The Value of Vulnerability (9 page)

“Yes.”

“And you do?”

A shrug. “When it is warranted.”

“Nice guy.”

The look he sent her suggested she was na
ïve beyond compare, so she hadn’t put enough sarcasm into her tone. She smothered a laugh with a gulp of GM. It would be a terrible thing to be in such a man’s debt.

Without another word, he dialled the charm up to eleven, and she didn’t stand a hope of holding onto the already-fading memory of that forbidding expression.

They finished their drinks silently, eyes locked one moment, hers sliding away the next when desire came waving up too hard for her to bear. Yet he constantly drew her back in, seducing her with amber flame. A touch. A look. A silent promise of the best sex she’d ever experience.

Tension and relief alternated, swirling around them in intimate eddies.

He brushed fingertips across her cheek, hooking slightly under the tender flesh of her jaw to bring her attention back to him. Her lips parted as he bent his head—

H
e gave her hand a squeeze. “I need my hand back. To sign.”

Hells.
She had been looking forward to a kiss.

As he signed the credit card slip and dialled a number on his cell to order the car brought around, she could only stare dreamily
at him. She probably looked like a mooning fool.

Totally don’t care. Look at him
! Who wouldn’t moon over that?

As he disconnected the call, the delinquent lock of hair fell over his brow, and her fingers itched to smooth it back.

But he did so himself. “Come on. Let’s get you home before my indiscretion gets the better of your judgment.”

He helped her into her coat, scolded her again for lack of gloves
, only to put his own on her.

“These are beautiful,” she admired, pressing the soft leather to her face to feel its texture. They were much too large, of course,
and unnecessary, but the gesture that prompted their donning warmed more than her hands.

The bartender bid them a smiling, “Goodnight and Merry Christmas.”

Ford nodded shortly, sliding into his overcoat. “Good work.”

Odd acknowledgement!

“Thanks! Merry Christmas!” Erin provided the holiday cheer part. Smiling as Ford guided her into the front door alcove to wait for the limo. “Why do I feel the victim of a conspiracy?”

“Because you are.
”

“I realised already. I want the gory details
of your extravagant efforts.”

“
I had just arrived when I first saw you come out of the party. That couple—who were they?”

“Joe and Cathy Woods. I work with Joe. And Cathy and I have become
pretty good friends, too, over the years.”

He gave
her yet another oddly calculated look, though less intense and much briefer than before. “I pointed you out to the bartender, told him your name, and we set up the phone call.”

“You didn’t thank him for his help
.”

“I did. With money.
There’s our ride.”

Several
centimetres of wet snow had fallen since her arrival, and though restaurant staff had kept up as best they could clearing it from the sidewalk and putting down salt, Erin found the way rather treacherous in her heels, sliding a little.

Ford scooped her up in his arms. “Permit me,” he purred as she gasped in surprise.

“What if
you
slip?” she demanded, her arms going tightly around his neck.

“Then I’ll have the pleasure of you on top of me
.”

Snowflakes starred his black hair and thick eyelashes
. Erin’s insides went soft again under the narrow smiling look he gave her as he carried her with ease to the waiting car, the attendant driver holding the door open.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “I feel so girly all of a sudden.”

“Get inside,” he said with rough humour, and spoke quietly to the driver as she did so.

No one asked for her address
. Must be handy, those background checks.

Handing the gloves back to Ford as he settled in beside her, she asked, “How bad is this storm supposed to get? They were only calling for flurries and a few centimetres.”

“This should be it. Changing to rain overnight, apparently.” He shoved the gloves in his pocket. “Comfortable?”

She
nestled against him, tucking her head beneath his chin, and took his hand in hers with a pleased little sigh. “Now I am.”

He released a
mild imprecation on a noisy breath, a mixture of amused frustration and admiration. He rested his chin on her hair. “You’re a romantic, aren’t you?”

“Why do you say?”

“Our position is rather cosy, considering our lack of intimacy.”

She lifted her head,
swallowing a laugh. “We have to have sex before we hold hands?”

“I—well, no
. Of course not.”

“Not a cuddler, Ford?”

“That is privileged information.”

“Do you want me to let go of your hand?”

“No.” His hand flexed around hers, ensuring she did not remove it.

“Can we go back to cosiness?”

“Very well.” As she resumed nestling, he repeated the accusation: “You
are
a romantic.”

“Not known for being one, actually. But tonight is romantic.” Another pleased sigh emphasised the statement. “Having a gorgeous man show up to buy me drinks, dance with me. Being carried to the car like a helpless waif through the snow
.  All of it. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any romance.”

“When did you break up with that negligent boyfriend?”

“A year ago. Give or take.” Sighing again, this time without the pleasure, she gave him the short version of the story. “I showed up at his place in the middle of the day to surprise him. A rousing success.”

“Don’t tell me he was with someone else.”

“Someone Else had already gone, and he did deny her existence. But I didn’t think he needed to use condoms if he had just been . . .” She laughed shortly and shrugged.

He
said nothing for a moment, then gently: “Did you love him?”

“Considering the speed I got over it, I guess not.”

“Going a year without sex is not exactly evidence of being over someone.”

“Of course I was hurt.” She considered that. “But mostly angry, I think.
”

“Those are the same thing.”

“No, they aren’t! Are they?”

