Page 26 of Indulging Temptation (Tempting the Heart #1)

I glower at him. Making sure that he feels every bit of the size difference between us, being that he’s substantially shorter than I am.

Sure, it’s kind of a dick move, but he deserves it.

“Suit yourself. Your loss is my gain. Now get the fuck out of my restaurant, and don’t make me tell you again.

I’m only saying it nicely because of that pussy, as you put it, has made me a changed man.

” Without so much as getting to even touch, lick, or sink myself into it like I’d kill to.

“What-fucking-ever, Amato. I still win. I got that shithole property that your Chef Boyardee ass couldn’t swing, and now you get my sloppy seconds.”

Every ounce of self-control that I’ve displayed thus far, is hanging by a damn thread. I’m too enraged to think straight. I don’t know what’s worse. That he got to her before I could or that he’s referring to Lorena as sloppy seconds.

Owen leaves on that note, and I feel myself ready to follow after him, but a tug at my apron stops me, along with the scent that matches the candles throughout the restaurant invading my nostrils. Her scent. Her. Lorena. Standing in front of me begging me in silence to stop before she says it.

“Please, drop it. He’s not worth it.”

“You’re right,” I sigh. “He’s not worth it.” And as I say it, needing the reminder for myself, I feel my anger dissipate. My mood softens with her in front of me.

Lorena shifts her grip from my apron to my hand. Squeezing it for my attention. Her soft touch becomes more intense the longer our palms are intertwined.

Lost in the unexpected intimacy of this moment, of this seemingly minuscule gesture, I feel lost, but okay since she’s here.

“Say something,” she says, snapping me back to reality and the fact that the entire restaurant is painfully silent.

Everyone is looking at us.

Everyone has been watching me make a scene…once again.

My lips part, but she interrupts me. “Not to me, to everyone looking at us.”

It’s pathetic that all I can focus on is the fact that she is holding my hand and saying the word us at the same time. But she’s right. She’s also doing her job that I realize I’m making more difficult for her.

Still keeping my hand in hers, needing the comfort her touch brings me, I clear my throat to address the wandering eyes and guests whispering.

“I apologize if there was an interruption to your dining experience. Everyone’s dinners are on the house,” I offer, though it does nothing to erase what I just did.

A round of applause erupts throughout the restaurant, but that’s not what has my attention.

What does have my attention is the flash of hot pink that invades my periphery as Lorena goes to grab something from the table. I don’t know what overcomes me, but my reflexes kick in, and I snatch it before she can get to it.

“Tino, no,” she mumbles.

I stare at the small pink control, immediately recognizing the squiggly buttons on it, that it’s a remote to a vibrator of some kind.

“This his?” I ask.

“No, it’s mine.” The flush on her cheeks rivals the fuchsia on her lips.

Fuck, I love how she looks in that lipstick.

The way the shade complements the warmth of her skin tone, matched with how perfectly it’s applied, with such precision to her naturally full lips, has my imagination running wild.

Visions of her leaving a trail of fuchsia marks on my cock, telling a story of where her mouth has been, fill my mind.

Tempting me, as does this remote in my hand.

I said that she deserves to be treated like the queen she is, but that doesn’t mean that in order to please her I wouldn’t retire the gentleman hat I wear daily for her long enough to have that lipstick smeared all over my cock, and have her mouth sloppily clean it up.

I’m just a man after all.

A man dying to be hers.

Embarrassed, she takes her hand and purposely digs her nails into my skin. I can’t help but lean into the feeling, pain and all, and smile, because she could stab me, and I would drop to my knees and ask for more, if it meant being the one she runs to for pleasure instead of him – or anyone else.

My eyes trail down to her hips. Keeping my gaze on them, letting my mind run wild with what I can do to her, I ask the question I’m dying to know. “Are you wearing what connects to this now?”

“No,” she quips, looking down at the ground.

I tip her chin up. “Why are you lying to me, Lorena?”

That gets her attention. “You’re unbelievable.

Why do you care? You didn’t seem to care about anything to do with me when we were in…

” She stops herself. There are too many lingering and curious eyes on us.

“You know what, forget it. Let’s go,” she huffs under her breath, as she grabs my hand and leads me away from the main dining room, to the back of the restaurant.

Lorena may be walking ahead of me, but I know she’s close enough to hear what I say. “Is this what you’re into? Public…”

As we approach the far back of the restaurant, she stops, now standing just past the kitchen doors near my office. Whipping her head around to face me, she stops me there.

“Humiliation? Is that what you’re going to say? Am I into public humiliation like you’re clearly trying to do to me for a second time, as if once wasn’t enough?”

I hear what she’s saying. I do. I really do.

And it’s not my intention to embarrass her.

Not then. Not now. Not ever. But I can’t stop thinking, as I rub the small control in my hand, that another man, fucking Owen of all people, had access to her in a way that I have dreamt about for far too long.

It’s messing with me and making my ability to focus on her line of questions impossible.

I want to know what she likes.

I want to do what she likes.

On repeat.

“Tino.” Her fingers snap in my face. “Are you paying attention to me?”

“No. I mean, yes, I just didn’t hear the last thing you said.” Not a lie. I saw her lips moving, but all I was thinking about are the sounds I want spilling out from between them, when I give in and press this button wedged under my thumb.

Her back arches slightly, brushing up against the crash bar of the exit door leading outside to the secluded alleyway where I usually take a smoke break.

I flatten my palm onto the door, pushing it, expecting her to tell me to stop.

But to my surprise, she doesn’t. Silently we work together to open the door, moving as one in perfect synchrony until we’re no longer in the restaurant but heading outside… together… alone.