Ross 03 Leave Me Breathless (30 page)

Macy had booked the hotel room and texted him the directions. She’d also said she would call him when she got there, so even though she’d left home earlier than he had, he figured as he pulled into the parking lot that he must have beaten her.

Well, given the fucking ticket tossed over in his passenger seat, it was no wonder. At least the cop had let him go without searching his damn car. His appearance didn’t exactly present him as an upstanding citizen.

After parking and stretching his legs for a minute, he grabbed his cell and dialed her. It was a perfect day, the sky a flawless, early spring blue. He stared at the cars zooming past on the interstate while he waited to hear her voice again.

“Do
not
tell me you’re already there,” she answered.

“Yeah, I am. Where is your slow ass?”

“Hey, now. I’ll show you
slow
in about…twenty minutes, according to my GPS.”

Oh, hell yes. “A’ight, then. Just making sure I wasn’t about to get stood up.”

“Not in a million. See you soon.”

“Be careful.”

While he waited, he texted Steph, then called and shot the shit with Brian for a few minutes. The dude sounded frazzled but hid it fairly well. If Ghost hadn’t known him for half his life, he might have missed the strain.

Did Brian think the same about him? Probably. Weren’t they just a couple of miserable clods. But brighter days lay ahead. They had to. He could put a bug in Macy’s ear that she needed to get her best friend to drag that guy away and fuck him senseless for a few days. He’d be a new man.

A burgundy Acadia caught his attention as it whipped into a parking space a few down from him, and he said his good-byes to his friend.

All through the week while he’d been away from Macy, he’d told himself she couldn’t be as beautiful as he remembered, he couldn’t feel for her this much this soon. He’d spent days having to look at Brooke, whose beauty was like a knife carving his heart out all over again. When Macy came around the back end of her SUV, her bright smile all for him, she was like a balm to his ragged senses. His breath fled him. He literally couldn’t take in air for a moment; he damn sure couldn’t speak.

She couldn’t know she did this to him. Not ever. How could he give someone that kind of power over him, when every time he’d allowed it to happen before, everything had gone to shit?

Macy flew into his arms, and he held her with all the conviction and determination he had in that moment to keep her at a distance. To not get so crazy so fast. It wasn’t smart, and he knew it; he just didn’t think good sense would be enough to trump his need for her. He was so fucked, careening madly down the path to getting his heart splattered all over hell. And grinning like a buffoon the entire time.

Her scent engulfed him. Warm vanilla, even sweeter than he remembered, tempting him to eat her alive. She made a little helpless sound in his ear, and he damn near lost control of himself.

“You okay?” he asked, wondering at her exuberance. They’d talked a lot in the past week, almost every night, but he realized they’d mostly talked about what was going on with him. What hurts and stresses had she come here to work out? He simply couldn’t believe she was only here to see him, but he had all night to get to the bottom of it.

She nodded against his neck. “Mm-hmm. Long drive. Glad to be here, glad to see you.” She gave him another squeeze, and he set her feet on the ground, only then realizing he’d lifted her.

“You look… You’re stunning, Macy.”

A blush rose in her cheeks, and he couldn’t resist reaching up to caress them with his thumbs. Had no one other than him ever told her that before? It was most likely an idiotic assumption, but even so, it pissed him off. Any man she’d belonged to who neglected to praise her every damn day was a damn fool.

“Thanks. I feel kind of wilted after being in the car all this time.”

“Wilted, my ass. You’re in full bloom, baby.” He ducked as she laughed and swatted at him. “Hey, are you hungry? The city is our playground. I know we can find good sushi around here.”

“Mmm. Yes, I’m hungry,” she said, running her finger underneath his chin and getting an instant reaction from down south. “But the food can wait awhile.”

Damn straight it could. Somehow he made it through the next few minutes, waiting while she checked them in, unloading her bags for her, finding their room. It all passed in slow fucking motion. Lust had sucker-punched him. He hoped that woman knew what she’d signed on for, because he kept thinking he was going to go to hell for all the things he wanted to do to her.

