Ginnie started to exclaim emphatically that she would have complied with whatever Lawrence wanted, but all that came out was a noise that sounded like, “Ugh.”
“That enthusiastic, huh?”
She didn’t even blush. She was too busy wondering why the mere thought of playing a dirty version of cops-and-robbers with Lawrence had about much draw as…
A grandma blanket and talking about one of Quinn’s exes? her mind filled in. Wait. Does Quinn have a lot of exes? Why does the feeling that he probably does make me want to pick up that shaded lamp and toss it across the room?
“Ugh,” Ginnie said again, this time on purpose.
“So you would’ve told him to take his handcuffs and shove them up his ass?” He sounded thoroughly pleased with her disgust.
“No,” Ginnie replied, the smallest smile turning up her lips. “He might’ve liked that.”
Quinn laughed again. “All right. So your fantasies weren’t in line. Still not grounds for being a total douche.”
“I didn’t have any fantasies,” Ginnie blurted.
“Everyone has a fantasy or two.”
“Yeah, okay. I had one. To marry a doctor. Look how that turned out.”
Quinn’s chest shook behind her, and she knew he was laughing even harder.
“It’s not funny,” Ginnie told him. “My marriage ended because of this.”
Abruptly, Quinn stopped laughing. He slid his hand under her knees and spun her sideways, then put two fingers on her chin.
“Tell me one of your actual fantasies,” he commanded.
And something did pop into Ginnie’s head. But it was embarrassing in its tameness.
What does it matter? she thought. Tell him anyway. Twenty-four hours from now, you’ll never have to talk to him again.
“Ginnie,” he prompted.
She exhaled. “Okay. When I was twelve, I moved in with the Silvers. They’d been fostering for years, and they were in their sixties and decided that they wanted to adopt. I spent my teenaged years with them, and they were great. But they were used to having a lot of troubled kids come through, and they picked their battles carefully. One of the things they didn’t care about was letting me have boys in my room.”
Quinn tapped his lip ring. “I’m not sure I want to hear about the boys in your room.”
“Why? You jealous?”
“Extremely.”
Ginnie inhaled sharply. She’d been expecting him to deny it, and the fact that he didn’t…It made her tingle.
“You have to be patient,” she told him. “I’m getting there.”
“Patience isn’t my strong suit.”
Ginnie rolled her eyes. “I didn’t have a lot of boys in my room.”
“Some?”
“Stop that!”
He growled out a, “Fine,” and Ginnie suppressed a sudden urge to make up some sordid details, just to get an even bigger reaction.
“There wasn’t a point in bringing boys home, because they didn’t care.”
Now Quinn shot her a lopsided smile. “No thrill?”
“Exactly,” Ginnie said with a blush. “And I guess I always wondered what it would be like to have that thrill.”
Quinn’s smile became a cat-like grin. “So…” he dragged out the word, turning it from a single-syllable conjunction into lazy, sexy purr. “You want to know what it feels like to have some hot-bodied, shouldn’t-be-there hunk of man in your bedroom – in your bed – while you’re just waiting to be caught?”
As teasing as the question was, it sent a battalion of butterflies to flight in Ginnie’s stomach, and the rapid beat of their wings didn’t create a breeze – it created friction. Hot, work its way down to her panty-less crotch friction.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“That,” he replied. “I can do.”
“You can – ”
He cut her off. “My bag’s just inside the bathroom. Help yourself to something dry, then meet me back here.”
Ginnie stared at him, her eyes wide. She was on fire. Everywhere.
“Ginnie?” he said softly.
“Ermph?” she mumbled.
“Hurry.”
Sixteen
Quinn stared after Ginnie for about ten seconds, wondering what kind of game life was playing with him.
If he believed in fate, even a little bit, he’d say the opposite of what she had said. The universe wasn’t tossing them signs that they shouldn’t be together. It was just plain tossing them together. However the fuck it had to.
But you don’t believe in fate, he reminded himself.
