Manwhore +1 (9 page)

“I wasn’t sure what you’d require of me today but I hope I dressed all right.”

He doesn’t even look at my clothes when he nods. And then he says, “I’d like you to meet some people.”

“Of course.”

He waves a hand and I get to greet Dean, his PR person, and then he introduces me to his other assistants, a few members of his board, and two key Interface design members. “Nice to meet you,” I say to them all.

I remain talking to one of them. A young man who didn’t finish college but his work as an innovator and application designer has been lauded across the world.

Saint has been praised for having a great eye for talent. He brings out their talent, their determination, and their mettle. The M4 conglomerate is proof of that. They all truly follow their leader.

“Oops, time to sit down.” The young man heads to search for his name on the tables. I scan for mine and, once sitting, I survey the menu at my place for a while as the room finishes filling up.

There’s an impressive array of wines on the list. I’m trying to find one I may be familiar with when Catherine comes and moves the card next to mine and sets the name
Malcolm Saint
there instead.

Oh.

Saint is coming over?

My heart starts pounding. I can’t even breathe when he takes his seat. One second the chair is empty and the next he’s there.

I can smell him in every breath, especially his aftershave. Oh god, how can you miss a smell so much?

He takes his menu quietly and reads, and my concentration is nil as I pretend to do the same. Then some guy comes over to say hi, and Saint and he discuss oil prices. Saint’s hand is on the table, resting there, idle—his big tanned hand. That’s all I’m looking at—I’m this pathetic.

I think about reaching out. Touching his hand and linking my fingers through his. Sending a message that says,
Dibs on this. Dibs on you.

I am obsessing about it. I slowly set down the menu but don’t dare do anything. I offered to work the weekends; this isn’t a date and I want to respect the distance he seems to want to keep between us. But I still can’t stop staring at his hand and remembering how it feels, how thick it is and strong and warm. Malcolm shifts in his seat then and shoves his hand into his pocket, scanning the menu again when they drop the conversation.

“It’s getting cold out and we’re barely out of summer,” I say.

“Yes,” he agrees, lifting his eyes to me for a long, long second. Then, he sets the menu down and shifts his shoulder to face me a little more.

His gaze is fiercely direct and a bit stormy. Oh god.

Chills down my arms, my legs, my feet.

“So. Wine tasting,” I say.

“A man shouldn’t let another man choose his wine,” is all he says.

“Only make it?” I quip.

He looks at me as if for the first time tonight. And then, he smiles. Full on, mega-watt, grab-on-to-your-panties-sweet-bitch smile.

God.

There’s no wine, no drug this powerful.

His
smile.

We remain seated as we start the tasting.

After the fourth wine, I notice that Sin makes a signal to a waiter, and soon, the waiter sets a blindfold over my place settings. “For the lady newcomer,” the waiter tells me with a little grin.

I watch as Malcolm’s long, tanned fingers take the blindfold. He lifts it up and looks at me, a frank question in his green eyes.

“May I?”

Oh god. “I . . . um, sure.”

He starts to lower the blindfold over my face. I’m not breathing when he covers my eyes with the velvet material. All the darkness in the world engulfs me. I hear the clink of glass, the sound of footsteps, of chairs. I catch my breath when warm, long, achingly familiar fingers guide my own to curl around the stem of a wineglass.

Saint’s touch is so familiar to my body, I’m raging right now. All my systems on
go
.

“Noel isn’t going to ever drop his issues with you, is he, Kyle?” a businessman sitting very close asks in a low voice, clearly meant not to be overheard.

Saint is quiet beside me.

Kyle.

Is the guy addressing
him
?

Saint’s thumb pauses on the back of mine until he’s sure I’m holding the glass on my own. His nearness is so disturbing and exciting it takes me a moment to get a good grip.

“Ever going to address the rift between you two?” the voice speaks again.

“No,” Malcolm answers. Then he whispers to me, “Smell it.”

My senses fire up. All but my eyesight. Sin’s voice feathers down my spine as I scent the wineglass he still hasn’t released even though I’m holding it too. I can smell the soap on his hand. I can hear my heartbeat. My skin prickles as I drag in the scent and almost taste it.

“Taste it,” he says, in my ear, and when he speaks again, his tone is different. Colder. “Whatever I had to say to my father, I said it long ago.”

“But he blames you.” The man is still whispering, but Saint is not.

“He can blame himself.”

One more whisper from the businessman: “So is that why you’ve never tied yourself up to a woman? You suspect it’s going to be like father like son?”

He lets out a long, rumbling laugh. “I’m not anything like him,” he murmurs dismissively.

I’m quiet, trying to make sense of what I’m hearing, sipping the wine, when I feel Saint take the glass from me, whisper, “How was it?”

Fuck. How was it indeed? Too curious for her own good, is the lady? “Fruity, I think. Dry.”

I lick my lips and there’s a silence. Is it odd that my stomach feels warm when I feel, sense, his eyes on my lips as I lick them one more time?

Then warm, gentle fingers on my hand as he gives me another glass. “Smell it again,” he tells me, the touch of his fingers lingering on mine. The tone holds a degree of warmth and command as well as curiosity.

I lift it to my nose and sniff, the aroma opening my lungs somehow.

“Now taste.”

God, his voice is all man. All sensual. Pure Sin. He makes the command sound coaxing to the point you never consider not obeying.

