Jacked Up (12 page)

Control, that’s why. She had to be in control of everything she possibly could, since so many things were out of her control. It was insane, she knew that, frustrated with herself even as she willed her feet to just close the narrow gap between them.

Nolan didn’t wait for her mental boxing match to conclude. He didn’t even comment on why she was just standing there like she’d been hit by a stupid stick. Nolan just set his beer down on the island with a thunk and ate up the space between them in two purposeful steps.

When he kissed her, she recovered her sanity and kissed him back. It would have been a crime to blow this moment further than she already had, so she turned off her internal thoughts and just felt. She was really starting to fall for his mouth and the way he kissed her. It was always soft yet demanding, skilled but never too suave. It just . . . worked.

As his lips moved over hers, Eve leaned closer to him, wanting to feel his hard chest. Yanking up his T-shirt, she slid greedy fingers over that rock-hard hot surface. His skin was warm, such a contrast after holding her chilled beer that she wanted to taste him. Biting his bottom lip a little to get him to release her, Eve bent over and pressed her mouth against his abs, her tongue flicking out to swipe along his skin.

He gave a low groan. “What are you doing?”

She shrugged, not really sure. It wasn’t normally like her to make a move like that. “I wanted a taste.”

“Why don’t you show me your bedroom then you can taste all you want. And just in case you were wondering, you’re not restricted to the abs. Taste anything you want, I don’t mind, really.”

She gave him a wry smile. “I bet you don’t. Bedroom is this way.” But she wasn’t about to let him dominate this seduction. As she strolled down the hall, she peeled off her shirt and tossed it on the floor behind her. She was wearing low-slung heels and she figured it gave him a good view of her butt in her jeans to dispense with her shirt. As well as catch him off guard.

It seemed to be working, given the strangled gasp he gave. “Damn, honey, you don’t play around. I haven’t even finished my beer yet and your shirt’s off.”

Was there an insult in there? For some stupid reason she’d thought he wanted her naked as quickly as possible. But hell, what did she know about seduction? She’d only gotten half a girlie gene and it wasn’t the one that knew how to flirt.

“Did you bring your beer with you?” She’d abandoned hers on the island.

Pausing in the doorway, she shot him what she hoped was a seductive look. More likely she just looked insane.

“Yes.” He raised his bottle. “Not sure why I did, but I did.”

“Chug it and take your shirt off.” Eve immediately regretted the words. God, she was trying to be sexy and she just sounded like a bitch.

But he didn’t look off-put. “I can do that.”

Somehow he drained the whole bottle in about four seconds. She was impressed. Then he turned around and went back down the hallway.

“Where the hell are you going?” She stood there, hands on her hips. This wasn’t how she’d planned this night. She had planned on them tearing each other’s clothes off in the foyer and doing it on the floor, to be honest. Scratching an itch. But only at the right moment, after they had relaxed and talked and sat on the couch. Suddenly it all seemed more complicated. Especially since ripping each other’s clothes off wasn’t really something you could plan.

He had disappeared into the kitchen but he called back to her, “I’m putting the empty bottle in the recycling bin. I wasn’t going to just throw it on the floor.”

That made sense. But it didn’t make her feel any less ridiculous standing in her bedroom doorway with no shirt on. At least she had the blue lace bra on still. Being braless would have been truly awkward.

Nolan seemed to appreciate the bra. As he came back, he was staring at her chest, his eyes dark. “I like this,” he told her, running his finger along the edge of the cup, his warm touch spilling over onto her breast.

So maybe the sexy bra and panties hadn’t been a lost cause after all.

“It’s like two blueberries I want to bite.”

Blueberries? Really? There was nothing sexy about being compared to food. But she wasn’t going to complain. That might distract him from his current task, which was stroking across her nipple, back and forth, slowly driving her wild. “So bite it.”

Anticipation had been building in her all day. She wanted to have sex now. She wanted to skip all the preliminaries and get straight to the main event. It was a little embarrassing, but a couple of kisses and some nipple pulls and she was wet. Ready.

His eyebrows rose. “Well, well . . . sassy. I like that about you.”

