She carefully applied her makeup and dressed in a tiny black dress that hugged her curves and dipped low in the back and she grinned, knowing Rian would be staring at her ass all night. Good. Let him stare. Let him hunger. Maybe if he was lucky, she would let him cop a feel. She’d known that he wouldn’t compromise his integrity for a roll in the hay so she’d been pretty assured that he’d give in to her demand to go out, which he had. Men were so predictable.
“Just what are you wearing, woman?” Rian demanded, staring hard at her dress. She couldn’t quite tell if he liked it or was appalled. “There’s hardly enough to cover half your body. You can’t go out like that.”
She laughed. “You like it? It’s one of my favorites.”
“No, I don’t like it,” he answered, but his gaze said otherwise. Her skin heated at the hunger she saw building behind his eyes. “Don’t you have a jacket or something you could put on over it? The last thing I need is to fend off a legion of horny guys once they catch a glimpse of you in that thing.”
“Aw, how cute. Would you defend my honor?” she asked demurely and he snorted. She rolled her eyes and grabbed her purse. “And here I thought I was seeing the gentleman in you. Whatever happened to all that Southern charm I hear about? I guess that saying that Southern men know how to treat a lady is totally false.”
“When I see a lady I’ll let you know,” he retorted and she glared. He gestured to her dress. “Just sayin’.”
“It’s couture,” she told him with a sniff. The man wouldn’t know high fashion if it bit him in that cute butt.
“It’s the size of a postage stamp.”
“Not the point. Humor me...what do you really think?”
He hesitated and for a second she thought he might fall back on a smart-ass quip but instead he shocked her with an honest answer. “You look damn fine and you know it.” It looked as if his answer had cost him by the way his mouth tightened and his gaze darted, but she warmed at the admission just the same. “Can we go now? Let’s just get this over with,” he growled and she had to suppress a shiver at the way his voice danced on her vertebrae.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to toy with him like this. It seemed she wasn’t entirely immune to him, either.
It was still a little early to hit the clubs so she suggested cocktails first. “I know a cute little place on West Fifth Street, not too big, where we can get a drink and appetizers before we hit the clubs. I’ll even do you a solid and buy the first round.”
“I’m not drinking and you shouldn’t, either,” he said, raining on her parade. “This ain’t a vacation.”
“C’mon, stop being such a stick-in-the-mud. One drink isn’t going to hurt anyone. Besides, you look like you could use a beer or something.”
He didn’t disagree, which was a point in her favor. “One drink and that’s it,” he finally relented and she silently crowed with victory.
“Sure. One drink,” she agreed, though she had no plans to stick to that promise. “I think you’ll like this place. It has a real laid-back atmosphere but it’s still classy.”
“Fine.” He exhaled as if he were being dragged to hell and back for the sake of the job and she decided that they were going to have a good time, whether he liked it or not.
She snuck a sidelong glance at him and couldn’t stop the smile even as that tiny tingle in the pit of her stomach also rang with a warning. Rian wasn’t like the guys she was used to hanging around. He didn’t play games, he was a straight shooter and he didn’t hold back when he believed something was wrong.
But there was something else that she sensed about him—and it was that little bell ringing in her head that she knew she ought to heed.
Rian had that certain something about him that said when he took a woman to his bed, she didn’t leave until he was thoroughly finished with her.
She sucked in a sharp breath as her heart skipped a beat. Rian was probably a stallion in the bedroom. She pictured all that hard muscle wrapped around his lean frame and arousal warmed her belly.