Seduce Me Tonight (25 page)

I was in the dining room of the well-appointed restaurant by six o’clock. I wanted to get some coffee in me before Joe showed up. I wasn’t nervous. At least, I didn’t feel nervous until I was actually sitting there, sipping my coffee and wondering if Joe had changed since I last saw him. I certainly had, I thought, nervously rubbing my right thumb over my left ring finger. There was no ring there – not any more – but a faint tan line remained. I had become cynical the hard way. Trial by fire.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and looked up just in time to see Joe lean in to kiss me. He brushed my cheek rather than my lips, and smiled.

‘Hey, beautiful. Long time no see.’

‘Smooth as ever.’ I smiled. ‘You’re looking good.’

And he was. He’d always had the enviable ability to eat anything he wanted and maintain a lean runner’s body. Not generally my type, even when I had been thinner myself, but for some reason it worked with him. He had a narrow frame that was perfect for the drape of the expensive Italian suits he had coveted in law school and apparently now could afford. But, despite the fancy suit, he was still Joe. His blue eyes still crinkled – actually a little bit more – when he smiled; he still played with his cufflinks and tapped his leg with that nervous energy that said he was ready to
go
, somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was fun. He had been one of the most ambitious young men I’d ever known. I wondered if that had changed.

He sat down across from me and poured a cup of coffee from the French press I had ordered.

‘So, I don’t know whether to ask why the last-minute surprise or why I haven’t seen you in ten years,’ he said finally, after savouring the first sip of his coffee.

I’d always liked the way Joe could immerse himself in an experience. Whether it was coffee or sex, the whole world stopped for the moment he was enjoying it. I smiled, thinking I could learn a thing or two about life from Joe, even now.

‘I’ve been busy,’ I said, keeping my tone light. ‘Work eats up my time.’

He took another long sip of his coffee. ‘I know the feeling, but there’s always time to play.’

Bingo. He was still the same guy. I smiled.

‘Well, my phone wasn’t exactly blowing up with calls from you,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘I heard you got married. I didn’t want to … intrude.’

I could feel my face flush hotly. I should’ve known someone in the grapevine of law-school friends and legal colleagues would have passed the information along. Now I felt like a jackass for not telling him myself.

‘Oh, you heard that, did you?’

‘Read it, actually. I was in Miami – when, five, six years ago? – and came across your wedding announcement in the
Herald
. You were a pretty bride.’ He tilted his head toward my hand.

I shrugged. ‘It was a pretty show. But that’s all it was. I’m divorced now.’

He nodded without comment. This conversation was taking a decidedly non-cheerful turn.

‘But I’m happy and life is good,’ I said brightly. ‘How about you?’

He blinked long and slow, and there was something mildly seductive about it. ‘You know me, love. Still catting around with anyone who’ll have me.’

‘Players play,’ I said, though I wondered when players
stopped
playing. Did they? ‘So, no wifey and rug rats tucked away somewhere?’

‘No.’

I’d expected a joke of the cynical variety, but that was the extent of his response. I shifted nervously and glanced at my watch. We hadn’t even ordered breakfast yet.

‘I, um, I wanted to catch up,’ I said, trying to infuse my words with meaning. ‘I’ve been thinking about you a lot.’

‘Me or my wang?’ he said with a grin, bouncing back to his old, flirty self. ‘As I recall, you liked him even more than me.’

‘Maybe we can get reacquainted and find out?’ The words made me cringe, but I was anxious to get past our pasts and see if there was a chance of something happening. ‘I know you said you’re busy, but maybe dinner tonight?’

‘Why not now?’

So much for working our way up to it. ‘Really? Now?’

He shrugged. ‘Why not? We’re both here, you have a room, I don’t have to be in court until ten. I assume your schedule is flexible?’

I nodded. ‘Somewhat. Lunch meeting with a client,’ I murmured absentmindedly. This felt more like a business deal than a seduction.

‘OK, then,’ he said, standing. ‘We can order room service afterward. Let your client pay for it.’ He flashed me a quick smile as he took my hand.

For some odd reason, I felt like the prey instead of the hunter.

