In which case, Renzo definitely wasn’t going to let him have a shot at her.
As he and Esme slid into the seats of the round booth table in the back corner, Renzo asked the waitress for a couple of Good Fortune Potions, Giselle’s most recent creation.
He’d simply enjoy a drink with Esme until he could put her safely in a cab back home. Surely he could justify not telling her the truth since he was only protecting her. It’s not like he had designs on her for himself.
Still, in an effort to forestall any questions about him, Renzo thought he’d better take the conversational lead.
“Esme is a great name.” Okay, admittedly his dating small-talk skills needed a little sharpening up, but it was the best he could come up with on short notice.
“Short for Esmerelda, but that’s a bit of a mouthful.” She peered around the club from the safe haven of their table, her dark-blue eyes absorbing the action with the passive interest of a woman accustomed to observing life rather than taking part. “My mother thought if she gave her daughter an exotic name I would eventually live up to it.” Esme gave a shrug, her exposed shoulder calling attention to itself a few feet away from him. “But no luck so far. I’m an out-of-work art historian with an interest in antiques. Not exactly the outgoing and adventurous type.”
Renzo allowed his gaze to wander over her again with this new information in mind. But his eye was distracted by the shadow of her body beneath her dress and the…
Holy hell.
She was naked underneath that dress.
Thank you, God, he wasn’t in the middle of taking a drink or he would have spewed it for sure. Luckily the waitress chose to make a reappearance just then, bringing with her a tray laden with the exotic concoction his sister had demanded he taste just last night for the first time. The blend of fruit juices, rum and who knows what else, garnished by a fortune cookie had been delicious.
Esme reached for hers, a gesture that put her breasts in close contact with the silky thin fabric of her lavender dress. Breasts he could now see that were shaped like small apples, tipped with dark, tight nipples.
A rush of male appreciation swamped his senses, alerting his every stray blood cell that a sexy woman sat within tantalizing reach. Heat crawled over his skin, making his whole body edgy and very…ready for action.
Great. This was just what he needed—he was trying to be noble and in the course of two steamy seconds his body had turned traitor to the cause.
How had he ever thought that dress of hers was conservative?
“I’m sure you’re living up to the name.” His words scratched across a throat gone slightly hoarse. Maybe this swearing off women thing hadn’t been such a good idea. His self-imposed sexual deprivation of the last few months was robbing him of necessary objectivity. “You risked accepting a blind date tonight. That takes a healthy sense of adventure.”
“Maybe a little.” She sipped her drink through the straw, her forehead puckered in wary concentration as she tasted the concoction. And smiled. “My compliments to your sister. This is delicious. Much better than champagne.”
She bent forward for another sip, her breasts grazing the fabric of her dress again. Not that he had a clear view with the table in the way and her sitting at a forty-five degree angle to him in the round booth. Still, his imagination easily supplied what he couldn’t see with his own eyes.
“You’re an art historian?” Think conversation. Think conversation. He refused to morph into some slick pickup artist just because he’d caught a glimpse of bare breasts. He could maintain an intelligent discussion even if Esme was naked beneath her dress. He hoped.
“I just left a position with the South Beach historical museum that I held for five years. We focused on preserving Floridian culture and we recently added a small exhibit on native architecture.” She did a double take as the lights dimmed on the dance floor and the music changed to a salsa beat. The club-goers who had peopled the floor moved to one side to make room for the hourly show. Leaning close, she whispered in Renzo’s ear. “What’s happening now?”
Warmth tripped through him along with her hushed words. What was it about a whisper that created an immediate veil of intimacy around two people?
“There’s a floor show every hour. Sort of a Vegas-style event with lots of—” Half-naked bodies. Painted-on tattoos over women’s nipples. See-through feathers in the place of panties. “—costumes.”
She’d see for herself soon enough. The parade of perfect female bodies and fluffy white feathers was already snaking through the club toward the open dance floor. He and Nico had been trying for weeks to convince Giselle that the sex-drenched club was no place for a young woman to work, but to no avail so far.
Renzo didn’t take any note of the parade of bare flesh, however. He simply watched Esme’s reaction, mesmerized by her transparent features as her face registered surprise, titillation and pleasure at the seductive moves performed by the Moulin Rouge’s dancers.
Her cheeks flushed pink the first time a dancer sent a limber high kick in their direction. Her soft lips parted on a little gasp when another woman brought her supple bump-and-grind routine a few inches from their table.
Was Esmerelda Giles—who, according to her, had never quite lived up to her name—as innocent as she appeared? She had to be in her mid-to-late twenties if she’d worked as an art historian for five years. Didn’t that sort of profession call for some kind of postgraduate work? Surely she couldn’t be all that inexperienced. But there was an undeniable naiveté about her actions, an unexpected sense of wonder Renzo found incredibly appealing.
So many women he’d dated were blatantly in charge of their sexual desire. The dating mentality these days seemed to be I want this, I want it nonstop for 12.2 minutes and I don’t want to wait for it. Did it make him a chauvinist to think that in women’s rush for control in the bedroom a certain willingness to go with the flow, an openness to try new things, had been lost?
Spontaneity seemed like a quaint notion of the past.
However, it seemed like a quality Esme Giles might possess.
Too bad he wasn’t going to act on the growing attraction he felt for her.
Besides, Esme wasn’t the sort of woman a guy could just cart back to his room. She was more demure than that. More subtle. A woman with delicate ethics and old-fashioned values.
JUST HOW DID A WOMAN go about enticing an Italian stud back to her bedroom?
Esme pondered the question as she stared across the table at her sexy-as-sin date.
The seductive performance of the feather-clad dancers had just ended and the music pulsing through the club switched from the blood-pumping salsa to a funky R&B song that had everyone on the floor. Something about the staged show remained with Esme, some vaguely erotic longing, a latent desire to perform and be noticed in the bold manner the dancers had called attention to themselves.
If she could claim that kind of sensual power, she would surely be an in-charge woman to be reckoned with. A fierce female. A woman who ran with the wolves.
All of which was exactly what she needed. And she’d be on her way to having those things
