If Kindra had suffered through a string of lousy lovers, it was no wonder she was disinterested. He could fix that. He could satisfy her. He'd given himself twelve hours after all.
Mack pulled into the driveway of a white Cape Cod with gray shutters. It was tiny but well kept, and there were a couple of pumpkins sitting on the front steps. He'd never pictured Kindra as the homeowner type.
They had worked together a lot over the past year, and about the only thing he could say about her for sure was that she was intelligent. She did her job well. Quickly and with little fuss.
Other than that, he couldn't claim to know Kindra at all.
He wanted to know her. And not just in the physical sense. He was drawn to her, attracted to that flash in her eyes that popped up from time to time.
Parking his black SUV in the driveway, he got out and rang the doorbell. He waited. And waited. He rang the bell again.
Rocking on the balls of his feet, he peeked in the window. He couldn't tell if she was home or not. Had he been stood up? That hadn't happened to him since… ever.
The door flew open. Kindra hovered there, her face pale and her eyes huge. Her hair was still tightly bound in a clip, and she wore no makeup that he could tell, but she had on a denim skirt.
It hugged her hips and ended with a naughty little slit in the middle an inch or two above her knees. Mack swallowed hard. He'd seen Kindra's legs plenty of times at work. But cov-ered in nylons and sticking out from under a shapeless black skirt.
Now her smooth, creamy legs were bare, making his hand ache to run along her calf. She wore sandals with straps and her toenails were painted a chestnut color, giving rise to images of her feet sliding across a white sheet.
Above the skirt rested a navy blue tank top. Which was not revealing in any way. But given that Mack was used to having all of Kindra covered in layers of business boring, this was enticing.
The cotton top was straining against her lush chest. He stared in appreciation. Kindra had been hiding some great tits.
"Hi," she said breathlessly.
"Hi," he said with a glance up, then couldn't stop himself from zeroing back in on her chest. Why had she been covering those up? It defied logic.
Her arms covered her chest and a pink hue tinted her cheeks. Her embarrassment was evident. It was also arousing.
With a smile, he reached out and pulled her arms away with a light tug. "No, don't cover up. I'm enjoying the view. You have a beautiful body, Kindra."
She tugged her arms back. "You're making me uncomfortable."
"I'm going to see it all anyway, sooner or later."
"Later," she whispered.
"So, you haven't changed your mind?" He needed to hear her say it, having had twenty-four hours to think about it, that this was what she wanted to do.
Her chest rose and fell. Her hand crept up to fiddle with the clip on her head. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, "No. I haven't changed my mind."
Thank God. Mack tried not to fall on the ground and kiss her feet in gratitude. But hell, for a second there, he had feared for his sexual safety. If she had said no, he might have actually suffered some real damage from lack of release.
He smiled at her. "I'm glad. Now are you ready for dinner?"
They didn't talk on the ten-minute drive to the restaurant in a trendy rejuvenated old neighborhood. Kindra seemed to be concentrating on breathing, and keeping her legs crossed and far away from him. Mack was concentrating on driving and accidentally-on-purpose bumping her with various parts of his body as often as he could.
A thigh brush here, an arm rub there. At one point he stretched all the way across the front of her, brushing everything, to retrieve his sunglasses from the glove compartment. Kindra sucked in her breath and froze.
Whether or not it was arousing Kindra, he couldn't tell, but it sure had him hot and bothered.
Mack had called Mojo's ahead of time and had requested the smallest table in the darkest corner. As he guided Kindra to the table, his hand on the small of her back, he was happy to see they had followed his instructions.
Once seated, they were sitting almost next to each other, plants and shadows separating them from the nearby tables. Their knees were touching.
Mack slipped his hand under the table and stroked Kindra's bare knee. Smooth and soft.
She jerked it away.
Now he intended to find out exactly why Kindra had chosen cybersex over the real thing. And what would be his best strategy to please her. To make her moan. To have her begging for more.
He shifted as his black pants swelled beneath the table. Damn. If he kept this up, he was going to knock the whole table over with his dick.
"So how does a nice girl like you wind up having online sex?" he said, going with the element of surprise.
Kindra nearly swallowed the lemon wedge in her iced tea. Eyes watering, she coughed and sputtered. She should have known Mack would be curious and questioning. He certainly was at work, and it made him a good designer. But they weren't talking about download times here, they were talking about sex.
But this was not like a normal date.
Mack Stone was a cut-to-the-chase kind of guy. Working with him had shown her that. The encounter in her office the day before had confirmed that.
He was also a flirt and something of an expert on women. Everywhere he went, there was bound to be one or two dangling after him, giggling and smiling and offering to fetch and carry for him.
To Mack, this was probably just mild, everyday kind of stuff. Eat dinner, talk about sex, then do it. But for her, little Kindra Hill, this wasn't exactly the kind of conversation she had on a regular basis. She didn't talk about sex.
Well, if you didn't count Russ, that is. But that was different. That was like an outlet, a hobby. Some women scuba dived, some women knitted. Kindra talked dirty to Russ.
Which somehow made her seem frighteningly sad and twisted. Maybe it wasn't too late to take up chess or spelunking. Tennis could be fun.
In answer to his question, she said carefully, "I'm not sure that's any of your business."
His ice blue eyes never left hers. "You're my business. For tonight anyway. I want to know you."
Kindra shivered and wished she hadn't let Ashley talk her into wearing this tank top. It was clingy and totally ridiculous for October, even if the temperature had peaked at seventy degrees that afternoon. She had worn a denim jacket with the tank top at home, but the cut was so narrow, it had made her feel as if she were stuffed in a straitjacket, so she had taken it off.
Now she wished she were covered in head-to-toe denim. Loose denim. A denim sack. Then maybe she wouldn't feel like Mack was looking at her, picturing her naked.
Of course, the whole point was that she wanted him to see her naked. No correctionshe wanted to see him naked.
But getting from here to there was the hard part. She almost wished he had just jumped her bones the minute she had opened her front door and had forgotten all about this wine-and-dine part.
But that would make her a really cheap date. She was being cheap enough already; she supposed she should at least spend the guy's money first. A flush started hiking up her face. She wasn't so good at this in-person business.
"Well," Mack said. "If you're going to talk dirty, you should at least find someone who knows how."
While this sounded interesting, Kindra was aware that though they were in a dark corner, they were still in a public place. With other people around. Mack's voice sounded really, really loud to her.
She opened her mouth to shush him.
"I mean, that guy is completely unoriginal. Come on." His voice rose another notch. "I want to lick your nipples until you come like a rocket, hot and wet…"
Yikes. Did he want a microphone in case the chef didn't hear? Or maybe he could take out a billboard ad or start an Embarrass the Shit out of Kindra website. She darted a glance around and nearly hid under the tablecloth when she saw that two different tables of people were gawking at them.