Perseverance, hard work. Tangible, measurable results. Those were real. Not fate.
Unconsciously, Quinn fingered the scar just up and to the left of his heart.
If fate were real, it had a lot of shit to answer for.
Then he heard his suitcase unzip, and the sound was sexy as hell, and his questions went out of his head.
He snapped up the phone from the side table, pressed zero to speak with reception, and issued a request in a low voice. When he was done, he slid into his T-shirt, then flicked out the lights.
And just as he climbed into bed, Ginnie opened the bathroom door. She stood just fifteen feet away, her petite but well-curved frame drowning in a pair of pajamas that Quinn didn’t even remember packing.
In the dim light, she looked small and needy, scrubbed and perfect. She’d wound her hair into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, and she was the opposite of everything Quinn found attractive in a woman.
But holy shit.
She was still the most beautiful damned thing he’d ever laid eyes on.
“Quinn?”
Her voice was soft – unsure but not wanting to admit it. Just like her. And also just like her, it had a hardline to his groin.
“I ordered room service.”
“What?”
“Twenty to thirty minutes. I told them to walk right in.”
“But – ”
“Get in the bed, Ginnie,” he ordered.
“In the – ”
“Quick. Before someone catches us.”
He lifted the quilt, and Ginnie scurried across the room. She jumped into the bed and tucked herself in, and Quinn grinned as he realized how careful she was being to leave a foot between them.
None of that.
He reached across the space and pulled her flush against his own body.
“Hi,” he said softly.
“Hi,” she breathed back.
She felt just right, against his chest. Like something he could get used to.
Jesus, he wanted her.
“Do you think anyone heard me sneak in?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
“No.” She still sounded a bit nervous, but she cleared her throat and added, “My parents are out. At least for the next half hour or so.”
“That’s both good and bad,” Quinn replied.
“How do you figure?”
He then leaned back, ran his finger along her cheek, and dropped his voice. “Because I plan on making you scream in the most pleasant of ways. But I sure wish I had more than thirty minutes.”
Ginnie drew in a sharp breath, and her chest rose. Her nipples were erect enough that he could feel them pressed against him through both the light cotton pajamas and his T-shirt. It made him eager to free them, to undo those buttons and drop his mouth to their waiting firmness. So eager that he almost forgot what role he was supposed to be playing and went for it.
Then Ginnie tipped up her head and scrunched her face into sweet little frown. “Maybe you should go then. Before they come home.”
Quinn flicked his tongue to his lip ring and gave it a slow, deliberate poke. “Maybe I should convince you to let me stay instead.”
She shook her head. “You know what? I’m a nice girl and – ”
He cut her off with a deep kiss, forcing her lips apart with his tongue and plunging it into her mouth. He dragged the titanium ball from his tongue stud acro
ss every surface inside, then gave her bottom lip a solid nip before he pulled away.
“You know what?” he countered. “Nice girls don’t let boys like me sneak into their rooms in the middle of the night, do they?”
She shook her head and mumbled, “Mm,” while keeping her eyes on his lips.
Quinn grabbed her chin and forced her gaze up. “I’ve seen the way you look at me in math class. There are definitely some not-nice thoughts running around in that pretty head of yours.”
“Math class?” Ginnie repeated, her face screwed up again, this time like she was trying not to laugh.
Quinn raised an eyebrow and refused to drop the act. “Did you think I didn’t see you? Did you think I didn’t notice the way you hike your skirt a little higher when I walk by? Or last week when you showed up bra-less and wore that sweet, little, pink shirt?”
An image of the made-up scenario flooded Quinn’s mind. Ginnie’s creamy legs, barely covered in frayed denim, her ample breasts visible under a vibrantly hued T-shirt. A lust-filled groan built up in the back of Quinn’s throat. He fought it off.
“You wanna lie and tell me that wasn’t an invitation?” he asked.
“Is that why you came here tonight?” she asked. “Because you thought I might be easy?”
