Can't Buy Me Love (21 page)

She wanted something that she’d lost. Something that had been taken away from her a million times.

Her power.

The power this man made her feel, long after she’d thought she’d never feel it again.

“I’m interested,” she blurted.

Inwardly, she shrank. Inwardly, she freaked right out.

What the hell am I doing?

But her mouth wouldn’t stop talking and the loneliest part of her was steering the ship.

“I’m interested.”

His smile illuminated the sharp planes of his face, creating softness where she’d never seen it. He was happy, she realized, feeling as if her chest might explode from the combustible nature of every single conflicting emotion at work.

But Luc … Luc was boyish in his happiness. Sweet. And it took her breath away. She closed the distance
between them, wishing his happiness might seep under her skin, set off a similar reaction in her.

“I’m glad.” His fingers traced her eyebrows, the curl of her ear. Tenderly, he kissed her lips, sending her sighing into a hot internal place.

“Good night, Tara.” He stepped back and that hot internal place was doused.

“What … what are you doing?”

“Going to bed. I’m thinking it might be better if we didn’t … act on this interest right now.”

“Better for who?”

“Both of us. Look, Tara, it’s not easy to walk away right now, but it’s not like we started this on the right foot. I’d like to … I don’t know … take you on a date or something.”

“No.” She didn’t want to date. She wanted to feel good. She wanted that happiness on his face to rub off on her. Now. Right now. Banishing every scent of Dennis on her skin.

“Now?”

She nodded.

“Really?” His voice all but cracked, and she smiled as she stepped toward him.

“Really.” Slowly, she put her fingers on his arm, her body rejoicing in his heat. His strength and life. She spread out her hand, covering as much of his skin as possible.

He’s so big
, she thought, excited by his size. His power.

He ran his hands over her hair, down the strong lines of her back, and she curled under his touch, a flower seeking sunshine.

“I was told I was worthless too,” she said, the words sticky in her mouth. But she’d opened the door and suddenly, with this man, she wanted to go through it. “My whole life. My mom. My mom’s boyfriends. I grew up in a trailer on the wrong side of every track in the world.
And then I got breasts. And hips. And suddenly I wasn’t worthless anymore. I had something people wanted.”

“How old were you?”

Nothing about him conveyed pity. He was nothing but stalwart understanding and sympathy, and her heart swelled. “Twelve.”

“Tara—”

“They’re just breasts, Luc.” She smiled, but it didn’t quite cover up the old pain like it used to, so she looked away, smoothing her hand down his chest.

The kitchen was quiet; the sound of his breathing and the echo of her blood pounding in her ears were all she heard.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” he whispered. “And part of me doesn’t care. But I have to know it’s for the right reasons. I would hate … I would hate to take advantage of you and not know it. So you need to tell me, Tara. Why?”

“Sex stopped being fun for me a long time ago,” she said. “So I stopped having it.”

“That’s a shame. Sex should always be fun.”

Her eyes perused the muscles of his chest, deciding where to start. Her fingers, long and delicate, followed. Skating across his collarbones, down the rounded curve of his pecs. Muscles and nerves twitched under her touch. She dipped down to the hard plain of his breastbone to his abs, her fingers riding the ridges of muscle until she landed at the waistband of his shorts.

He shook beneath her touch and she delighted in it. Was empowered.

“I’ll bet it is with you.” She lifted her fingers, pausing, smiling at his torture, and then started the downward path all over again at his shoulder. His breath hitched in his lungs as she found the small valley between his deltoid and bicep, and the muscles flexed and jumped.

“Is that what this is?” he asked. “You want to have fun?”

“Is that wrong?”

“No, but I don’t think it’s the whole truth.”

“Maybe that’s the only truth I’m going to tell you,” she said. His laughter stroked her, feathered her hair, and his hand followed.

“Is it about the bonus?”

“No.” That line was drawn in concrete. “It’s about me. It’s about wanting something and taking it. It’s about being tired of being alone and cold and untouched. It’s about feeling something good after a long, long time of feeling nothing.”

Slowly he nodded, his hands stroking her hair, the line of her back, and then they slipped to his side. He stood in front of her, a mountain of strength that he would never use against her.

“I’m whatever you need, Tara,” he breathed. “Take what you want.”

Eve’s dilemma with
that apple suddenly made sense to Tara Jean in a whole new way. Here was Luc, a bad idea on so many levels, but tempting on just as many.

And all that strength she used to have, all that denial and restraint that had lived at her fingertips for the last four years, were nowhere to be found.

Hunger, selfish and horny, was running the show.

And Luc, in the moonlight, against the fridge, his hands in fists at his side as if they were going to engage in a little bondage, looked like a particularly juicy apple.

Yep, she totally sympathized with Eve.

Slowly, she leaned against him. Her chest and stomach met his in a hundred little delicious soft spots, her arms slipped over his shoulders, her lips hovered over his like a honeybee.

“Tara,” he breathed, his lips curling into one of the most pained smiles she’d ever seen.

Poor man
, she thought and carefully, as if either of them might break at the contact, she put her lips to his.

She tilted her head, opened her lips, and tasted him. The sweet corner of his lips where chocolate lingered. His salty upper lip, where he was sweating despite the cool air conditioning.

His mouth opened and she tasted his tongue, chocolate and toothpaste and something else. Something Luc,
and it was sweeter even than the ice cream. And deeply, wickedly spicy.

She stepped closer, her hips finding the cradle of his, and he jerked against her, his hands lifting for a second. She held her breath, wondering where those hands would fall, waiting for his touch with electric anticipation.

But then he put his hands back to his sides, his muscles tight and hard beneath her touch. It seemed like he had taken all her restraint—made it his own.

