Birthright

color-blind.
    There was a waist-high counter separating living area from kitchen. And the kitchen, she noted with approval, was spotless.
    Either he valued cleanliness or didn’t cook. She could live with either option.
    “I’ll be out in a minute,” he shouted from the next room. “I just need to finish this.”
    “No hurry.”
    It gave her time to poke around. There were a few mementos scattered about. A trophy for MVP in his high school baseball’s championship year, a very broken-in ball glove, what seemed to be a scale model of a medieval catapult. And, of course, the books.
    She approved all of these as well, but it was the selection of art on the walls that won her envy, and made her wonder more about the man.
    There were prints of Mucha’s The Four Seasons , a Waterhouse mermaid, and Parrish’s Ecstasy and Daybreak.
    A man who put fancy art on his walls and kept a high-school baseball trophy was a man worth getting to know better.
    To get started, she walked to the bedroom doorway.
    A very plain bed, she noted. No headboard and a wrinkled blue spread pulled over it haphazardly. And thedresser looked like an heirloom, dark, aged mahogany with brass pulls. No mirror.
    He was working at a laptop on a battered metal desk, his fingers moving efficiently over the keys.
    He wore a black T-shirt, jeans and, to her fascination, tortoiseshell glasses.
    She felt a little curl of lust in her belly and stepped into the room.
    His hair was damp, she noticed, just a bit damp yet. She could smell a lingering whiff of soap from the shower he must have taken a short time before.
    She gave in to impulse and, stepping behind him, trailed her fingers through all that dark, damp hair.
    He jerked, swiveled around in the chair and stared at her through the lenses. “Sorry. Forgot. I just wanted to get this inventory . . . What?” he said as she continued to stand, continued to smile.
    “I didn’t know you wore glasses.”
    “Just to work. On the computer. And to read. Stuff. Are you early?”
    “No, right on time.” He seemed just a bit nervous to have her there, in his bedroom. And because he did, she felt powerful. “No hurry though. The movie doesn’t start for an hour.”
    “An hour. Right.” She still had on her lawyer suit. Pinstripes. What was there about pinstripes on a woman? “We were going to grab something to eat first.”
    “We were.” She loved the way his eyes widened when she slid into his lap. “Or we could stay in. I could fix something here.”
    “There’s not much to . . .” He trailed off when she lowered her head and teased his mouth with hers. “Not much, but we could probably make do. If that’s what you want.”
    She ran her hands up his chest, linked them around his neck. “Hungry?”
    “Oh yeah.”
    “What’re you in the mood for?” she asked, then laughed when he crushed his mouth to hers.

Sixteen
    S he wound herself around him. Surrounded him, was all he could think as her taste, her scent, her shape dazzled his senses.
    It was like being possessed, and it had started the instant she’d risen to her toes and touched her lips to his outside the restaurant.
    He wasn’t sure if he wanted to burn this need out of his system or steer it in. He only knew he needed more of her. Now.
    “Let me . . .” The chair creaked ominously under their combined weight. A car backfired on the street. But all he could think was how quickly he wanted to get his hands between them, deal with the buttons of her shirt and find her.
    “I intend to.” Her heart was thudding, a thick, pounding beat in her breast, her throat. She loved the feel of it—that hard pump of life. She eased back to give his hands room to work. “The glasses were the kicker, you know.”
    “I’ll never take them off again.”
    “That’s okay.” She feathered her fingers through his hair, then slid the glasses off, folded the earpieces neatly.She set them on the desk as he undid the buttons on her white oxford shirt. “They’ve already done the job.”
    “I could say the same about the pinstripes. They just kill me.”
    “It’s Brooks Brothers.”
    “God bless them.” She was so perfect—almost tiny, with skin smooth and white as milk. He could have lapped at it like a cat. “But why don’t we . . .” He tugged the jacket off her shoulders, let it catch at her elbows. Her shirt was open, and the bra beneath was a slick of silk over a soft, subtle swell. “That’s a nice look for you,”