Summer Desserts by Nora Roberts Page B

mouth. As Summer crushed out her cigarette she thought how much their discussion sounded like a negotiation. Yet wasn’t that how she preferred things? “I said it would be difficult to work around, but it’s also necessary. You want a service from me, Blake, and I agreed to give you that, because I want the experience and the publicity I’ll get out of it. But changing the tone and face of your restaurant is going to be a long, complicated process. Combining that with my other commitments, I won’t have time for any personal distractions.”
    “Distractions?” Why should that one word have infuriated him? It did, just as her businesslike dismissal of desire infuriated him. Perhaps she hadn’t meant it as a challenge, but he couldn’t take it as anything less. “Does this distract you?” He ran his finger down the side of her throat before he cupped the back of her neck.
    She could feel the firm pressure of each of his fingers against her skin. And in his eyes, she could see the temper, the need. Both pulled at her. “You’re paying me a great deal of money, to do a job, Blake.” Her voice was steady. Good. Her heartbeat wasn’t. “As a businessman, you should want the complications left to a minimum.”
    “Complications,” he repeated. He drew his other hand through her hair so that her face was tilted back. Summer felt a jolt of excitement shoot down her spine. “Is this—” he brushed his lips over her cheek “—a complication?”
    “Yes.” Her brain sent out the signal to pull away, but her body refused the command.
    “And a distraction?”
    He took his mouth on a slow journey to hers, but only nibbled. There was no pressure but the slight grip he kept on the base of her neck with fingers moving slowly, rhythmically over her skin. Summer didn’t move away, though she told herself she still could. She’d never permitted herself to be seduced, and tonight was no different.
    Just a sample, she thought. She knew how to taste and judge, then step away from even the most tempting of flavors. Just as she knew how to absorb every drop of pleasure from that one tiny test.
    “Yes,” she murmured and let her eyes flutter closed. She needed no visual image now, but only the sensations. Warm, soft, moist—his mouth against hers. Firm, strong, persuasive—the fingers against her skin. Subtle, male, intriguing—the scent that clung to him. When he spoke her name, his voice flowed over her like a breeze, one that carried a trace of heat and the hint of a storm.
    “How simple do you want it to be, Summer?” It was happening again, he realized. That total involvement he neither looked for nor wanted—the total involvement he couldn’t resist. “There’s only you and me.”
    “There’s nothing simple about that.” Even as she disagreed, her arms were going around him, her mouth was seeking his again.
    It was only a kiss. She told herself that as his lips slanted lightly over hers. She could still end it, she was still in control. But first, she wanted just one more taste. Without thinking, she touched the tip of his tongue with hers, to fully explore theflavor. Her own moan sounded softly in her ears as she drew him closer. Body against body, firm and somehow right. This new thought drifted to her even as the sensation concentrated on the play of mouth to mouth.
    Why had kisses seemed so basic, so simplistic before this? There were hundreds of pulse points in her body she’d remained unaware of until this moment. There were pleasures deeper, richer than she’d ever imagined that could be drawn out and exploited by the most elemental gesture between a man and a woman. She’d thought she’d known the limits of her own needs, the depth of her own passions…until now. Barely touching her, Blake was tearing something from her that wasn’t calm, ordered and disciplined. And when it was totally free, what then?
    She found herself at the verge of something she’d never come to before—where emotions