Then he yanked down the front of her bra with enough force that her breast burst free with comedic velocity. Only she wasn’t laughing. She was gasping and aching. When his teeth grazed over her nipple, she dug her fingertips into his back. It had been way too long since a man had touched her. Just the view of him bending over her turned her on. Or maybe it was just that it was Nolan. From the first minute she’d seen his bare butt ten days earlier, she had been intrigued by him. Aroused, if you will. Which she was.

He bit. She moaned.

“Mmm. Juicy.”

That distracted her again. Damn it, she was not a piece of fruit. Closing her eyes, she prayed he would keep his mouth shut. Then forgot to care when he started lapping across her breast, catching her nipple with each pass. It was slow, leisurely, maddening.

He raised his head, breaking contact. Eve sighed at the loss, but assumed he was going to switch to the other breast. He had a funny look on his face, though, one that didn’t scream that he couldn’t wait to slide his penis inside her.

“What?” she asked, her own ardor cooling a bit.

“Nothing.”

“It’s obviously something.” Was there lint on her boob? Or something even more mortifying?

“I just don’t like the taste of body lotion, that’s all. I prefer the taste of your skin.”

So the fifteen minutes she’d spent slathering slime all over her body had not served to make him in awe of her silky skin but actually turned him off? Yep, it was official. She sucked at seduction.

“I shouldn’t have made you chug your beer. At least a swig now would wash the taste out of your mouth.”

“It’s not that bad. It’s just very . . . floral.”

Hot. Not. Between the blueberry bra and the floral lotion, she basically had garden tits.

The only thing she could think to do was to distract him so she undid the button on her jeans and pulled down the zipper. Bending over, she shoved the denim down to her ankles. Only she’d forgotten about the shoes. So the jeans got stuck. And she was fighting with the heels, trying to wrest them off without falling over. Her hair fell in her eyes. Sweat broke out between her floral boobs.

It was all very clumsy and bad and stupid.

“Can you go in the other room and come back when I have a grip on this situation?” she asked, breathless, as she tugged harder. One shoe off.

He grinned. “No.”

Really? He couldn’t spare her dignity just a little? “You’re an ass.”

“And you need a new insult.”

Eve managed to free the other shoe and ran through all the various names she could call him, from the childish to the gross to the downright rude. She settled on the one that she knew would get him the most riled up, and land her flat on her back with him buried deep inside her. “Wimp.”

Kicking the damn jeans off with more violence than finesse, she stood back up, trailing her hand across the front of his jeans as she went. “You know a real man would swallow a whole bottle of floral lotion and still have an erection.” Which Nolan did. But she did enjoy teasing him. “He could eat dirt and still be turned on.”

Nolan took her hand and pulled it back. He pressed it hard, against his erection. “Feel that, cupcake? That is my dick, rock solid for you.”

Oh, my. Eve felt the heat of those forceful words deep in her womb. She liked his bold reaction. She really liked the feel of him thick and long beneath her hand. She stroked, enjoying the way his body tensed at her touch. “And while there’s no way in hell I’m going to eat dirt to prove any point, you can be damn sure I could and would still have a massive hard-on around you. You make me crazy.”

Eve barely had a chance to say, “Good,” before she found herself swept off her feet. Nolan picked her up, wrapping her legs around his waist and carrying her into her bedroom, all while kissing the curve of her breast. Yeah, he was definitely no wimp, and she was grateful for all the hours he’d logged at the gym.

Being carried like she weighed about as much as a Chihuahua was very sexy. She was wearing only the thong and her bra, dragged down so that half of her chest was exposed. He was still totally dressed. It should have been weird to be so exposed but it wasn’t. It was just hot.

“I’ve had a hard-on since your button popped on your shirt.”

As was that. “You have?”

“Yes.”

They were in front of her bed, but he just stood there, holding her, nibbling at her neck. “I’ve had to take care of it a time or two.”

“Really?” Eve felt breathless and her eyes were threatening to drift closed. She dug her fingers into his shoulders when he lowered his head to flick his tongue across her nipple. To think that she hadn’t been the only one touching herself . . . it made her damp with desire.

“Really. All I could think about was you naked, you kissing me, you with your beautiful hair spread out around you while I use my tongue to make you come . . .”