That, he could give her a real-world answer to. “Not in the slightest. I was hoping for a challenge, actually.”
“Oh, really.”
“Mm hmm. If I wanted easy, I would’ve snuck into Hailey’s room instead of yours.”
“Hailey. The one with the globs of eye makeup and the pink hooker heels? Or the one with the belly ring and the weird-smelling locker?”
Quinn bit back a chuckle. “The first one.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?”
“A transvestite.”
Quinn pulled back. “What?”
“That Hailey. She has a little sumpin’ sumpin’ extra under her short skirt.”
This time, Quinn couldn’t hold in his laugh. “You are a troublemaker, aren’t you?”
“Don’t tell my parents,” she replied with an impish smile.
“Ginnie?”
“Yes?” All innocence.
“There are quite a few things I’m going to not tell your parents about.”
A flush crept up her throat and her eyes sparkled. “Like?”
Quinn dragged his hand to the back of her neck, put his fingers under her bound-up hair and massaged lightly. “Like how this hairstyle is begging to be messed up.”
Ginnie arched into the massage a little and half-closed her eyes. “Messy hair? That’s not terrible.”
“It is when it happens because I’ve got you underneath me, sliding in and out of you. Or when it happens because I’ve got your hands tied to the bed post and my tongue between your legs.”
“Quinn?” His name was almost a gasp.
“Yeah, baby?”
“You worked hard to sneak in here, right?”
“Climbed a trellis, lost a shoe, and got chased by a rabid cat,” he teased.
“So…”
“So…What?”
She met his eyes, and it was impossible to tell how much of her was lost in the game, and how much of her remained separate.
“Are you all talk?” she wanted to know. “Or are you going to see if you can get past first base?”
They stared at each other, the temperature in the room rising to the point of blistering. Ginnie’s lips were parted and moist, and Quinn felt his breath turn from rapid but controlled, to shallow and more than a little ragged.
The things I want to do to those lips, he thought. The things I want them to do to me…
A sudden thump from somewhere out in the hall broke the tension abruptly.
“Shit!” Ginnie whispered, her eyes darting to the door.
“Don’t panic,” Quinn said. “If it’s your parents, we can just tell them I’m the cable repair guy.”
“Very funny.”
But there was no further noise from outside the room, and after a quiet minute with Ginnie staying tucked in his arms, Quinn whispered, “You know what? I’m not convinced that a nice girl like you even knows what anything past first base is.”
Under the blanket, Ginnie’s palm inched its way to his body, landed on his elbow, then worked up to his bicep, and came to rest on his shoulder.
It was the first time she’d touched him voluntarily, Quinn realized, and it filled him with an odd mix of intense satisfaction and incredible longing.
When she tilted her mouth up and brushed his lips lightly with her, the groan he’d been holding in rumbled deep down in his chest.
“Christ, Ginnie,” he said against her mouth.
“Show me,” she murmured, and her thumb traced a delicate circle over his back. “That’s why I wore the short skirt and the little T-shirt and no bra. Because I heard you knew a thing or two about base work, and I wanted a lesson.”
Quinn let her continue her exploration of his shoulder blades for a moment longer, wondering if he’d ever been so turned on by such a small gesture. Or how it was even possible.
But apparently…it is.
He was dying a second-by-second death, his body a torrent of need.
So Quinn pressed his hand to her hip and kissed her, driving that need into his mouth. Into her.
He took the exploration slowly this time around, though, tangling his tongue with hers, soft, then firm, then soft again. He tasted each part of her mouth, and made her gasp against the attention. He drew his tongue away and used his teeth on her lips, tugging and pulling, while he skated his fingers down the side of her legs, then to the back of her thigh, then paused them just below her ass and pulled away.
“First base,” he told her.
She was trembling a little, and for a second, Quinn thought maybe she was scared, but when he looked into her eyes, he saw nothing but a desire that matched his own.