She lifted her head, drawing out the kiss as long as she could, sucking on his tongue, feeling him grow harder and hotter against her belly.

It was gonna be good, whatever was coming her way, it was going to be very, very good.

“You gonna touch me?” She looked into his hooded eyes, rubbed the silk of his hair between her fingers.

“You want me to?”

She smiled, feeling coy. Feeling girlish and wise at the same time, and it was exhilarating. “It would be nice.”

“I … I don’t want to do anything you don’t want.”

A gentleman, honestly. She was sucking his tongue, pressing the seam of her jeans as hard as she could against the impressive erection she felt beneath those workout shorts. Most men of her acquaintance wouldn’t be waiting for anything as mundane as permission. They probably wouldn’t even wait to take their pants off.

That’s why he’s special
, she thought.
That’s why you can’t resist him anymore
.

Somehow, one of the good guys had wandered onto this ranch. Into her arms.

Which only meant, in the end, that he was even more rare and extraordinary. More forbidden.

Because she’d not once in her life done anything to deserve a good guy.

This was her moment with the apple. And she was going to take a bite.

“There’s nothing I don’t want right now,” she whispered. “Touch me.”

He growled and came off the fridge like a freight train. On a lesser man, the growl would have been ridiculous. But on him it fit, and her body organized a cheerleading squad in his honor. He lifted her as if she were weightless, his hands cupping her butt, sliding her onto the tiled island in the middle of the kitchen.

His fingers, nimble and light, climbed her ribs, stroking the skin beneath the thin pink T-shirt she wore. The hidden switch in her neck that controlled every bell and whistle in her body—the ones she knew about and the ones she’d never dreamed she had—he found with his full lips, his clever tongue. She shook against him, every pleasure receptor thrown open. She put her hands on his face, her fingers gripping his hair until he lifted his head and she kissed him.

She kissed him as if she wanted to swallow him. Eat him alive. He was pleasure, he was bliss and joy, and she’d forgotten how much she loved this dark thrill, how good it made her feel. How sex could push away everything that was wrong, everything she didn’t want to deal with.

She could wallow in sex, swim in its eddies for days. Ignore the problems and mistakes that were growing like weeds in her life. And she could do that now. Luc could make her forget Dennis and the money and his threats about Victoria. He could make her forget how alone she was. How scared she was of failing. How success felt like something that happened to other people. Not to her. Never to her.

“Hey,” he breathed, pulling away. “What’s the rush?”

The fire was out of control in her body, her head was spinning with desire, and she felt the way she used to,
years ago, as though this heat, this pleasure, was all she had. The only thing she had to give. The only thing that gave her worth.

For a moment she froze.

I am not that woman anymore
, she thought.
I don’t want to be that woman
. She’d worked hard to put Jane behind her.

Mistakes, a thousand mistakes littered her past, brought to bear usually because she’d decided to be selfish. Lazy. Trust some man because he made her feel good. Wanted.

This is a mistake
, she thought.

“Tara?” Luc whispered, his lips feathering across her cheeks.

She didn’t say anything and he blinked up at her, shifting backward, taking his heat away from her, and she tightened her legs around his hips to stop him. Her body speaking for her.

“You all right?” he asked, smoothing her hair back off her face, leaving her bare and revealed.

He was so beautiful and so ready to step away and she realized, all that power that had been taken away from her—half the time she’d tossed it away. Handed it out like it was nothing.

She deserved the pleasure as much as she deserved the power. It was a matter of balance, of living in the space between reckless and alone. And there was plenty of space there. She could build a house.

“I’m good,” she said. Tonight, she had no interest in being alone. And being with Luc wasn’t reckless. This moment established the balance. Stepping into this place, this considered and adult place, felt wildly different. It was as if she’d suddenly grown new skin. Or was wearing someone else’s. “I’m really good. Kiss me.” His grin was wicked and those devilish lips pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek. The corner of her lips. He leaned down
and kissed the dip between her collarbones. His lips seared her skin, cauterizing any thoughts of the past.

And then he licked her, leaving a trail of sparks across her skin, the tops of her breasts.

Sweat ran down his chest, onto hers, making her shirt stick to both of them.

His fingers traced the lace edge of her bra, as if scouting foreign boundaries. She opened her mouth against his neck, tasting the salt, testing the skin with her teeth, begging him to touch her, to slide that hand against her breast. Waiting, she breathed him in. His eyes met hers and the moment filled with a thousand pleasures. The heat of his hand slipped past the silk of her bra, his thumb caught the edge of her nipple, pulling it, and she gasped, caught in the web between pleasure and pain.

Her heartbeat pounded between her legs and she arched hard against him, all those years of celibacy suddenly making her frantic with expectation.

The seam of her jeans hit her just right and she shook, desire’s edge turning sharp.

“Come on,” she breathed, slipping her fingertips under the elastic waist at the back of his shorts, pulling him harder against her. His skin there was so smooth and she spread her hands wide to feel as much of it as she could.

She didn’t have time to wait for him to get around to what she needed. Knowing Luc, he’d toy with her until she lost her mind, and she already had a head start on that. She took his hand and slid it down the trembling muscles of her belly to the button on her jeans.

“This is what I want,” she whispered. “Make me come.”

“Oh God, Tara,” he groaned and curled over her, his body a protective shell they lived in, the world outside of no interest. His fingers made quick work of the button and zipper. She dropped her legs from around his
waist and arched her hips, helping him find his way into the tight wedge between her pants and skin. His forehead pressed hard against hers and two callused fingers slipped through the curls between her legs. She was stretched taut between his forehead and his fingers, a bow ready to be released, and when his fingers found the tight knot of her clitoris she jerked and hummed, her hands clutching at his skin, her mouth open against his neck.