LITMIR.BIZ

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to the kitchen. His mother was already seated at the table. “So sorry to interrupt,” she told Jaiven’s mother. “Jaiven didn’t know I was coming. What’s your name?”

      “Rosa.” The woman eyed her beadily as Jaiven pulled out a chair and Louise sank into it, making sure her coat stayed closed.

      “So nice to meet you, Rosa,” she said, trying for a smile, and the woman just folded her arms.

      Jaiven placed his hands on her shoulders and asked, “May I take your coat?”

      A bubble of surprised laughter burst from her lips and quickly she shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

      “Sure?” Jaiven murmured, and she tilted her head up to meet his glinting gaze, tried to convey with her sternest teacher’s glare that he should not push it quite that much.

      He just smiled back.

      All right, fine. She could do this. Jaiven thought she could do this. Taking a deep breath, she gave him a smile back. “But if I get a little hot, Jaiven, I’ll let you know.” She trailed her fingertips along her cleavage, saw Jaiven’s pupils flare, heard his mother snort.

      Okay, whatever. She didn’t care what this woman thought of her. She wasn’t going to cringe or cower or apologize. So she’d showed up to a man’s house in a trench coat. Her choice. And she’d see it through.

      Jaiven went to the kitchen area to fetch her a plate and Louise sat in silence across from his mother, who had folded her arms across her impressive bust and was giving Louise a narrowed, very shrewd look.

      “Your coat,” she finally said after nearly a minute of taut silence. “It needs to be buttoned.”

      Louise glanced down and saw that her improperly buttoned coat was gaping so much at the front that Jaiven’s mother could nearly see her nipple. She bit her lip to keep from laughing out of sheer nerves and rebuttoned it.

      “Oops,” she said.

      Rosa made a huffing sound, her arms still folded. “You know my son well?”

      Hmm, tricky question. What was she supposed to say? No, we’re just acquaintances really, but I showed up to his house naked. “We’re friends.”

      “I just met Louise last week,” Jaiven said as he came back with a plate and cutlery and set her a place at the table. Oh, and that sounded better.

      His mother said nothing, but then she didn’t need to. The expression on her face said at all. Clearly in her eyes Louise was a no-good slut of a woman.

      Well, Louise thought with sudden satisfaction, maybe she was. That would make a change, at least.

      The next hour bordered on interminable. Louise didn’t really contribute to the conversation between Jaiven and his mother. She didn’t even think of someone like Jaiven as having a mother, and certainly not one who pestered and nagged him about all sorts of things: his work, his home, his lack of a respectable woman in his life—it was, she suspected, safe to assume his mother did not place her in that category.

      What was even more surprising than the woman herself was Jaiven’s response to her. He took all her criticisms, implied or overt, with a careful equanimity that intrigued Louise because he certainly seemed like a man who didn’t take crap from anyone, not even his mother.

      After an hour of only half listening, even Louise felt like telling the woman where she could put it. Instead she decided to have some fun, and slipped off her heel. Stretching her leg out under the table, she ran her foot up Jaiven’s leg all the way to his crotch.

      She kept her face blank as she pressed her foot between his legs and felt him harden. Jaiven had gone still, his eyes narrowed as his mother yammered on about some cousin’s baby.

      Louise pressed her foot against him and Jaiven shifted in his seat, ground out some response to Rosa. Louise bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud.

      She’d never felt so powerful. This was sexual confidence.

      She ran her foot down his leg again and then back up, and this time when she reached his crotch his fingers clamped around her ankle, keeping her foot in place.

      Louise thought he would thrust her foot away but to her amazement—and delight—he didn’t. He met her gaze across the table with a wicked, knowing one of his own, and then brought her foot closer against him, his fingers sliding up her ankle nearly to her knee.

      Desire sizzled through her. So two could play at this game, apparently. And Jaiven, she suspected, could play it very well.

      They kept up their game of footsie through another half hour of Rosa’s company, and by the time she finally hefted herself to her feet Louise felt nearly liquid with desire. Jaiven rose as well, and Louise followed suit, one hand clutching her coat to keep it together.

      Finally the door closed, and Jaiven turned to her, his eyes dark, his expression suddenly fierce.

      “You’d better get that coat off now.”

      And bold as she’d become, Louise couldn’t keep from teasing him a little more. “Didn’t you have a nice time?” she asked, her eyebrows raised innocently.

      “I’m in pain, woman,” Jaiven growled. He reached for the belt of her coat and gave it one swift tug. “You’ve been torturing me for nearly two hours.”

      “You were the one who invited me in.”

      Her coat had fallen open and Louise found she didn’t even mind. She shrugged it off, stood before him in nothing but heels. She’d bought them especially, fire-engine red with a six-inch heel. She’d almost broken her ankle climbing out of the taxi, but they were all part of the fantasy. The fantasy Jaiven had understood, about feeling sexy and bold and on top of the world.

      She felt that way now.

      Jaiven groaned aloud. “You are the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen. Now come here.”

      And laughing, she came, pressing her naked body against him as he kissed her.

      “I bet the cabbie knew you were naked under that coat,” he murmured as he turned his attention to the curve of her neck. “Tell me you did take a cab, and not the subway, to the Bronx at night with nothing but a trench coat on?”

      “Of course I took a cab. I’m not stupid.” And now that she thought about it, the cabbie had eyed her coat with something close to a smirk. “I bet he’ll remember me,” she said with satisfaction, and Jaiven let out a throaty laugh.

      “Damn right he will. Best ride of his life, I bet, and all he got to do was wonder.”

      He lowered his mouth to her breast, his hands spanning her waist. Louise let her head fall back, let the sensations overwhelm her. They felt so good. “I’m very, very glad you had this fantasy,” Jaiven said in a voice that had turned hoarse with desire. “Very glad.”

      Louise laughed breathlessly, driving her fingers through his hair to anchor him more closely to him. “Even if your mother thinks you consort with disreputable women?’

      “My mother already thought that. And she couldn’t think less of me if she tried, anyway.” It was an offhand comment, and Jaiven had already moved his mouth lower, his tongue teasing her navel and making it very hard to think, yet even so Louise felt a flicker of curiosity. Wondered about the heart and soul of the man whose body she craved.

      Then she stopped thinking at all because he was shucking his clothes and reaching for her, and as his lips found hers again and her legs wrapped around his hips she wasn’t curious about anything but the desire deepening inside her, and how only Jaiven could satisfy it.

      Eventually they made it to the bed, a huge king-size affair on the top floor of the house, with skylights above that let in a flood of moonlight.

      Louise lay amid the tangled, silken sheets, her legs twined with Jaiven’s, her hand resting palm-down

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