"Yes."
"We didn't exactly part on the best of terms, did we?"
"No."
He looked up at her then, his eyes fiery. "I'm undergoing a tremendous conflict in my life, Shay."
She licked her lips. "I don't understand. What does that have to do with me?"
He grinned abashedly. "You're the conflict. It's not in keeping with what I profess, with what I am, that I continue to think of you the way I do." She thought she might suffocate from the emotion lodged in her throat. "Do you know what I'm telling you?"
She made a shrugging gesture with her shoulders that could be either affirmation or denial, but was certainly not conviction. She could barely hear his softly spoken words over the pulse drumming in her ears. She clenched clammy hands together on the tabletop.
"Your accusations were well-founded that morning after I hit you with the tennis ball. Accidentally, I hasten to add." His lips separated into a wide grin before he grew serious again. "When you accused
me of enjoying touching you, you were right. I enjoyed touching you, holding you, far too much. That's why I got angry. I didn't want to admit to myself, much less to you, how holding you affected me."
"Stop," she gasped and catapulted out of her chair. "Please don't say any more." Propping herself on rigid arms, she leaned into the countertop and rested her forehead on the cabinet door. Where weeks ago she would have found this scene highly amusing and would have teased him unmercifully, now she only wanted to stop him before he said more.
She wasn't the same woman who had caught him stepping out of the shower. Something had happened to her. She hadn't been able to attach a name to it. She didn't know how to handle it.
He stood up and placed his hands on her shoulders. His touch ignited her senses, she moaned softly. "I have to tell you, don't you see? My only salvation lies in being honest about what I feel." He took a step closer. The hard strength of his body made her feel comparably weak. "Shay, that dream I was having that morning we … we woke up together, that was a dream I didn't want to end."
With gentle pressure on her shoulders, he turned her around to face him. Forcing her chin up with his index finger, he made her meet his eyes. His hands closed around her face. Lightly, tenderly, his thumb glided over her lips. "I didn't want it to end," he whispered.
That wonderful mouth melted onto hers, and she felt that she had come home after spending months away. For the first time in years, no, in her life, she felt whole.
His mouth slanted across hers, persuasively parting her lips. His tongue paused, hovering on the brink of great discovery before it slipped between her lips to sample the sweetness of her mouth.
She heard her own moan of pleasure echo his as her arms came around his neck. He moved closer, pressing her body between his and the countertop, both equally unyielding. His arms, hard and strong, molded her to the length of his body.
His kiss was long and deep and thoroughly sexual as his tongue dipped into the hollow of her mouth, withdrew, and probed again. "Shay, Shay," he breathed into her ear after having charted a path there with light kisses across her cheek. "I wrestled with myself as long as I could. I had to see you. I had to know if what I was feeling was real or just the aftereffects of an unusual weekend spent away from home. It had been months since I'd left Brookside for even a day. You were so different from the women my well-intentioned friends try to pawn off on me. You are so different from any woman I know."
He tilted her head back once more and, holding her jaw firmly between his fingers, kissed her with a passion that stole her breath and her reason away. "All weekend, from the moment I took that towel off my head and saw you standing there with that devilish grin on your beautiful face, I didn't know which I'd rather do, spank the daylights out of you or kiss you."
She grappled with his hands in order to bury her face in his shirtfront, to inhale the scent that belonged uniquely to him. "Me, too. I wanted to kill you one minute and kiss you the next. You ignored me. I couldn't tolerate that. Half the time you acted as if I wasn't even in the same room."
His chuckle rumbled in his ear. "Oh, I knew. I was biting imaginary bullets to keep my eyes and hands off you."
She lifted her head to weigh the measure of truth in his eyes. "And my portfolio. You analyzed the pictures aesthetically. You didn't even notice me."
His eyes, burning with an internal light, dropped to her breasts. "I noticed … everything. More than I should have."
He kissed her again, applying a sweet suction to her mouth, as though he wanted to draw all of her into himself. His hands roamed over her back with caressing motions. One slipped beyond her waist to cup her full hip. "Did you have a bruise?" he asked.
She smiled against his mouth, though they didn't pull away from each other. "About the size of a tennis ball. First it was royal purple, then it faded to a mute blue. Green set in next, and then it turned a sickly shade of yellow."
"I'm sorry," he said, rubbing the spot gently.
"I'm not. It proved that you're human."
"I'm all too human," he said with a growl, devouring her mouth with unleashed hunger. Not only his lips and tongue testified to his human nature, but also the steel evidence of his desire that pressed against her. She welcomed and responded to both, opening her mouth to his delicious ravishment and moving with reciprocal need against his aroused manhood.
When he pushed away at last, his chest heaving and his face flushed, he choked out, "We'd better talk." Taking her hand, he pulled her into the living room. Her feet seemed disinclined to move. His last kiss had drained her, leaving her with a debilitating lethargy. Conversely, her whole body was quivering with newfound life.
They settled close together on the couch. He took both her hands and held them on his knee. "Your mother told me you weren't involved with anyone. I want us to start seeing each other regularly, be together often. I thought we—"
She yanked her hands away as his words cooled her fevered senses like an icy bath. "Wait a minute. Back up. You asked my mother about me? About my love interests?" She trembled with anger.