“What was that all about?” Finn asked when he reached her side.
“What? Oh, that? I’m good at massage. I get a lot of practice, you know,” she explained with a sultry look. His return appraisal was frankly suspicious.
“Is that your way of telling me that your bedmates are usually in their seventies and suffering from arthritis?”
“You’d hardly fit the bill if that were true, lover,” she teased.
The red-blooded male in him couldn’t resist the heat in her brandy-colored eyes. He spread his hand on her lower back just above her right butt cheek. When he applied a slight pressure Kitten slowed and came to a halt.
He leaned down and planted a slow, hot kiss on her lush lips. Christ, she tasted good. When he realized that he’d turned her in his arms so that he could reexperience firsthand how well she fit against him, and that his cock had stiffened to full readiness with record-breaking speed, Finn regretfully broke their embrace.
When he lightly urged a dazed-looking Kitten to keep walking, he had to take several deep breaths to regain his equilibrium. He’d have to watch himself. Her taste did strange things to his body chemistry. He was supposed to be having a little fun with a sexy woman to get over Julia and pull him out of the dumps he’d been in since his father’s death. At the rate he was going he was going to become thoroughly addicted to Kitten’s sweet mouth—not to mention the rest of her succulently curvy body.
Whoa, he definitely needed to apply some brakes here. He reluctantly removed his hand from the enticing swell of her upper ass and grasped her hand instead. The dreamy, goofy look on her pretty face as she stared blankly into the distance reeled him back in to her sexy snare quicker than he could blink. Made him feel like a king that his kiss made her look that way—
“It looks like the sails of a ship unfurling,” she murmured dreamily as they walked and she stared at the stainless steel curves of the Pritzker Pavilion, the enormous outdoor band shell that was the centerpiece of Millennium Park.
“That’s a good description, actually,” Finn said as he glanced at the pavilion, glad to focus his attention elsewhere than on Kitten’s big, sexy eyes and lust-flushed pink cheeks. “A ship’s beauty is a consequence of its function. Frank Gehry, the architect, might have pushed the aesthetics a bit to get the effect for the Pritzker Pavilion but everything on that band shell serves a purpose. See that?” he asked as he nodded at the intricate trellis of stainless steel pipe that domed the open air seats and lawn.
“It’s the lighting system, isn’t it?”
“There are lights on it, yes, but the entire structure is primarily a very sophisticated sound system. Gehry designed it to distribute and enhance the sound from the stage across the huge area of this lawn. The audience gets amazing sound from the stage but the entire structure, including the bridge over there,” he nodded at the stainless steel bridge that serpentined across Columbus Drive, “was also designed to keep urban sounds out of the park.”
“Awesome,” Esa muttered as she studied the modern structure. Her speculative glance transferred to Finn. “How come you know so much about it?”
“How does a guy who breaks up concrete at the side of the road know anything about world-class architecture and engineering, you mean?”
“No,” Esa retorted, clearly stung by the sarcasm he hadn’t successfully kept out of his tone. “I didn’t mean it like that at all. I guessed from some of the stuff I saw in your condo that you knew about architecture and design and stuff. I was just wondering where you learned it.”
“Building viaducts and roads might not be pavilions and bridges but they’re all in the same ballpark.” He glanced once more, longingly, at the ultra-sleek structure. “We can’t all have the high-profile gigs,” he added in a flat tone that didn’t invite further inquiry.
He was glad that Kitten didn’t pursue the matter when he briskly suggested that they go eat their lunch.
* * * * *
The Crown Fountain had quickly become a favorite Chicago landmark, demonstrating interactive art at its finest. Esa chuckled as she watched dozens of children playing in the water that covered the enormous black granite courtyard between the two fifty-foot-tall fountain towers made of tiles of glass. The kids wore everything from swimsuits to rolled-up jeans and t-shirts, their shoes and socks long forgotten next to parents who lolled on the sidelines in the autumn sunshine, secretly envious of their children’s opportunity to cool off in the water.
Their picnic was delicious, especially spiced as it was with Finn’s warm, amused glances as she consumed it with relish.
“It must be at least eighty degrees. I was thinking about…” Finn stilled when Esa reached out and spontaneously wiped a stream of peach juice from his chin. Her eyes snapped up to meet his gaze when she realized what she’d done.
“Giving the fountain a try myself, I’m getting so warm,” he finished huskily.
“Sorry,” Esa said as she removed her fingertip from his skin. She took another sip of wine to calm her nerves.
For the most part, she found Finn to be an easygoing, fun companion. He had a rich supply of entertaining stories, which usually involved some colorful character from his large extended family winding up in some improbable and inevitably hilarious situation. Esa realized that she’d just spent almost two hours with him, however, and wasn’t that much closer to knowing about Finn the man, except that he obviously loved his family like nuts.
It only made him exponentially more attractive to her. Not that he needed the extra help in that arena.
“There’s nothing to apologize for. I grant you free rights to touch me anytime you like.” He grabbed the hand that had just been stroking him, pressed his thumb into the center of her palm so that her fingers uncurled and bent his golden head to plant a warm kiss where his thumb had just been.
Esa shivered despite the heat that flooded her.
“Is that right?” she asked with forced casualness as she firmly extricated her hand from his grasp and leaned back in the grass. She reached into the paper sack and grabbed her peach in order to busy her hands while he studied her through narrowed eyelids. Despite her ease with Finn, her intense sexual attraction to him made her wary. Her body had never responded so wholeheartedly to any of her serious boyfriends in the past. It confused her to the point of feeling downright threatened that a weekend fling evoked such a reaction from her.
Although Esa had never been a very accomplished tease, she found it surprisingly easy to flirt with Finn. Every time she began to do so quite naturally, however, an alarm started blaring in her brain, warning her that she was behaving precisely in the shallow, promiscuous manner that he expected of her. Resentment would inevitably follow.
Why did men always have to be so predictable in the type of woman they wanted?