Sushi: A Forbidden Flowers Story Read online

  Back at Delaney’s, he helped her out of the Mercedes, covered her shoulders with his suit jacket, and walked her to her car, where he shielded her from the chilly air and plundered her mouth some more before breaking their marathon lip-lock and tipping his forehead to hers.

  “Have dinner with me.” His gravelly voice was laced with need.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  A subtle smile curled her lips. “It is tomorrow.”

  Tiny crow’s-feet jutted from the corners of his eyes as he grinned. “Then have dinner with me tonight.”

  She nodded, feeling as if she were in a dream, and lifted her mouth to his. “Okay.”

  She couldn’t say she wasn’t disappointed that the date was over and they hadn’t made good on his promise from this afternoon, but, in all honesty, she couldn’t imagine their date ending any other way. The evening had been perfect. Absolutely, irrevocably perfect. The best first date of her life. Hell, this had been the best date—period—of her life. First, second, or otherwise.

  He brushed his lips over hers with fiery tenderness, then took a step back. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  His fingers lingered around hers for a long moment as he gazed at her with a sense of wonder. Then he released her hand, opened the driver’s side door for her, and waited until she was seated with the engine started before heading back to his Mercedes.

  The perfect gentleman.

  And the perfect ambassador for how an older man could totally sweep a younger woman off her feet.

  Chapter Five

  Dinner the following night was just that. Dinner. And more of his mouth making love to hers, and nothing more. He kissed her good night, ending the evening the same as the night before, as a perfect gentleman.

  The night after that ended the same way after he took her to an art opening in Manhattan. All flaming kisses, but no sex.

  And so it went, night after night, for nearly two weeks.

  Gabe wined her, dined her, and took her dancing. They attended the opening of a new celebrity-owned restaurant and paid a thousand dollars per plate to attend a fundraising dinner for children’s charities. He took her to the opera, to a Knicks game, and to a friend’s uptown wine bar for the launch of a new pinot noir. But every evening ended the same way, with the two of them making out like horny teenagers in the back of his Mercedes before he dropped her off at home.

  It wasn’t that Gabe wasn’t into her or turned on. She could tell from the impressively hard bulge in his trousers that he was. His equipment definitely worked, so why wasn’t he using it?

  Jordan’s anticipation had built to a fever pitch, the frustration reaching critical levels. If Gabe didn’t put out the two-week-old fires he’d started between her legs soon, she was going to incinerate.

  Either she was going to have to get the ball rolling or tonight’s date would end the way all the others had.

  They were at her apartment door, his mouth copulating gloriously with hers. But, damn it, she was tired of her mouth getting all the action. She wanted the rest of her to feel all that physical passion as well.

  “Do you want to come inside?” she suggested between feverish kisses.

  He shook his head, breaking their lip-lock, and inched backward. “Not tonight.”

  She’d been clutching his shirt, but now her hands went slack as she pulled away and searched his face. This was the man who had told her that the next time they fucked each other it wouldn’t be from across the room. Well, they hadn’t been across the room from each other for two weeks. What was the holdup?

  “Gabe, are you ever going to fuck me?”

  The problem with trying to contain the uncontainable was that the longer you tried to restrain it, the stronger and more demanding it grew. Until, eventually, one way or another, it had to come out. Tension like that couldn’t sustain itself forever. And she had reached her breaking point.

  He stared back at her for a long moment, then a mischievously cool grin spread over his face. “What’s the rush?”

  “Rush? We’ve been dating for two weeks?”

  “And . . .?”

  Was he being intentionally dense or just teasing her? “I just thought—”

  “Are you having fun?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are you having fun? Do you enjoy being with me?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Do I turn you on?”

  Her shoulders dropped and she cocked her head as if to say that was a stupid question. “Gabe, if you could feel my panties right now, you would know without a doubt that you do, in fact, turn me on. It’s why I asked if you’re ever going to fuck me.” She fisted his shirt and tugged him closer. “I want you. I want you in my bed. I want you in the shower. I want you up against the wall.” She took a deep breath. “I want what you promised me on the phone the day we met. Do you remember?” She searched his eyes. “Do you remember what you said to me?”

  He eased her back against her apartment door, hands on her hips, eyes on her mouth. “Oh, I remember.” One of his eyebrows cocked upward. “And I meant every word.”

  “Then what’s the prob—”

  He grabbed her hand and planted her palm between his legs—right on top of the impressively hard, ample erection tenting his trousers—and held it there.

  “You turn me on too,” he said. “God, do you ever turn me on.” He licked his lips as his gaze dropped to her mouth. “Every time I kiss you good night, I don’t think I’ll be able to walk away. That I’ll turn back around, take you to the floor, and hook your legs over my shoulders until you’re screaming my name and I’m buried so deep inside you that I don’t think I’ll be able to make it through another day without remembering how you feel quivering around me.”

  Jordan’s mouth fell wordlessly open. In one breath, he’d robbed her of the ability to speak. But her mind was full of words. Yes. Please. This. Now. Tonight.

  She swallowed, barely able to breathe as Gabe’s confession continued to pour out of him.

