The way she’d watched him, warily, those big blue-gray eyes wide open, ready to jump if he so much as moved, would have made him angry if he didn’t know that he deserved her wariness. He was the one who’d acted like an asshole, ripping her clothes off and taking up her against a wall. Now it was up to him to make up for it.
He needed to make this right. He needed to find a way to make this right. But hell—just seeing the woman sent him into overdrive. Damn, but she’d looked pretty this morning, and even more desirable than last night, though he wouldn’t have believed such a thing possible.
Still elegant, still graceful, still achingly feminine but now he didn’t have to speculate about what her breasts looked like, tasted like. How soft her mouth was, how smooth her skin was, how it felt to be deeply buried inside her. He knew.
He wanted more. More of the same, only in a bed this time, with hours at his disposal to kiss that pretty mouth swollen again. He’d do it right next time, make sure she was ready, and maybe go down on her first. Make sure she was wet, and then enter her slowly. She’d been surprisingly tight.
She carried the signs of his lovemaking. Lips slightly bee-stung, a dewy sexy softness to her.
He’d given her a hickey.
He could remember every second of his mouth on her neck, the taste of her. He’d sucked hard at her skin while coming. It had felt as if the top of his head was going to come off and he was lucky he hadn’t taken a bite out of her.
He’d wanted to. He still did.
He wanted to bite her, kiss her, suckle her, penetrate her. He wanted it all, every single thing she could give, and more. But if he didn’t play his cards right, he was never going to get into her pants again. Right now it looked like he had better hopes of becoming a ballerina than of taking Suzanne Barron to bed. She was shying away from him as if he were the Antichrist.
He knew what the problem was but he didn’t have a clue what to do about it.
It was a problem he’d had all his life, though it hadn’t made much of a difference in the Navy because the Navy was full of men just like him.
But out here in the civilian world, it was a real problem. If he hadn’t been so good at his job, it would have stopped him from making his business a success.
There were two kinds of people in this world. Those whose thoughts and emotions were on a dial and those whose emotions were on a switch. He was a switch man himself and had spent his entire lifetime among switches.
Something either was or wasn’t. Had happened or hadn’t. You either could do it or couldn’t. It either worked or it didn’t. You were either happy or unhappy.
Dial people were different. Their emotions ran up and down a scale and you had to guess at what point they were and try to coax them to go in the direction you wanted.
Commanding men who risked their lives in battle required a working knowledge of human psychology. John knew he was a good leader. He’d worked hard at that. But there were limits to what he could do.
His men were just as susceptible as the next man when it came to women problems, family problems, and money troubles. But soldiers had less slack to fart around. If his men had troubles John had to know—right now. He couldn’t put up with bullshit and they didn’t give it to him. If one of his men had a problem, John tried to help him resolve it. If it couldn’t be solved, and it affected a man’s performance, that man was out of the Teams. The soldier knew it, he knew it, everyone knew it.
John wasn’t used to pussyfooting around or cajoling.
He’d almost lost the Western Oil contract because of his nature. The CEO, Larry Sorensen, had invited him to dinner at his house and to his golf club the next day. John knew he was being tested and he’d damned near failed the test. Sucking corporate cock wasn’t his style.
Dinner had been pure unadulterated hell, with Mrs. CEO trying to plant her foot in his crotch under the dinner table and Mr. CEO trying to talk art, about which John knew exactly zero.
And the golf club episode—that had been right up there in his all-time personal list of crappy things he’d had to do in his lifetime. Worse, much worse, than an underwater incursion through the sewers of Jakarta on a hunt for a nest of tangos.
He’d had to endure Sorensen trying to bond with him while trying to smack a little white ball into a hole, just about the most useless activity the mind of man has ever invented. All of that while riding a golf cart—a golf cart for Christ’s sake!—around the course.
Sorensen was at least fifty pounds overweight—all of it pure flab—and he still couldn’t be bothered to walk a few miles. To top it all off, Mr. CEO talked the whole time about how his shrink had told him to ‘get back in touch with his manhood’.
John wanted to tell the guy that getting back in touch with his manhood was going to take a lot more than tumbling his secretary once a month.
This wasn’t his scene. He’d written off the contract until the Venezuela episode showed Sorensen and the entire Western Oil Board that actions were more powerful than words, any time.
John was good at action. Bad at words.
It had never bothered him before. Action had got him everything he’d ever wanted from life. Until now. Action wasn’t going to get him back into Suzanne Barron’s bed. Maybe not words, either.
But whatever it was that was going to work, he’d find it.
He’d never failed a mission yet.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Men!” Todd Armstrong said in disgust, leaning back and crossing his perfectly creased linen trousers. They were in Todd’s elegant office in a steel and glass high-rise which he’d manage to make look like a boudoir. Todd’s tastes were unerringly fine but classic. He could spot a Louis Quatorze at a hundred paces and he knew every auction house in the continental United States.
They made a great team. Suzanne had a natural affinity for modern design and Todd had a magic touch when it came to traditional design. Together, they buzzed. Todd kept her from being too starkly post-modern and she restrained his natural tendency to go for the Sun-King-in-Versailles-on-acid look.
“Bad date, sweetie?” Suzanne asked.
Todd’s lips pursed. “I’ll say. The date from hell. Listen to this one.”
Suzanne sat back, prepared to be amused. Todd’s forays into the wild world of dating were legendary.
“Here we are in that new Thai place—you know it?“
“The Golden Tiger?” If it was new and trendy, Todd had been there. Suzanne had just read the food review in The Oregonian and knew that it was just a matter of time before Todd would go to The Golden Tiger himself and report back to her.
“That’s the one. Tacky decor but the food is to die for. At least the meal wasn’t a total write-off. So anyway, here we are. Food’s good. My date’s cute. A young Keanu Reeves, Gucci suit, tight buns. I thought it was really going to work out. And then all through the chicken satay I listen to him telling me how much he hates his mother. I’m told in excruciating detail exactly how much. Though if half of what he told me is true, he’s got a point. Then he starts recounting in even more excruciating detail all about his hobby, which is?” Todd leaned back and watched her, head tilted.
She tried to think of all the things Todd might find boring. “His tax write-offs.”
“Noooo. That was Tuesday’s date, with the CPA.” Todd shuddered delicately. “This is worse.”
“Genetically modified organisms?”
Todd laughed. “No. That’s actually sort of interesting. Try harder.”
“Republican politics.”
He held his hand up and waggled it. ”Close,” he said, “but no cigar. Dutch voting patterns.”
“Wow.” Suzanne sat back and thought about a date spent discussing a castrating mother and Dutch politics. “Pretty dire.”
“The whole evening was about as much fun as rolling in glass.” Todd sighed theatrically. “I’m going to give up dating for Lent.”
Todd, giving up dating. Suzanne laughed at the thought. “Lent’s not for another three months. And anyway, you’re not Catholic. I don’t think you get any brownie points for giving things up for Lent unless you are. Still, not dating for a while might not be a bad idea. Why don’t you give yourself a little rest? Maybe—I don’t know—maybe a week’s respite?”