“I don’t know, Molls, I’m looking at you.”
It was the tone he used, deep and husky as a country love song, that made her insides move in a way that made her supremely uncomfortable. Or maybe the sensation was due to the fact that Garrett must be watching them dance. It had to be. For it felt as if the Earth had stopped and not only Garrett, but the entire world, was watching them dance—or at least sway to the harp tune in the middle of Landon’s living room.
“I’m pretty sure he’s watching,” she whispered, moving closer to Julian’s ear. There, she leaned against his chest and whispered, “I’m thinking we could just stroll off somewhere and return a little disheveled, you know. Or go lock ourselves in a closet for fifteen minutes and let his imagination run wild.”
She could feel the coiled tension in the muscles underneath his shirt as he dropped his head to whisper back into her ear, his lips grazing the lobe. “As you wish.”
Fireflies exploded in her stomach, the words were so unexpected, as unexpected as the caressing bump of his lips against her earlobe. Molly drew back with a start, trying to calm her racing heart, telling herself he couldn’t possibly know what those words did to her. Or how deeply they spoke to her. “Really?” she whispered, shaking her reaction aside. “It’s a good idea?”
He arrested her gaze with tender, heavy-lidded eyes that threatened her equilibrium. All she knew was that in her favorite movie of all time, Westley looked at Buttercup in just this manner.
And this was just the way Garrett had to look at her by the end of the evening.
“Yeah.” Julian lightly chucked her chin, then with painstakingly slowness, smoothed his calloused thumb across her lower lip in a way that made her shiver. “I’ve always enjoyed a little closet fun. Let’s get lost.”
Molly didn’t remember moving so fast in her entire life—even though she had to stop several times because she was laughing so hard—than when Julian dragged her down the long hallway. She felt intoxicated with an incredible sense of freedom and mischief and fun—and when she caught a glimpse of Julian’s sexy, curvy smile, she wanted to fling herself into his arms and kiss him from the excitement alone.
Within seconds he came to an abrupt stop and efficiently shoved her inside a small downstairs office.
The instant the door closed after him, Molly’s heart stopped.
Darkness enveloped them. Silence and seclusion spread between them, around them, like a cloak of velvet. But in this closed space, nearly entirely occupied by a big mahogany desk, Julian’s scent suddenly stormed around her like a tornado, and it made her lungs burn. He smelled clean and of spices and within seconds Molly couldn’t seem to stand still. Her mouth watered, and she swallowed.
“Do you have lipstick in your purse?” he asked in a voice roughened with exertion.
Her eyes adjusted to the shadows, and she realized with a start that Julian was undoing the top buttons of his white shirt. Molly could barely organize her thoughts at the sight of his tanned throat being exposed, then the hollow between his collarbones, then a part of his pectorals.
She licked her lips and, without even thinking, she lunged at him.
Going straight fo
r the dirty business, she coiled her arms firmly around his neck and kissed his square jaw, pressing her body against his marble-hard one. Next she trailed her lips down the length of his throat. She’d surprised him, she supposed. For he stood utterly still, maybe not even alive.
Oh, no, but he was definitely alive, very much so. His warmth seeped through his clothes and spread heat all the way to her bone marrow. Intoxicated by the incredible feel of his taut, warm skin under her roaming lips, Molly trailed a path of kisses down to his collarbone, where she crazily wondered if she should just go ahead and trace it with her tongue.
“Molly?”
Julian’s voice was a thick rasp.
“Mmm,” she answered, placing a gentle kiss in that hollow at the base of his throat.
“You could’ve used your lipstick straight on me, baby. You didn’t have to kiss me.”
It took a moment for that guttural whisper to register. She had been happily—maybe too happily—dragging her lips along the thick tendons of his throat so that they ended up smeared peach and no one doubted, not even Julian and especially not Garrett, that Molly had kissed him.
She stopped abruptly and backed off in sudden confusion, all of her body heat concentrating on her cheeks. “What do you mean…? I don’t even remember where I left my purse, I think Beth has it.”
He must have heard the utter embarrassment in her voice, for he gathered her back against him, his voice even thicker and rougher than before. “Shh. Go on then. This works, too.”
But she hesitated, her cheeks now scalding. As though encouraging her, Julian undid another button of his shirt, so leisurely that as she watched she began to focus on details she had never thought of before. How gracefully his fingers moved. How both their breaths ricocheted off the walls of the small space.
How she could feel his eyes burn like lasers through the top of her head as she watched him undo another button.
How a hot little tingle spread across every inch of her skin.
And how this would all be so easy to dismiss if she hadn’t seen him almost naked…
“Now try kissing me a little lower.”