Pearls of Passion
By Chantilly White
Cover Design Copyright © Chantilly White
Cover Image Copyright © Maksim Toome, via fotolia. Used with licensed permission.
Digital Edition 1.0
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[email protected] This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is purely coincidental.
Pearls of Passion
Shy librarian Sabrina has had her heart set on Robert, her hunky, reserved colleague, for months. Now she's taking matters into her own hands. . . and anywhere else she can manage. But once she's had her way with him, will she end up with the love match she craves even more than his luscious body? A short, H-O-T contemporary romance, Pearls of Passion is 6,000 words.
(about 15 pages)
DEDICATION
To the shy ones
Out of your whole life give but a moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it,—so you ignore
So you make perfect the present,—condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense—
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me—
Me—sure that despite of time future, time past,—
This tick of our life-time's one moment you love me!
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet—
The moment eternal—just that and no more—
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet
~Robert Browning, Now
TABLE of CONTENTS
Pearls of Passion
Book List
Acknowledgements
About Chantilly
Pearls of Passion
Sabrina licked her crimson lips, adjusted the low V of her scarlet satin blouse a bit lower, the black mini a bit higher. She admired the toned cut of her thigh muscles and the creamy swell of her breasts in the glass as she pushed through the double doors of the county library on ice-pick, black-patent stilettos. She could do this. If her heart was beating a bit too fast and her breathing was a bit, well, breathy, that would just help set the stage.
Mr. I’m-Too-Shy-To-Ask-You-Out was going to get a Valentine’s Day surprise like no other.
She’d timed her entry carefully, just a few moments before closing. The parking lot outside had already emptied of all but her prey’s vehicle, and as the doors closed behind her, the lights in the back began to click off, row by row.
Perfect.
At the check-out counter, Sabrina cleared her stage. She shoved a stack of books off to the side, tossed file folders on the desk chair, then topped them off with the computer, complete with mouse and keyboard. Stage set. Now for the centerpiece.
Hopping up on the counter, she arranged herself along its length, her legs crossed, the top knee bent just so. Her head propped on one hand, Sabrina posed the other at her hip, feet dangling. She made sure the mini skirt rode right below the Promised Land over her bare legs, the V in her blouse more than hinting at the braless contents beneath the satin. She tossed her long chocolate-brown hair over her shoulder and planted a come-hither smile on her lips just as Robert strode around the corner of the closest aisle of books.
Then had to stop that smile from turning into a triumphant grin when Robert stopped dead in his tracks, mouth agape, as books tumbled from his grasp.
“Wha-wha—?” he choked out as she all but saw his tongue roll up in his mouth. And didn’t he look adorable in his blue button-down and wire-rimmed glasses? She was going to take him from Clark Kent to Superman in zero-to-sixty.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Robert,” Sabrina said, her voice a low purr, just as she’d practiced. This seduction thing wasn’t so hard after all. He was already shaking in his black leather loafers.
“What are you doing?” he finally got out. “Um, doing here,” he amended, blushing (and wasn’t that adorable, too?), because it was probably quite obvious, even to him, exactly what she was doing.
“Why, waiting for you, of course.” She smiled at him again, that slow, slow smile, the one she knew raised his blood pressure several notches whenever she laid it on him, which was as often as possible. Not that he’d done anything about it, but she was going to change that.
Right now.
Enjoying her temptress role even more than she’d expected, Sabrina stroked a red-tipped fingernail over the rope of pearls circling her neck. She even batted her lashes.
“For—for me?” Clearly the oxygen had left the building. She’d never seen him so incoherent. “What—what happened to you?” he asked, waving his hand to encompass her transformation from dowdy librarian to, she hoped, sultry siren. Amazing what a pair of contact lenses and a day at the spa could do for a girl. She was buffed, polished, and decked out in her best friend’s recommendation for total seduction success.
So far, so good. Sabrina’s confidence level rose several notches with Robert’s every stammer. Purr, keep purring. “Oh, do you like it? I felt like a little change.”
“A little. . .” He swallowed hard. “Um, change. Yes. Good.”
Why the hell had she waited so long to go for him? He was nearly panting, and he hadn’t even gotten close enough yet for a whiff of her spicy new perfume.
Sabrina took the finger circling the pearls at her neck and dropped it by slow degrees down her throat, her chest, into the velvety hollow between her breasts. She drew it up and down, once, twice, thrice, and when his eyes glazed she continued the path over her torso, tracing the line of tiny pearl buttons down the front of her blouse to the narrow black-patent belt at her waist.
Robert stood frozen in place, the books forgotten by his feet. Even at twenty paces, Sabrina could see the heavy beat of his pulse at the base of his throat.
The blood in her own veins danced a strange tango, surging with desire, then skittering with nerves. Months of small talk, longing glances, brushing against him while re-shelving books—all the subtle little hints she’d dropped to let him know she was interested flashed through her mind. Her friends said she was too subtle. Well, she couldn’t wait anymore. She wanted him. Badly enough to step way outside her comfort zone. Not just crossing the line from subtle to obvious. Blowing the line apart.
It was now or never.
Swinging her legs to the front of the counter, Sabrina sat up and stretched. One tiny muscle at a time, all the way to the tips of the fingers she twirled, ballerina-like, over her head. She didn’t have to look down to know the hot red satin covering her breasts was pulled taut, highlighting every dip and curve, tracing the painfully tight buds of her nipples,
begging to be touched. Caressed. Kissed and suckled.
Would he never stop staring and come to her?
Finally, Robert stooped to gather the books he’d dropped. Sabrina’s confidence might have taken a dive at that moment if it weren’t for the fact that Robert’s eyes never left her. He was reduced to searching for the books by touch, hands scrabbling blindly over the floor. He missed several in the process and tripped over them on the way to the counter with the rest. At least he kept his feet, and his gaze stayed hot on her body. She smothered a laugh. He was just too damn cute for words.
“Why?” Now he averted his eyes, his face in profile. Did he really have to ask? The tips of his ears burned bright red while his eyes burned holes in the counter. Could his heart be racing as fast as hers?
Sabrina wrapped a strand of hair around her finger and canted her head to the side to study the man of her desires. At six-foot-four, he towered over her, even in her heels. Classically handsome, with wavy black hair, laser-blue eyes and a lean, muscular body, she’d felt the physical pull the moment they’d met. His shy smile, framed by killer dimples, made her whole body quiver with animal lust. But it was him, his personality and intelligence, that had taken her from chemical reaction to emotional attraction. His charm, coupled with a sly sense of humor, had her daydreaming about simply spending time with him. She’d waited so long for him to get up the nerve to ask her out. How many months had she slavered over him in her fantasies? Now here she was, acting the femme fatale. Tonight he’d be slavering over