Summer Desserts

after the same thing, and would both agree cost is secondary.”
    “I might think so.” With a flourish, she looped her name on the line. “But I’m not signing the checks. So—” she passed the contract back to him “—it’s official.”
    “Yes.” He didn’t even glance at her signature before he dropped the paper on his desk. “I’d like to take you to dinner tonight.”
    She rose, though she found her legs a bit reluctant to hold weight again. “We’ll have to put the seal on our bargain another time. I’ll be entertaining Carlo.” Smiling, she held out her hand. “Of course, you’re welcome to join us.”
    “It has nothing to do with business.” Blake took her hand, then surprised them both by taking her other one. “And I want to see you alone.”
    She wasn’t ready for this, Summer realized. She was supposed to begin the maneuvers, in her own time, on her own turf. Now she was forced to realign her strategy and to deal with the blood warming just under her skin. Determined not to be outflanked this time, she tilted her head and smiled. “We are alone.”
    His brow lifted. Was that a challenge, or was she plainly mocking him? Either way, this time, he wasn’t going to let it go. Deliberately he drew her into his arms. She fit there smoothly. It was something each of them noticed, something they both found disturbing.
    Her eyes were level on his, but he saw, fascinated, that the gold flecks had deepened. Amber now, they seemed to glow against the cloudy, changeable hazel of her irises. Hardly aware of what he did, Blake brushed the hair away from her cheek in a gesture that was as sweet and as intimate as it was uncharacteristic.
    Summer fought not to be affected by something so casual. A hundred men had touched her, in greeting, in friendship, in anger and in longing. There was no reason why the mere brush of a fingertip over her skin should have her head spinning. An effort of will kept her from melting into his arms or from jerking away. She remained still, watching him. Waiting.
    When his mouth lowered toward hers, she knew she was prepared. The kiss would be different, naturally, because he was different. It would be new because he was new. But that was all. It was still a basic form of communication between man and woman. A touch of lips, a pressure, a testing of another’s taste; it was no different from the kiss of the first couple, and so it went through culture and time.
    And the moment she experienced that touch of lips, that pressure, that taste, she knew she was mistaken. Different? New? Those words were much too mild. The brush of lips, for it was no more at first, changed the fabric of everything. Her thoughts veered off into a chaos that seemed somehow right. Her body grew hot, from within and without, in the space of a heartbeat. The woman who’d thought she knew exactly what to expect, sighed with the unexpected. And reached out.
    “Again,” she murmured when his lips hovered a breath from hers. With her hands on either side of his face, she drew him to her, through the smoke and into the fire.
    He’d thought she’d be cool and smooth and fragrant. He’d been so sure of it. Perhaps that was why the flare of heat had knocked him back on his heels. Smooth she was. Her skin was like silk when he ran his hands up her back to cup her neck. Fragrant. She had a scent that he would, from that moment on,always associate with woman. But not cool. There was nothing cool about the mouth that clung to his, or the breath that mixed with his as two pairs of lips parted. There was something mindless here. He couldn’t grip it, couldn’t analyze it, could only experience it.
    With a deep, almost feline sound of pleasure, she ran her hands through his hair. God, she’d thought there wasn’t a taste she hadn’t already known, a texture she hadn’t already felt. But his, his was beyond her scope and now, just now, within her reach. Summer wallowed in it and let her lips and tongue draw in the sweetness.
    More. She’d never known greed. She’d grown up in a world of affluence where enough was always available. For the first time in her life, Summer knew true hunger, true need. Those things brought pain, she discovered. A deep well of it that spread from the core. More. The thought ran through her mind again with the knowledge that the more she took, the more she would ache for.
    Blake felt her stiffen. Not knowing the cause, he tightened his hold. He wanted her now, at once,