[4 Seasons 01] Seducing Summer (20 page)

Gene knew he’d paused for too long. Callie
was too astute not to notice his hesitation. But she didn’t quiz him, maybe
understanding that if he hadn’t caved, it meant he’d decided to keep it to
himself.

Would he ever tell her the truth about what
had happened in Afghanistan? He leaned back in his chair as the waitress came
to clear their plates, sadness settling over him like a wet mist. He couldn’t
shake the feeling that once the truth about everything came out, Callie wouldn’t
want to see him.

He accepted the dessert menu, half wishing
he’d told Phoebe that he didn’t take protection jobs himself anymore. As
director of the firm, he’d been within his rights to farm out the work to one
of his agents, and there were plenty who would have done a great job—a better
job than he was doing, he thought gloomily. But he had a soft spot for Phoebe,
and he’d been unable to say no to her.

“Why so sad?” Callie leaned forward on the
table. She’d rested her breasts on her forearms, pushing them up in the
process. The dress wasn’t low cut, but it gave him a perfect view down her
cleavage, and he had to fight not to look at it.

“Just thinking about the past.”

“Army life is a strange dichotomy, isn’t
it? I would imagine it’s the same in the other defense forces. When you’re
away, you can’t wait to get home, and when you’re home, you’re constantly
thinking of going back.”

“Maybe. I don’t miss it, though.”

“You think you made the right choice
leaving?”

“Oh yes. It’s a good life for a young
single man, but as you’ve mentioned, not so great when you get older or have a
family.”

“Would you like to have a family?”

He smiled. “One day. You?”

“Oh yes. I think I’d be a terrible mum,
though. I’d never remember their lunches, and I’d forget to pick them up from
school.”

“You’d make a great mum,” he said, meaning
it. The thought of Callie curled up beside him, pregnant with his child, gave
him goosebumps.

She looked into her glass of wine for a
moment, and he watched as a light blush filled her cheeks. She was so gorgeous.
He wished he could lean forward and press his lips to hers.

She glanced to one side as a movement a few
tables across caught her eye, and she smiled. He followed her gaze to see a guy
lowering down to one knee as he proposed to his girlfriend. The young woman
pressed her fingers to her lips and burst into tears, nodding furiously.
Everyone around the restaurant cheered, and the guy stood, his face bright red
and beaming.

“Aw,” Callie said. “How romantic.”

“You think?” Gene drew his brows together.
“I can’t imagine proposing in a restaurant. Imagine how embarrassing it would
be if the girl turned you down.”

He’d not given much thought to marriage
before, but he decided that when he eventually proposed, it would be just the
two of them, him and his chosen girl, somewhere quiet.

His brain transplanted Callie into the
picture, giving him a vision of kneeling before her. Her words rang in his
head:
we’re not exactly sweethearts, are we?
It made him sad, and he
looked away.

The waitress returned for their order, and
Callie requested the ice cream trio, while Gene just wanted coffee.

When she’d left, Callie leaned on the table
again. “Tell me about Lisa,” she said.

That startled him. He was surprised she
even remembered Lisa’s name. “What about her?”

“What was she like?”

He played with the salt shaker, turning it
around in his fingers. “Shortish. Long, dark hair she wore in a bun most of the
time. Pretty. Feisty. Brave. She loved animals—dogs, cats, horses, anything we met
went straight to her.” He knew why—she’d had a magnetic personality that had
pulled everyone and everything toward her.

“How long had you been dating?” Callie
asked.

He stared at her. Then he put down the salt.
“What makes you say that?”

“It’s obvious, Gene. It doesn’t take a mind
reader to see your pain.”

“I’d have been upset at the loss of any
colleague.”

“Sure. How long?”

He sighed. “Only a few months. It wasn’t
serious—it had only just gotten going, really. Maybe that was worse, never
having the chance to discover whether it would have worked. I don’t know.”

Callie covered his hand with her own. “I’m
sorry.”

He left it there for a moment, but he was
too worried that Ian—the agent who’d preceded them to Napier to carry out a
threat assessment, and who’d be keeping an eye on the surroundings—would see
them, so he carefully slid his hand away and picked up his drink. “Thanks.”

He hated doing this, pushing her away, and
cursed himself for being so weak. She finished off her drink, though, and
smiled at him, suggesting she wasn’t upset.

“Let’s change the subject,” she said.
“Where are we off to after Napier?”

She kept the conversation light after that,
talking about the towns they were due to visit and places she’d been to while
she dipped her spoon into her ice cream and ate it slowly. Gene was content to
listen to her and watch the spoon filled with creamy mixture slide between her
lips, her tongue occasionally protruding to remove any drips.

He wished they were a couple, and she would
ask if he wanted a taste of her ice cream, and feed him spoons of it, looking
into his eyes with adoration. But she didn’t ask, and although she smiled a lot
and her eyes were friendly, she was careful to keep her hands to herself, and
to steer the conversation away from anything too intimate.

But it was as if the more he tried to
remain professional, the more he hungered for her. By the end of the evening,
he ached with longing.

After they’d eaten, they went for a short
walk through the streets of Napier to let their dinner go down, and it was all
he could do not to take her in his arms, strip her of the dress right there in
the street, and feel her hot skin against his.

“It’s going to rain any minute,” Callie
said, looking up at the heavy gray sky. “Jeez, it’s humid.”

He couldn’t even take her hand, because he
knew Ian would be following them at a distance, keeping a watch out for any
suspicious characters. This really was like torture, and even though he hadn’t
drunk a drop of alcohol, he felt slightly dizzy, consumed by lust and need for
her.

Something landed on his cheek—a large drop
of rain. “You’re right,” he said. “We should get back.”

