“The Paris weekend was glorious,” she said, and he knew she was alluding to the first one, a mere couple of weeks into their scorching sexual union. “Everything so alive and intense. You were so passionate about everything, I remember – the art, the architecture, the wine – and you took me so hard every night.” There was a warm tremor in her voice that ran to the core of him and set his cock alive, despite every reservation he still had about this meeting.
“I figured you didn’t think about those times anymore,” he said, eyeing her as coolly as he could manage over his wine glass. “Or think of me remotely that way.”
She looked something verging on penitent. “I said some… unkind things to you, Mac. Things I regret.”
Things like ‘Maybe you’re not the man I thought you were’, he recalled, the disappointment and near-contempt more memorable to him than the words. Disappointment because he’d struggled to keep the staff employed in one subsidiary business rather than cut them loose when the recession hit, at considerable cost. Contempt because he’d not been quite cut-throat enough to secure the Glendale contract, losing out to bloody Rainbow Software. How swiftly had her feelings cooled towards him after that conversation. There was no sweeping it away with a few words, not after everything that had followed. Miranda, nonetheless, was intent on trying.
“Honestly,” she said, responding to the doubtfulness in his expression, “I didn’t acknowledge that we were simply different kinds of people. That just because you’re a… a good man, it doesn’t make you any less of one.” God, it sounded like she was wrestling with concepts utterly foreign to her. But shedid remember the fatal conversation. That at least meant something. It mattered to him that she was trying to act like a human, however taxing the performance.
“That hasn’t stopped you trying to take me for everything you could,” he observed, sipping again at his wine.
“True.” She had the decency to look slightly abashed. “But then that’s my nature. A woman has to be true to that.” She reached out and stroked the back of his hand. The hairs on it prickled. “You know, whatever happened between us,” she said, her pupils of her dark eyes dilating, “however… incompatible we turned out to be, you’re still one of the most physically impressive men I’ve ever met.”
“Stop that, Miranda.” Even the use of her name had his erection inflating against the inside leg of his trousers. This was beyond unwise. He needed to see the signed papers before he could even contemplate such a development.
“Stop what? I can still say I find you attractive, can’t I?” Her fingertips lingered. “So broad, so tall, it’s not many men who tower over me physically. Not many men with the capacity to take control of me the way you did – when you wanted to. When your confounded niceness didn’t get in the way.”
“You make ‘niceness’ sound like a regrettable quality.”
“It wouldn’t be for some women, I know,” she said with a hint of sadness. “There are a lot who would find your… your sweeter aspects, along with that spectacular cock of yours, an irresistible combination. So tell me – has your gorgeous length been getting any satisfaction recently? Has it been delving into any interesting places? I know, I know… you can’t tell me.”
“Hardly,” he said, blood pumping the cock in question harder even as alarms sounded in his head. “I slipped up once and it was my undoing.”
“With your comely secretary.”
“We both know that whole sorry tale and so do our lawyers.”
“Indeed.”
There she was, goading again. It had been comfort sex, in the full knowledge that Miranda was out on her own, partying with God knew who. And she’d put a private detective on his tail. Christ, he had been made to pay for one indiscretion – just like his darling wife had planned. He wondered whether his wife knew that the curvy temp had sneaked to his new apartment for that follow-up night of passion. Hell, the conniving cow probably did. Anger reasserted itself within him, but his lust made no concession. Hardly likely, with Miranda’s perfumed breath flooding his face.
“Look at you,” she said, staring deep into his eyes. “Anger burning away inside you. You know something, Mac?”
“What?”
“The only times you ever fucked me like I knew you could, were the ones when I’d pissed you off. I mean really pissed you off.” She was leaning across the table, red hair trailing in that loose ponytail over her shoulder, the fissure between those wonderful tits on fuller display. “So tell me. How angry are you with me right now?”
He could hear his own breath. That and the sound of Miranda’s voice were the only two sounds in the universe right then. “Try ‘very’.”
“‘Very’?”
“You know how angry I am and you know why.”
“I suppose I do. Well what if you could do something about it?”
“I…”
“What if after a delicious dessert we were to go back to my place and sort this business out once and for all?”
“You mean…”
“I mean what if the papers are signed and waiting back there to be handed over? What if once you’d driven me there and had them in your possession, Mac, you were to get some fucking payback? You know, do what it takes for us to part on good terms. How do you like the sound of that?”
“I…” He liked it a lot and he knew that she could see it, but he eased back nonetheless. “I think we should have that dessert first, while I consider it.”
She took his hand and pressed her full, exquisite lips to his fingers. “That reserve ever in place,” she said. “You need to lose it. You need to act more on what we both know is underneath.”
“Dessert,” he insisted, however rock-solid and straining his cock.
The moment lengthened, but was finally interrupted by a buzz from that confounded phone. “How the minions irritate,” she said, her tongue wetting her lip, before she went to check the text.
Mac observed her closely, a vague suspicion from earlier resurfacing from his mind’s depths. Is she up to something here? Please no… Her face remained impassive as she responded to the communication and casually tossed her phone into her bag. The device lay balanced on the zipper and he felt an uncanny urge to check who she’d been texting. Miranda smiled again, her expression and her entire bearing one sly sexual taunt. “Now – dessert,” she said. Mac’s erection reasserted itself against the tight fabric of his boxers.
They selected the dessert platter and shared it – the profiteroles, the tiramisu and the sweet pastries – like a symbol of their united intent. Mac’s appetite for food had returned so fiercely it surprised him, and with it grew that other carnal appetite. God, I want to have you like I’ve never had you before. Once those signed documents are in my hands… He ate slowly, sublimating all signs of his mounting passion, or attempting to. Then he savoured the coffee and sucked slowly, deliciously, on the provided breath-mints. Not a word needed to pass between them; the occasional loaded glance sufficed.
“I think it’s time,” he said when they both were utterly finished, adopting the kind of tone he might have used at the end of a meal on their Parisian honeymoon.
“Indeed it is,” she said, and in that instant her smile transformed from lascivious warmth to icy calculation – the look he had come to associate so closely with her. His animated vital signs iced up in reaction. “Time for me, my dear, to send you off into the night with your big throbbing hard-on and nowhere to put it. It’s okay – I suggested the evening, so I’ll pick up the bill. You can go.”
“I… Sorry? I can go?” Mac stared into her calmly mocking face, mind racing to process the development. She was dismissing him? What the fuck… “Exactly why did we come here?” he inquired, enforcing a state of calm on himself. “What’s the point of all this?”
“Oh darling,” she said, “simply so I could remind myself of how easy you are to play. You didn’t really think I was going to leave it where it was, did you?”
“You’ve got…” Mac’s mind spun and eddied as he groped for words. “How can you possibly expect to get a better deal than the one I offered you? It’s more than generous. You fucking know it is.” The last part came out as a gravelly hiss. “Besides,” he added, “you’ve no cards left to play.”