Love Me Tonight - Four Erotic Romance Stories for Valentine's Day - Boxed Set (9 page)

I’m flying over the top of the rapids, but I’m not worried about drowning. He’s holding me tight, and we’re just floating - floating in the sensations of really damn good sex, had while I’m wearing red stilettos in a Paris shoe store.

When I can’t go any longer because my sensitive spots have become too sensitive, I move to get off of him.

He holds me tighter. “Wait. Don’t go yet.” He pulls me down for a kiss. It’s not like the others this time; it’s more tender. Softer. Caring.

“Thank you,” he says, tugging on my bottom lip a little before licking it.

“Thank
you
.” I kiss him once quickly before getting up. I step out of the shoes and look around on the floor for my clothes. The heady delusions brought on by our passion begin to fade, and now I just feel a little awkward. He said a bunch of things in the heat of the moment that I’m sure he didn’t mean, and I don’t want him to start making up excuses about how he can’t go through with it, or worse - pretend he never said it. I rush to get dressed.

“Well,” I say when I’ve got all my clothes on again, “I really need to get going. Thanks so much for showing me around and for… this. This evening. I mean, I’m never going to forget it.”

He freezes in the middle of buttoning up his shirt. “Wait a minute. What?”

“Um, what do you mean, what?”

He abandons getting dressed and walks over to me, taking my hands in his. “What do you mean, you need to get going? Where? I thought you didn’t have plans yet.” He sounds hurt.

“Well, I do. I mean, I didn’t, but I should. I don’t now, but I should.” I sigh heavily and hang my head. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little confused now.”

He lifts my chin with his finger and kisses me tenderly on the lips. “Please don’t go. Not without me, anyway. And not without those red shoes.” He gestures at the mess we made on the floor with the boxes and paper.

“I can’t buy those shoes, I already told you.”

“I’m buying them for you. And the leopard ones, too. I want to see them on you outside.”

I gasp. “I can’t let you do that!” He’s talking about shoes that have the same value as my used Corolla.

“Why not? Are you married?” He steps back, sounding suspicious.

“No, of course I’m not married. Would I have done this with you if I were?” I can’t believe he would think that of me. I cross my arms, a little offended.

“No,” he says, pulling me to him, forcing me to hug him back. “I didn’t really think that. But I can’t imagine any other reason why you’d say I can’t buy these for you. They’re a gift. You can wear them out to dinner tomorrow when I take you out.”

“You’re not serious,” I say, looking over his shoulder at the dark wall.

He sighs and lets me go. Striding over to the lights, he reaches them and flicks them on. “Look at me,” he says as he comes back to stand in front of me.

I stare into his eyes. He’s as serious as I’ve ever seen him.

“I mean this. I want you to spend the week with me. Let me show you this town and then the small villages near my winery. It’s a magical place. You’ve never seen anything like it, I guarantee it.”

“But why? Why would you go to all that trouble just for me?”

He frowns. “You’re a funny girl, Lilly Rose. I would think the answer to that question is pretty damn obvious.”

“Well, it’s not. Not to me.” Doubts are attacking me from every front.
This can’t be real. This doesn’t happen to girls like me. It’s a joke, a trick, a hallucination.

“Do I need to spell it out for you?” he asks, leaning down and kissing me again.

It makes me dizzy it’s so sweet.

“Yes,” I whisper, “spell it out for me.”

“Paris is the city of love. Don’t you believe in love at first sight?”

I smile. And then I laugh. I tip my head back with it, not really believing I heard those words coming out of his mouth.

“What? Why’s that so funny?” he asks.

I squeeze him hard to me, answering over his shoulder. “It’s not funny. It’s wonderful. I do believe in it. I just never thought it could happen to me.”

“Me neither. But I’ve learned one thing about myself over the years: When something takes you like this… sweeps you off your feet and sends you to another place, even when it doesn’t make any sense, you just have to go with it and see where it will take you.”

I pull away and look into his eyes. He totally means it; I can tell.

“I like your attitude.” I smile like a lunatic. I’m so happy right now. This feels right. It feels crazy, but it feels right all the way to my bones.

“Then say you’ll stay with me.” He brushes a stray hair away from my face, kissing the spot where it used to be. “Let me spoil you. Let me treat you like a queen while you’re here in France.”

I nod once, my decision made with the ease of a true adventurer. “Okay, fine. I’ll do it.”

He picks me up and swings me in a big circle. I whoop with laughter over not only the tickling sensations in my stomach, but also the tingling that feels suspiciously like love as it works its way into my heart.

