She wanted to climb onto the table and serve herself to him. Wanted Stephen to cover her in Ruby’s secret sauce and lick it from her thighs. Wanted to hear him moan when she gave him his dessert.
It’s just dinner.
The last time they had dinner alone, they’d been in a Las Vegas hotel room after a four-hour sexual triathlon. The room service hadn’t been anything to write home about, but they’d needed the energy for one more round before the car came to take her to the airport.
He’d only been a lawyer then, another face in the convention crowd, and there’d been no worries about reporters staking out his hotel room. There was no way they could get away with something like that now.
Sex and Stephen. Stephen and sex. She couldn’t think about one without the other. Old habits were hard to break.
Tasha lifted her feet and placed them on his lap as he took another bite. He was hard too. He choked and she bit her lip to hold in her hum of satisfaction at finding him as aroused as she was.
Stephen reached for his glass of wine and took a fortifying sip. “Comfortable, Natasha?”
“Not at all.” She swiped the plate with her finger and lifted it to her mouth, letting him watch as she sucked it clean. His jaw clenched. “Neither are you. And that’s a problem we need to fix before we get to Burke’s.”
“Desire is a problem? He’ll expect us to want each other.”
She nodded slowly. “I know. But people in the kind of relationship you want him to think we have? Their desire reads as a sizzling simmer instead of a constant frustrated boil. They know each other’s moods and habits. They’ve been naked with each other, or nearly naked, when sex was not immediately involved. They talk. Sometimes at the same time, which is annoying, but realistic when you know someone well enough.”
“I know you, Natasha. Better than you think. And we’re talking right now.”
“You and I have talked more today than we have since college.” There was no way for him to deny it.
He lifted his napkin to his mouth and adjusted himself in his chair so her feet weren’t pressed against his erection. “There’s an argument to be made that it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part, but now is not the time. Your point is valid.”
She pretended shock. “Are you actually admitting that I’m right?”
It was his turn to nod. “I’m also assuming you have a solution in mind. Other than the obvious.”
“The obvious being sex to take the edge off?”
“Yes.”
“The obvious can wait another hour or two.” She stretched her legs and wiggled her toes against him, making him shudder. “Do you trust me, Stephen Finn?”
He pinned her with that look that never failed to make her melt. “I always have.”
“Good. Finish your dinner. We’ll be hard at work all night.”
***
“Damn it, Natasha, stop moving.”
The frustration in Stephen’s voice matched her own. But she was the masochist who’d started this, and there was a method to her madness. “I’m just getting comfortable, Senator. That’s why we’re here.”
After dinner they’d dealt with the dishes and then she’d brought him into the living room. She’d had him take off his button-down shirt, leaving him in a white undershirt that should not have been sexy and the snug khakis she wanted to see him out of. The muscles in his arms stood out in the short sleeves, and the clinging material did nothing to conceal his washboard abs.
Directing him to the couch, she’d stood in front of him and stripped off her shorts. When she was in nothing but her jersey and a thong, she’d shocked him by telling him he was not allowed to touch her while she laid herself across his lap with her bare cheeks in full view.
He didn’t like that command at all.
They were going to have sex. They both knew they were going to have sex. The fact that they hadn’t already was a miracle. But whenever they came together, everything else tended to disappear in their mad rush to climax, and tonight they had something to accomplish. The getting-to-know-you phase, she’d called it—becoming comfortable around each other’s bodies while sharing vital tidbits that people in a relationship would know. For this part of the exercise, she’d handed him her purse and taken his wallet, her body draped over his strong thighs in the perfect position for a spanking.
Sometimes she had bad ideas.
Tasha forced herself to focus on his driver’s license. “Thirty-eight-years old and you’ve already served as a state senator for four years and been on the cover of multiple magazines. You’ve peaked before forty. And I’m not sure you’re human. No one takes a good picture at the DMV.”
His erection was pressing insistently against her hip, making her ache. She moved against him. Just one more time. Just to ease the need inside her.