“Maybe you haven’t had a chance to read your wedding itinerary thoroughly yet, but we do, in fact, have an outdoor soiree planned—”
“The word ‘soiree’ has no place near a grill.”
Julie pushed a tack into the wall using a little too much force and bent it. “No one is forcing you to go. I’m certainly not going to take attendance.” She turned with a hand perched on her hip. “If you hate this wedding business so much, why did you show up? I’m sure you could have made some excuse to blow it off.”
Reed’s expression remained impassive. “I might not decorate or plan sunset cocktail parties, but I show up for my friends and lend my support.” Julie felt herself soften toward him. Just a little. Then he went and mucked it right up. “I figure when a man is willing to pledge himself to a woman for all eternity, he needs as much support as he can damn well get.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not the best man.” She leaned back to study the placement of the lights. “You’d be about as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike.”
She thought she heard him chuckle behind her, then decided it was her imagination. “Sorority girls, huh? Let me guess. You were the relentlessly cheerful one in the group. The do-gooder who forced everyone out of bed, hungover on a Sunday morning, to go perform charity work.”
Julie refused to face him when she answered, certain the fact that he’d come uncomfortably close to the truth would show. “Which place of honor did you hold among your friends? Were you the one who pilfered the Hustler magazine for all the boys to ogle?”
“Who told you about that?”
“Lucky guess.”
Reed made a sound that suggested he didn’t believe her. “Anyway, it was a Penthouse. July issue.”
Julie laughed in surprise, then cut herself off. Her animated laugh had always caused people to look at her strangely. She’d once been told by her Sunday school teacher that she laughed loudly enough to distract Jesus from performing miracles. The gravest of sins, according to the older woman. As a child, she’d taken it to heart and tried to tone down her enthusiastic bursts of amusement, but they often caught her off guard. She cast a look over her shoulder and found Reed watching her with an odd expression on his face. Great. Something else for him to hold over my head.
She pinned an arrangement of flowers over where she’d placed the tack and searched for something to fill the sudden silence. “Penthouse, huh? Didn’t they sell good old-fashioned Playboy in Manchester?”
“Sure they did. But a man has to decide what he likes and stick with it.”
“And you’re one of those men?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
Not having heard him move across the room, she felt a jolt of shock when his big hands gripped the backs of her knees. Without warning, heat speared through her and pooled in her belly, tightening every muscle below her waist. Involuntarily, her eyelids fluttered closed and her breathing accelerated. No sound could be heard in the room beyond her pounding heart. It all happened in under five seconds. Rapid, coursing need. How did this man accomplish what no one else ever had?
“W-what are you doing?”
“I need to get to the bottom of something.” His thumbs began to massage small circles against her skin and she felt an answering tug in her nipples. “You knew it was me in the dark last night. I need you to admit it, pixie. For my sanity.”
Julie said nothing. Tossing and turning in her empty bed last night, she’d admitted as much to herself, but she loathed telling him the truth. Giving him the satisfaction of knowing how easily he could manipulate her body. His ego was big enough. “You’re wrong.”
He growled. “I’m right.”
“We’ve got ourselves a stalemate.” How she managed words was beyond her. Knowing Reed stood behind her, eye level with her bottom, hands wrapped around her legs, did funny things to her brain. “What do we do now?”
“I guess we find out how much higher you want my hands.”
Breath escaped her in a rush. “How do we find that out?”
“By being honest.”
She started to respond when one hand slipped higher and began kneading the inside of her thigh, just inches from her center, where she’d started to throb painfully in time with his hands. He kept it up for long moments, his big hand working her fevered flesh until she’d started to pant, chest shuddering with each breath. “I have been honest.”
His hand stopped moving and she just barely swallowed a whimper of protest. “You see how this is going to work? When you lie, I stop making you feel good.” He kneaded her once. “I know you like that. You’re giving off so much heat, you’re going to burn my hand.” She felt his lips at the back of her knee, planting a kiss. “Let’s start simple. Do you like what I’m doing right now?”
Julie recognized the moment of truth presenting itself. Did she like it? To say so would be an understatement. She felt like she might burst into flames. His hand, so skilled and capable, sat on her leg unmoving and she wanted to scream at him to keep going. He wanted her to admit she liked it first. Wanted her to admit she’d shamelessly begged him for more of his rough treatment last night in the darkness. Something she’d never done in her life. Especially with a man like Reed. Dark, dangerous…interested in only one thing. Never had a man treated her with anything less than respect. Reed, on the other hand, didn’t give a damn about her r
ecognizable last name. Where she came from. Whose names sat on the branches of her family tree.
He wanted to take her to bed. Plain and simple. She had no experience with men like him. Men who took what they wanted and damn the consequences. He represented the unknown, something terrifying for a routine-oriented girl like her. Until now, all her partners had been met through acquaintances after being thoroughly vetted. Or she met them at church on Sunday like most God-fearing Southern girls. She was on her own here. No one to guide her or warn her about the dangers of getting involved with a bad boy. If she wanted this, she could take it. It could be the adventure she’d been secretly wanting for so long. Her chance to cut loose.
But what came after?
“I asked you a question. Do you like the way I’m touching you?”
Don’t think about it, Julie. Live in the moment for once. “Yes, I-I like it.”
At once, his hand tightened on her thigh almost painfully, then slid a little higher. When the massage started again, he was so close to the barrier of her underwear, she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning. God, the thought of his hand touching her there…she suddenly needed it more than her next breath. Somehow she held her tongue and waited.
“Good. I like it, too. Too damn much.” He made a hungry sound. “The second you walked outside last night and let down all that hair, I wanted to fuck you. If you’d stayed any longer, you’d have been gripping the railing, screaming for God. You knew it, too, didn’t you?”
Julie gasped as his knuckles brushed over her aching core. “Yes. I knew.”
Through her damp panties, he sank a thick knuckle into her opening and twisted. Julie cried out, her hands flying to the rafter in front of her, seeking purchase when her knees threatened to buckle. “When you look at me, baby, do I strike you as the type of man who lets the woman he intends to fuck walk into another man’s hotel room?”