Tempt Me Tonight (8 page)

As he shoved the front door closed, then padded across the floor in bare feet, everything inside her boiled with want and need. This seduction business was coming far easier than she’d expected—which only proved it was the right thing to do, meant to be.

She and Joe were worlds apart now, their lives separated by far more than a mere two-hour drive to Indianapolis—there could never be anything real between them again. In fact, she suspected Joe
seldom
had anything real with women these days—it just didn’t seem like a part of the grown-up him.
Sex,
however—
that
was clearly a
big
part of the grown-up Joe, the most obvious part, something he couldn’t even begin to conceal. And sex with him she could have.
Would
have. Right now.

“Sit down,” she said when he reached the sofa, and she helped by giving his chest another push, watching as he plopped backwards.

She instantly liked the fact that he looked up at her now, that she stood over him. She liked his eyes. Etched with experience, a past, they sported just a hint of those little crinkles at the edges that made a man look as if he’d lived, as if he knew things.

Easy to get lost in them, those eyes. It always
had
been.

And right now, they were melting her, owning her.

But that couldn’t happen.
You have to do the owning here. You have to be the one calling the shots.

So she didn’t squander another second. And like everything else so far, it came shockingly easy to skim her hands up her body to the top hooks of the dress, between her breasts. It came easy to flick them open, feel the snug fabric parting, exposing more of the cleavage her tight bra created. Her breasts ached beneath his gaze, and she remembered the last time he’d seen them—that night at the lake.

But no, don’t think about that. This is now. And this is like sex with a stranger—because he’s not the guy you knew then.

“Don’t stop there, cupcake.”

His voice moved through her as powerful as a kiss—she felt it at her very core, his low rasp fueling her, letting her know he was edging back from shock into the lust she required from him. She undid the next few hooks, letting the dress open further.

She liked hearing his breath catch. Liked the heat climbing her thighs, spreading through her like warm fingers.

“Keep going,” he prodded in a low voice, and she did, revealing her body to him bit by bit. Another few hooks and her lacy bra was on display, her stomach bared. Soon the dress opened completely, and Trish shrugged free of it, letting it fall to the floor behind her.

She stood before him feeling like erotica personified in her lingerie, stockings, and heels. His eyes burned on her like blue flames, and her entire body began to sizzle with an almost animal need.

Suddenly, she suffered a want that surpassed last night, or even a few minutes ago.

She suffered a want that burned feral and reckless.

A want that knew no thought or decision—only impulse.

And that impulse led her to drop to her knees between his parted legs. To reach out, deftly undoing the button at his waistband with a flick of her wrist. To smoothly ease the zipper down over that bulge.

Oh God. Yes. He was so hard…and she’d never…back then, they’d never…she’d only once touched him through his jeans, but it had felt too brazen, too raw, and she’d drawn her hand away and resumed letting
him
touch
her.

But now she was finally ready to do some touching. Brazen or not.

Using both hands, she spread the denim wide, then lifted the white cotton of his underwear over the column contained within. She let out a tiny gasp when she saw him—full, erect, magnificent. She didn’t mean to, but he was too incredible like this.

“Aw, God,” he breathed, his gaze dripping with arousal.

Normally, she would never be this intimate with a man she didn’t know well, with someone who was practically a stranger to her now. But like
all
of this—it felt right, natural. So easy to skim her fingertips down his length, smooth as satin, hard as steel. Easy to bend over him, licking a path from base to tip.

She absorbed his sweet shudder, heard his low moan. She wanted this so much, more than she’d even realized until this moment, and she’d long since ceased thinking about control, or who was getting, or giving, or who would win. The encounter had escalated into something far more powerful than that.

Lifting her gaze, she found his face wrenched with desperation, passion, disbelief.

And with her eyes still locked on his, she lowered a tiny kiss to the tip of his erection, making them
both
shudder this time—just before she took him in her mouth.

As she let him fill her, she experienced the overwhelming bliss of delivering ultimate pleasure, and even as his sighs and moans echoed above, sounding almost like pain, she knew his response was actually the deepest sort of ecstasy.