“I can’t help but feel naughty about doing this,” she said as she fitted the key card into the slot. “It feels like some illicit affair, sneaking off from life, meeting up at a hotel…”

He grinned and hauled their overnight bags inside, dropping them by the door. “Then that’s what it is.”

“Secret lovers. That aren’t exactly so secret anymore.” She glanced around the room. It was nice, cool, dim from the closed curtains. Hell, he didn’t give a fuck about the room. He only gave a fuck about the bed and the woman in the room.

“Oh yeah? Who knows you’re here?” he asked.

“You know…no one, actually. I didn’t even tell Candace or Sam where I was going.”

“I hope there was no important reason for that, because Brian knows. So Candace probably does too.”

Macy muttered something that sounded like, “That isn’t necessarily true,” as she leaned over and tested the softness of the bed, but he couldn’t be bothered to ponder over it. All he could focus on was the way her blousy brown shirt cinched at her little waist and those fucking ass-bling jeans molded to her butt.

“Secret lovers, huh?” he said, moving toward her. She turned around and gave him a little smirk, taking a step back for every one he took forward. She wore her hair long and straight, and it spilled around her shoulders, inviting his fingers to sink into the heavy, lustrous silk of it. “That the way you want it?”

“No. I didn’t mean that. Like I said, we aren’t so secret now.”

And she didn’t mind. Jesus H. Could he love this girl the way she deserved? He could love her with everything he was, and still it wouldn’t be enough. He would fuck up somehow, because that was what he did.

She’d stopped her teasing retreat from his advance and stood still now, big hazel eyes watching his approach until she was looking right up into his eyes. Unflinching. Open. Her breath came a little quickly; her pulse fluttered at the side of her neck.

Would he ever get used to this breathless, speechless, fucking stupefaction she instigated when she was close to him? It all seemed so fragile… One wrong word, one wrong action from him and the whole thing would crack. He only knew how to really communicate with girls like Raina. Brash, in-your-face girls who knew why they were here: to fuck and fight and above all have a good time.

Not girls like Macy, who looked at him with expectations beyond what he could give them physically. Girls like that should know to go elsewhere to get those needs met. Brooke sure as hell had. She’d even known right where to go.

“Why’d you come here?” he asked, gently brushing back a lock of hair straying near her eye.

Confusion flitted across her delicate features. “What?”

“I’m sure it’s not about walking on the wild side anymore—hell, we never even really got there, did we? I’ve been a sucky tour guide.”

“Seth, you’ve said and done things to me no one else has.
I’ve
done things and thought things and said things I never thought I would. So, no, you haven’t been a ‘sucky tour guide’. You’ve been…perfect. For me, you’ve 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 wet her lips and obeyed, hips swaying hypnotically. If he were a lesser man, the mere sight of her advancing on him would be enough to make him come all over himself.

He’d known from the first time he’d seen her—freaked out and practically cowering in the parlor—that underneath the demure exterior lurked a passionate, confident and devastatingly sexual woman. She’d never disappointed him.

“So if I’m yours for the night, what are you going to do to me?” she asked. He let his gaze roam her body. She was within reach now, standing at the side of the bed; he just didn’t know what he wanted to reach for first.

“What do you want?” he whispered.

Never taking her eyes from his, she unhooked her bra and let it slide from her arms. He swallowed against the sudden dryness in his throat. Suddenly there was no question what he wanted to reach for first.

Sitting up and turning toward her, he grasped her hips and pulled her in between his legs. Her breath hitched and shuddered and her skin felt like warm satin underneath his palms as he pushed his hands up her belly to cup the firm weight of her breasts. “Fucking gorgeous,” he murmured, leaning forward to catch first one nipple and then the other in his mouth. Her knees quaked where they were pressed between his thighs, and her hands grasped fistfuls of his shirt as she whimpered.

He loved the sound of that. He drew her deeper, sucked her harder, circling her hard little nipple with his tongue, all in an effort to send her moans to a crescendo. Her head fell back, a movement that only bowed her lithe body into him more. The scent of her arousal flared his nostrils, and if his erection had been threatening to bust his fly before, the situation was twice as dire now.