True to his word, the table is heaped with enough Italian food to feed a small army. Enough that we’ll never be able to eat it all. “Don’t worry,” he says, “whatever we don’t eat will be eaten by someone. I don’t let food like this go to waste.”
“Good,” I say, a little relieved. I’m not sure how he knew that’s what I was thinking, but I’m glad of the reassurance.
His thumb runs along my knuckles, and I’m suddenly very aware of how close we’re standing together. Jet brushes a curl away from my face, leaning down. I think he might kiss me, but I’m not ready for it yet. Once we start, I know that we won’t be able to stop ourselves. I turn my head, and his lips press against my temple. In a soft voice he says, “I’m glad you decided to come tonight.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Does that sentence have a double meaning.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” I can hear the smile in his voice.
There are two plates waiting on the table, and I pick one up, circling the food. He really has almost anything you could order from an Italian restaurant, and it all looks and smells amazing. I put a little of everything on my plate from fettuccini alfredo to baked ziti to shrimp scampi. Once both our plates are full, he guides me to the living area, which is populated by plush couches and armchairs. He pours us each a glass of white wine, and I curl up in the corner of the couch with my plate, already kicking off my shoes.
“Those did look painful,” he says, “but hot.”
“They weren’t comfortable, but the look on your face when the door opened was worth it,” I admit.
He smirks at me. “You know, that’s a really beautiful dress. Italian food has a tendency to be messy, and I would hate for you to ruin something that looks so sexy on you.”
I lean forward and put my plate on the coffee table. “Mr. Kincaid,” I say in mock horror, “are you asking me to take my clothes off?”
“No, not at all. I’m merely trying to look out for your dry cleaning expenses. You know those can be really outrageous.”
Finding my glass, I take a sip of wine. “Hmm. You’re right. But you know, I hear the expense for cleaning dress shirts as nice as yours is even more expensive. Something about the amount of buttons involved.”
“Damn it,” he smiles, “you’re right. I should have thought of that.” He puts down his plate, reaching for his buttons, and I drink him in as his body appears. It’s so much better than a memory, something about seeing it in person that makes me want to touch him, explore him with my mouth in a way I didn’t get to last time. I want to trace his tattoos and ask the meaning of each, maybe see if the ink makes his skin more sensitive. But not yet. He shrugs out of the shirt, and tosses it on a nearby chair. I don’t stop looking at him though. If this is going to be the last night—and I’m not anywhere close to deciding if it will be—I want to take advantage of this chance to memorize him.
He lifts an eyebrow at me, and I sigh. “Well, I guess we should both save ourselves some money. You’ll have to help me with the clasp.”
Jet is on his feet before I even finish the words, and I turn. He slowly unzips the back of the dress, and I hear a soft intake of breath as he sees my lingerie. His lips press softly against the back of my neck, and I lean into the feeling for just a moment. It feels like that warmth spreads through me, and I’m so tempted to let this go further now, to go where we both know it’s going. I step away from him, and he backs away to his seat.
“I want to enjoy this delicious Italian food,” I say. “So thanks for helping with that so I can eat.” I pull the dress off my shoulders, letting it pool at my feet before I scoop it up and drape it over the nearby chair, giving him a perfect view of my ass. It’s here that I get the reaction that I’m looking for. His mouth is so far open it might as well be on the ground. This lingerie is little more than strategically placed blue ribbons, laced and sewn together to cover the essentials, but just barely. They show more skin than not, and the way Jet is looking at me now, I’ve never felt hotter in my life. He clears his throat. “That is very, very sexy.”
I sit down again, grabbing my wine glass and crossing my legs, letting him look at me. “I’m glad you noticed.”
“I think I would find it very hard not to notice that.”
Retrieving my plate, I balance it on my fingers and start in on the ziti. It’s awesome, as I expected. “This is amazing.”