Author's Note - Kandi Kayne

It’s been a blast writing this story, and I sincerely appreciate your readership. If you have the time, I’d love to have you review the book on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com. Help more readers find me and the other great authors at Orly Press by sharing your thoughts and opinions! Oh, and please don’t forget to stop by
my Facebook page
. I
adore
chatting with my readers. xoxo

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kandi Kayne is the author of the erotic romance series
Red Hot Rose
, featuring Rose DuPont and Alex Blackstone, and she has several other series in the works to be published in 2013. She’s an American girl and bona fide book fanatic residing in various places including New York, California, Florida, and Paris. She writes wherever she happens to be at the time, and her laptop is never far from her side. She is married to the sexiest man to ever wear a kilt and has three children who have no idea she writes erotic romances novels for a living.

She nearly turned around and left the salon when she realized who was going to cut her hair. Over the phone, she'd mis-heard the name as
Andrea
, and had not been expecting a man, let alone a dashingly handsome one with silver hair and bright, blue eyes.

“I'm Andrew,” he said, reaching to shake her hand. His palm was as warm as his tone, as wide as his smile, and as hot as skin could be. She'd not felt the warmth of a man's touch in many years, and the heat coursed through her body, fanning the pilot light she'd thought blown out years ago, along with the light in her eyes.

“Tessa,” she said.

“Beautiful name,” he murmured as he led her to the hair washing station.

Her heart beat faster and faster as he ran the warm water through her long hair and then massaged her scalp, the shampoo's smell sweet and biting.

He wore a black, button-down shirt, rolled up to the elbows to reveal sinuous forearms with no shortage of muscles. His hair was both white and gray, blending into silver, short on the sides, and spiked in the middle. If Tessa had to guess, she'd say they were the same age, but that life had gone easier on Andrew. His glistening blue eyes spoke not of tragedy, and he hummed along with the song playing over the salon's speakers.

Tessa would give anything to be so light of heart, to take his jacket and his smile and wear them as her own, in a new life. Could she be so free? Tomorrow. There was always tomorrow.

With lightly-toweled hair falling to her shoulders, she followed him to the chair and lowered her eyes so she didn't have to see the reflection of a frumpy old woman in the mirror. She should have worn lipstick.

His tone as casual as an old friend's, he said, “It's been a while, hasn't it?”

She glanced up and met his blue eyes in the mirror, in sharp focus as everything else whirled amidst the hustle of the noisy salon.

“A year?” he asked. “Since the last time you dyed your hair? Looks like you were using a dark brown, but it's turned ginger on you. And now you're sporting this two-tone look. Very trendy.”

She laughed. “Since when is lack of upkeep trendy?”

He had been grinning, but his expression turned serious. “We can't dye your hair brown. That shade is too dark for your coloring now. You must go lighter.”

“I was thinking of chopping it all off and going natural. I'll embrace my age and start wearing purple, maybe get a bunch of sweaters with sequins on them.”

“Short and natural? You'd look like me, only without the sequined sweaters, of course.”

“Your hair looks great.”

He pulled her damp hair back behind her shoulders and studied her. “Platinum blond,” he said. “To bring out the gold in your lovely brown eyes.”

She squirmed in her seat, suddenly warm, the air around her devoid of oxygen. “If that's what you want, then yes.”

“What do
you
want?”

What did she want? To no longer walk and talk and feel like a widow. To take this man's face between her hands and make him her own, pretending the thick gold band on his ring finger had come from her, and that they were the two souls who shared a lifetime of memories and love.

He was combing her wet hair now, the scratching of the comb's plastic tines the only thing keeping her in this world.

“Sure, platinum. Whatever you think is best,” she said.

He switched the comb for scissors and held out a length of hair. “I'll need to cut it about here to remove everything with the old color. We could strip it out chemically, but I don't want to put you through that.”

A lump rose in her throat. “I've never had my hair that short.”

“Why not?”

She lowered her eyelids and pulled the pain inside her, before people could see. Her husband had loved her hair long, and she'd promised on her wedding night that she'd never cut it short. Of course, her locks had been chestnut brown then, and she'd just started work as a librarian. Wearing her long hair twisted up in a bun had seemed like such a funny cliché—the prim librarian—but her coworkers and the people in town loved it, and everything became a part of the whole of her, back when she'd been whole.

“It's time,” he said. “You'll leave here with platinum hair, and you're going to
love
me for it.”

She could hardly argue with that, so she smiled, and the scissors flashed, and the hair fell away. It all just fell away.