Page 20 of Serenity
Something about my fire enthused him. He didn’t seek to suppress it, tame it, or claim it. He was impressed.
“You don’t scare me, Serenity. Only a fraud of a man would shy away from you. Your business acumen, your wittiness, your tenacity, your leadership—none of that is off-putting to me. I find it… wildly attractive.”
He made “wildly” sound like a vulgar word. Drawing closer, he prompted that damn two-step in my chest. Inches from my face, his heated, minty breath brushed my face.
“Somewhere deep within that chest cavity—” He pointed, “lives a soul longing to lay her burdens down and be weightless. I see it. Feel it. Can almost taste it and smell it.”
“For a man who hardly knows me, you read me so well.”
“Any man can read if he pays attention to the words clearly inscribed on a woman. You must be accustomed to illiterates,” he chuckled, giving me room to breathe as he attempted to take the sting away from the jab far too aligned with truth.
“You have no idea, Duke.” Recalling my disaster of a date, I shook my head of the regret.
“That fire churning and emulsifying like scorching lava in your chest? Keep that tender, love. Your soft season is coming.”
It was a promise. One that floated between us. I trained my gaze on something else. The Dom Perignon. The bucket of ice on our table. Anything to keep me from melting under Duke’s heat. Anything to keep me from begging him to take me down and spread me out.
The man smelled of toasted vanilla and bergamot under a warm fucking sunset. This was no play-play man. This was a man on Saturn. On big business. On his square. Tirelessly, he worked, owning more zeroes in his bank account than not. Aggravating my attraction to his success, the nigga was sculpted from the firmaments and likely modeled for MLNIN in a past life.
Duke Stepford was impossible not to want and difficult to forget.
“When might I get the pleasure to see you again?”
Ever forward, I made my desire for his presence known. An unseasoned approach, I’d never been one to encroach upon a man’s time. Far from default, it was by design. I wasn’t myself in his presence. There was a different aura about me. Something sweeter in my essence. Between my thighs, a tumescence. I was a lover girl. He’d unearthed me, and I was thirsty. But not for anyone.
For him.
“Pleasure?” His brow spiked as if opening the floor to an invitation of it.
“It was,” I smiled and blinked slowly and seductively.
“What does your weekend look like?” He probed.
“Work.”
“What does the following weekend look like?” Again, he attempted to unearth a morsel of my leisure time. The yearning was burdening him as much as it was me.
“Work.”
My shoulders fell, as did my face. Work had been placed on hold over the past week to entertain a host of fruitless dates. It was time for me to get back to business. My bag wouldn’t wait for Duke. This was a novel case of bad timing.
“Don’t force it,” he advised, noting my hesitation. Fluidly, he reached into his pocket and extracted a business card with several numbers.
“Maybe your end of the month will be more inviting. Don’t make this card decoration, Serenity.”
Hastily, I summoned my mental calendar, recalling what my end of month looked like. He was in my head, requesting it, attesting to his power. Controlling my thoughts. Commanding me. Demanding I make time to be free.
Hurriedly, I scurried over the mental date, noting my calendar’s unavailability. It was filled with more business I couldn’t dismiss.
“There’s an investor’s conference.”
One I couldn’t afford to miss for what I wanted to accomplish. Again, more bad timing for the right man. It was pathetic.
Despite the doom and gloom, his eyes bloomed. “The one in the city?”
“The very,” I nodded, already feeling the sting of his absence. Though he hadn’t left yet, this was our farewell from titillating conversation and pleasant flirtation.
“I guess I’ll see you there, Busy Bee.”