with her lovers. The potential for pleasure simply hadn’t been worth the consequences to the sense of self she gripped like a tether.
Jon was different. Everything about him screamed limited time only . He was fast becoming a special treasure to stuff into her box of memories—decadent memories worth savoring.
He was watching her quietly, probing again.
Her stomach unsettled, she pushed away the remaining few scraps of her salad. Upon swallowing the last of her wine, she made herself a vow. When she looked toward the future with Jon, even to the next morning, she would imagine a wall of red brick. Slamming expectations against such a wall would hurt like hell. Best not to have any.
She pushed away from the table and walked to the fridge, retrieving her hard-fought piece of cheesecake. Jon’s gaze followed as she made herself comfortable on the couch. His dark eyes were mysterious in the soft lamplight, as if pupil and iris were one and the same. That brandy color was only for daylight and bright places, not their private retreat.
“I don’t care if you are all silverware and cloth napkins, rich boy,” she said, flipping open the takeaway lid. “I’m not eating my dessert at the table.”
“Are you going to share?”
“If you’re good.”
He rose from the table, a grin crawling across his lips. The times she’d seen him laugh spontaneously could be counted on only a finger or two. She hoped he found things amusing on the inside, at least, even if he tramped down the reflex. It would be a sad life indeed to live at the expense of real humor, always calculating the worth of putting it on display.
She knew that for a fact.
“Ms. Morris, you may have noticed that being good is not my specialty.”
He flopped heavily onto the couch, his grace abandoned. Heather lifted the cheesecake out of the way as he did. The tactic was a diversion, apparently, as he parted the folds of her robe and settled the back of his head in her lap.
“You don’t do anything by half, do you?”
Jon shook his head, which rubbed the bristles of his short hair against her inner thighs. His smile told her he’d done it on purpose. Impossible man.
“Now feed me,” he said.
Heather placed the plastic container on his work-of-art abs. One forkful at a time, they traded bites. The cheesecake was utterly amazing, just tangy enough to counter the sweetness. The texture was so thick that it clung to the tines, no matter how slowly she dragged the fork past compressed lips. Subtle citrus flavored the chilly whipped cream, which was an unexpected surprise. It blended perfectly on her palate with the dark chocolate sauce.
Watching Jon eat and being watched by him—that was the real treat. Every lick. Every swallow. Every blissful moan of appreciation.
“You know what I’m going to do to you,” he said casually.
Shivers raced across her skin. Goose bumps. “Perhaps. But I think you should tell me.”
“Why?”
“Because being blunt about erotic things is arousing.”
A muscle on his cheek twitched. “They can be. True. But what about the mystery of the unknown?”
“You’ve already suggested that I know what you’re going to do.”
“You know, Heather, if you flew as well as you spar, you’d be a hell of a pilot.”
She trumped his chuckle with an outright laugh. “I’d pass out before I made it into the cockpit.”
He placed the cheesecake on the coffee table and turned onto his stomach, supported by his elbows. He blew a warm breath against the bare skin of her thighs while offering a remarkable view. Beneath his clingy briefs, his ass was taut and firm, just rounded enough to provide shape. The twin divots at his lower back were tempting enough to lick.
“I doubt that,” he said. “I have firsthand knowledge that you’re a brave woman.” He turned his head to grin up at her. “But you’d plow into something if you managed to take off.”
“In what life do you get to insult a woman while making plans