The Satin Sash by Red Garnier

the hairsbreadth between them and took her mouth voraciously.

    Voyeurism had never been Heath’s thing. He was either an active participant or not interested. Not that a kiss could be considered voyeuristic. But then that was one hell of a sensual kiss.
    From his seat across the table, he tightened his hold on Toni’s hand as she continued kissing Grey. No way in hell would he release it.
    He wanted that sash, and she was holding it.
    The restaurant continued to move in the slow, discreet way fancy places did. Waiters passed by the secluded booth. No one gawked or paused. But Heath could not drag his eyes away.
    No wonder Grey didn’t want him to kiss her. The delectable Miss Kearny was eating Grey up with that killer mouth, and damn, Grey was worked up in a way Heath had never seen him. If that man opened his jaw a fraction more, it would crack.
    His hands were guiding her face, tilting her this way and the other, and their kiss was so mouthwateringly sloppy it was painful to watch. If Heath were closer, he had a mind to push his head in there and find a spot for his own tongue somewhere deep in the recesses of Toni’s mouth.
    The kiss tingled across his entire havoc-wreaked body. It made him ache in his seat. He’d never thought a man as unmoved, as impenetrable as Grey could ever be so hungry. Hell, he’d never thought he could be so hungry. For a kiss. A woman.
    Toni. Kearny.
    With that beguiling combination of innocence and sex, the sound of her name screamed in his head like a siren call. Damn, he was almost tempted to beg her to make that same husky vow to him, too.
    No man is an island....
    He’d heard this from a retiring construction worker who spent his lunchtimes with a book.
    Heath had snorted. I’m it, buddy. Lunchtime is over.
    He didn’t like emotional entanglements and he didn’t like messy good-byes, which made his relationship with Grey so easy. Grey wasn’t sentimental; his partner was forthright and the most level-headed man Heath knew.They worked. Heath elbowed him. Grey let himself be amused sometimes.They were themselves.
    Heath pretty much didn’t give a shit about anything else.
    But watching Grey and Toni kiss . . . fuck, just the way they stared at each other . . . damn, even watching Grey fondle her little hand . . .
    Some kind of creepy, unwelcome loneliness gripped at his chest. Maybe the knowledge that his partner and best friend was as emotionally isolated as he was had kept the feeling at bay, kept him from feeling like an oddity. But something in Grey had cracked, and something in Heath envied it.
    He was torn with wants. He wanted to rise from the table and find something to do other than watch them. And he wanted to slide up to crowd her from behind and plunge into her silken depths. Most of all, he wanted to bend her over the table and fuck her until they both passed out.
    Instead he raised his wine—the Hermi-whatever—and tossed back the liquid. He desperately craved a beer. Once they drew apart, Grey left Toni’s hair in a delectable, thoroughly touchable mess, and she brought a pair of glazed forest green eyes to Heath’s.
    His mouth ran dry. He’d never seen a more kissable, more fuck able pair of lips, no bullshit. Her pupils were dilated with arousal. The black almost swallowed the gold-speckled green of her irises. Sweat glistened across her small forehead, and that fine- sized chest of hers rose and fell heavily with each breath. She smelled of woman in heat, and if he didn’t have her soon he’d . . . he didn’t know. But it wouldn’t be good.
    “This fire . . .” he gruffly told her, caressing the inside of her wrist as he turned her hand to stroke its smooth center with his thumb. He liked that part of a woman, the dent in her palm, and he liked fucking it with his thumb. Slowly and sinuously, until the meaning of what he was doing became clear.
    Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
    “This fire isn’t just Grey’s.”He watched the color rise in