first.
The corner of his mouth twitched in a ghost of a near-smile. “No. You won’t. Because you’re curious. You can’t get me out of your head. Did you dream about me last night?”
How did he know? Those vivid, Technicolor dreams had left her sweaty, aching, and wet. Waking up without him had made her practically scream with frustration.
Raising her chin, she shook her head. “No.” She didn’t usually lie, but there was no way she was going to admit the truth to him.
With a little chuckle, he took a step toward her and whispered in her ear. “You did . I can’t help but wonder if they were as good as my dreams about you.” He was close enough that she felt his body heat. Then he reached out, one hand resting on her hip, the touch light but strangely possessive. “I had you beneath me for hours. I kissed every inch of you, all those little valleys and hollows of your curves. Lost myself between your thighs and tasted you as you exploded on my tongue…”
Holy fucking hell…
Kat couldn’t breathe. He was talking about going down on her? Blood rushed to her face, and she knew with dreaded certainty she was showing him just how much his words were affecting her.
“I—I’m not interested.” Another lie.
His lips twitched. “You are. You’re blushing, by the way. I’m sure you know that. And your thighs are clenching together. Is that because you’re wishing I was between them right now?” His fingertips on her hip stroked slowly upward to her waist, but that simple touch seemed to travel all the way to her clit by the way it suddenly throbbed. Tristan could talk about one part of her body, and she could almost feel him touching her there…
“Stop! Just stop it!” she gasped, covering her burning cheeks. If he kept talking, she was going to…well she didn’t know, but something was going to happen, and she’d end up embarrassing herself.
“Very well, I’ll go easy on you. Just dinner tonight.” He winked, and she could almost hear him say, “Seduction tomorrow.”
There was something eerie and erotic about the way he studied her and drank again, licking his lips.
Every instinct inside Kat shouted that she was being hunted. It was the only word to describe the feeling. Every sense, every muscle was ramped up. Her heart beat hard against her ribs. She sucked in a breath as her body responded with interest. Too much interest. Her thighs quivered, and she pressed them together as she felt a flood of heat deep within her core. The idea that he wanted her was exciting, even thrilling. He made her feel…like a real woman. Yet she was still afraid to rush headlong into whatever this thing was between them. He seemed so confident and at ease about this, but she was spiraling out of her comfort zone at a hundred miles an hour. He probably did this whole “Here’s dinner, let’s have sex” routine with tons of girls all the time, but she didn’t want to be just one of a string of women.
If it was casual sex, she’d regret it, and she didn’t want any regrets. Sex was supposed to be meaningful, at least it was to her, and intimacy wasn’t just physical—it should be emotional, too. Several of her friends from high school had told her about casual sex, but it hadn’t seemed wonderful, not in the way Kat knew sex should be. It was part of the reason why she’d waited. For the right man at the right time. Was Tristan the one?
All her life she’d felt like a little girl, abandoned by her mother and at odds with the world around her. But when Tristan looked at her as he was doing now, she seemed to feel differently. Like the woman she wanted to be, one who knew herself and her own desires. As infuriating as it was to know he thought he would easily seduce her, she did want him to try because she wanted to kiss him again. To feel that heady rush of physical pleasure and that deeper sensation of connection.
When he kissed her, her mind seemed to flood with images of butterflies, of stained glass, of adventures from the books she cherished. He seemed to make everything she cared about come to life inside her mind. Like a wonderful sort of magic. It was easy to lose herself in the sensation of his embrace and leap off the edge without