He blinked, oddly taken aback. “I, uh…sure. If that’s what you’d like.”
Delaney nodded. “Thanks, I would. You’ve been great.” She gestured toward the dressing room. “I’ll just run and change, then I’ll give you the address and sitting fee when I come out.”
He nodded again, seemingly disturbed about something. “Sure.”
Delaney swung her feet off the side of the bed and the whole place went black. “Uh-oh,” she chuckled. “Who turned off the lights?”
She heard Sam mutter a curse. “Stay there. The building is under renovation. Somebody must have accidentally cut the power. Let me go check things out. I’ll see if I can shed a little light on things.”
She heard Sam’s bare feet pad from the room, and might have remained there calmly if she hadn’t noticed something out of the corner of her eye. A finger of unease tripped down her spine.
Not a single city light shone from the bank of windows that lined Sam’s loft. Somewhere between her first and last change of clothes, dusk had fallen and brought night. From this vantage point, she should have been able to see half of the Memphis night skyline. Not a single pinprick of light disturbed the inky blackness.
“Sam?” she called tentatively.
“Be there in a sec. I’m getting a flashlight.”
Moments later she watched the beam of the flashlight bob into the studio. “Bad news.” He winced apologetically. “Looks like the generator’s on the fritz. We’ll have to wait it out.”
“Wait it out?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “The elevator won’t run without power, and the stairs and fire escape are under repair. It shouldn’t be more than a few minutes before they get things up and running again.”
He sounded completely confident that momentarily all would be well, so confident in fact that Delaney didn’t think he’d noticed that the entire city of Memphis seemed to be dark.
“Don’t worry,” he said, evidently interpreting her silence for concern. “It’s happened a couple of times since they started the renovation. The guys working here are top-notch. They’ll have things fixed in no time.”
No stairs and no fire escape? She was trapped here with him for the duration? Oh, hell. She’d never been good at resisting temptation. That’s why she stayed on a perpetual diet. And Sam Martelli definitely qualified as temptation. “Well, they’d have to be good if they are going to get the whole city up and running again.”
“What?”
“Look out the windows,” Delaney told him, panic making her voice shrill. She gestured wildly. “The whole city is black.”
She heard him turn, heard him murmur, “Well, I’ll be damned.” Then in a more dire, almost desperate tone, “Oh, hell.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Delaney concurred, slightly annoyed.
“You’re trapped here,” he said flatly. “In my apartment.”
“Yes, I’d figured that out.”
He walked over to the windows. “God only knows how long it’ll take them to get it up and running again. A major transformer or substation must have gone out. You could be here all night.” From the flat, emotionless tone of his voice, a root canal held greater appeal.
“You seemed to have developed a real penchant for stating the obvious,” Delaney said, unreasonably perturbed. Honestly, he didn’t have to sound so put out. It wasn’t her fault that the damned power had gone out. Wasn’t her fault that she’d been imprisoned up here with him.
Her sarcasm appeared to chastise him because he muttered another soft oath and abruptly turned and made his way back to the bed. “Sorry,” he muttered apologetically and had the grace to sound chagrined. “I’m just thinking out loud. Why don’t we go back to the other end of the loft? I’ll light some candles and we’ll, uh, wait it out.”
Well, it’s not like she had a choice, Delaney thought. She slid off the bed and immediately came up against something hard, warm and decidedly male. He shivered—actually shivered—and she could have sworn she heard him grind his teeth. A tense beat passed before he stepped back.
Suddenly another reason dawned for his almost frantic behavior and a slow feminine grin worked its way across her lips.
On second thought, was there any better way to spend a few hours in the dark? Was there a better-looking man to spend them with? Chocolate-covered sex, indeed, Delaney thought as the night ahead and all its possibilities loomed tantalizingly before her. Dare she indulge?
4
A DISCONCERTING MIX OF furious despair and carnal hunger dogged Sam’s every step as he led Delaney back down the hall toward his living room. She’d slipped a distracting finger through the belt loop at the back of his jeans and followed him wordlessly down the hall. He’d either hurt her feelings by his tactless response to their current predicament, or she’d figured out why he’d acted like such a thoughtless ass at the prospect of her being trapped here for God knows how long with him.
Though he knew she’d gotten more than her fair share of heartache recently—and he particularly hated himself for adding to it—he nonetheless hoped that she’d just lumped him into her men-sucked category and hadn’t discerned the true reason behind his blind panic moments ago.
But the thought of being here with her all night, in the dark, with her in that outfit… Sam pulled in a shallow breath.
Damn.
For reasons he didn’t care to explore, the idea was almost more than he could bear. More than he could conceivably handle.
Something about the disconcerting feelings this woman evoked scared the living hell out of him, had curiously led him into emotional territory best left uncharted. He didn’t like either sensation at all and, though a niggle of doubt had surfaced in his befuddled brain, he absolutely refused to consider the “quickening” as a possible cause.
He’d simply been blindsided by desire in its purest, most veritable form—lust.
He’d taken one look at her and centuries of in-grained civilized male behavior had been stripped away and replaced with nothing but the blind, single-minded drive to procreate. To mate.
With her.
He’d been reduced to little more than a caveman and grimly suspected that if she didn’t get out of his loft soon, he’d undoubtedly grunt a couple of uga-uga’s, club her over the head and drag her back to his bedroom.
Which would be tantamount to professional ruin.
Which meant she was off-limits.
Sam smothered a frustrated growl. Of all the women in this city, why on earth did his hyper-libido have to zero in on her like a damned homing device? What exactly was it about this woman that had turned him into such a damned lust-ridden, dick-driven wreck?
When