  “I need you in every way a man needs a woman, Jordan.” He cupped her face with his palm, running his thumb over her cheek. “Just wondering about what outfit you’ll be wearing when I pick you up gets me hard.” His angular jaw tightened as he looked down the front of her body. “Will it be the black leather skirt with the slit up the side? That pair of sexy denim trousers with those red stilettos and red silk blouse? The baby-blue sweater that makes your skin look like you’ve been out in the sun all day? Or some exotically sexy dress I haven’t seen yet?” A frustrated growl rumbled from his throat. “I spend hours fantasizing about getting you out of those clothes. About tasting your skin and pinning you to the mattress of my bed while I sink my cock inside you.”

  He was breathing hard, his eyes lustfully glassy.

  She licked her lips, on the verge of panting. “You’re making me wet.”

  He groaned and rocked forward, his cock twitching against her palm. “You can’t say things like that to me, baby.”

  His words might have said one thing, but the way he rubbed his hardness against her hand and moaned as his eyelids slid halfway closed said another. He wanted her to tell him how wet she was. How wet he made her. He was on the verge of breaking. If she had any chance of getting him inside her bedroom tonight, this was the moment for a full-court press.

  “I’m wet now.” She brushed her lips over his. “So wet for you. Only you.” She softly kissed him. “Let’s do what our bodies want us to do.” She rubbed her palm up and down his hard shaft. “Come inside. Spend the night with me.”

  His fingers curled roughly against her hips, making the fabric of her dress bunch. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, groaning through a long exhale. “Not tonight.”

  This man was infuriating! After everything he’d just said about stripping her out of her clothes and pinning her to the bed, he was still going to deny her?

  “Please, Gabe. I need you.” He had reduced her to begging.<
br />
  Taking a shuddering breath, his fingers loosened as he stepped closer, the tip of his nose nudging hers. “I need you too. I need you so fucking bad. And I will fuck you.” His palms slid around her back and down to her butt, where he squeezed and pulled her hips forward, making her sweet spot collide with his.

  With a gasp, she clutched his shoulders and involuntarily widened her stance, pressing the back of her shoulders against the door.

  “But I’m not some horny kid,” he added. “I can allow myself to enjoy the anticipation. To let it build so that when I do fuck you, you’ll know that you’ve been well and truly fucked, not just played with by some little boy pretending to fuck.” Grinding himself against her, he released a low growl. “You’ll come harder with me than you have with anyone else, Jordan. Don’t you think that’s worth waiting for?”

  It was a decent argument in favor of abstaining a little longer. The best orgasm of her life was hard to resist. But she was ready now. She was so close to coming right this minute, without even being undressed, that if he brushed the tips of his fingers over her clit through her panties, she would explode.

  “How can you be so certain?” she asked.

  He grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. “Experience.”

  She flashed a smarmy smile. “That’s right, you’re older.”

  “Old enough to know I can make good on my promise.”

  She draped her forearms over his shoulders, in no rush to let him leave. “You are cocky, aren’t you?”

  “Not cocky. Confident.” He gave her a long, lingering, blistering kiss, then murmured against her mouth, “I’m very confident.”

  “Yes, you are.” Her lips found his, playing freely, suckling, teasing, unwilling to let him go in her desperately aroused state.

  “So,” he said, breaking away but staying in her embrace, “what do you say? Can you wait a little longer?”

  Searching his eyes, she wanted so badly to tell him no, that he needed to come into her apartment with her this very instant and fuck her until sunrise. But she knew if she made that demand and robbed him of the opportunity to blow her mind, she would regret it in the morning, and that he probably would too. Maybe he would even resent her for making him do something he wanted to wait for. She didn’t want their first time to end like that, with hard feelings, doubts, and what-ifs.

  “Yes,” she whispered, squirming against him, needing release so badly it hurt. “I can wait. For you.”

  He cradled her cheek. “You won’t have to wait much longer, Jordan, because I can’t wait much longer.” He encroached even farther into her personal space, practically lifting her feet off the floor. “You get me so damn hard and hot, I can’t believe I haven’t already had the pleasure of feeling your tight little body around mine.”

  Talk about hot, she was practically dry humping him through their clothes.

  Somehow, they untangled themselves, and he gave her one last heated kiss before leaving her sexually frustrated. Again.

  Inside her apartment, she stripped out of her dress and was just about to masturbate her frustrations away when her phone rang.

  One glance at the caller ID showed her what she already knew.

  Gabe.

  “That didn’t take you long,” she said with a smile, standing naked in her darkened bedroom. “Did you forget something?”

  “Maybe.” He chuckled, then grew commandingly quiet. “Take off your clothes.”

  She had yet to have sex with him, but she didn’t need a translator to know what the lust in his voice meant. “What if I said they’re already off?”

  “Ah, hell . . .” He uttered a low, appreciative growl. “I wish I could see that.”

  She strolled down the hall toward the dining room. “You could have if you’d stayed.”

  “Don’t tempt me. It was already hard enough telling you no tonight.” A muffled sound came through the line. “So, tell me, Jordan”—God, she loved how he said her name like that. Like it was a sexual weapon only he could wield—“you’re naked?”

