“Are you both hitting on me?”
“You noticed that, did you?” Derek grinned and waggled his eyebrows at her.
“It’s getting kind of hard to ignore,” she replied with a nod.
“I think we’ve ignored it long enough. Don’t you?” Scott said with a quiet chuckle.
“I’m not sure what you mean.” Her eyes scanned the restaurant. There weren’t many people around, and those who were seemed to be oblivious to them. She took a deep breath, trying to force herself to think straight. It was difficult with the two of them still touching her. She felt the warmth of Scott’s palm pressed against hers. The faint tickle of Derek’s fingertips trailing over the curve of her shoulder. “What exactly is it you want from me?”
“We just want you, Julia,” Derek replied. He removed his hand from her arm and sat back in his seat, though his eyes continued to run over her in a warm caress. “We’re both attracted to you and we’d like to get to know you better.”
She was speechless for a long moment as she tried to reconcile everything she knew about her world, with the words that had just come out of Derek’s mouth. She failed. This didn’t make any sense at all.
“But you’re gay,” she blurted, then slapped her free hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that, but… well, you are.”
Derek shrugged, unconcerned by her faux pas. “People get so hung up on labels. Why do I have to declare myself as gay, or straight, or bi? I prefer to think of myself as open to the possibilities.” He said it with such an air of mischievous delight she couldn’t help but smile.
“Why now though?” She remembered all the times she and Derek had eaten lunch together at work. There’d been no sign of this attraction to her back then. They hadn’t even indulged in any illicit flirting, though there were times when she’d wished they had. “We’ve been working together for a year and you never—”
“That was the problem,” he pointed out. “You were working for us. It would have been inappropriate to tell you we want to strip you naked and suck on your nipples during a business meeting. Wouldn’t you agree?” His tone was so matter-of-fact it took a moment for the sexually explicit words to register. He had really just said that.
Indignation warred with a baffled sort of arousal as she stammered, “What on Earth makes you think I’d be open to such a proposal?”
“Come on, Julia,” Scott said from behind her. “You’ve been dying to get those long ladylike fingers all over Derek since the first time you laid eyes on him.”
She narrowed her eyes as her head whipped around to face Scott. “How dare you?”
“Do you deny it?” The words were nothing short of a challenge, daring her to admit the truth.
She clamped her mouth shut, knowing all the blustering in the world wouldn’t stop any sort of denial from being a big, fat lie.
Scott seemed to take her refusal to answer as an acknowledgement, because the next words out of his mouth were, “The question is, how do those fingers feel about me?”
Her jaw dropped at his audacity. “How do I feel?” she screeched in a stage whisper. Conscious they were still in a public place, she cast a quick glance around the room before continuing in a low tone. “You’re the one who glares at me every time I walk into a room. I guess that tells me how you feel about me having the hots for your boyfriend.”
Scott smiled again and her stomach fell through the floor. God damn, he was beautiful.
“You admit it then,” he said. “You want Derek.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Oh, all right, I admit it. You can hardly blame me. I mean look at him.” She gestured toward Derek, who seemed to be enjoying their argument.
“You don’t have to convince me, sweetheart.” He lifted his left arm, placing it behind her shoulders, along the back of the booth. Capturing her gaze, he refused to let her look away as he spoke. “I have memorised every inch of Derek’s body a hundred times over. I know where to touch him to make him moan. I know where to lick to make him shiver and I know just how hard to push to make him beg.” He paused for a moment, before adding, “Now I want to know all those things and more… about you.”
