“Chinese. Found a great delivery place.”
“Not Chinese,” she almost shouted.
With a puzzled expression he ended the call before it completed. “You always used to love Chinese.”
“I still do,” she moaned. “But I’ve used up all my calories today. I cannot watch you eat and not dig in.”
“You need to quit this diet craziness, you hear me? You look fantastic. Even better naked than I remember.” He grinned at her. “And I’ve got a very visual memory. It’s an architect thing.”
The thought of him comparing today’s naked body with that of five years ago was enough to send her into the bathroom to slam the door and lock herself in until he was gone. “You’re lying.”
He shook his head and pressed redial. She heard him ordering all of her favorite foods and wondered if any woman would blame her if she killed the man by plunging chopsticks into his heart. So long as the jury was packed with women on diets, she knew no one would find her guilty.
While they waited for the food to arrive, he poured them another glass of the wine and pulled his jeans on.
They sat together, chatting, almost like old times.
“Tell me about your project,” she asked.
“I’m excited about this one. The original building is a perfect example of classical revival architecture. The Stockard was built in the 1920s as the headquarters for a trading company, then converted to a bank and then a law firm. Our challenge is to transform The Stockard into a twenty-four-story mixed-use building with office, retail and luxury residential.” He took a sip of wine and she knew he was picturing the project. “They’d already agreed to preserve the exterior façade and mezzanine, where most of the original historic details still exist. But we had to convince them that green building was the way to go. And we did.”
“Congratulations,” she said, knowing that Dex, with his passion and vision, was hard to resist.
“Thanks. We’re mixing smart design with the original architectural detailing. Retail at street level, a couple of floors of offices and a separate entrance leads to top of the line condos. I love mixing old and new.”
She smiled at his excitement. “It sounds amazing.”
“It will be. I might buy one of the condo units.” He shrugged. “See how they turn out.”
She was surprised and she knew it showed on her face. “You’d move back to Philly?”
He flicked her a glance. “I don’t know. Maybe. Or if I keep doing a lot of work here it might make sense to keep a place. I haven’t decided yet.”
She didn’t know what she’d have said, wasn’t even sure what she thought of the idea of him spending enough time in the city to keep a home here, when the doorbell sounded.
“Get the plates, will you?” he said, as he jogged down the stairs to answer the door.
“Plate. One,” she muttered, even as she licked her lips in anticipation.
He jogged back in with a shallow box containing far too many takeout containers.
“What did you buy? Everything on the menu?”
“Sex makes me hungry. You know that.” He plopped the box on the counter and flipped open a carton. Waved the thing under her nose. “Makes you hungry, too. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
“Oh, I am a weak, weak woman, and you are an evil, evil man,” she said as she reached inside the container for a crispy chunk of ginger beef and popped it in her mouth where the spicy flavor exploded on her tongue.
From that moment she was lost.
They talked, they ate, and when she tried to stop, claiming she’d had enough, he started feeding her little pieces with his own chopsticks. When he dropped a fat, juicy prawn before it reached her mouth, so it slid down her chest, and then he went after it with his mouth, she laughed. “You did that on purpose.”
“Maybe.” He leaned forward and undid her robe.
“No,” she cried, trying to pull the lapels back together.
“Let me look. You are so beautiful.”
“After I lose five pounds.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
She shook her head at him.
He got a cunning look in his eye, one she knew well, and that stirred her blood. “What are you planning?”
“Maybe just a little peek.”
She laughed, but the light in here was so bright. “You’ve already seen everything there is to see.”
“Come on. I like to look at you.”
But she let him ease open one side of her housecoat. Revealing one plump breast, the nipple already as round as a blueberry.
He glanced up at her, then back at her breast. “I haven’t had dessert.”
“Have a fortune cookie.”
He reached for his chopsticks. “I have a better idea.”
“OH, NO,” she said, seeing where he was going. “Not the plum sauce.” But she was already giggling.
He opened the little cello pack of prepared plum sauce, squeezed some out and painted her nipple with sauce. It felt sticky and cool and when she glanced down her nipple glistened.
To her shock, Dex took his chopsticks and snagged her nipple between them. “What are you…”
He lifted the plump flesh carefully toward his mouth, lowering his head until he could lick plum sauce off the end of her nipple. The sensation was intense: she felt the pressure of the wooden sticks, not squeezing tight, he’d never hurt her, but holding her, as though she were a morsel of food to be offered to his mouth. And then, beside the rigidity of the wood, clamping lightly, came the warm, wet caress of his tongue on her sensitive skin swirling the slick sauce around until she felt herself beginning to melt.
She didn’t even try to protest when he pushed her robe away from her other side and proceeded to squeeze more plum sauce, take her other nipple between chopsticks. Lick and suck her halfway to oblivion.
Her robe was gone. Fallen away, and she didn’t care that it was probably going to be ruined. He trailed plum sauce down her body in unpredictable patterns, following with his tongue.
When he hit her belly, she felt herself growing heavy and liquid with desire as she sat, sprawled on one of her designer kitchen stools.
“Now,” he murmured, “I wonder where else I could use chopsticks.”
“Oh, no, I—”
But he was already slipping her legs apart, and she was offering herself up like a banquet on a Lazy Susan. She watched through heavy lids as he parted her folds, exposing her clit which had no need of plum sauce to glisten.
He came slowly toward her with the chopsticks and she began to tremble.
She could pull away, shut her legs and close up shop, but she didn’t. She watched. Everything about her was plump, including her intimate parts and when he took that most sensitive of her parts gently, ensnaring the root with the chopsticks, she thought she might fall onto the floor so wildly did the sensation rock her.
A strange sound, not moan or sigh, but some combination of both slipped from her mouth. He took the plum sauce, squeezed a dab onto her hot, aching clit. Then he began to lick it off, unbelievably gently because he knew how sensitive she was, how close.
Torture.