“Are you trying to seduce me, Vittoria?”
“Seduce you, Mr. Caine?” She faked an outraged gasp as her bare foot continued running up the inside of his trouser leg. Quietly amused, he sipped his aged Scotch in the chair opposite, “Why! We’re in public, what, pray tell, do you take me for?”
They’d arrived at a small, expensive restaurant about 100 miles out of town. Jayden wouldn’t explain why they had to go so far, except to say that they made the best pizza in town. Although, 100 miles out, Tori suspected it could well be that everybody had forgotten the taste of Domino’s by the time they reached it.
“A little minx,” he swirled the amber liquid around the squat glass, “I’ve created a Frankenstein.”
She threw back her head, the long blonde curls shaking around her petite body as she leaned back in the chair, spilling over the black velour chair.
She looked decadently beautiful. Her smoke-shadowed eyes deepening the dark violet eyes as her body bathed discreetly in a slow burning arousal that nobody would ever notice did they not know that soft flush that her skin caught. And the deep teal coloured mini dress set off a perfect contrast for her pale skin.
And almost every eye in the room turned at the gentle sound of her child like laughter.
The restaurant was small, only marginally bigger than a large domestic space, split with an arch in the separating wall at the centre of the room. Jayden gritted his teeth as he watched even the restaurant staff lean around the wall to watch her, and knocked back the remainder of his whiskey. The gangly young waiter’s eyes quickly jumped up to meet Jayden’s steady glare, and he flushed comically, dropping his head away to order another drink for his sullen customer at the bar.
“Jay?”
He shook himself from his moody, jealous reverie. This shit with Seb and Marco Franchetti addling his brain. They shouldn’t be anywhere near her side of town, he knew enough about their dealings to know that!
The only reason they were there was to check out his Achilles heel, and find a way to work it to their advantage. No doubt Sebastienne, that ambitious, over reaching little prick, was about to follow up with a bit more digging on their behalf.
“So what’s with the Ramsay contract?” he pulled back in his seat as the opportunistic waiter’s eyes drifted across to Tori’s ample bust, swelling against the ocean teal silk. “You just lost your tip, mate,” he grunted at the now tomato red young man who dropped his tumbler of whiskey onto the table in front of him.
Tori gasped in outrage, “Jay ...” she started, angrily.
“Don’t Tor! I’ll not stand by while some little muppet disrespects me and you at the table ogling you like you’re some piece of meat! He was checking you out from over there earlier, and I gave him a silent warning, which he ignored. So the idiot loses his tip.” He reached across the table to gently capture her hand with his own, “But I was talking about something else, with my woman, which he won’t ruin because he can’t keep his mind out of the gutter.”
“You’re one to talk!”
“Only where you’re concerned! I usually have highly commendable control!”
“You don’t with me?” Dry-mouthed, suddenly, she pulled free her hand to reach for the chilled bottle of Pinot Grigio that rested in the ice bucket.
“No,” he sighed, eyeing her hands intensely, watching them fiddle nervously with the stem of her glass once she’d poured out a small measure for herself, “With you I just can’t seem to keep a hold of it sometimes. Like right now, you’ve pulled your hands away from me, but I feel like climbing over the table and pulling you into my lap, because I need to know that you’re real, that you’re with me. I need the heat, the scent form your body, against me.” Suddenly dry mouthed himself, he drained half of the measure in his glass in one sip, “I’m not used to that.”
What could she say to that?
Discreetly, he cleared his throat as their starters were placed in front of them, thankfully by a new waiter.
“Thank you,“ she smiled up at the new waiter, as he nodded his head and left them to their food, obviously heeding a warning from his young colleague.
“I thought the idea after you graduated was to come home, work on selling your own work?” picking up a random fork from the over-assembled collection in front of him, he started to cut into his Confit Duck starter as he waited for her answer. Why the hell did they give you so much cutlery? Who the hell knew which one to use for which course?
“It is, or it was, I guess. I doubt I’ll come home, I have the apartment, and my contacts are here. It’s hard to break into these circles, at least if they’ve seen my face, they might be more inclined to buy my own work from me if that is the plan. I make enough at the gallery, and with my own commissions with the illustrations and the web work, I guess I’ll have to wait and see.”
“You mean sit back and wait for an opportunity to present itself? This corporate co-ordination stuff isn’t what you want is it?”
“It’s what I do,” she shrugged, “I don’t know about tomorrow, but right now, it’s making me money, and giving me a standing in the creative community, that’s good enough for me.”
His jaw clenched when he thought about her staying here, vulnerable in the city without him. He’d had enough worries on his plate before he’d seen her here, before Sebastienne and Franchetti had put all the pieces together.
Before she’d become a target to draw the Caine name back into their industry.
Tori watched his face become sullen, as he silently brooded on his starter.
He’d been behaving strange all evening, she could see that, and she refused to call him on it, preferring to leave him stew until he explained himself later. Or, as was probably more likely, just shoved it away somewhere and dealt with it on his own later.
“Excuse me a second, I need to pop to the loo.”
Folding her napkin at the side of her now empty plate, she rose from her chair, and headed to the bathroom on quiet footsteps, still distracted by Jayden’s funny mood, trying to work out if maybe it had something to do with this afternoon, those pictures, or the call with her brother. Somehow, although everything had gone right, it all felt off kilter, like she really didn’t understand what was going on.
She flinched as a large hand descended into a grasp around her slender wrist from the shaded corner table that she’d not seen as she passed it.
YOU ARE READING
Puppet Master
General FictionGRAPHIC and EXPLICIT! Tori's been in love with Jayden since she was twelve years old, but he's pulled away at every turn. Doubts, insecurities, and certain, ahem, preferences have been convincing him that she's the kind of girl t...