But when she least expected it, he raised her head between his palms and gazed into her eyes. “No more.”

“What?” The words paralyzed her.

“I don’t want to come yet.”

“Oh.” Paralysis over. Pleasure to be continued. Thank God.

Biting her lower lip, she met his eyes again, then moved smoothly up onto the couch to straddle him. When she lowered her palms to his bare shoulders, the simple contact radiated through her, along with his very
nearness,
their faces close now. It was one kind of intimacy to be near a man’s penis, but another to be eye to eye, mouths only a few inches apart. Every part of her ached for him—urgently.

Brushing her lace-covered breasts teasingly across his chest, she angled a kiss across his lush mouth, tasting a hint of pizza—she’d noticed an empty box on the coffee table—and drinking in the fresh, clean scent of soap on his skin. Oh God, to kiss him again nearly took her breath away. One kiss turned into another, and another, until she sank heavy against him, lost in the passion, their tongues mingling in wild abandon. They’d learned to kiss together all those years ago, and she realized only now that no other man’s kisses had ever meshed so well with her mouth, ever made her feel so complete.

But soon there was more than just kissing—his hands roamed her back, bottom, sides, and then her breasts.
Mmm, yes.
He rained more hot kisses to the curve of her neck as he firmly kneaded her through her bra, his skilled touch sending spasms soaring down her spine to ricochet to other key points of her body. And when he stroked his thumbs over her nipples—oh!—she heard herself pant with the hot pleasure of it.

When his fingers slid smoothly between her legs from behind, she arched instinctively.
Oh God, yes. He’s touching me there again. Really touching me there.
Not under her panties, not yet—but the pleasure was almost as intense.

Which was when all rational thought departed, leaving only action and instinct.

While he peeled her bra straps down, they kissed more—wild, rough, slaking kisses made all the more amazing by the fact that his hardness pressed naked between them, nestled against the lace of her panties.

He whispered her name between kissing her lips, cheeks, neck, shoulders. He whispered it hotter just before he yanked the lace down from her breasts, allowing him to draw one taut nipple into his mouth.

“Oh…” she moaned, the intense pull echoing all the way to the juncture of her thighs. His eyes fell shut as he suckled her deeply, deeply—and she arched her chest, letting him know she wanted more.

“I need inside you, Trish,” he growled.

And their gazes met. Their bodies went still.

It was like being wrapped in the eye of a hurricane—the strange, brisk calm of their eyes locking, of recognizing the storm they’d just been through, and the bigger one they were about to experience together.

She recalled the times he’d dared to say those words when they were teenagers. It had seemed like the ultimate dirty talk then—so blunt about the geography of it, making her think about the sizes and shapes made to fit that way. And she thought about all the naughty responses she could give him in this ultimate moment of fruition, but it seemed the best, most natural, most fitting reply was simply to…rise up on her knees, reach down and pull the lace aside, and lower herself smoothly onto him until he was sheathed warm and tight inside her.

“Unh…” she moaned, overwhelmed by the sensation, the fullness, the…
reality.

Oh God. No.

No, no, no.

She knew instantly it was the biggest mistake of her life. Because nothing had ever felt more physically or emotionally perfect than finally having him inside her, connecting their bodies so profoundly. They both sat breathless and trembling and holding each other tight.

She’d been so stupid—this
wasn’t
just sex. This was exactly what he’d promised her—
what she’d missed.
Every sweet, stirring emotion of her youth swirled with the rush of deep physical pleasure and fulfillment. Not even moving. Just being like that, him in her. Pure rapture.

She kissed his neck, then raked her teeth across his earlobe, loving him—oh God,
loving
him—but desperately avoiding his eyes. Because if she looked into those blue depths now, it would be all over; he’d see every pang of passion, romance, hurt, agony, and love currently assaulting her.

Make this sex again. Just sex. Just pleasure.
That was what she had to do.

She had seduced him and now she had to see it through to the end. She had to remain the lusty vixen. She could not let herself care.

And so she began to move on him—not a hard thing to do, the natural inclination, in fact—but she had to think sexually, not emotionally.

