Terèse Boynton saw the tall brown-haired man walking toward her. She wasn't really paying any attention to him, but she knew he was coming, and she assumed he was headed to some point beside or beyond her. She had registered his good looks, his height, the ease of his movements as he sauntered over. Damn, but he was a good-looking son of his mother! After a minute, she took her eye off him, and concentrated on rewriting the last sentence. She had to have the edits and rewrites done by tomorrow, or she'd miss the deadline for the third time, and the publisher would pull the plug on the novel. It was her third, and although the success of the first two meant she could find a new publisher fairly easily, she didn't want to have to go through all that until she was making enough money to leave her part time job as an adjunct lecturer in the local college.
When the waiter came to take her order, she spoke to him absently, and went back to her writing.
"Teri?" the voice said, in her ear, it seemed.
She looked up. It was the handsome brown-haired man. Close up, he looked vaguely familiar, but she had so many white male friends who were brown-haired, with a great smile, sexy lips, and a straight nose, that she couldn't place him. She wondered briefly how to respond, and chose cool aloofness, to cover her nervousness.
"You are...?" She let the coolness settle in her voice.
"Ethan Dunn," he replied, a hint of a drawl in his voice. "Don't you remember? From Austin, Texas. I told you I might be coming up on business."
Teri's eyes widened slightly, but she collected herself and put the laptop aside long enough to raise a hand to shake the one he held out. She was stunned that he recognized her, that he remembered her, even. She was one of the women he had invited to be his friend on the webpage where he kept a blog, among other things. She visited his page once or twice a week, mostly to say hello on the top page, every now and again stopping to catch up and read his blogs, and maybe comment on a couple. He was a witty man, but aloof, or at least that was her reading of him. Or actually, he was aloof with her. He seemed to get along well with the other friends on his list, but she had not felt any special interest from him at all. At first, because she knew how attracted to him she had become, she had been hurt by that, but eventually she gave up any hope of attracting more than a passing glance from him, and went on with the business of living. As far as she knew he was married, so he was unavailable, anyway.
"May I?" he was saying, indicating the chair to her right.
She blinked, and then nodded. When the waiter returned with her order, he made his.
"How are you?" he asked, clearly intent on doing more than merely sit there quietly while she worked.
She sighed inwardly and reluctantly put the laptop aside. "I'm fine, thank you. You?"
He smiled, and for some reason, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
"I'm much better, now that I've found you. I'd given up hope, and was just coming for a bite of dinner before heading back to my hotel. And suddenly, there you were!"
"You were looking for me?" she asked, forgetting the food in front of her for a minute. "Why?"
Again the smile that made her tingle. "I told you I would, in my e-mail, didn't I? I always keep my word. And I'm very glad I found you, too. You're the friend I've most wanted to meet offline, because," here he paused, "quite frankly, you're the most mysterious to me."
The waiter brought his drink, and she suddenly remembered the food she had been served. She picked at it, wondering why he would want to search out the "mysterious" black friend he barely acknowledged online. She felt increasingly uncomfortable, especially when she realized that the feelings for him she thought she had gotten over were now threatening to choke her, making it hard for her to do such a necessary thing as breathe. She realized she was holding her breath again when the waiter returned with his order. She swallowed and took a deep breath. "I'm flattered," she said, her voice a little husky. She wanted to clear her throat, but didn't want him to know the effect he was having on her. So she picked up her glass and drank deeply from it instead. She hunted around in her suddenly vacant head for something, anything, to say to break what was for her an uncomfortable lull in the conversation, such as it was.
"So, is your business done, Ethan?"
She half hoped he would say yes, and therefore could not account for her disappointment when he did just that.
"Yes," he nodded. "I was planning on taking a late flight home tonight, but now..." He looked at her, then at his plate, then back at her. "Now I think I'll go tomorrow."
Teri's appetite had long since deserted her, but she ate mechanically for another minute before pushing the plate away. The waiter appeared, as if by magic, and asked if she wanted to take it with her. She nodded and he left with her almost full plate.
"Not hungry anymore?" Ethan wanted to know.
