Now and Then (Dare to Love #3)

by Mira Lyn Kelly

  “Sounds like this Fred is some kind of catch,” he said, his eyes locking with hers. “Shame you’re about to break up with him.”

  —

  Brynn was gone the second he released her wrist. Pointing to her phone with an exaggerated smile no one seemed to notice but him and then practically running toward a lounge at the far end of the VIP section.

  He hung back and asked the chattier one if she’d seriously been with this Fred for that long.

  “Yeah, we give her a hard time,” he chuckled, “ribbing her about the guy, because mostly she’s pretty tight-lipped about him. But pour a few drinks in her and she’ll start to spill.”

  Ford looked around at a couple of the players who’d fallen into their own conversation. “So these guys. The guys on the team. She’s never—”

  He hadn’t even finished the question when he was cut off by a burst of laughter. After a breath, the trainer shook his head. “Not even close, man. Sure, every time we get new blood without a ring on his finger, there’s the usual hot pursuit you’d expect. Brynn’s sexy as all get-out, smart as a whip, doesn’t fuck up, and she can sure as shit hang with the big boys. But no mixed signals with that one. No lead-ons. And hell, half the team thinks of her like a little sister—so she doesn’t get hassled.”

  Yeah, he could see how that worked. Why being available might compromise a dynamic she didn’t want to risk. So maybe fabricating a relationship made sense. But the part about using him as the template for this made-up man? Well, all it did was confirm he hadn’t entirely made it out of her head. Like she’d never made it out of his.

  And his plan to give her time to get used to the idea of them being together, to wait until she acted on the attraction herself? Not after this. No way.

  Chapter 8

  She’d known Ford would come after her. That he’d give her a couple of minutes’ head start, and then follow.

  Which meant if Brynn had been serious at all about getting away from him, she could have.

  She could have headed for the front exit instead of the rear lounge. She could have stayed in the ladies’ room instead of pacing back and forth across the communal space waiting—well, yeah. Waiting. For Ford to come for her. To round the corner with his deceptively casual stride, sexily satisfied and totally irritating smirk, and deep-focused eyes that were most definitely the richest, meltiest chocolate brown she’d ever seen…locked on her.

  The glowing green butterflies were back, threatening to smash the last of her pathetic defenses to rubble, and again she heard that same whisper sounding from somewhere deep inside her.

  Give in.

  Ford took another step toward her and, panic flaring, she rebelled.

  “I’m not breaking up with Fred,” she announced weakly, matching him with a step back because every irrational part of her was begging her to fling herself into his arms and it terrified her.

  Ford cocked his head, continuing his advance. That too confident grin firmly in place.

  “It’s time, Brynn. Him in Milwaukee, you here. The long-distance thing is killer. I’m surprised you made it all these years.”

  She shook her head, not wanting to laugh. Not wanting to give in to the pull that was growing with every step he closed between them. “What we have works.”

  “What you have,” he corrected in that crazy-deep voice of his, “is a handful of memories about what it was like once upon a time.”

  Her back hit the wall and her breath caught as Ford took that final step into her space, stopping only when his body was within an inch of her own. When she could feel the heat coming off him, and that pull was so strong it pulsed like an ache through her veins.

  “What if that’s all I want? What if it’s all I need?”

  His brows drew together, darkening an already dark stare. “Is it?”

  It had been.

  As it pertained to men in general, she’d been good with how simple her life was. How she didn’t have anyone else to worry about—aside from her immediate family, of course, but that worry never went away. And because it didn’t, the last thing she wanted was some extraneous guy offering his judgment on a situation he would never be able to comprehend—a complicated dynamic she wouldn’t want to explain. A problem that could remain hers and hers alone as long as she kept the walls up and the emotional interlopers out.

  But relating to Ford specifically? Fine, there were times when she’d been lonely. When she remembered what it had been like to have Ford’s arms around her and she missed it. Missed that connection and feeling of belonging, of being part of a whole. She missed that sense of the world falling away when he kissed her and she missed knowing he was there for her, even when she couldn’t let him be. And yes, there were times when she’d been desperate for someone to talk to, to lean on. Someone to hold her when the injustice of it all felt too much. When she wished it could have been him almost as much as she was grateful it wasn’t.

  Sure, she had friends. Friends like the guys out in the bar. People she joked and chatted with on a superficial level, but didn’t let get too close. Which was for her protection as much as theirs. Heck, even Jet, the one person who knew where she’d come from and what her life had been like. Who knew about Ford. Even with him, she kept the walls between them. Safer that way.

  Smarter.

  Lonelier.

  But mostly she knew better than to give in to something as selfish as loneliness. Mostly she’d been able to convince herself she had everything she needed…until she’d seen him again.

  And now?

  Ford planted a palm against the wall above her head and leaned in closer still. His mouth and jaw teased through the hair at her temple in that way that made her senseless. His lips rubbed over the sensitive shell of her ear, curving when that betraying little moan escaped and her hands met the hard planes of his chest. “Is Fred giving you everything you need, Brynn?”

  “Please,” she whispered, no longer sure of what she was begging for.