They began to walk more quickly, but Callie
was wearing high heels and couldn’t stride out as fast as him.

“We’re not going to make it,” he said as
the raindrops increased and began to turn the pavement a dark gray.

“Hold on.” She stopped walking and bent to
ease her heels off, then squealed as the heavens opened. “Quick!”

She ran beside him in her stockinged feet,
but they were still soaked by the time they reached the steps to the hotel. “So
much for the elegant makeup,” she said, dripping onto the tiles as they walked
across the foyer. “I bet I look like a panda.”

“You look wonderful.” It wasn’t false
flattery. Her cheeks were flushed and strands of wet hair clung to them, but
she looked young, fresh, and full of life. It was only at that point he
realized that, in spite of his relationship with Angela and a few other girls,
Lisa had haunted his memories for a long time, and it was nice to be with
someone who banished his dark thoughts, at least for a while.

She didn’t reply, and they made their way
to the elevator, just catching a half-filled cubicle about to go up. They stood
to one side of it as the doors closed, and she looked up, meeting his eyes. She
was quite a bit shorter than him without her heels, and he discovered he could
see down her cleavage from this angle.

Heat flooded him, and it must have shown in
his eyes because her lips parted. Their gazes locked, and suddenly Gene knew
that in seconds she’d be in his arms, naked, and it wouldn’t be much longer
afterward that he’d be sliding inside her, losing himself in her warmth.

The elevator dinged at their floor and they
broke their gaze and walked out. There was another couple in the corridor,
talking, and so they walked straight to their rooms, not saying anything.
Callie swiped her card and opened her door, went in, and waited.

He glanced over his shoulder. The couple
had disappeared. The corridor was empty. Ian would have taken a room on the
same floor, but he would continue to keep an eye out in the foyer for a while
before retiring for the night.

Turning back, Gene followed Callie into the
room, and the door closed behind him.

She walked to the bed, flicked on the
bedside lamp, then turned to face him. He closed the distance between them,
until they were standing only an inch apart. Outside, the rain hammered on the
streets and pounded on the window, but inside the room it was warm and quiet,
the only sound their fast breathing and the tick of the clock on the wall.

Callie looked up at him. “Can I touch you
now?” she said softly.

He undid the buttons of his jacket, slid it
off, and hung it over the chair. Then he did the same with his waistcoat,
because he didn’t like her touching it in case she discovered how thick it was
and started asking questions.

Then he came back to her, cupped her face,
and lowered his lips to hers.

Oh… it was heavenly to kiss her after an
evening of having to keep his distance. She gave a little moan, and he slid his
arms around her and pulled her against him, reveling in the feel of her soft
body against his. Brushing his tongue across her bottom lip, he was rewarded
when she opened her mouth, and they exchanged a long, slow kiss, his hand
sliding down to her bottom, hers beginning to unbutton his shirt.

Reaching the hem, she thrust the sides of
the shirt aside and slipped her hands underneath, onto his skin. “
Aaahhh
,”
she sighed, scraping her nails lightly across his ribs. “I’ve wanted to do this
all evening.”

He shuddered, and suddenly everything was
taking too long. He needed her naked, wanted to feel her against him, to have
her beneath him. Turning her, he caught hold of the zipper at the top of her
dress and slid it down, then eased the dress off her shoulders and let it fall
to the floor in a whisper of material.

Eyebrows rising, he turned her back to face
him. An impish smile crossed her face. “Happy birthday. And happy Valentine’s
Day.”

She wore a set of Four Seasons underwear
he’d seen in the catalogue, made from black lace with a shiny red ribbon
threaded through the tops of the demi-cups. The same red ribbon wove through
the fabric of the panties, culminating in a neat bow at the front. It was
grown-up and sexy at the same time—not the cheap sort of underwear a girl
bought and wore once before relegating it to the back of the drawer because it
was too uncomfortable, but the type a woman bought and wore all the time
because she wanted to feel good and look sexy for herself as well as for her
man.

“Wow.” The erection that had been half
there all evening now sprang to attention. Turning her away from him, he moved
closer and slid his hands from her hips up to cup her breasts. “You look
fantastic,” he murmured, kissing down her neck to where the pulse beat, and
covering the spot with his mouth. He sucked, and she groaned and leaned her
head on his shoulder, arching her back to push her breasts into his hands.
Taking the hint, he took each nipple between his thumbs and forefingers through
the fabric and tugged a little, and she moaned again and covered his hands with
her own.

“I need you,” she whispered, turning to
throw her arms around his neck. “I want you, Gene. I’ve wanted you all evening.
I can’t bear it any longer. Make love to me.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. He pushed
her onto the bed and gestured for her to climb onto the mattress, which she
did, lying on the pillows, her breasts rising and falling fast with her rapid
breaths. He let his shirt drop to the floor and quickly removed his trousers
and his underwear, then went to his jacket and took out a small velvet pouch
before returning to the bed.

Her lips curved up. “Is this my present?”

“Well, it’s a present for both of us.” He
climbed on and stretched out beside her. “I wouldn’t have bought a toy without
consulting you, but I thought these might be acceptable.” He handed her the
pouch.

She unclipped the popper, opened it up, and
took out the two small bottles of lube. “Oh!” Her face lit up with pleasure.
“His and hers!”

“Yeah. This one is a warming gel. This one
makes things… tingle. And together they combine to provide some interesting
sensations, apparently.”

She met his gaze and smiled. “Thank you.”

“Not that I think you need it,” he teased,
laughing when she blushed prettily. He moved close to her, pulling her thigh
across his so she was practically wrapped around him. “God, I want you,” he
said huskily. “It’s all I’ve been able to think about.”