His need was so palpable it practically reached out and touched her as she passed him to grab her black cotton tap pants and threadbare tank top from the tote in the closet. She fished out her pajamas from the stuffed bag. Ignoring the catch in her breath and the want dampening her panties, she kept her back to him and pulled the tank over her head.
“Why?” The simple word, heavy with meaning, hung between them.
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t you return my calls?” Most men would have whined the question or asked with a snide edge. But Devin wasn’t most men.
For the briefest of moments, she considered lying, but the truth was always a more brutal way to stop further inquiries. “Because I wanted to so badly. You were the first person since Heath that had me thinking ‘what if.’ I promised myself a year without any ‘what ifs’, without any heartbreak. So I don’t sleep with anyone more than once, unless there is a very clear fuck-buddy only understanding.”
“Ever?”
”Not for another four months. I gave myself a leave of absence from relationships.”
Warm, strong hands gripped her shoulders and spun her around until she was practically nose-to-nose with him. “I hate that someone fucked with your head this much, but I’m not that guy.”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, because the end result is the same.”
They stared at each other, their bodies so close his hard cock brushed her thigh. It took everything she had not to reach down, wrap her fingers around its wide base, and stroke him. His head angled downward, his mouth slightly open. One tiny move and those lips would be on hers. A few more, and his thick length would fill her up until she couldn’t take any more and broke apart in his arms.
“Are you saying you’re scared to sleep with me again?” Challenge sparkled in his eyes.
Her heart hitched up. A challenge was something she never let slide. “As I recall, we didn’t do a lot of sleeping.”
“Don’t try to turn the argument around.” He shook his head and placed a palm firmly on the wall beside her head, trapping her on one side but leaving a route for escape. His gold bracelet, the one that matched hers, twinkled in the dim light.
Silly man. Didn’t he realize by now that she rel
ished the battle—because she always found a way to win? She batted her eyelashes and stayed her ground. “Were we fighting?”
He cut the space between them, proof of his arousal rubbing against her slick, panty-covered folds. “There is always make-up sex.”
She tsk-tsked, and used a single, determined finger to ease him back—before she came just from the casual contact with his cock. “I’m not sleeping with you again.”
“Then you won’t mind just kissing me.” He dragged a knuckle across her bottom lip, setting off electric shocks through her body. “I’ve been dreaming about this sweet mouth for weeks now. Kissing it. Licking it. Watching it open as you moan my name while you come. How it would look wrapped around my dick.”
Her tongue turned to powdered chalk as the rest of her dissolved into molten liquid.
“What’s wrong? You’re not scared of one little kiss, are you?”
She straightened her spine, pushing out her boobs until they grazed his own hard nipples. “I’m not scared of anything.”
His eyes darkened and he raised his other arm, enclosing her between his sinewy, inked biceps. “Prove it.”
Oh, it was on.
She sucked her bottom lip, drawing her front teeth across it, never losing eye contact with her challenger. The man thought he was ready. He was about to learn how wrong he was.
Her first touch came not from her lips, but from her thumb brushing his slightly parted mouth. He shivered under her fingertips and nipped her thumb. She clenched her thighs together in an effort to maintain control over the desire rushing in waves over her.
“That’s not a kiss.” Gravel infused the honey of his voice.
“No.” She brought her mouth millimeters from his. “This is.”
Giving in to the wicked temptation he offered, she pushed her hands against his shoulders, shoving him against the opposite wall. Her mouth was on his before the shock of her sudden move could possibly register in his brain. This wasn’t just a kiss, it was a full frontal attack. She melded her lips to his, not waiting for an invitation to sink her tongue into his luscious mouth, but instead pushing her way in. He tasted of fruity wine, seafood, and all the deliciously bad things her mother had warned her about with boys. Dragging her hands upward, she relished the coarse texture of his close-cropped hair against her palms. She plastered her hungry body against his muscular frame, rubbing against the steel between his legs.
Riding high on passion, she wanted nothing more in the world than to follow through with her body’s demands, ride him until he couldn’t come any more, fall into a sweaty heap beside him to sleep, and then wake up a few hours later to do it all again. His personal mixture of raw sensuality and almost animalistic single-mindedness was the perfect fit for her own single-minded needs. She’d known it the minute his hands had roamed across her ass on the dance floor the night they first met—Devin was the man who’d make her let down her guard, forget the bitter lesson she’d learned last summer, and lose control.
That couldn’t happen.