been perfect.” She took his hand, the one that hadn’t quite been able to stop touching her hair, and let her fingers slide through his. “I even talked to my parents and one of my old friends about racing again. Baby steps,” she added quickly.
Pride practically exploded in his chest. “Babe, that’s awesome.”
“Well, thanks for confronting me about it.”
“It’s all you. All I did was give you one little nudge.”
“Yeah, but…it was a nudge no one else would give me. And you did way more than that.”
“Oh? Like what?”
“I know I can be sort of a closed book sometimes. You get me to open up. You aren’t afraid to do that. It means a lot, that you would make the effort. At that moment, it was like you knew me and what I needed to hear better than anyone else ever has.”
Again, she was able to put something out there that strangled his heart in a chokehold and tied his friggin’ tongue up in knots. So he did the only thing he knew to do—pulled her in his arms and put his mouth on hers. If he couldn’t use it to speak to her right then, he could use it to make her feel good. To get closer to her.
A sigh escaped her, and he drank it up, drank her in, sliding his hands down to her ass to pull her tight against his aching cock. She whimpered against his lips, and her tongue slipped between his teeth, teasing and tempting his until he plundered her back. Her body trembled and heated against his, and when she pulled away to look up at him, her eyes were a little brighter, her lips a little fuller.
“Why didn’t you kiss me the first night we were together?”
Seriously? “Couldn’t give you everything up front.”
Her fingers curled around the back of his neck, warm and tantalizing. She wet her lips, and the knowledge that she tasted him there made his hands clench on her. “You gave me everything later.”
He leaned in, sliding his lips across hers. “Not everything.” When she parted her lips to invite the invasion of his tongue once more, he eluded her, instead trailing his mouth down her jaw and her sweet-smelling neck.
“Tease,” she chided, but he heard the tremor in the word. Chuckling, he reluctantly let go of her and stepped back, leaving her panting gently and staring at him in bewilderment.
“Undress for me,” he told her.
“What about you?”
“In due time.” He sat on the bed and leaned back against the headboard. “Do it.”
Expression unreadable, she regarded him for a few seconds, and he wondered if she might refuse despite the fact he’d seen her naked often enough.
“You’re feeling like a bad girl today, remember,” he prompted her. “You’ve run away from life to meet up with your clandestine lover in a distant city, and no one knows where you are. You’re his for the night. It scares you a little, doesn’t it.” Her quick intake of breath caused her breasts to swell briefly, beguilingly. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, watching the effects of his words soften her body. “But it also gets you hot.”
“Sometimes I think you know me a little too well.” Even as she said it, her hands slipped under the bottom of her shirt. Agonizingly slowly, she peeled it upward and over her head until her hair came free of it with a soft swish and settled back around her creamy, naked shoulders. His mouth ran dry at the sight of her lacy red bra, cut so low if she but moved, he might catch the slightest glimpse of the upper edge of her areola.
Aw fuck.
“You’re wearing the red panties, aren’t you?”
Her head fell back, and she giggled in a way that made him think of a demonic seductress. She should have a red devil tail twitching around her feet. Then, giving him an impish glance any porn star could learn from, she popped the button on her jeans, lowered the zipper and slid them down over her hips with a slow wiggle. Kicking them free, she shook her hair back and looked at him, waiting for his next move.
He knew what he wanted that move to be. Pinning her sexy ass down on the bed and having it six ways to Sunday all night long. He wanted to tie her up, take away the control she so desperately needed in her life, make her give it all to him.
Instead, he said, “Come here.”
She