He eyed her, taking in the blue jeans she wore, and the sleeveless red shirt with the V-neck that gave him a sweet view of her ample cleavage. She wore a simple, thin gold chain around her neck, with the initial B as a pendant, a graduation ring on her left ring finger, and another ring, with a sapphire, on the right ring finger. Her fingernails were varnished with clear polish. The watch she wore was simple but elegant, with a thin band of linked hearts, and a bracelet, of dolphins breaking the waves, adorned her right wrist. Her ears bore oval-shaped gold hoops. He knew he was making her nervous, and the thought thrilled him for some reason. He watched her eyes follow his as he took in her whole appearance.
"Teri," he began, swallowing some of the beer he'd ordered, "I really wanted to meet you to ask you something."
He looked at her steadily now, and Teri felt her face flaming.
"Yes?"
"You once told me that you'd never played Truth or Dare. Ever since that day, I've wanted to play that game with you."
Although his voice was even, Teri thought she detected an undertone of something that made her begin to shiver.
"Really?" Her surprise was genuine. "Why?"
"I think you know why," he answered, and Teri found her hand held fast. "You ran away from a conversation we began months ago, when we first became friends. You said you would try almost anything once, but when I asked if you'd have sex with a stranger, you hemmed and hawed."
Ethan watched her, and saw her face flush with embarrassment, or acknowledgment, or both – he could not be sure. He gripped the handle of the beer stein a little harder and raised it to his lips. Although he had never given her even the slightest hint, Ethan had found the tall caramel-skinned woman sitting across from him intriguing and sexy from the time she had chatted with him for about an hour about their lives, their interests, and had played word games. She was good with words, he knew that much, and she had told him about the books she had already had published. He guessed, by the laptop, that she was working on another one now. And he knew he wanted to take her away from the world she created in her writing, to a world in which he could show her how exciting it could be to spend time with him. He wanted her, he realized with a flash of insight, to be as fascinated with him as he was with her. He wanted her to...well, it was becoming increasingly clear to him that he just plain wanted her.
He came back to the moment with a start when Teri cleared her throat and said,
"I don't normally talk about those things with almost total strangers. And anyway, the idea is outrageous! Would YOU have sex with a stranger?"
Teri watched Ethan's expression change from cool amusement to warm interest. Whenever her small hairs tingled, she knew things were going to get pretty interesting where she was. And those telltale hairs were fairly quivering with excitement now. Her brown eyes met his brown eyes, now darkened to almost black, and she saw the flash of desire in them. She tried to catch the breaths she couldn't seem to hold on to, and felt the force of his reply like a sensual caress.
"Only if that stranger was you!"
Ethan's eyes held hers, and Teri knew in that moment what it felt like to be mesmerized, bewitched, enthralled.
"Ready?" he asked. "Let's get out of here!"
Teri packed up her laptop while Ethan paid the check and collected her food. He extended a hand, and she slung the laptop bag over her shoulder and took it, enjoying the warm hardness of it as he engulfed her hand in his.
"Nervous?" he asked, looking down at her as they walked out into the late afternoon sunshine.
"Yes," she answered. "Where are we going?"
Ethan stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned her to face him.
"Where do you want to go?" he wondered huskily, his hand reaching up to caress her cheek, a thumb sliding warmly over her full lips.
Teri opened her mouth to reply, but no words would come out. She felt swamped by all the desires she had tamped down since the first time they had chatted online and he had dared her to come play with him and his friends in their Friday fun sessions online. Although she had been tempted, she had never gone, knowing that she was not brave enough to display any part of her body to strangers. Which made her wonder now what she thought she was doing going anywhere with a man she had only ever "met" online!
"Look, Ethan," she began, but he stopped her.
"Wouldn't you like to know how it could be between us? Just you and me. No outsiders. No voyeurs." He lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. "I think you know there's always been something unspoken between us, hon! I dare you to explore it with me. Now! I dare you to come back with me to my hotel room and find out what it's like to have sex with a stranger!"
There! He'd said what she was afraid he would, and yet she knew she wanted to hear it, and to do what he dared her to do. She wanted to feel alive, to feel desired, to be made love to by someone who knew what he was doing, and who could make her forget her name in the throes of passion. She suspected, from the things he said to her, the things he wrote in his blogs, and the comments he wrote on his friends' pages, that he was experienced and passionate, and that he would be an exceptional lover.
