“Miranda?” He couldn’t move yet, but he was speaking. It was a start.
“Hmm?”
He smiled a little, to think coherent speech was a struggle for her, too.
“Are you hungry?”
10
“MMM.” THE APPRECIATIVE RUMBLE in the back of Damien’s throat let me know he was enjoying the game we played an hour later as we half sat, half sprawled near each other on the office floor. “That tastes so good.”
A shiver of pleasure went through me as I understood why those same words, when I’d spoken them earlier tonight, had made him think sexy thoughts. They did the same for me now. I fanned myself.
Not that Damien could see, since he was blindfolded.
“But what does it taste like?” I prompted, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him, the remains of our picnic scattered around. We’d eaten everything in a nest of blankets spread over the Persian carpet, like a couple of decadent Roman nobles.
I leaned back against the displaced leather couch cushion and waited for his verdict. I’d used the office’s coffeepot to heat water for tea, since I always carried a small stash in my purse. Tea bags take up about as much room as an extra tissue, and that way I always have my favorite flavors. So after a lunch catered by a local winery, I’d come up with the idea of a taste test.
“It reminds me of you.” He lifted the edge of his shirt up over one eye to look at me, the rest of the flannel still tied around his head, where I’d secured it earlier. His chest was, happily, naked. He’d pulled on his jeans for dinner and I’d worn his other shirt.
“Me?” I laughed, a little giddy from my one glass of wine. Plus I’d thrown myself into the “live for the moment” idea and wanted to squeeze every second of joy that I could out of this window of time with Damien. “I’m pretty sure I don’t taste anything like tea.”
“I definitely recall a hint of vanilla.” He set down the cup I’d given him and shoved the flannel blindfold the rest of the way off. “Right here.” He leaned over a crimson chenille throw blanket and brushed his fingertips along the spot just beneath my breast through the fabric of the cotton shirt I wore. “I kissed you there and the scent of you reminds me of this tea. Vanilla.”
My breasts felt heavy with awareness, the nipples beading as soon as he touched me. Since I hadn’t bothered to put my bra back on, I knew he could tell, now that the blindfold lay forgotten on the floor.
“Well.” I tried to ignore the pheromones back at work between us. My eyes went to his lips as I thought about him kissing me there. “You have an excellent sense of taste, it seems. That one is vanilla with cinnamon.”
His smile was part triumph and part pure wickedness.
“Are you sure? Because I can put my mouth on you again and double-check.” He was already coming for me across the blanket, the discarded silver trays and lids clanking as he disturbed them.
“I have a better way of testing it.” I skittered backward, laughing. “There’s another tea you haven’t tried.”
He sat down, planting an arm on the leather ottoman that had been his backrest a moment ago. “Seriously?” He frowned while I poured hot water over the bag in yet another disposable cup. “How much tea does one woman need on a horseback ride?”
“It’s just a little tin.” I held it up to show him a case no bigger than most women’s compacts, the fabric of my T-shirt dragging across my taut, sensitive left nipple. “I keep a handful of tea choices in there so I have them with me most any time.”
“What made you decide you want to run a tearoom?” He took the cup from me, but didn’t drink out of it. The scents wafted between us, a complex bouquet he’d probably never guess. “It’s a long way from small-town farmer’s daughter to Hollywood actress to tearoom proprietor.”
“The acting thing was just a stopgap.” I knew that even going into it. “I wanted a more exotic life—some reason to feel like I was running to something instead of running away from the past. And since lots of people dream of going into show business, I could tell myself it was a step forward, even though I was just sort of...biding time.”
“What kinds of jobs did you land? Anything I would have seen?”
“Depends how you feel about late night infomercials for skin cream or advertisements for local fast-food chains.”
“That bad?”
“No.” I had purposely trotted out the bottom-of-the-barrel jobs to make him smile, but instead his brow wrinkled with worry. “I had tiny roles in a few movies and landed a minor character in a sitcom that didn’t get picked up after one season. But it was enough for me to hold my head high when my parents would call and tell me to return home.”