Joe rested his hand on the base of my neck as we walked from the elevator to my room. It felt nice, if proprietary. I wondered how many breakfast ‘dates’ he had – not that it was any of my business. But still, this was just all too smooth … like he did this all the time. I started to ask him and then thought better of it. That wasn’t why I was here. Judging Joe’s sex life had nothing to do with anything. And if not for his proclivities, I might not have called him at all.

‘I’m glad you called,’ he murmured as I swiped the key card in the door, as if reading my mind. He dropped a kiss on the curve of my neck as I let us into the room. ‘I’m looking forward to this.’

I dropped my purse on the vanity in the foyer and turned to him, suddenly uncertain if this was a good idea. ‘Hey, um, I don’t want you to think I just wanted to see you because I wanted to have sex,’ I said.

Liar
, a little voice screamed in my head, but I ignored it. I didn’t want Joe to think he was a piece of meat to me – even though he didn’t seem to mind.

He slipped his arms around my waist and kissed me for the first time in a decade. Despite being married for half of it, I had kissed a lot of men in those in-between years, but I still remembered the way Joe kissed. Soft at first, with increasing intensity. Like him. So easy-going on the surface, but with a heat and drive like no other. My train of thought was immediately derailed as he pressed his body against me, moulding my curves to his planes.

‘Sweetheart, you don’t have to explain anything to me,’ he said, cupping my ass in his hands. ‘Once a man whore, always a man whore, right?’

I was thrown into an emotional and physical conflict. My body was responding to his touch, the press of his erection against my belly, his fingers kneading the cheeks of my ass. My mind, though, was horrified that he thought of himself as just a piece of ass – or of me as someone who would treat him that way. The fact that I was actually treating him that way, or had intended to, didn’t really matter.

Not without some reluctance, I pulled away from him and took a few steps back. That helped clear my head, even if it did nothing to ease the dull throb in my cunt. I licked my bottom lip, already swollen and tender from his rough kisses.

‘Joe, you don’t seriously feel that way, do you?’ I asked, hearing how breathless I sounded. ‘I don’t think you’re a … a man whore and I didn’t want to see you just for sex.’

He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back, bracing himself on his elbows. The position perfectly framed the erection straining against the front of his expensive trousers.

‘Everyone knows I’m a man whore, love. I’m who you call when you need to get your pipes cleaned,’ he said. He was smiling, but I could hear the bitterness in his voice. ‘It’s OK. It’s a reputation I’ve built for myself. Might as well enjoy the … perks, right?’

I felt like crying. I didn’t much care what Joe did, as long as he was happy. But he was so clearly
not
happy – why didn’t everyone else see it? Or was it only with a decade’s worth of distance that I could? Or was I looking for something that simply wasn’t there?

I sat down next to him, but left enough space between us to keep my head in charge of the conversation. ‘No way in hell you really feel that way,’ I said softly. ‘Maybe you did once, but you’re not that guy now.’

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Aren’t I? Would you change your mind if you knew I’d had a very kinky threesome in this very hotel just a couple of months ago?’

‘No.’ And I said it with all the conviction I felt. ‘You may have done that, and you may have slept with a lot of people, but you’re not just a … a piece of meat. I’m sorry if I ever acted like you were.’

‘It’s OK. I did it to myself.’ He sighed and lay back on the bed, hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling like he was going to find the answers to the world’s problems in the white expanse. ‘I love sex, Danica, always have and always will.’

I laughed. ‘There is
nothing
wrong with that.’

‘No, but I’m starting to realise that there’s more to life.’

‘That’s good, right?’

He turned his head to look at me. ‘Come down here. I can’t talk with you hovering over me.’

I lay on the bed next to him, our shoulders touching, studying the same expanse of ceiling he was. ‘OK.’

‘Don’t laugh at me,’ he said, sounding for all the world like he really believed I might laugh. ‘But as much as I love sex, I’m thinking I might actually want to be in love.’

Part of me was happy for him. Happy that my old friend was still the same guy I knew and loved and also evolving into someone who wanted to make a connection with another person. Another part of me was oddly disappointed.

‘I fall for girls I can’t have,’ he went on, oblivious to my warring emotions. ‘Oh, I can fuck them, if I want. But I can’t
have
them. They don’t want me – Joe the player – or they already belong to someone else and I’m just the dessert they want but that’s bad for them.’

‘So find a girl who is available and doesn’t care about your history,’ I said, realising how idealistic – and unlikely – it sounded even before he snorted. ‘Fall in love.’