  Using his free hand to cup the side of her face, he brushed the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip in a slow, back-and-forth caress that sent a shot of desire straight through the center of her.

  “If he was,” Ford continued, “I don’t think you’d be looking at me the way you are right now.”

  “How am I looking at you?” she asked, needing to know what it was Ford saw, when all she felt was confused.

  “Like you want me, almost as bad as I want you.”

  A weak breath trembled past her lips, taking the last of her resistance with her. Because when he stood this close to her, that ache in her veins, the compulsion to touch him, to feel more than the warm puffs of his breath in her hair, became unbearable.

  Ford was right. She needed more.

  She wanted it. And maybe, despite the fact that her dad was about to crash back into her life and she was sure to feel it like a grenade, maybe it didn’t have to mean Ford would. Maybe no one had to know they were together. Or if someone figured it out, the fact that Ford was really just an average guy working two jobs to keep up would keep him off her dad’s radar. Maybe she could stop worrying about all the things that might go wrong and just enjoy this one thing that for the first time in too long felt so right.

  “Stop thinking so hard, Brynn. This doesn’t have to be anything more than right now.”

  Her heart skipped at the possibility. “It doesn’t?”

  Ford searched her eyes. “Not if you don’t want it to.”

  Want wasn’t the issue.

  “Kiss me, Ford,” she whispered into the scant space between them.

  Ford’s fingers delved deep into her hair as he promised, “So good, you won’t remember Fred’s name.”

  And then his mouth was coming down on hers in a bruising crush that had her opening beneath him on a needy, ready gasp. This was no tentative kiss. It was no taste.

  This kiss was a hot claim that called to every aching part of her. Her hands climbed to his neck, his hair. Her body bowed
in a plea to get closer. And when he licked into her, every part of her shuddered with the need for more.

  Oh God, he tasted good.

  And the feel of his fingers in her hair, gently tugging even as his kiss turned ravenous—it was almost too much. It was so good, making her want him so very, very bad.

  She couldn’t get enough. Not of the taste of him thrusting hard into her mouth, or the feel of his silky hair sliding through her fingers, or the press of that big body of his pinning her against the wall.

  “Ford,” she gasped when he gripped the curve of her ass, pulling her into him in a move that teased more than it satisfied, offering a brush of contact so perfect, it wasn’t nearly enough. Because now that she’d stopped fighting, now that she’d stopped resisting…she couldn’t stop. “More.”

  His mouth found her ear, his tongue flicking expertly against the lobe before he answered.

  “Christ, Brynn. I need to get you out of here. I need to get you alone.”

  Yes. She needed that, too—wait—alone?

  “Oh shit—shoot, sorry, shoot!” she cried out, cringing behind the shelter of Ford’s blessedly big body from whoever might be standing two feet away…while she’d moaned and groaned and begged and rocked and grabbed with greedy hands and a greedier body.

  She could sense the smile stretching above her head before hearing it in Ford’s next words.

  “Lose track again?”

  She gulped, hard. Because yes. Yes, she had. And in a nightclub where her friends and co-workers could have happened upon them at any time. What was she thinking?

  Obviously, she hadn’t been.

  She’d been too caught up in the relief of giving in, in the sensation of everything bubbling up in her chest and the sweet rush of yes burning through her veins. Even now, after a reminder as to where they were, the residual effects of Ford’s kiss were still there screwing with her judgment. Pooling warm and wet, low in her belly. Making her wonder if she peeked around Ford’s arm and there wasn’t anyone there, how far they could get before there was. Or better yet, if there was some protected alcove less than a dozen feet away—because that was probably the limit of the distance she was capable of walking on her jelly-turned knees—where they could hide and kiss just a few more minutes. Kiss the way Ford liked to kiss, with his mouth and his hands and his whole body getting in on the action.

  “Brynn,” Ford began, her name sounding like something between a warning and a dare. “You keep rubbing your hands all over me like that, shifting your hips, and I’m going to stop telling myself I’ve got to get you out of here before I do something neither of us will regret.”

  Her breath caught, her eyes following the buttons of Ford’s black shirt until she was looking up, up into a face that most definitely was not joking.

  One dark brow arched down at her, the corner of Ford’s mouth ticking into what might very well be the sexiest hint of a smile she’d ever seen.

  “Or is that what you want?”

  She tried to answer, to tell him no, of course they should get out of there and as quickly as possible, but her throat was too dry, her tongue clumsy in her mouth.

  Ducking his head lower, he spoke into her ear. “Should I back you into that corner a few feet over, use my body to block most of the view of what I was doing to you? Of how I’d lifted that sexy-as-fuck skirt so I could slide into—”

  “Ford!” she gasped, horrified by the way her hips had pushed just that much farther into his.

  “Or pay someone off to let me take you into a backroom, where I’d use my lips”—a light graze to the shell of her ear before he licked at her lobe— “and tongue on you?”

  “Who are you?” she gasped in breathless wonder.

  The devil was in his dark eyes when he answered, “I’m not Fred.”

  No, but he used to be.

