and I felt the sensation everywhere. In my core, my belly, the tips of my breasts. That simple motion caressed my heartbeat and sent it skyrocketing.
“More,” I begged, squeezing my thighs around him, needing the pressure to ease the ache, even if just a little.
Like I’d bitten him, he released my thighs and stepped back, my shock loosening my grip enough that he broke the lock on my ankles.
“Okay, that’s the opposite of more,” I said, my words as choppy as my breath.
He leaned back against the other counter, his chest rising and falling just as rapidly as mine. At least I wasn’t the only one affected by that kiss. He looked flat-out tortured and a little angry as he ripped his tie loose.
Damn, that was sexy.
He closed his eyes as his hands tugged at his hair. He was the very picture of an intensely aroused man who couldn’t get a grip on his control, and maybe I was mean, but I loved knowing I’d put him there.
“Beckett.”
“No.” He shook his head as he opened his eyes. The way his gaze raked over me, my dress barely covering my still-spread thighs, was intense enough to send another wave of pure lust through my system. “Not like this.”
A quick cut of fear slid down my sternum. Had the kiss not been the same gravity-bending event for him that it had been for me?
“You’d prefer to wait another four months to make out? Because this is us, Beckett. I’m always going to be Ryan’s sister. I’m always going to want you, and if the way you just kissed me is any indication, you want me just as badly.”
“I always knew it would be like this between us. From the moment I set eyes on you, I knew the minute my hands…” He caught the side of his bottom lip between his teeth for a second, then gripped the counter.
“Your hands what?” I taunted, sitting up straight and giving my arms a rest.
“I knew the minute I got my hands on you, it would take a miracle for me to stop long enough to get a rational thought in my head. Touching you… God, Ella, if you had any idea how badly I want you, you would not still be sitting on my counter looking at me like that.”
“Maybe I do know.” I ran my tongue over my lower lip. “Maybe I feel the same exact way. And rational thoughts are overrated.”
“Think this through.”
“Why? Maybe I want to be reckless for once. Maybe I like the way you take every rational thought out of my head. Maybe that’s exactly why I need this—need you.” The ache centered between my thighs had me shifting my hips. Sex had never been something I sought out, or a big fireworks show, but I never remembered it starting with this torturous, clawing need, either.
“I’m really trying here.”
Trying my patience.
The sting of rejection was sharp. I brought my knees together and buttoned my shrug with trembling hands. “I don’t get you. I tell you I want you to kiss me, and you jump across the couch. I shave my legs and put on a dress, and you hug me good night. I throw myself at you, and you kiss me like I’m the only woman in the world, and now you’re over there. Beckett, I can’t make my wants any clearer, and I can’t be the one who always has to chase you. If you want me physically, but don’t want me, then say it. Because I’m done listening to you tell me no like there’s something wrong with me.”
He had the nerve to look wounded, like his constant arm’s-length approach to our physical nearness was more painful to him than it was to me. Like I wasn’t the one constantly trying to push our relationship out of the friend zone.
“Do you see me as a sister? Is that it?”
“Hell no!” He sighed. “And now I’ve sworn at you twice.”
“I really don’t mind. You could throw in an F-bomb if it meant you were interested in using it as a verb.” I put my hands on the counter and prepared to jump down, find my shoes and my dignity, and take my sexually frustrated butt home.
“Look at me.” His voice had taken on that gravelly tone that I loved.
I brought my eyes to his, wishing I could understand what the hell the man was thinking about. What kept him from taking what I knew—or at least really hoped—he