Free Curvaceous Heart by Terri Pray

manage to go head to head at times.”
    “On rare occasions, but he’s pretty much taken a step back from things recently. Especially with some of the deals we currently have on the table. So to find someone willing to damn near shout me down in my own office caught me off guard. In a pleasant way, of course.”
    “I’m surprised you didn’t have us kicked out of your office. I would have lost my temper and had you removed if the roles had been reversed.”
    Alan set the glass down and leaned forward, reaching out across the table to stroke his fingers over her hand. “Now why would I do that when all I wanted to do in that moment was pull you over the edge of my desk and explore every inch of your body with my tongue?”
    It took a moment before she realized what he’d said. Heat flushed across her cheeks, her breath caught in the back of her throat as she fought to keep control and to prevent her sudden urge to crawl under the table to hide.
    “Ah, not the sort of thing you were expecting to hear?” Alan’s full lips twitched in a flicker of disappointment before a smooth smile returned to mask his emotions. “Perhaps I’m not the sort of man you’d find attractive. I can understand that; I did come across as a complete and utter arrogant asshole.”
    “No, it’s not that.” Not find him attractive? Was he nuts? He had to be one of the most gorgeous men she had ever seen.
    “Then?”
    “I wasn’t expecting to hear that from you.” Nor from any man, if she was going to be brutally honest. Not unless it was part of a cruel practical joke, and she’d been the brunt of those for far too many years.
    “Why not? You’re attractive, strong willed, intelligent, with more than a hint of courage. You’re the sort of woman that any man in their right mind would give their soul to spend time with.”
    “Most people don’t think that way about women like me.” She looked away from him, trying to force her thoughts into some semblance of order. “I mean I’m not exactly a size 5 here. And I’m past my sell by date.”
    “And why would that matter?”
    Sue turned back to look at him. “Well, don’t most men want something slim and young?”
    “Funny, you look like you have all your teeth to me, and honestly speaking, if I wanted a stick insect that would break the first time we tried to play then I’d spend my time hanging around models. Sorry, but that type really doesn’t appeal to me. Most of the ones I’ve met in the past couple of years have been me, me, me , and oh, yeah, me .”
    He hadn’t moved his hand and as he spoke he stroked her fingers gently with his own. Each light touch sent a wave of shivering delight through her body. Heat rippled through her inner walls, a need throbbed along her labia into her clit until she was left wondering just what he would feel like buried deep within her vulva.
    “Are they all like that?”
    “No, there are some good ones out there. Just, well they don’t appeal to me. Not as lovers, or anything more than friends. I’d break them if I tried to do anything with them. I mean I’m not a weak man. I work out most days, and if I tried to thrust into a woman who barely weighed more than my office bag on a good day, I’d leave them bruised or with broken bones. That’s not what I call attractive.”
    “You have to have seen the pictures, the news reports, those skinny models walking up and down the catwalk. That’s what men find attractive, not women like me.”
    “Did you know that up until around the turn of the nineteenth century women who were that thin were looked on as being sick? Just look at the artwork of the time period. The women there, the nudes, are Rubenesque . They didn’t paint thin women; they didn’t find them attractive. The women in those paintings had hips, curves, and breasts. They had the figure of a woman, with all the wonderful, soft skin and padding in between.”
    “So maybe I was born in the wrong era?” Sue almost