  He met her eyes, let out a low rumbling groan, and shook his head. “Truth? When I look at you, I’m not above either of those suggestions. I want you, Brynn. I want to feel your breath breaking beneath me again and again. I want to see your eyes when I make you come apart. I want to hear you begging me not to stop. And after, when I’m holding you in my arms, I want you to be thinking about how good it was, and not about whether you made a mistake. Whether any of your friends saw. What kind of explaining you’ll have to do.”

  Was that even possible? She couldn’t imagine not worrying or wondering when this was done, because deep down, as much as she wanted it, needed it, there was a part of her that still knew it was a mistake.

  Her eyes skated away and she tried to ease some of the intensity of the moment. “You want a lot of things, Ford.”

  He caught her chin and brought her eyes back to his. “No. Just one. Tonight, Brynn. For tonight, all I want is you.”

  Chapter 9

  Ford was going to have to throw the suits a bone after all. Because stepping out of the club to find their limo at the ready when there was nothing on the planet he wanted more in that moment than to get Brynn alone, have more of her mouth and restless body moving against him, her breathy little noises there in his ear—yeah, that was big. Huge.

  “This is for you?” Brynn asked when Ford led her by the hand to where the driver was opening the door.

  He helped her inside and then folded himself in next to her.

  “Yeah, the business thing. They pull out all the stops.”

  She looked a little confused, but he’d explain about the games later. Tomorrow morning, or soon anyway. Once he figured out what had scared her off relationships so badly. Once he showed her she didn’t need to be scared with him. But right then, his entire focus was dedicated to making sure he waited until after he’d given the driver the address and the privacy shield was securely in place to pull Brynn into his lap.

  She was quiet beside him, a tension building in the intimate space as the driver rounded the car.

  He opened the door and Ford’s hand covered Brynn’s, needing the contact. Needing a hell of a lot more than just the contact, but knowing it was all he would take until they were on the road.

  The driver slid inside and Brynn’s hand flipped, her fingers threading between his. And shit, if that slow slide of flesh against flesh didn’t have him half hard already. He wanted her. Wanted to be sliding between her legs, between her lips, deep in—

  Focus. Just a few more seconds.

  There was a nod of understanding at Ford’s directions and then the partition was sliding up and up until, finally, they were alone. He turned to Brynn as she turned to him and, catching her by the back of the neck and the side of her hip, Ford pulled her into his lap.

  She let out a gasp of surprise, but then her mouth was at the perfect height for the assault he couldn’t contain another damned second, and she was moaning against his lips and around his tongue. Softly, sweetly.

  Fuck, then less sweetly, and more urgently as her one hand found its way back into his hair and the other wound in the fabric of his shirt. So good. He loved the way she clung to him when he kissed her, like she was afraid if she let go he’d stop. He wouldn’t, but the needy grip was like a firm stroke to his ego all right. And then her hips were shifting against him as she squirmed to get closer and—

  “Oh God, Ford, I’m already going crazy from inside the club,” she panted, those dark curls shadowing her face where they hung in front of her eyes. “I can’t wait.”

  —something in his brain shorted out.

  In the next second, he had her straddling him. His hands were wrapped around the backs of her thighs, pushing upward until he had her skirt bunched around her hips. Until he could see the small triangle of her black panties. Until his hands were kneading the perfect curves of her ass as she moaned between one kiss and the next.

  And then he was pulling her back down, bringing all that damp heat he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since his too brief encounter with it the week before against him. Jesus, that fast, and he was so hard it hurt.

  “I need to fee
l you, baby,” he groaned against her ear as he slid into the back of her panties, reaching for where she was hot and wet for him—fully intent on making her wetter still. On making her scream.

  Shit. No screaming in the back of the limo, he mentally amended. But the wetter part? Hell yes.

  He inched down in the seat, bringing Brynn with him, so she was leaning forward just that much more. The wide spread of her knees on the seat at either side of him keeping her flush against the hard ridge of his fly while he pressed a finger into her from behind.

  “Ford,” she cried out, rocking back into him as he sank deeper still.

  She was so tight. So wet. And the way her body clutched at him—he was never going to make it to Wicker Park.

  But even as he thought it, he knew he would. Because the only thing he wanted more than to get off with Brynn was to get off with Brynn after he’d gotten her off half a dozen times first.

  That was what he couldn’t wait for. What he needed more than his next fucking breath—to feel her coming apart around him.

  Another slow, deep pump as she rocked over him again and the rippling spasm of her inner walls told him it would be soon.

  “Do you want me to make you come, Brynn?” he asked, even though the tensing of her body and desperate clutching of her hands had already given him the answer. He wanted her to be looking into his eyes when she said yes. He wanted to see her come apart.

  Her hips continued to rock as she blinked up at him, meeting him with those gorgeous Irish eyes, made even more beautiful by the sensual fog clouding them. “Oh God, yes. Yes.”

  Adding a second finger to the first, he pushed deep again, pumping against the stroke of her sex over him. Sliding in and out as her body clenched and clung to him. She was so tight. So soft. So very, very wet. And so incredibly close, it had to be any second and—she was there.

  Her body spasmed hard, her lips parting on the silent plea he read all too clearly in her eyes. Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.

  “Not a chance, baby,” he promised, continuing to stroke through the last tremor around his touch.