Fire Between Two Flames

CHAPTER 5

I was three drinks in, perched on a velvet barstool in the kind of lounge where the lighting was designed to make everyone look like they had secrets. The bass thrummed through the floor, through the stool, through my body in a rhythm that felt almost obscene. I'd come here to escape—the suffocating weight of my board forcing me to go public, the impossible decision pressing down on me, the memory of Ahmir's dark eyes and darker promises in that conference room.

Instead, I'd found myself being hit on by a man whose name I'd already forgotten.

He was attractive enough—sharp jawline, expensive watch, the kind of easy confidence that came from never being told no. He'd bought me my last drink, leaned in close enough that I could smell his cologne (something generic, trying too hard), and said something that was probably meant to be charming.

My body registered none of it. No flutter of interest, no quickening pulse, no heat. Nothing.I smiled politely, distantly, and lifted my glass to my lips. The vodka burned cold down my throat. That's when I felt it. Him.

The sensation started at the base of my spine—a slow, liquid heat that spread upward, vertebra by vertebra, until it reached my neck and made my breath catch. My n*****s tightened against the silk of my bra, suddenly, almost painfully sensitive against the fabric of my dress. Between my thighs, a pulse began, it was slow, insistent, maddening.

That was the thing about Ahmir Wolfe—he had a presence that preceded him, a disturbance in the air like the pressure drop before a storm. The fine hairs on the back of my neck rose, and my body went taut with awareness, every nerve ending suddenly, painfully alive.

I knew without looking that he was watching me.I knew without turning that his eyes were on me with that intensity that made me feel stripped bare, exposed, seen in ways I'd never permitted anyone. The man beside me was still talking. I couldn't hear a word.

Then Ahmir's scent reached me—Louis Vuitton with a scent of something darker underneath, something that smelled like sin and expensive sheets and the kind of bad decisions that ruined you in the best way. It cut through the generic cologne of the man beside me, through the perfume-heavy air of the lounge, and went straight to some primitive part of my brain that wanted to turn toward it, follow it, surrender to it. I gripped my glass tighter.

"I don't think she's interested."

His voice came from behind me, low and dark, with that edge of command that made my thighs clench involuntarily. The man beside me straightened, his expression shifting from confident to uncertain as he looked past me. I didn't turn. Not yet. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"We were just talking," the man said, but his voice had lost its certainty.

"No." Ahmir moved into my peripheral vision, and even that glimpse made my pulse spike. "You were talking. She was tolerating it."

He wasn't wrong. I hated that he wasn't wrong. The man looked at me, perhaps hoping I'd contradict this, but I said nothing. After a moment, he stood, muttered something about seeing friends, and disappeared into the crowd. Ahmir took that as an invitation and sat in his seat.

The heat of his body reached me immediately, even though he wasn't touching me. He radiated warmth like a furnace, and I was suddenly, acutely aware of every inch of space between us—the three inches of air that felt charged with electricity, that felt like both too much distance and not nearly enough.

"You're following me now?" I said, still not looking at him. I kept my eyes on my drink, on the way the light caught in the clear liquid, on anything but him.

"Following implies I ever let you out of my sight."

The words should have angered me. They did anger me. But they also sent a dark thrill through my body, a pulse of heat that settled between my legs and made me press my thighs together. The pressure helped nothing.

"That's called stalking," I said, proud that my voice came out steady.

"That's called protecting my potential investment."

Now I turned to look at him, and it was a mistake.

He was devastating in the low light. His shirt was black, open at the collar, and I could see the hollow of his throat, the strong column of his neck. His jaw was tight, shadowed with stubble that I wanted to feel against my skin—my neck, my thighs, between them. His eyes were darker than the shadows around us, fixed on me with an intensity that made my breath shallow.

"I'm not your potential anything yet," I said. "I haven't agreed to sign you on as my consultant."

His lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Yet."

That word. That single syllable, loaded with dark promise and inevitable surrender. It made my stomach clench, made heat flood through me, made me want to slap him and kiss him in equal measure.

"You're very sure of yourself," I said.

"I'm sure of what I see." His eyes dropped, deliberately, slowly, down my body. I felt the path of his gaze like a physical touch—over my throat where my pulse hammered visibly, down to my breasts where my n*****s were tight and obvious against the thin fabric, lower to where my thighs were pressed together. "And I see everything."

My face flushed hot. "You see what you want to see."

"I see a woman who came here to escape." He leaned closer, and his scent wrapped around me, intoxicating and dangerous. "I see a woman who's been thinking about me since I left her in that office this morning, aching and wanting from my demeanor alone." His voice dropped lower, intimate, meant only for me. "I see a woman whose body responds to me even when she wishes it wouldn't."

"You're delusional," I said, but my voice was breathless, betraying me.

"Am I?" His hand moved to the bar beside my thigh—not touching me, but close enough that I could feel the heat of it. "Tell me you haven't been thinking about me putting hands on you. Tell me you haven't wondered what it would feel like if I'd pushed your dress up in that office, if I'd slid my fingers inside you and made you come while you tried to give your little presentation to stay in control."