give you a better outlet for your frustration. Just say the word.”
She poked her right index finger in his chest. “Isn’t that just like a man, defining everything in terms of himself. I am not frustrated.”
“Stop fooling yourself, and quit stabbing me with your finger. What you want is for me to…to—”
“What?” she asked with her flat palm now against his chest, almost daring him to say it. “To do what?”
His hands grabbed her shoulders, and she’d never seen such fire in a man’s eyes. Eyes burning with desire. “Don’t dare me, Felicia,” he said, his expression thunderous. “You think if you provoke me into doing what you want me to do, you won’t share in the responsibility. That it?”
Her gaze drifted from his eyes to his mouth, to the full bottom lip that she longed to feel on her lips, her nipples and all over her. She bathed her lips with the tip of her tongue and didn’t bother to hide her thoughts and feelings.
“Damn!” His mouth came down hard on hers, and she parted her lips, shamelessly wanting him inside her. He locked his arms around her, pulled her tight to his body and drugged her as he unleashed his passion. He loved every crevice of her mouth until, exasperated, she pulled his tongue into her and feasted on it, loving him. His fingers gripped her buttocks, and his breathing shortened almost to a pant as he lifted her and held her to his body. His heat seemed to fire up her nerve ends, and her blood raced to her loins. Her nipples tightened, and all she could think of as his tongue plowed in and out of her mouth simulating the act of love, was how she wanted him inside her. She undulated against him, rubbing her left nipple and moaning her frustration. He let the wall of the two-hundred-and-forty-year-old building take his weight and grabbed her knees as she pressed herself to him.
Suddenly her feet touched the floor and he was no longer kissing her, but leaned against the wall and held her close. “What on earth got into us?” he asked. “How did we forget that we’re in a public place?”
When his mouth touched hers, she hadn’t a thought as to where she was or why she was there. “I don’t know what happened, Ashton. I’ve never been down that road before. I’ve never experienced anything that caused me to behave less than circumspectly. You see what you did?” she said, trying to smile.
As if he understood that her comment was an attempt at levity, his arms went around her in a brief gesture of reassurance.
“It was completely out of my hands, baby. So help me God. You were all I saw, felt or heard. Are you still frustrated and annoyed about it?”
“What I’m feeling now is…I don’t know. I’m just…out of sorts. Are we still having dinner together tomorrow night?” she asked him.
“Yes. There’s a nice little restaurant over near the United Nations. Diplomats won’t be interested in you and me. I’ll be at your place a seven. Okay?”
“I’ll be ready. How do you dress?”
“Business suit. Come on and let’s see the remainder of this place. We have to get the five o’clock shuttle.”
They walked out of the smokehouse arm in arm. In the few minutes she spent in his arms, her life changed, and she knew she would never be the same. Maybe he would become important to her, and maybe he wouldn’t, but he’d taught her how she could feel in a man’s arms, and for that, she would never forget him. She had thought she knew but, in fact, she hadn’t had a clue.
He appeared engrossed in their surroundings, pointing out the birds and the foliage, things that he evidently hadn’t observed earlier. “Wonder what kind of plant that is,” he said, pointing to an evergreen.
She stopped walking, put her hands on her hips and looked up at him. “How can you act as if nothing happened back there. I don’t care how many strange plants George Washington had or how many pigs he slaughtered every week. How can you—”
He interrupted her,