Jet doesn’t answer because his own mouth is full of the same delicious food. I’ve always thought that the best sign of a good meal is silence, and silent we are. Though it doesn’t feel like silence. We make eye contact every few seconds, followed by an exploration of each other’s bodies. It’s almost like I can feel his eyes on me, how they wander across my collar bone and down to my breasts, continuing down to where my legs are crossed, and back up to my eyes. Every glance is a bigger turn on. I work my way from his eyes and down across the planes of his chest, getting lost in the lines of his abs, and lower to where I can see the line of his cock through his pants.
I eat my fill, and then return to my wine. I may beg him to let me take home some of that food, though. If he’s going to give it away, I will be a happy recipient. “So,” I say when I’ve curled up comfortably, staring down into my wine glass. “You promised to tell me everything.”
“I did.” He picks up his own wine glass. “Refill?”
I stretch my legs out on the couch, and my feet are just barely touching his leg. There’s a kind of gravity between us, begging us to touch, but I resist. “What do you do for a living?”
Jet clears his throat. “I’m both the CEO and the main designer for a company. I introduced you to it earlier today—KINdred Spirit Toys. The KIN stands for Kincaid.”
Everything starts to click into place in my head. “You’re a sex toy designer?”
“Yes.” He nods. “I’ve been doing it for a long time, but I started this company relatively recently. This is the first time I’ve had a line that’s my own.”
“So when you came into the store?”
He grins. “Competition research. I really did want to know about that toy I gave you. And then I saw you, and I was just…blown away.”
I look down at the wine in my glass, hiding my blush. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”
“A couple of reasons. First, I didn’t want to get you into any legal trouble. If someone accused you of corporate espionage—not that likely, but you never know—that would be serious. Second, everything was so precarious, just on the verge of coming together, that I was afraid that even a little word getting out about my launch would make someone else sweep in and try to stop it. Sex toy companies can be pretty brutal to each other, it’s a competitive business.”
“So you didn’t trust me?” I ask, sitting up a little straighter.
“It wouldn’t necessarily have been you. If you had even mentioned to someone in the store that you were helping a new designer, word of mouth moves quickly in this world.”
“Okay.” I suppose I can’t really blame him for a lack of trust after a three-day acquaintance, it was the same rationale I was using to help me get over him. “So where were you? Why were you in Singapore?”
“And Tokyo.” He leans forward and places his glass on the table, bracing his elbows on his knees. “The final stages of design and the start of production. I needed to be there to oversee the start of everything, make sure the molds were solid and that the toys were coming out at the level of quality that I wanted. I added a few new toys to the production line too. Honestly, I feel like I’ve barely slept in the last six weeks.”
“How did we start selling your toy so quickly then?”
“I had an early batch shipped to all the stores in New York. I want to see how people react to them here.”
I nod. Everything
he says makes sense, and everything he says rings true. But it still doesn’t change the fact that he was a ghost. “But why didn’t you call me?”
“Yeah, about that…” He rubs his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t have an excuse for it. When I didn’t hear from you—not realizing the thing about the phone—I thought maybe I had done something wrong. That maybe you didn’t want to hear from me. And then that one night I figured I would try turning on the We-Vibe on the off chance you would put it on. That you might know that I was definitely interested and then you would reach out. But I could have made a better effort. I should have made a better effort.”
“Seems like both of us drew the short end of the stick on that one, in terms of communication. But if you had told me you were going out of town, even if you hadn’t been able to tell me why, I would have understood.” I put down my glass, and stand. Aware that the move is going to make him even more aware of my body.
“I know. I’m sorry.” He sighs, standing too. “I know that saying I’m sorry doesn’t make up for it. And I know that saying it won’t happen again is just words. But I promise if you decide that this isn’t our last night together, I won’t waste that chance.”
I walk towards the windows, confused. Everything in me wants to give him that chance, but after all this time, I’m hesitant. I don’t have to decide in this moment. I promised him one more night, and I want that as much as he does. But I can’t get that little knot of worry to leave my chest. He approaches me from behind, and his fingers roam up and down my sides. “I still haven’t decided,” I say.
“You take as much time as you need,” he says. “Even if you wanted to banish me and take me back a hundred times, I’d say yes to you.”
My breath stills in my chest at the declaration. He wants me. Do I want him for longer than tonight?