  She ran her fingers along the back of one of her cushioned, straight-backed dining room chairs. “Yes.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Maybe I was just getting ready for bed,” she said coquettishly, gazing out the window at the way the moonlight reflected off the Hudson River in the distance, “and you caught me before I could put on my pajamas.”

  “I don’t think so.” His seductive and decisive voice scorched her ear. “I think you had other plans.”

  “Maybe I did.”

  “Tell me.”

  She pulled a chair out from the table and faced it. “Guess.”

  “I’d rather hear you say it.”

  She swung her leg over the seat and lowered herself onto it as if she were taking him inside her. She could almost feel him. “I was just about to masturbate to the fantasy of straddling you on a chair and fucking your brains out.”

  He groaned. “Do it. Straddle a chair and touch yourself for me. Make yourself come while I listen.”

  Her palm glided down her stomach. “Only if you let me hear you come too.”

  “Ah, Christ, I’m about to come right now just listening to you talk like that.”

  “Are you still in the car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is the panel up?”

  The panel between the back seat and the driver. She knew it well. They’d used that panel a lot over the past two weeks to give them much-needed privacy.

  “Yes.”

  “Take out your cock.”

  “It’s out.”

  “Stroke it for me.” She slid her fingers through her own wetness and circled her swollen clit. “Imagine it’s me and not your hand fucking you. Imagine you’re inside me.”

  “Fuck,” he muttered, his voice tight, his breathing intense.

  She was right there with him, breathing heavily into the phone as her own excitement ballooned at record pace.

  Less than a minute later, each listened to the other tumble over the edge, grunting, gasping, crying out as waves of pleasure pummeled them.

  Once they came down from their high, he cleared his throat, still out of breath, and said, “I’ll be in California until Friday, but when I get back, make sure you’re well rested.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ll be making good on my promise, and I plan on keeping you up all night.”

  The line went dead just as she sucked in her breath.

  Damn, did Gabe ever know how to write a cliffhanger.

  Chapter Six

  The following Friday morning, Gabe’s driver, Timothy, called to let Jordan know he would pick her up in an hour for a day at the spa, compliments of Gabriel Stone.

  What a nice surprise.

  By late afternoon, she was back home, sufficiently manicured, pedicured, waxed, massaged, exfoliated, coiffed, made-over, and pampered. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt more relaxed and made a mental note to treat herself to a spa day at least every other month.

  Shortly after arriving home, a pair of packages arrived for her via courier, along with a dozen perfect red roses and a note: “For tonight. –Gabe”

  She opened the large white box first and gasped at the bed of creamy white satin sporting a Gucci label. Holding it by the spaghetti straps, she slowly lifted the slinky, knee-length slip dress from the box, staring in awe at the exquisite sheen of the delicately lined fabric. It was softer than silk.

  For a man who had fantasized about undressing her for three weeks, he’d certainly pulled out all the stops for their big night. This dress had easy access written all over it.

  Inside the other box was a pair of strappy silver Manolo Blahniks and a matching clutch.

  A few minutes before eight, a beige BMW limousine pulled up to her building as she was putting the finishing touches on her lipstick.

  “It’s open,” she called from her bedroom when he rang the bell.

  After the front door opened and clo
sed, she called out, “I’ll just be a minute.”

  He’d texted earlier that he was taking her to a gallery opening for a friend of his, an up-and-coming photographer named Maxwell Slater. Apparently, Slater was a men’s fashion model who had decided he liked being behind the camera as much as enjoyed being in front of it, and tonight was his big debut as an artiste.

  Checking her hair one last time, she grabbed the Manolo Blahniks and perched on the edge of the cushioned bench at the foot her bed. As she bent over to fasten the small silver buckles around her ankles, Gabe appeared in the doorway and leaned against the frame.

  She paused and smiled up at him. “Hello, handsome.”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him in a tuxedo, but tonight he looked extra delicious. Maybe because she knew what he intended to do to her later.

  His gaze slid over her from head to toe. “Nice dress.”

  She finished fastening the buckle on the second shoe and stood, smoothing her palms down her hips. “You like?”

  He looked her up and down, then swirled his finger. “Turn around.”

  She did as he asked, and when she faced him again, he pushed away from the doorframe and crossed the room toward her. “Something’s missing.”

  “Yes, a bra.”

  He grinned and shook his head as he sank his hand into his pocket. “No, something else.” When he drew his hand back out, he was holding a shimmering strand of pearls.

  “Gabe . . .” This was too much. She liked it, of course, but she didn’t need a sugar daddy and didn’t want him to think she was just after his money.

  He stepped behind her as she faced her full-length mirror, then draped the necklace around her neck, fastening it in back as she held up her hair. When he was finished, he kissed her nape with lingering lips, sending hot shivers down her back.

  From his other pocket, he pulled a pair of matching pearl teardrop earrings.

  She smiled up at him as he placed them in her palm. “Gabe, you didn’t need to do this.”

  He shushed her. “It’s been a while since I had a woman I could buy jewelry for.”