“Yes,” I managed.
“Please tell me that martini’s stirred and not shaken.” He moved at last, taking a few steps into the room and then stopping again, his hands twitching at his sides as if he didn’t quite know what to do with them. “Otherwise you’re ruining the James Bond effect.”
James Bond? Yes, I looked damn good, but Declan was the one who could’ve filled in for whichever A-list stud Hollywood had picked for the role this time around. With his shoulders, and his stubble, and his piercing dark eyes, and the way the trousers hugged his muscled thighs…I snapped my own mouth shut. Drool would ruin my suit as much as a spilled martini would.
It took me a second for my brain to catch up. “He shook them, not stirred them.”
“No, that was a change they made from the books, because they thought ‘shaken, not stirred’ sounded cooler than ‘stirred, not shaken.’ It’s backwards.”
That startled a laugh out of me. “You’re such a nerd,” I said without thinking. “Bond trivia? Really?”
A dark flush spread along Declan’s cheekbones, and he turned away abruptly. “We should get going. Knock that back, we’re late.”
My stomach gave an unsteady lurch. I’d been teasing. Being…friendly. Without even meaning to be. And he’d taken it as an insult. Of course he had—when had I ever been pleasant to him? And I shouldn’t want to be!
But I did, and I desperately wanted that moment back, that shining instant when I’d laughed at him and thought he might laugh with me.
“I was joking.” The words came out without my wanting them to, small and plaintive.
Slowly, Declan turned back to me, eyes glittering. Those eyes. They caught and held me, and just that look was enough to have me breathing a little faster, heat pooling low down in my abdomen.
“It’s shaken,” I said, holding the martini up. “Not stirred. I don’t think I’m Bond material.” I swallowed hard, forcing myself to keep my eyes on his and not stare down at the floor in submission like an idiot. Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to lie or prevaricate when his eyes bored into mine like that. Some alpha I was. “I’m more like the Bond girl, only—not a girl. Pretty. Occasionally clever. Mostly useless unless someone needs eye candy.”
The corner of Declan’s mouth quirked, and he raked me up and down with his gaze, slowly, assessing. I fought the urge to squirm—or to throw the martini over my shoulder, throw caution to the winds, and get down on my knees. He still wanted me. No matter what I’d said or done the night before, he still wanted me!
“You’re not a girl, I’ll give you that,” he said as he looked back up at my face.
That hit hard. I turned away quickly, hoping to hide how much, downing the rest of my martini at one go and setting the glass back down on the bar with a clatter. “I’m ready whenever you are,” I muttered.
I didn’t hear him move, but the heat of him at my back warned me he’d moved closer, hemming me in against the bar. I clutched the edge of it, closing my eyes, willing him to get the fuck away from me.
He didn’t.
“Blake,” he said softly. I counted to five. He still hadn’t moved. A long sigh ruffled the hair on the back of my neck, making me shiver, and I jumped as a big, warm hand landed on my hip, sliding under the tux jacket to caress me through my shirt. “Shit. Blake, you are extremely pretty. And occasionally clever.” I bit my lip and gripped the bar so hard there’d probably be dents, and my claws had started to creep out, poking into the wood. He’d need new furniture at this rate. Fuck him. Those were my self-deprecating words,mine. The first rule of polite society was not agreeing when other people criticized themselves! Had he been raised in a barn? He leaned in even more, his breath heating my ear. “And you’re not useless. I’ve found a lot of uses for you.”
James Bond had found the same uses for nearly every female character in the series, as I recalled. That didn’t make them useful. And even though I’d been so worried about him getting sick of me if I didn’t make myself available to be used, I still wished, pathetically, that he’d see me as something more than an object.
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. If I did, I might cry.
Or I might spin around and try to claw his eyes out before he could see how much he’d hurt me.
“I’ve seen more of you the last few days, but you haven’t talked much,” he went on. “Except last night, and that was—anyway. You’ve hardly opened your mouth in weeks.” His hand crept inexorably around my waist, stroking my stomach, the little finger teasing under my waistband. That touch was enough: my cock stirred, my ass clenching convulsively. I hadn’t had him inside me for two days. And to add to that, he’d noticed. He’d noticed that I hadn’t been speaking to him much.
Except for last night, of course. Fuck.
A little whimper worked its way out of my tight throat.
“I’ve opened it plenty,” I whispered, unable to deal with anything to do with the night before. Addressing it directly might kill me with embarrassment.
“Only when I had you on your knees waiting for my cock. Last night, and today. It’s the first time you’ve really talked to me in—a while.”
He bent his head, lips brushing over the shell of my ear, until he could nuzzle under my collar and put his mouth against my neck, right where he always bit me. His tongue darted out, tasting, teasing, the heat of it arrowing straight down and into my aching cock.
“You don’t like it when I talk.” My claws buried themselves another quarter-inch or so into the bar, and my whole body quivered, so much tension with nowhere to go. “You tell me how much you hate me when we talk. Or you hate what I talk about.”
Declan pushed even closer, and now I could feel his hardness against the swell of my ass.
My claws were never coming out of the wood. I’d have to stay here forever, which meant he’d need to fuck me bent over the bar.