She bit her lip as the heat of the movements grabbed hold of her. And she kept her eyes shut tight.
He could be anyone, any guy in the world. He’s not your Joe. He’s not the guy you fell in love with.
But emotions still mingled with sensation, adding to both her deep pleasure and her addled dismay.

“Trish. Oh God, Trish.” He was doing it again, whispering her name. Closer to moaning it, actually. The sound of his wrenched voice only added another layer of depth and history to the connection.

She moved in slow, tight, sexy circles. Kept her eyes closed still.
Don’t see him. Don’t feel him. Just feel your body being pleasured.
But it wasn’t working very well. His hands clutched at her bottom, his fingers reaching, massaging, somehow seeming to open her to him more. His tongue laved her nipples hotly. She hissed at each added sensation as the most violent part of the storm began to build inside her, growing, amassing, getting more colossal with each heartbeat.

She gyrated on him more fervently, her breasts grown heavy, her soul lost to the pursuit of the pure ecstasy bearing down on her, getting nearer with each stroke, with each time he filled her, each time her body collided so tight and hot with his.

Finally, she whispered his name, too, heard it leave her lips, just before the tidal wave of pleasure crashed. “Joe. Oh, Joe.” And then the wave fell, crushing her, tossing her wildly, and her whispers expanded into heated cries as the climax ripped through her with more intensity than any storm surge. “Ah, Joe. Oh God! Oh God, Joe!
Oh God.
”

She clung to him after. She didn’t mean to—it just happened. He held her just as tight, sprinkling kisses on her shoulder. Their bodies had never been this close—never. Until now.

And then he was lifting her, shifting her, until she lay on her back on the couch. “I know this is selfish,” he breathed, their faces no more than an inch apart, “but I want you under me.”

And she wrapped her legs around his back as he moved in her, harder with each thrust, and she met his eyes because they were so beautiful filled with such heat, and because she knew this was her one chance to live that, to soak that in, to love him like this.

This is how it would have been back then. You beneath him, peering up, feeling that bond for the first time, together.
She hugged him even tighter, gave herself over to him even more completely.

And when he came, emptying inside her, rocking her body with the power of his deep plunges, it was with a huge groan that left him collapsing atop her, his head on her chest, his hands firmly gripping her hips. “Aw, Jesus,” he breathed. “You’re so beautiful, Trishy.”

Trishy.
The very most childish form of her name—what she’d been called in elementary school. She’d known him for that long, since the first grade, even though they’d not been close until much later. It was as if he were dipping back into their lives, deep. As if their entire existences had led up to this one moment.

But she said nothing. Because she was reading too much into it. And she was playing the role of the mad seductress here, after all—not a foolish teenager in love.

Even though she knew now—since the moment he’d entered her body—she
was
in love with him. Still, or always. And she never should have done this, never should have been so stupid to believe she could have sex with him and have it mean nothing. Because even if she was the seductress and he the conquest, it was still going to hurt now. It was going to hurt much worse than she could have imagined.

This was the part where she was supposed to get up and leave.

A shame she hadn’t really thought that out better.

She kind of hadn’t expected him to be lying on top of her, still inside her. She kind of hadn’t calculated how a girl was supposed to make a quick escape with her underwear askew and her dress discarded on the far side of the room. And she was fairly sure she’d had keys when she walked in here, but she harbored no recollection of what she might have done with them.

She also—stupidly—hadn’t expected lying with him afterward to feel so darn wonderful. Warm. Cuddly.
Yeesh.

That boy’s trouble. Pure trouble.

But her job from this point forward was not to let him see all the emotion pummeling her, not to let him suspect she felt anything at all. Because nothing had changed, really. He was still the town stud—and she knew why now; even just responding to her lead, he was the best lover she’d ever had—and he was still the guy who’d found it more convenient to have sex with Beverly Rainey than wait for her. And
she
was still the girl who’d been made tough that way—and who would
continue
to be tough that way. She was still the girl who couldn’t wait to get the hell out of this town as soon as she closed the sale on the damn diner next week.