“Pleased to meet you,” I say.
“Delighted.” Cameron raises my hand to his lips, ignoring Landon’s narrowed eyes.
“Cameron is an old friend,” Landon tells me, “and he only recently opened this restaurant, so he’s dying to hear you say that it’s awesome.
“Definitely awesome,” I say, with a smile at Cameron, whose grin widens.
“Definitely, I like you already.” He pulls out a seat and joins us. “What are you doing with this handsome devil anyway,” he says jovially. “We reds should stick together. I know all the dirt on him. Known him for years. I could tell you things that’ll make him squirm.”
I steal a glance at Landon, who’s chuckling silently. He looks almost jovial, so different from the controlled man he usually is in public, and the intensely sexual person he is when he’s with me. He sees me looking at him and holds my gaze, and in his eyes I can see the sensual promise that always goes right through to the deepest parts of me.
I turn back to Cameron. “I look forward to hearing the worst.”
Cameron responds by clapping his hands excitedly, before summoning a hovering waiter who takes our wine order. “For my friend, who I haven’t seen in ages, and his lovely girlfriend, I have prepared something special,” he informs me. “You don’t mind seafood, do you?”
Shaking my head, I wonder if I should correct him about the girlfriend part. Landon, who’s watching me, makes no move to say anything, so I leave it.
“Perfect,” Cameron grins again, “Now while we wait, lets gossip.”
I haven’t enjoyed a meal so much in a long time, laughing so hard at Cameron’s quips that more than once I almost choke on my wine. He’s irrepressible, around the same age as Landon, but with a wicked wit and sharply funny commentary that flows very naturally. He tells me how he met Landon when he spent a few years working at the New York Swanson Court in his early twenties, before leaving to open his own restaurant. He took courses in management and learned how to expand along the way. Now he owns a chain of restaurants in Northern California.
By the time we leave, I’m not only stuffed, but actually sorry to be leaving Cameron. He follows us outside to the sidewalk and gives me a warm hug. “Take good care of her,” he warns Landon, making a big show of relinquishing me to him.
“I believe I’m already doing that,” is Landon’s only reply, his carnal gaze on my body telling me all the ways in which he’s going to take care of me.
A flash from across the street makes me raise my head in alarm, and a few more flashes follow. Landon mutters something under his breath and pulls me closer to him.
“They always come here hoping the catch the movie stars leaving,” Cameron says, turning dismissively from the paparazzo. He eyes Landon. “You can blame yourself for looking too much like a movie star.
“I agree,” I say, giggling, even as Landon’s hand around my waist sends warm heat coursing through my body. I shouldn’t have drunk so much wine, I decide silently, saying goodnight to Cameron.
Landon helps me into the waiting car, joining me in the back just as the car starts to move. Alone again, the impossible sexual energy that always radiates from him finds me, drawing everything inside me to him. I’m tense again, eager for him to touch me, wanting to touch him so desperately that it hurts.
I sneak a look at him, the same moment as he turns to me. In the next second, he pulls me to his body, crushing my breasts against his chest as he claims my lips.
He tastes perfect, like the wine we shared, and like warm sexual heat. A low moan comes out from deep within me as my hands roam over his body, trying to touch him through his clothes and wishing I could tear them off.
When he releases me, I’m panting softly, my nipples straining against the fabric of my bra. His chest is rising and falling sharply, his increased body heat enveloping me even through the barrier of our clothing.
“I’ve been thinking of this all evening,” he whispers, his palm tracing a path along my thigh. “No, since we spoke on the phone earlier. I need to fuck you.”
“Me too,” I admit, my thighs parting of their own accord, needing his touch, even though I know we’re in a car, that we have to wait, at least until we get to the hotel.
His fingers tighten on my thigh. “You’re going to give yourself to me, every part of you.” He traces his lips along the side of my throat. “I want you so much, Rachel, and I’m going to make you mine.”
The possessiveness in his words strokes the flames of my desire, making it almost impossible to wait. By the time we get to our hotel, I’m practically burning with need, senseless to everything but the driving desire to have him deep inside me.
Inside the elevator, he looks as if he’s barely restraining himself. He stares at the numbers on the panel, his hand tight around my waist. Standing close to him, I can feel how tense he is. I feel as if we so much as look at each other, then we’re going to end up having sex inside the elevator.
As soon as the doors slide open in the suite, he pulls me inside, pinning me to the walls of the entrance foyer, and claiming my lips. His tongue dips inside my mouth as he rocks his hips against me, allowing me the feel the steel hard length of his arousal.
I’m panting, fumbling with the tie of my dress in my eagerness to take it off. Landon, thinking along the same lines, tears off his jacket and shirt, without bothering to release my lips.
My hands find his chest, running feverishly over the rock hard muscles before moving down the flat board of his stomach to his waistband, where my fingers get busy undoing his belt.
He pulls my dress apart, exposing my body only in a pair of bra and panties. Then he pulls me from the wall, so he can slide the dress off my shoulders. Before my fumbling fingers succeed in undoing his pants, he already has my bra off, and is pulling my panties down over my hips, letting them slide till they fall around my ankles.
I finally manage to get into his pants, stroking his hard length through his briefs. He groans and slides a finger between my legs, feeling the slickness of my need for him. His groan turns into a low growl, and in a swift motion, he lifts me, spreading my legs around his waist as he pins me to the wall, his hips pressed against my needy, aching center.