His pants hit the floor and Syd just- just laid there. Staring up at him, her eyes glistening, shining with heat and hunger, her lips parted, little raspy breaths escaping their lush fullness.
She wasn’t drunk.
She didn’t have any excuses to want him.
Jesse tensed, waiting. Waiting for her to give him a sign, because the way she was acting… it wasn’t like Syd at all. It confused the hell out of him.
Slowly, so very slowly, she shifted on the bed, letting her legs fall open.
And fuck. He was thirty-two years old and he’d been waiting his entire life for this. For that invitation. It was worse, because he’d been haunted by the memories of the night they’d spent together, for the past ten years.
Something in his brain short circuited and he just- lost it.
As sexy as his sweats were on Syd, they’d be sexier off.
She seemed to think so too, because when he curled his hands into the fabric pooling at her ankles and tugged, she lifted her hips off the bed, her hands flying down frantically to help him. She clawed at them the same time he did, and between the two of them, he managed to tug and she managed to kick and writhe and finally, those bastard sweats ended up on the floor in a rumpled heap right next to his clothes.
Right where they belonged.
He stared down at Sydney and he had to force a hard swallow because his throat had suddenly closed up at the sight of her shapely, creamy legs on full display. Syd was more of a pants wearing girl. She hated skirts and dresses and even shorts. She rarely wore anything that showed her legs. She’d once said it was because she hated bug bites, itching herself raw all summer, and he’d believed her.
After staring at her legs, though, he decided it was a crime. Bugs should be outlawed, banned from their state, because Syd’s legs, they were meant to be on display. Long and shapely, slender and full in all the right places. They were athletic legs, thicker calves that curled sweetly around her shin bones and bunched higher up. He wanted to run his tongue there, to lift her leg and taste her behind her knees, up, up over her creamy thighs.
He was so damn hard that his tight boxers were a tent they could both freaking camp out in. And when his eyes continued up the rest of the way, to her yellow cotton panties- he was done. Moisture flooded his mouth, a sharp spurt over his tongue like he was about to open a bag of salt and vinegar chips. Except she wasn’t chips. God, she was so much better. And those panties… they were light, so light around the edges, but in the center, they were a darker hue, where her wetness had soaked them.
All the wetness disappeared from his mouth and it suddenly went bone dry.
“Those panties are a sin,” he managed to grind out.
A line creased on Syd’s perfect forehead. “Yeah? Because they’re not your brand?”
“Hell no. Because they’re still on.” He shook his head so hard it felt like it was going to break off his neck. She smiled up at him, a lazy smile that spread over her lips that let him know she knew damn well what she was doing to him.
Or- or maybe she didn’t. Because behind the natural confidence in that smile, there was a shadow of something else. Fear? Regret?
“I- we can… we don’t have to-”
Her eyes darkened and she blinked slowly, lazily.
If he was suddenly struck down five minutes from now, he was going to die a happy man, because Syd, who never tore her eyes from his face, hooked her fingers into the waistband of those panties and slowly slid them down her legs. She shifted and wriggled in ways that shouldn’t have been sexy, but were completely steaming hot, and threw them on the floor.
Damn. She’d changed things up a bit since college.
She was completely bare, perfectly proportioned, and glistening wet for him.
It wasn’t just that night that haunted him. It was all the details he couldn’t erase from his mind. Her scent. Her taste. The feel of her clenching right around his cock.
God. He had to put the brakes on the deluge of mental images, or he was going to have some premature issues going on south of the belt.
She looked up at him, blinking slowly again, purposefully, and spread her legs just a little wider. She knew exactly what she was doing, and it was such an abrupt change from the way she’d walked into his house that it floored him. He’d wonder if she was just playing with him, but he knew there was no way she’d be that cruel.
The whipped cream explosion was just a happy accident, and now she was sprawled out on his bed, as turned on as he was. She might be able to fake a lot of things, but she couldn’t fake that wetness glistening on her bare sex.