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“We aren’t strangers who just hooked up without knowing each other.”
“We are strangers,” I insist. “Most people always are, in fact, strangers, and you’re too good an attorney not to know that.”
“Explain.”
“Why are we talking?”
But he doesn’t allow me to dodge my meaning. “Explain,” he insists.
“People live in our worlds, but never really see beneath the surface. They never even try. It’s how passion hides lies and love hides hate. How sex is an escape and not a confession of the soul.”
He studies me, his expression unreadable while the music changes, and I know this song. A Jason Aldean duet with Kelly Clarkson, “Don’t You Wanna Stay,” which is somehow an unexpected choice for Reese, but it reminds me that I’ve started to know the man beneath the lawyer and asshole. A country boy with a family ranch, who is more than the suit he wears as armor in a courtroom. Perhaps in life. But as the words fill the air, it’s not his past that speaks to me or us. It’s the now, the here, the possibilities.
Don't you wanna stay here a little while
Don't you wanna hold each other tight
Don't you wanna fall asleep with me tonight
That last line quakes inside me, and suddenly Reese’s fingers are tangling in my hair, his mouth lingering just above mine. “Sleep is overrated,” he says, obviously referencing the song, a moment before his mouth crashes over mine, his tongue doing a wicked, smooth slide against mine, and then it is gone.
He lingers close a moment, breathing with me, and then, without warning, he turns me around, pulling my backside to his front, our bodies melded intimately together. And for just a moment, or two or ten, I think…I think he just breathes me in, and it’s quite possibly the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced. My body responds as if he’s touching me, goosebumps lifting on my skin. My nipples are tight, aching buds. My panties clingy and damp. Suddenly, and yet not sudden at all, he is dragging my jacket away, his hands caressing my bare arms along the away, his touch light, but every part of my body is now laden with a warm, needy sensation.
He tosses my jacket aside. I don’t know where and I don’t care. I try to turn to face him, but he catches my hip. “Not yet,” he says, his voice a low, sexy rasp I feel straight to my toes.
His fingers caress my hair to the side, over one of my shoulders, his lips touching the delicate skin of my nape. A tiny kiss that leaves me tingling all over as he reaches for the zipper of my dress and, with deliberate laziness, slowly tugs it downward. Inch by inch, it travels from my shoulder blades down to my lower back, the cool air of the room contrasting the combustible heat of anticipation: What comes next? What will he do? What will I do?
Questions that Reese answers when his deft fingers unhook my bra. He kisses my neck again, a whisper of a touch that shivers through me. His hands find my shoulders, and in a blink I’m naked to the waist. In another blink, he’s caressing the material over my hips and my clothing pools at my ankles. Instinct has me ready to untangle my feet, but, showing he does have manners, he doesn’t leave me a tangled mess. His powerful arm wraps around my waist, and he lifts me, his foot scooting aside my clothing.
The moment my feet are back on the ground, I am aware of my naked body being the only naked body in this room. Seeking to remedy that fact, and maintain some semblance of control, I twist around to face him. In the process, his arm has managed to remain around my waist, my hands have settled on his chest, and our eyes have collided. I forget control. I forget everything but these few seconds in which this warm blanket of intimacy wraps around us and steals my breath.
And then in the next moments, in which his eyes lower to my naked breasts, where they linger for countless seconds, my aching nipples pucker beneath his inspection before his gaze returns to mine. “You’re as perfect as I knew you would be,” he says, his voice managing to be both sandpaper and silk on my nerve endings, as he adds, “and almost as naked as I want you to be.”
The idea that he has wanted me as much as I have wanted him does funny things to my stomach, but more so, delivers an unexpected wave of illogical vulnerability. This is sex. The end. I don’t want or need to feel anything more. I want and need him naked and fucking me now, fast, hard. That’s safe. Desperate to find that safe place, to shift the control from him to me, I push to my toes, my breasts molding to his chest, and press my lips to his lips. They are warm, and he is hard everywhere I am soft.
And his response to my kiss, the answering moan I am rewarded with, is white-hot fire in my blood that he ignites further with a deep, sizzling stroke of his tongue. He slants his mouth over mine, deepening the connection, kissing me with a fierceness no other man ever has, but then some part of me has known from moment one that he is like no man I have ever known. Which explains why he is everything I want. And nothing about this night is what I expected, any more than this man is anything I can control.
But there is something intensely arousing about the idea of trying.
As if claiming I am reaching for the impossible, he molds me closer, his hand between my shoulder blades, his tongue playing wickedly with mine, but I meet him stroke for stroke, arching into him. He cups my ass and pulls me solidly against his erection. He wins this one. Now I am the one moaning, arching into him, and I welcome the intimate connection. I burn for the moment he will be inside me.
But I also want him to burn for this just as much as I do, and I need to touch this man. Really, really, need to touch him. My hand presses between us, and I stroke the hard line of his shaft. Reese tears his mouth from mine, pressing me hard against the pillar supporting the window again, and when his hands leave my body, when his palms press to the concrete above me again, I sense his withdrawal is about control. I was winning. I confirm that as reality when our eyes lock, and the dash of fire in his eyes is lit by one part passion and one part challenge.
“If I slide my fingers between your legs right now,” he says, “would you be wet for me? Are you ready for me?”
“Why don’t you find out for yourself?” I dare him, testing him, pushing him, and I don’t even know why.
“If I lick your clit, will you moan for me?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“Answer, Cat,” he orders, his voice low, gruff. Aroused. And God, I love the way he manages to be power and control, and yet, intentionally or unintentionally, he doesn’t deny me the understanding that I do this to him. It empowers and emboldens me. So when he pushes, when he says, “If I lick your clit—”
“Please,” I say. “Is that where this is going? Can we get it over with and just have you get to it?”
His lips curve, with just a hint of wickedness to them that tells me he plans to make me say that word about ten more times before this night is over. And I’m okay with that, I realize. Because that is the glory of one night. I can enjoy every moment of challenge with this man, but I don’t have to be in control until tomorrow. And he doesn’t get to be in control tomorrow.
Chapter eleven