“That was…very educational,” she said.
He caught the teasing, challenging tone in her statement, and he was fully ready to rise to it.
Ready to rise? You’ve already more than risen.
It was true. He was hard as hell and so far past wanting to move on to second base that it wasn’t even funny. He forced himself to rein it in.
“I should probably resent that remark,” he stated.
“Why’s that?”
“Being lumped in with the teachers – especially the good ones – is a grave insult to a true badass like myself.”
“Does a true badass proclaim himself like that?”
“A true badass says and does many unexpected things.”
Quinn moved his hand up and squeezed her ass – and it was smooth and firm and just as perfect as he’d been anticipating – so he didn’t care when she laughed.
“That was not exactly unexpected,” she teased.
“I must be slipping then. Maybe next I’ll be saying please every time I want to kiss you. Every time I want to touch you.”
“And maybe I’d like that.”
“You think you’d like having me beg?”
“I think I’d like having you be polite.”
“Polite? You trying to ruin my rep?”
Ginnie batted her eyelashes. “You trying to ruin mine?”
“Absolutely.”
Quinn tipped up his chin and sunk his teeth into throat. She yelped, and he let out a dark chuckle – that’d teach her to mock his bad-assery – then soothed the bite with a suck and a kiss. She mumbled something, but Quinn didn’t hear what it was. He was too busy making his way to second base.
Seventeen
Quinn’s hands were everywhere on her body at once.
His fingers skimmed the semi-important parts.
Face.
Shoulders.
Throat.
Back.
They caressed the sensitive ones.
Breasts.
Thighs.
Ass.
It’s a ga
me, Ginnie tried to remind herself. Role play.
Then his fingers slid deftly between her legs, brushing the cotton fabric of the pajamas against her waiting wetness, rubbing firmly before they slid out again.
And it was too little and too much at the same time and any pretense of role play was lost. She was on fire. She was in awe of the way he lit her up while they were both still clothed.
Maybe it’s a superpower.
She opened her mouth – maybe to ask if it was – but Quinn chose that second to find the buttons on her borrowed sleepwear. In one fluid motion, he rolled her to her back with her top open and one nipple in his warm mouth. Both his tongue ring and his lip ring were flicking across it in a searing dance that rendered speech impossible. So instead of words, a low, animalistic sound that Ginnie couldn’t even register as her own escaped her lips.
And Quinn spoke against her, his voice a rumble. “So sweet.”
Ginnie wasn’t sure why, but the tiny, two-word compliment sent her into a full-body blush. Maybe it was the way he sounded like he meant it. Maybe it was simply the fact that he had said it. Either way, she wanted more. And he seemed to sense it.
His mouth opened wider, drawing in more of her tender flesh. Then he switched to her other breast and kissed it with equal fervor while his thumb slipped to the first one and formed a slow, firm, repeated circle.
Holy…Oh. Dear. Keep…Ginnie’s mind was a mess.
But her skin…Her body…It was all focused on the attention Quinn was giving her. Every rub, every suck, every shift, every move, all of it brought her to exquisite attention. Her hands sought to touch him in return, but he stopped her before she got even close. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head, leaving her lying beneath his denim-clad thighs. Completely at his mercy.
Quinn looked her straight in the eyes, the unusual amber of his irises all but obscured by his wildly dilated pupils.
“Baby,” he said gruffly. “Don’t get me wrong, I want you to touch me. But the second you do, I’m going to forget about that other base. The one that comes between second and home.”
She tried to meet his stare with confidence, tried to mask the flare in her chest and the penetrating heat between her legs.
“You want me that badly?”
She meant it to come out teasing, for the question to be a joke. Instead, it sounded small and insecure. Ginnie cursed her slip up and waited for him to pull away. But he didn’t. He adjusted his grip so that her wrists were in one of his hands instead of both, then dragged his freed fingers from her cheek to her neck.
Mile High Weekend (Opposites Attract Book 1) Page 12
