“I don’t know,” she whispered, her voice just a throaty husk. “But I know that someone like you doesn’t look at someone like me.”
“Someone like you?” He murmured, placing the tray on a nearby table without moving away from her. “Someone beautiful and sweet and interesting and enigmatic? You do not think that is a lethal combination?”
“No.” she couldn’t let his words sink in. They didn’t make any sense. “Look at you. And look at the women in there!” She shook her head slowly. “I’m nothing like them.”
“Precisely.” His smile was slow and darkly dangerous. “I have been watching you all night.”
“You haven’t,” she denied on instinct, but her stomach was in knots and her body was leaning closer to his, driven by an ancient instinct she was powerless to deny.
“Yes. All night. I have seen the way your lips,” and he lifted a finger and traced their fullness now, “curl with disdain as you listen to the vapid mutterings of these women. I have seen the way men stare at you, and you seem not to notice. The way you glide across the floor as though you are a ballerina and this is your stage. I have seen, and I have watched, and I have waited and I have wanted.”
Emily’s heart turned over in her chest. He smelled so good; strong and masculine, clean and edible. “I’m at work.” Her voice was thick. “I have to get back inside.” She didn’t want to go anywhere. Her feet were digging roots into the ground.
Sabato’s eyes narrowed. “Will you meet me later?”
His meaning was unmistakable and it was enough to pierce the fog of sensual confusion that was wrapping around her. She shook her head, nervousness and coyness making her drop her gaze from his. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Don’t you?” His tone was mocking. Teasing. He understood her desire and he wasn’t letting her ignore it.
“I’m not … what you seem to think.”
“And what do I think you are?” Sabato prompted, pressing his body forward, so that they were separated by only a hint of the balmy evening air.
Emily swallowed; her throat was lined with sandpaper and her blood was gushing through her veins so loudly she could hear it drumming in her ears. Honesty was Emily’s first instinct in any situation; she employed it now. “That I’m someone who could handle you.” She bit down on her lower lip and her teeth gleaned in the moonlight. “That I’m someone who maybe makes a habit of doing what you’re, um, suggesting.”
He laughed, her innocence sweetly endearing and terrifyingly sexy. “Believe me, if I thought that, you have done an excellent job of showing me otherwise.”
“Meaning what, exactly? That I’m unsophisticated?”
“Yes.” His eyes flared. “Precisely. And it only makes me want you more.”
“You must stop saying that,” Emily groaned, lifting her hands to his chest to put some space between them. But his heart was beating beneath her palms now, and his skin was warm through the fabric of his shirt. “Please.”
“Please?” He teased in his deep voice. “Music to my ears.” And wilfully misunderstanding her, he lowered his head, intending only to brush his lips against hers. But the moment his mouth connected, she parted her lips and moaned, her fingers curled into his shirt and she pressed her hips forward, so that she was intimately connected with his arousal.
He deepened the kiss, lost to the magic of the moment they were creating; self control be damned, he wanted her in a way that was hauntingly unique. His tongue invaded her soft warmth, and his hands curved around her back. His legs were powerful on either side of her.
Emily couldn’t think. She was in new territory and she liked it. A kiss like this was completely outside her experience. She groaned, and lifted her head higher, surrendering herself completely to the experience.
Her hands ran across his shirt, across his muscular chest, and then lower, down his sides. She pulled at the fabric desperately, needing to touch him. To feel him. Emily wanted… something she didn’t understand. Her legs were so weak she felt like they might give way beneath her.
“Someone will see us,” she whispered frantically, but her hands finally broke through and her fingers teased the bunching muscles of his chest.
“Good,” he breathed against her, moving his mouth to the sensitive flesh at the base of her neck.
Her laugh was a trembling noise in the night air. “I can’t get fired.”
“Ah,” he grinned, and through the fabric of her apron and blouse, he padded his thumb across one of her taut nipples. “But then I would have you to myself for the night, no?”
Desire swirled inside of her; a galaxy she couldn’t escape. How nice it would be to say ‘yes’. To forget about the burdensome responsibilities she carried with her; the boy who depended on her not just for food and accommodation, but life and time. How nice it would be to pretend, for just one night, that she was free to make decisions such as this without thinking them through to the final degree. But his words were the beginning of an antidote. “No.” She pushed at his chest a little, her eyes finding his. Her pupils were dilated, her lips were swollen. Sabato was aching with a need to have her. “I have to go back inside.”
His world was tipping in a way he found impossible to understand. “Why?”
“Because I’m at work.” And for so many other reasons. Her breath was heaving from her body in ragged desperation. Her knees still shivered with weakness and her nipples were straining at the fabric of her shirt.
Still, she knew what she had to do; it was up to her to put an end to this. She’d been an adult for longer than her time, and sometimes being mature meant ignoring your own wishes for the sake of someone else. She thought of Andrew and plucked strength and courage from somewhere. “I don’t know if you were born with the proverbial silver spoon, or if you actually have a job. But this is my work. It’s important to me.”
“Agnes, wait.”