he’d let her take the upper hand.

Picking up the goblet, Gib drank deeply, taking a moment to switch gears. He’d ease off the sexual throttle for now, let her get comfortable with him again, and then he’d go in for the kill. What topic could clear the tension from the room? Ah, nothing would relax her more than talking about her great passion in life.

“I see you’ve got a new arrangement on the table.” Gib took another sip, then waved his hand at the low centerpiece. “Tell me about these flowers. Do they have a hidden meaning?”

“Yes. Not that all my arrangements do. The language of flowers isn’t that vast.”

“There’s no flower that says
I
had a crappy day and really need a glass of wine?
”

“Much like Latin, I’m afraid it’s a dead language.”

“You should think about changing that. Imagine how much extra you could charge for carnations if you convinced people they were the official
sorry you lost your cell phone for the fifth time
flower.”

Daphne chortled and popped another fig. “Gibson Moore, you are a marketing genius. I swear, your talents are wasted at that hotel.”

“As long as they pay me well enough, I’m good with the status quo. So, these flowers?” he prompted.

“I had some orange lilies in the shop left over from the wedding at the Cavendish. And orange lilies just happen to signify desire and passion. With our plans to attack romance head-on tonight, I was compelled to bring them home. But lilies stuffed all alone in a vase either look like a funeral or Easter. So I made a nest for them out of balsam pine boughs, signifying ardent love. The frilly green stuffed in between the blossoms is coriander, for lust. I know it’s silly. But I have fun with it.”

“How’d you even find out about such a dead language?”

“My mother.”

“Was she a florist, too?”

“No, just desperate to find a way to cheer me up.”

“I don’t understand.”

“School didn’t go so well for me at first. My teachers, and my parents, swore I was smart, but I couldn’t do the simplest things. Luckily, it didn’t take too many years for them to figure out I had dyslexia.”

He couldn’t believe she hadn’t revealed that in all the years they’d known each other. Gib never would’ve guessed. His respect for her as a businesswoman, already sky-high, shot up into the stratosphere. “Wow, I had no idea.”

“Good. That means that years of practice and frustration paid off. There’s no cure, but if you work hard enough, you can figure out ways around it. Tough going at the start, though. Just because you’re diagnosed doesn’t mean there’s a magic pill to fix it. I still felt like the stupidest person in the room most of the time. I was angry, and I was a handful. My mom talked to my tutor, my teacher, my therapist, but they all just said everything would work out in time. That’s when Mom remembered hearing about a flower language. We learned it together. I was so thrilled there was an entire vocabulary without words. Within days I memorized it by rote. And got the self-confidence boost I needed to start to make real progress.”

“Quite a story.”

“Yeah. I had a great mom.” Turning to skewer him with that laserlike gaze, she said, “You never mention your mother.”

“That’s right. Very observant of you. And you know what I observe? There’s one more appetizer that goes with this wine.”

“Can’t we skip right to the main course? It looks like lobster salad. I love lobster.”

“Lobster and fennel salad, to be precise. But no, we can’t skip ahead. There’s a different drink for that course. Pink, again, I see.”

“What, you’d prefer a Blue Hawaiian, so you can feel masculine?”

“That drink comes with a half-pound of fruit as a garnish. There’s nothing masculine about it.”

“Fine. Asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. ‘Three courses of asparagus were served to nineteenth-century bridegrooms due to its reputed aphrodisiac powers, most likely because of its phallic shape.’”

“There she goes, hinting at marriage again. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Mira was trying to sell engagement rings along with this picnic.”

“Hush.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s off-putting. When I see something described as a miniature penis, I’m not going to be in the mood to stick it in my mouth.”

“Fine. I’ll do it myself.” Daphne picked up the asparagus spear and held it between her fingers like a cigarette. “Whoops! I almost forgot about my character. Daisy will now commence to feed herself, as Graham’s apparently not feeling up to the task.”

Once again, she pursed those red lips into a tight circle. Gib’s heart lurched. That must be what happened when all the blood drained out of it in a single pump and relocated south of his belt. She bit off the tip, staring at him like a master hypnotist. “Salty. Delicious. Sure you don’t want a bite?”

Christ, he wanted more than a bite. Gib yanked the asparagus out of her hand and dropped it back on the plate. Then, his own glass already drained, he reached for Daphne’s wine and finished it off.

“What’s wrong? Gib, you can’t stop now. You have to sample everything.”

“You’re right. I do.” He didn’t care that it was stupid, and idiotic, and inappropriate and complicated. All he cared about at that moment was tasting her. So he did.

Gib pushed out of his chair and kicked it behind him, out of the way. Then he sank to his knees and framed Daphne’s face with his hands. The face he’d stared into a million times. He knew the glacier-blue tint to her eyes. He knew intimately each one of her smiles, and the different degrees of each. He knew the pert tilt to her nose. But tonight he looked at the amalgam of all those parts, and saw a deeply beautiful woman who’d completely entranced him.

Where to begin? In the normal course of a seduction, he’d go slow, to tease both of them. A few light butterfly kisses just below her eyes, following the slash of her cheekbone, now as red as the spiced wine. Or maybe a nuzzle at the sensitive curve where her graceful neck connected to her smooth shoulders. If they were both in a playful mood, he’d rip that ugly flannel shirt apart right down the front, and bury himself in the valley between her breasts. Not tonight, though. They’d teased each other enough. So he dipped his head and took her glossy lips.

Daphne opened for him eagerly, as though they’d kissed a hundred times already. They latched on to each other hungrily. Gib couldn’t believe he’d thought the champagne sweet, and the honey even sweeter. Nothing they’d tasted tonight compared to the singular sweetness of her kiss. And yet, even as he thought that, as she fell forward into his arms and straddled him, the sweetness disappeared.

Passion, raw and demanding, replaced it. Gib tried to take in the exquisite feeling of her thighs across his. The way the notch between her legs rubbed against him as her firm, wondrous breasts rubbed against his chest. But really, all he could concentrate on was the dark heat of her mouth. The slickness as her tongue twined with his as he explored her mouth. Finding just where to lick and nip to make her breath catch.

Driven by the need to make her purr again, he shifted his hands down to hold her close in a proper embrace. As he settled them loosely at her waist, a memory settled in place as well. Déjà vu, but a hundred times more real. He’d held her body like this before. Well, without the straddling. Just the embrace and the kiss. Gib would swear to it on every designer suit in his closet. He’d kissed this woman, held this body not two nights again, in a pitch-dark ballroom.

The memory cemented itself on top of the reality, like placing a negative on top of a printed photo. The match was seamless. Daphne Lovell, his Daphne, was his Cinderella. Gib pushed her back to stare at her in shock.