He rolled to his side and looked at me. ‘Is it really that easy?’

I sighed, thinking about everything I’d been through, everything I had wanted that always seemed just beyond my grasp. ‘No. It’s not. If it was, I’d have everything I want.’

He nodded. ‘What is it you want?’

‘I wanted to fall in love and get married and have babies,’ I said. ‘I fell in love, I got married, he decided he didn’t want children complicating his lifestyle. I decided I couldn’t live my life with someone so utterly selfish, we divorced, I gave up on love but I still want a baby.’

I expected him to bolt off the bed and run. He didn’t. ‘That’s sad,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t give up on love. Plus, it makes it hard for you to convincingly give me relationship advice.’

I laughed. ‘You’re right. But men seem to smell the maternal desperation on me and run for the hills. I figured I’d have the baby and then deal with finding love.’

‘Kind of ass-backwards, but I get it.’

I sighed. He didn’t get it entirely and I was cursing myself for feeling the need to tell him. ‘I’m ovulating,’ I said. ‘I was kind of hoping you’d get me pregnant.’

That did make him sit up, though to his credit he actually stayed in the room. His eyes narrowed, as if he was waiting for me to say I was joking. I stared at him, unblinking, until he shook his head.

‘You’re serious.’

‘Yeah. Sorry.’

‘Were you planning on telling me before, after or not at all?’

I hesitated. ‘Honestly? I don’t know. I think I would have told you after. I don’t think it would be fair not to tell you.’

‘Wow.’ He lay back on the bed next to me. ‘That’s … wow.’

I shifted so I could look at him. ‘Are you mad?’

He studied the ceiling for another long minute. ‘No, I don’t think so. It seems oddly flattering in some way. Why me?’

I’d thought about that a lot in the past few months. It wasn’t like there were a shortage of men willing to fuck me, no strings attached. But in my mind I kept coming back to Joe. My imaginary child, having his good looks and ambition, not to mention his sense of right and wrong and gentle personality.

I shrugged. ‘You’re one of the smartest, kindest men I’ve ever known. Why not you? We were close once, I’ve never stopped caring about you, I’d consider myself lucky to have a child who was like you.’

‘Aw, love, you have a very strange way of talking a man out of his pants.’

‘I’m being honest, Joe,’ I said, trying to convey to him how earnest I was. ‘When my marriage fell apart, I was as cynical as you’d always been about love. But I couldn’t let go of the idea of being a mother, having a child, making a family, even if it didn’t include true love. And you kept popping into my head.’

‘I’m honoured. I wish you would have discussed it with me first, but I’m honoured I was your choice.’ He turned on his side and stroked the side of my face with the back of his hand. ‘You’d make an amazing mother, Danica.’

I swallowed my sadness. ‘Maybe one day.’

His thumb stroked over my bottom lip. ‘Why not now?’

I stared at him. ‘Are you serious? You just said you wanted to fall in love. Don’t you think getting me pregnant might … complicate things for you?’ Not that he had to tell a prospective girlfriend, since I had fully intended to raise any child I had on my own without asking for any assistance, but Joe wasn’t the kind of guy to abandon his own baby – even one he hadn’t planned on having.

And then it hit me – that’s why I’d chosen Joe. I caught my breath at the epiphany. I’d been so caught up in my desire to become a mother that I hadn’t really examined my reasons for choosing Joe as the potential sperm donor, other than he was a good guy. But part of his goodness stemmed from the fact that he was a responsible and honourable man, too. His man whoring, as he called it, had always been with willing partners and full disclosure on his part that he wasn’t exclusive to anyone. Even in that, he handled himself with integrity.

‘I couldn’t just knock you up and walk away,’ he said softly.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

I could feel a single hot tear slip from under my lid and roll down my cheek. He caught it on his fingertip.

‘Why? I’m not.’

He leaned over and kissed me, and it wasn’t like the way he’d kissed me before. It wasn’t intense and sexual, it was soft and tender. It was passionate. It was better. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back, feeling my body respond just as quickly as it had before. No one had ever had that effect on me, not even my ex when we’d first gotten together. Joe knew how to kiss a woman and make her feel it everywhere. Or maybe it was just
me
he knew how to kiss so effectively.