Yes, please. Eve tugged at the bottom of his shirt. “Take your clothes off,” she urged. She had gone from flustered to aroused to desperate. The sound of his voice was like an aphrodisiac. She wondered if they had been both in bed, thinking about each other at the same time.

Dropping her lightly onto the bed now, Nolan stripped off his shirt.

It was everything she had imagined and then some. Saliva pooled in her mouth, her inner thighs aching with want. God, he was nothing but muscles and masculinity, not an ounce of fat on him anywhere. Her legs drifted apart automatically. Nolan was unbuttoning his jeans when he paused, making her groan. She wanted to see what was under that denim. She wanted to feel it. With her hand, with her mouth, with her sex.

“Why are you stopping?”

Nolan let out a crack of laughter. “Nice tattoo.”

Oh, damn. He’d spotted the visual display of her stubbornness. “Yeah, well, I have a hard time turning down a double dog dare.”

“Who on earth dared you to have
OPEN 24 HOURS
tattooed on your inner thigh?”

Eve cursed her best friend in college all over again. “Don’t worry about it right now. I’ll tell you later.”

“Was it a boyfriend?” he asked, still staring at her leg, his knuckles white on his zipper.

That made all of her annoyance disappear. She grinned. “Are you jealous?”

Most men would deny it and she was expecting that. But Nolan surprised her.

“Yes. I’m actually so jealous right now that I could chew nails. At first glance, the tat is funny, but to think that some guy wanted to stamp his claim on you like that . . .” Nolan seemed to check himself. His shoulders forcibly relaxed. “It’s none of my business, though. Sorry.”

If anyone else had said any of that, she probably would have tossed them out on their ass, no matter how fine. She normally hated jealousy. But Nolan had control over it and himself, and it was actually pretty damn satisfying to know that the idea of another man between her thighs bothered him. Which was why she was going to put him out of his misery and get back to the matter at hand—having an orgasm.

“It was actually a sorority sister thing. Picture intoxicated twenty-two-year-olds egging each other on about their love lives. This is the ridiculous outcome. I don’t think I would tattoo myself for any man.”

“Not even if I double dog dared ya?” Nolan grinned at her and tugged his jeans down.

“You would never do that.” He wouldn’t. She was sure of it. He would never force her to do something she might regret, preying on her stubbornness. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did.

The grin dissipated. “You’re right. I wouldn’t.” He looked down at her with such sincerity, such . . . admiration. “You’re beautiful.”

Eve had never felt ugly, but she had never felt beautiful. The way he looked at her, the way he said it, she believed she was to him. To her, he was gorgeous, and it felt good to be experiencing such mutual appreciation.

He stepped out of his jeans and stood in front of her in his tight black jockeys. She wasn’t normally a big fan of anything but boxers, but when you filled the cotton like he did, it would be a crying shame to wear droopy drawers. He looked delicious. She wanted to touch every inch of him, squeezing as she went.

She sat up on her elbows, determined to get her hands on him.

But he pressed her back, moving in between her legs. “I need to kiss you.”

The difference between want and need was vast, and she knew she was in the same camp as him. This wasn’t something that would be nice if it happened. It was something that had to happen or she was going to die.

When he took her mouth with his, she arched up to meet him, wanting more, all of him. She wanted to touch that chest and dig her nails into his back. But he pulled back to strip off his briefs. Eve waited with bated breath, knowing she’d felt something impressive. His erection sprang up, as long as she’d suspected. Her vagina did a happy dance. Him inside her was all that mattered, and she reached out to stroke him.

He had stark white skin where shorts would normally be, his chest a deep rich tan. How he was still so tan in October amazed her, but she figured he probably worked on cars in the sun.

Whatever it was, the contrast amused her and only served to showcase his muscles all that much more. Her fingers rose up and down on his velvet skin and she couldn’t prevent a smirk from squeaking out.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked her.

“You have quite the tan lines. Your thighs look electric white next to that bronzed chest. I’m surprised I didn’t notice how lily white your ass was on YouTube.” Talking helped her regain control over her body. She had been almost uncomfortably turned on by him. Aroused to the point that she might have been willing to do just about anything, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.