Excerpt from "In Your Wildest Dreams"
A Warner Forever Release
July 2005
ISBN: 0-446-61487-4
©2005 by Toni Blake
Page 4
Clutching her small sateen purse tightly, she made a beeline for the long, mahogany bar to one side of the luxurious room. A dark-haired guy stood behind the expanse of polished wood operating a blender, his back to her, as she climbed up onto a barstool. A moment later, he stopped the blender and turned. "What would you like?"
Her heart nearly stopped just from looking into his eyes. He was everything she'd never been attracted to. Rugged. Unshaven. Unabashedly sexual without even trying. Midnight black hair framed his strong face, along with the stubble of several days curving across his upper lip and chin. One wayward lock of hair dipped onto his forehead, drawing attention to deep, sensual brown eyes. Warm and chocolaty, a place to drown. A black t-shirt stretched across a muscular chest and broad shoulders, a hint of a tattoo peeking from beneath one sleeve. The forbidden sense of arousal already coursing through her veins deepened.
He cocked his head slightly. "Did you want a drink, beb?"
She finally caught her breath. "Um, yes. A Chardonnay, please."
As he reached for a stemmed glass, she dug in her purse, placing a twenty on the bar, all the while fighting her reaction to him. This wasn't her. She didn't get aroused by a guy on mere sight. Especially not one who looked so ... dangerous.
When he lowered her wine to a square napkin, his eyes fell on the cash. "What's that for?"
She blinked. "The wine."
His narrowed gaze only added to the sensations between her thighs. "Ladies don't pay."
She softly pulled in her breath. "Oh. Right." His tone said she should have known that. She shoved the bill back into her purse, then reached for the glass, taking a large swallow.
"First time here?"
What sort of accent was that? Something slightly Cajun? "Um, yes." She nodded, softly, trying to quit feeling like a schoolgirl. Here she'd finally begun to think she could control this situation as efficiently as she controlled the rest of her life, and this darkly sexy man was already turning her soft and vulnerable, emotions equally as foreign as the sensuality currently pummeling her.
Time to take back control, to start doing what she'd come here for. And the bartender seemed like a good place to start.