“His phantom corporations,” the man goes on, speaking words that sound important but that I have trouble registering in my dizzied mind, “all those overseas, hiding money, rumors of corporate espionage going on? Aren’t you concerned these snoops could be around M4?”

“Nobody gets into M4 without a thorough screening. Procedures too lengthy to discuss here,” he says.

Then Saint, to me, “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” I breathe.

Saint speaking: “Catherine, we’ll order three cases of each so far . . .”

I’m listening to everything but at the same time focused on this second wine. I’m loving the way it rolls down my throat, swirls in my mouth. Dry but sweet.

“One more,” Saint coaxes quietly as he hands me a third. His whisper tickles my ear when he takes the glass from me. “What’s the lady’s verdict?”

I smile and go up in knots at the teasing in his voice.

God, I can’t take it when he teases me. “It’s a little dry and earthy. The tastes really come alive with this.” I touch my fingers to the blindfold.

“Hence the purpose of wearing it,” he explains.

He takes it off me so gently that I hardly feel his fingers unwrap it from around the back of my head. There’s something quiet in the air between us as he lowers it. Like a secret. His eyes shine on me with intimate knowledge. Somehow, I can tell he likes the trust I placed in him just now.

Trust.

God, was this a test? He’s so beautiful and he was once a little bit obsessed with me and my windpipe swells with the force of the feelings he gives me.

We smile at each other before he’s forced to return to the conversation. I lean against the back of my chair, relaxed and drowsy, other parts of me tense with awareness.

“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” one of the men finally says.

I watch Saint, this ever-changing mystery to me. I watch his mouth as he talks, quietly, to them about something, and I watch his mouth as he takes a drink. The mouth I haven’t kissed in so long. As he talks, I tune out and wonder if I could be that wine, that glass. He reaches out with this knowing male smile and lifts it to his lips again, glancing down at me quizzically.

The lights from above hit his tanned face, the quiet melody providing the ambience. But no soothing background music can detract from the pulsing energy of this man beside me.

He’s a complicated man.

He never really mentions business, or anything about himself. He’s unselfish. Some men love to talk about themselves or brag—never him. He teases you instead, he baits and challenges you. And I know that when he’s quiet, and looks the calmest, that’s when you should be most scared.

He is very calm and quiet beside me now.

Like a nuclear weapon, charging.

“Enough talk about my father. Rachel, would you like to go to the terrace?” he asks.

I realize suddenly he was playing along with these men until this moment, when he firms his voice and snaps the door shut on their curiosities. He indulged them for a while, but he’s the most powerful man in the room, and he’ll indulge them no longer.

When he stands and instructs the waiter to carry our wines outside, I stand and excuse myself from the men, taking a moment to head to the terrace to regroup before he joins me.

“He has a temper.”

Turning at the voice, I find a gray-eyed young man in a navy suit approaching me, speaking with a bit of a slur. “You don’t want to see him lose it and you definitely don’t want to make him lose it,” he says, coming over with a full glass of wine. “Only reason he can be so contained is if he gets it every time he wants. That’s all he wants a woman for. Lucky bastard.” He offers the wine to me.

“I’m glad he’s found something that works,” I say noncommittally, shaking my head, declining the offer. But if Sin needs to work out something, I wish he’d work it out on
me.

“Try it,” he insists.

“Oh no.”

“Come on, try this one, it’s a ’seventy-three.” He hands me the glass, and as I take it, he moves around behind me.

“Thanks, but pass,” I say, shaking my head as I try to set the wine down, but he’s already put his hands over my eyes.

“Come on, indulge me,” he says in my ear.

I sip a little, just to get him off my back, and say, “Good. I’m done now.”

I notice, through a slit in his fingers, a very broad, muscular chest in a white shirt suddenly blocking my line of vision, and the guy’s hands drop from my face as he croaks, “Mr. Saint. I was getting acquainted with . . . well, this young lady here. She seemed so lonely just now.”

Green eyes look at me and something feels stuck in my windpipe. “Are you lonely?” he asks, as he studies me, and I swear I’ve never, ever, seen such a look of challenge and jealousy in Saint’s eyes.

“No,” I whisper.

Without looking at the other guy, he tells him, in a chillingly low voice, “You can go now.”

The guy looks paralyzed. Saint looks at me with complete calm and gestures around the terrace. “How about we move over there?”

As if expecting me to obey, he starts walking, and I follow him across the terrace. It’s more private here and a bright fireplace flares at the end. Still remembering the crestfallen look on the pale guy’s face when Saint dismissed him, I burst out laughing. “Sin!” I chide. “You were so mean. So intimidating. He didn’t do anything.”

His voice is calm, but his expression is all steel. “He touched you,” he says simply.

“Whaaat?” A disbelieving laugh leaves me.

He faces me fully, frowning in curiosity as he leans against a stone wall and crosses his arms. “I remember that laugh.” He looks at my smile with a sober expression, and his eyes grow dark. My laugh fades.

I hear myself whisper, “I guess I don’t laugh all that much anymore.”

A silence. He’s still looking at my lips as though waiting for them to smile again. “That’s a pity,” he murmurs. He lifts his finger and traces my lips, corner to corner. “I do like that laugh.”

I look at him, breathless.

I’ve never had a vice until him. His aroma hits my senses, making my mouth water. He’s my only vice. My only longing.