“Academically. One does not feel anger at being pleased. Nor joy at being hurt.”

“Does it work in reverse? If you’re angry, you were hurt?”

A pause.
“I imagine. Academically.”

“No experience to draw on?” she mocked.

“You were telling me about being over him.”

“Oh. Well, after the fact,
I refocused on my career. Initially it was to distract myself from the break-up, but as I moved up, I found that work was fun and interesting. Everything else took a backseat, but I know that isn’t permanent. I’ll get back out there eventually.”

“You’re back out there now,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head.

He certainly couldn’t be putting himself out there as relationship material . . . could he? No, he was only thinking about sex.

It would be so easy just to sleep with him
with no consideration of consequences. But ‘getting back out there’ probably shouldn’t start with what was sure to be a one-night stand. She wanted more than sex—not from Ford specifically, but from a relationship generally—and he was not the store to go shopping in for
more
. He was a one-item stop-shop.

But what an item! The comforting solidity of his body
. The heat emanating from him. It was not a stretch to imagine him in her bed. Naked. Hard. Inside her.

They rode in silence, the thumb Ford rubbed over her hand and wrist serving as both balm and malady, keeping her soothed and fevered in the same instant.

After a while, she forced herself to lift her head, assessing where they were in the city. Even having kept to the streets rather than taking the Gardiner, they had made better time than she expected—they were mere blocks from her apartment in the Distillery District.

She sent
him a smiling look of gratitude that froze as she encountered his gaze. It was like his touch—both fevering and soothing.

She trusted him, this total stranger. This predator, this seducer. Maybe because he had made no overt attempt to initiate sex once in the privacy of the car. No cheap feels, no force. Most guys
—even some otherwise decent ones—would have been all over a girl.

If that wasn’t a man who could be trusted . . .

On that baseless, rather stupidly instinctive sentiment alone, she put a hand to his face. “Ford.”

He didn’t hesitate, merely
bent his head and touched his mouth to hers.

Her lips parted slightly, and he took her lower lip between his, sucking gently, encouragingly. Murmuring an incoherent sound, she sent the tip of her tongue in an investigative probe of his upper lip, and Ford caught the explorer, sucking on that instead, gradually pulling it into his mouth, touching his own to hers.

The silken rasp of his tongue on hers finished her. Hot, wet kisses destroyed resistance that was all but gone anyway. She gave no thought to where it was obviously leading, and didn’t care that she was being reckless. He tasted of rye and some other flavour that she could only identify as his own—utter nectar. And when he turned her in his arms so that she was cradled against his chest, her head pressed to his shoulder, and she stretched her legs along the seat, she could only think of how comfortable she was in this new position as his mouth continued to unhurriedly plunder the depths of hers. Blood flowed sluggishly in her veins, cooking in the fire.

Her hand slid into his hair, holding his head, keeping him close while his fingers made short work of the buttons on her coat. When his hand slipped inside to glide over her belly to her ribcage, she arched in a little gesture of encouragement.

He required no more than that small act of consent, and he cupped a full breast, gently caressing. Nipples hardened in painful response and those talented fingers feathered tantalisingly over the hard buds through the material of her dress, assuaging the ache and leaving raw need.

The
fact that the car had stopped penetrated her fevered brain. But she didn’t care. She only wanted more kisses, more caresses. She wanted to be naked, her skin exposed to that touch that aroused and mollified all at once. Desire tightened her belly, and throbbed between her legs.

She was going to make love to him, here and now, in the backseat of the limo.
Or invite him in. Mistakes be damned.

She dispensed with his tie as if it were nothing, a mere annoying scrap barring her from access. Buttons on his silk dress shirt were ejected from their holes with equal ease, exposing the smooth skin of his throat and neck to her uninhibited caress.

“
Erin!
” He said her name on a groaning sigh as her mouth left his to explore the strong column of his neck, nipping and licking an urgent path to his chest. The spicy, clean, masculine taste of him, seasoned with salt from light perspiration that broke out on his skin, only fed her craving.

“Yes,” she breathed as his hand slid beneath the skirt of her dress, his fingertips sliding along the lacy edge of a thigh-high stocking, teasing the naked flesh above.

“No,” he chuckled roughly, and withdrew his hand. “I am not having sex with you in a car.” Threading fingers into her long hair, he made a fist and drew her head back slowly and inexorably, denying her the tang of him.

They stared at each other in the semi-light, breaths coming in shallowly and exhaled in harsh puffs.
She licked her lips, tasting him there. Something in his eyes spoke to her, and sanity started making the long trip back to her conscious thoughts.

Her entire body
slumped as she groaned. “You’re right. Thanks.”

Hadn’t she predicted that he would be a rock-star lover? Of course she had melted and capitulated
, and of course, he had not forgotten time or place. Probably he was doing advanced mathematics in his head while kissing her and feeling her up.

And just because he was hard as a rock didn’t prove he hadn’t been multitasking.

Annoying thought.

So it was some relief to her ego that she heard vexation underwriting his responding laugh. Untangling his hand, he smoothed it over her hair, giving her a hard, quick, closed-mouth kiss.
“And there I was, an hour ago, trying to convince you of just this.”

Her eyebrows shot up
at this declaration. “And sanity returned . . . Why?”

“I
am considering options.”