They stood there, Drake watching her calmly, utterly still. Slowly, her breathing evened out and she straightened. At some level, deeper than words, she realized she didn’t need to guard her vital organs, which is what she’d subconsciously been doing in holding herself so tightly.
His stillness reassured her. Someone who means you harm gives off minute signals, muscles bunching and readying themselves for attack. He deliberately relaxed every muscle, cleared his mind of all thoughts, and made himself open to her, something he never did with anyone.
It worked. The vein beating in her neck took on a slower rhythm, her hand relaxed in his.
“Come,” he said finally, tugging lightly. “Dinner is waiting for us. Let’s go before it gets cool.”
Grace stood for just a moment longer, watching his eyes. Whatever it was she was looking for, she found it. “Okay,” she said softly, and stepped forward.
Drake looked down at her feet and frowned. “You’re barefoot. I’m sorry I don’t have any slippers that would fit you. Maybe one of the maids has a pair of slippers.”
She smiled slightly. “Don’t worry about it. The floor is mainly rugs and I’m used to going barefoot in my house. I’m okay.”
He didn’t like the idea, though he had to admit that he enjoyed looking at her pretty, bare feet. But she might catch cold. He made a mental note to tell Shota to add several pairs of Ferragamo slippers to the list of things to buy her.
They walked down the big hallway together. He didn’t release her hand and she didn’t tug it free. Drake was so taken by her presence at his side, by the feel of her soft hand in his, that he was almost at the door of the dining room before he realized that it was the first time in memory that he’d walked hand in hand with a woman.
Such a strange and intimate connection, in some ways more intimate than fucking. You can fuck a woman you don’t particularly care for. Easy. But you don’t hold her hand. Holding hands signifies an intimate connection, one of trust and affection.
They weren’t there yet. But they would be. They had to be.
“Go on,” he said, holding the door open for her. She looked up at him and, reassured by what she saw on his face, walked into the room.
Shota had outdone himself. Through his amazing radar, Shota had understood that this wasn’t a business dinner. He’d brought out Drake’s best china and what looked like all his silverware. Drake had no idea what make the china plates were. When they’d arrived in Manhattan, he’d simply told Shota to buy the best, and he had. Gleaming, delicate white plates with silver rims, crystal glasses, creamy white candles in silver candlesticks. The candles were lit. Together with a few low lamps, they were the only illumination in the huge room except for the enormous crackling fire.
The table looked appealing and intimate, not at all what it looked like when set for his solitary dinners. When he ate here, it was for fuel. This looked like a little ceremony.
It must have appealed to the artist in her, because as he watched her, a small smile curved her lips. “Very pretty,” she said softly.
He nodded. It was very pretty.
No one had ever drummed manners into him. He’d grown up on the streets, fighting his way to the top. No one had ever told him how men are supposed to behave in society, with ladies. His formative years had been spent with warlords, generals and rebel leaders. Later, he befriended a few alcoholic war journalists and the odd rough CIA operative, none of whom had any manners worth speaking about.
But Drake knew how to observe, how to blend in. So he knew that he was supposed to accompany Grace to her chair, pull it out and wait for her to sit before sitting down himself. He’d seen it done. He knew how it was supposed to go.
But it wasn’t to conform to some abstract society ideal that had him walking her to her chair and pulling it out.
It came utterly naturally, instinctively. From the deepest part of his being. It gave him enormous pleasure to take her to his table, to make sure that she was comfortably seated before taking a seat himself. It felt absolutely right. Nothing to do with manners and everything to do with gut-deep instinct.
His cooks had outdone themselves. Warm and nutritious, he’d asked. Apparently that meant soup. Soup that was…green, he discovered as he filled her bowl.
“I have no idea what this is.” He filled his own bowl and waited until she picked up her spoon and delicately tasted the soup. “I hope it’s good. My cooks seem to know what they’re doing. Usually.”
“It’s delicious,” she said softly. “And just for the record, it’s watercress soup.”
Watercress. Jesus. He knew every gun that had ever been manufactured. Every hold in every martial art. This was beyond him. What the fuck was watercress?
“An herb. It grows wild.” She watched him with a small smile, answering his unspoken question. “Try it. You’ll like it. It’s really very good.”
He did. It was.
They were both hungry and ate their way quickly through the food. Drake knew the food was all good, fantastic even, but he could hardly taste it. He was completely taken up with Grace Larsen. At his table, by his side.
In the past year that he’d taken extraordinary risks just to see her, telling himself he was an idiot, he’d never thought he’d actually ever be sitting beside her, except in the middle of the night, in his dreams.
He was a fast healer, almost preternaturally so. He felt much better already, almost normal. He could feel strength returning minute by minute to his body, he could feel the blood circulating more strongly in his veins. Alas, most of it went straight to his cock.
He’d deliberately put on tight, stiff jeans, hoping it would act as a sort of a chastity belt, but it wasn’t working. Just watching her eat, move—hell, breathe—excited him.
Shit.
He had enormous mental discipline but mind games weren’t working. Not when he had Grace less than a foot from him, his gi gaping slightly over her breasts, showing the dips and shadows of her breasts, her delicate collarbones visible.
He clenched his fist on the table. He wanted so badly to reach out and touch her that his hand itched. He understood his cock, trying to punch its way through stiff denim. His cock wanted to reach out and touch her, too.
Actually, his cock wanted in her, in the worst way. It was as if he’d never had sex before, it was so intense.
They were making polite conversation, about the food, the tableware, the candlesticks—he could barely keep his mind on what they were saying—and all the time his head was flooded with images of her in his bed.
He wasn’t even fantasizing about foreplay—no, his head had gone straight to the main course. Fucking. Fucking Grace. Who was—whoa—not more than a foot away from him. Close enough for him to smell her, a delicate fragrance under the sharper smells of the food and the wood from the hearth. Close enough to see how fine-grained her skin was, what a lovely glowing color she had, as if sprinkled with pearl dust.
She favored loose clothing, so all the times he’d seen her at the gallery, he had to guess at what was underneath, but now, dressed in his gi, which she’d had to cinch around herself tightly or the whole damned thing would fall off, he could see exactly how she was made.
Perfectly. That’s how she was made.
She’d fit perfectly in his hands, fit perfectly under him. He could see them on his bed, long pale slender legs hugging his hips, arms around his neck, as he pumped inside her. She’d be soft there, too. Wet enough to take him, so that he could slide easily in and out of her. His hands—where the fuck were his hands in this scenario?
Holding that narrow waist, right at the sexy curve before it widened to her delicately round hips? But he also wanted to hold her breasts while fucking her, rasping a thumb across her nipple, feeling it turn hard as he moved inside her. But then he also wanted a hand in that glorious hair, feeling it curling softly over his arm like a female waterfall. But then what he really wanted was to hold her legs open with his hands, cup her knees and spread them so that he had full access to her cunt, nothing in the way, nothing between them…