Perfect Fit - Brenda Jackson [85]
“Yes, I’d like to come in if you don’t mind. I know you have a plane to catch in the morning, and I wouldn’t want to keep you up late,” he said, trying to keep the desire, the deep feeling of arousal, out of his voice.
“No, I don’t mind,” she said softly, opening the door.
As soon as Gabe stepped into her apartment, into the soft glow of lighting that filled her living room, he picked up her scent which was already embedded in his nostrils. Now inside her apartment, her scent was more prevalent. This was the place where she came home from work each day, to eat, to sleep, to bathe. This was her space, and he intended to invade it real good tonight.
“What would you like?”
Her question caught Gabe’s attention, and he met her gaze. In all this thirty-two years, he was quite sure he had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted the one standing before him. But he knew that he had to stick to his goal. He didn’t want a night with her; he wanted a whole lifetime. He blinked at the thought, taken aback by what he’d just decided. But then when a man loved a woman, he thought such things. The key with him would be to convince the woman that he was worth loving.
“Gabe?”
“Yes.”
“I asked if there was something you wanted or did you want to talk?”
Gabe leaned against the closed door. He found himself smiling at her question. And since she’d asked …
“No, Sage, I don’t want to talk, and yes, there is something I’d like, something that I want.”
Sage swallowed, knowing the answer to her next question, but she found herself asking anyway. “What?”
“You.”
For a full minute Sage didn’t say anything. There was nothing she could say. He had every right to want her, especially after the past few weeks. Unselfishly, on five different occasions, he had brought her to the pinnacles of total fulfillment with orgasms so strong, so potent, so unlike anything she’d ever experienced that even now the thought of them was making her tremble inside. And each time that he had fulfilled her needs, his own had gone unsatisfied.
He’d been determined to keep his word to her, determined to prove he could be trusted. A part of her knew that trust was no longer an issue between them. In a way, it never had been. There had been something about Gabe that had let her know from the first that he was a man who wouldn’t take advantage of her and her feelings. He was a man who proved to her that he would put her well-being before his own. He’d done exactly that over the past weeks.
She was woman enough to know that sexual pleasures should work both ways; yet for him they hadn’t, and it was time to put his torment to an end. It was the first time she would try seducing a man, and Sage hoped she did it right.
“Tonight is usually my pamper-yourself night,” she said softly, as a whirlpool of desire erupted in her stomach with the intensity of Gabe’s gaze.
“A pamper-yourself night?” he asked huskily, pushing himself away from the door to come and stand within a few feet of her.
“Yes, it’s a night that I pamper myself. I usually take a long, leisurely soak in the tub with lit vanilla candles all around and soft music playing in the background.”
He nodded, then flicked a quick glance at the door that led to her bedroom and master bath. “Don’t let me stop you. Go ahead and enjoy yourself. I’ll sit and wait out here for you.”
Sage took a step toward him. “Or you can join me.”
Gabe considered it for a moment, the full extent of her invitation. He was a man who could take only so much, and would have to be made of stone to join her in a bath and not make love to her. Did she not know what she was asking of him? Did she not think there were limitations to their madness?