by Jill Shalvis
“What are you doing?” he asked a bit hoarsely.
“Pushing you away.”
But she wasn’t pushing.
Because he needed a grip and she wasn’t providing one, he put his hands over hers, entwined their fingers.
She let out a slow breath, and he did the same. Then their gazes met.
“We should have just talked about our day,” she said shakily.
“Mine sucked,” he offered.
“Mine too.”
“I got that blast from my past and I didn’t like it.”
“I got hit on by my boss.”
“What blast—” she said, at the same time that he said, “What? What do you mean hit on by your boss?”
“Never mind—” They both started, then halted, stared at each other and let out a breath.
Then, inexplicably, Nicole’s lips twitched.
His did too, and beneath his fingers, hers relaxed. Her smile, which came slow and surprisingly sweet, warmed him in a way he hadn’t expected.
“How about we don’t talk at all,” she whispered, and leaned forward a very tiny fraction of an inch so that their mouths were lined up.
Lined up but not quite touching.
Ty ached to remedy that, but there was the matter of what had happened to her at work, something he found he couldn’t let go. “Nicole, about your boss—”
“No talking,” she said firmly.
“But—”
She put her fingers to his lips, which brought him back to the animal-sex thing.
With a little sigh, she leaned into his throat. “Damn it, you smell good. Who’d have thought you could smell good?”
She smelled good, too, so good he nearly took a bite out of her. “Why wouldn’t you have thought so?”
“Because I really don’t want to like you.” Her eyes clouded. “You have no idea how much I don’t want to like you.”
“But you do.”
She said nothing, and he smiled, pulling back far enough to look down at her. Sunlight sliced across half her face, illuminating her expressive eyes. “Listen up, darlin’, because my accent is about to make a return.”
With that he bent his head, slid his jaw to hers, then put his mouth at the sensitive spot beneath her ear. “I don’t want to like you either. So damn much, I don’t.” Having said that, he let out a slow breath to steady himself, and she shivered against him. “But it’s too late. I already do.” His fingers untangled from hers, so they could move up her back. “So let’s use that to our advantage. Let’s forget today.” He plowed his fingers through her short, silky hair, holding her head in his palms.
Her eyes, hard and cynical only a few moments before, were wide as saucers as he tipped up her face. Lowering his, he repeated, “Forget today. Forget the stress.”
She licked her lips. Swallowed hard.
And shot a hot ball of lust into his belly. “Hell,” he said grimly. “Let’s go for broke and forget our own names, what do you say?”
She sucked in her breath. “I never forget my name.”
“That’s because you’re too logical.” He was loving the way his touch seemed to interfere with her breathing. Through her tank top he could feel the outline of her nipples, tight and straining against the material of her shirt, dying for some attention. He was dying to give that attention. “Sometimes, Nicole, you just have to go with the flow.”
“Going with the flow is not a strong suit of mine,” she said a bit shakily.
“I’m beginning to see that.”
She fisted her hand on his chest. “I don’t like complications in my personal life, Ty.”
“Complications can be a good thing. Temporary complications, of course.” His voice lowered a fraction. “Are you ready?”
Looking a little wild, a little panicky, she chewed on her lower lip.
Stared at his mouth.
Arched her body just a little, just enough to drive him nearly right out of his living mind.
“Nicole? Are you ready?”
“Just do it.”
“Do what?” he asked huskily, teasingly.
“Kiss me!”
She looked so frustrated he nearly laughed. Nearly. Because there was nothing funny about how turned on he was, about how much he wanted her. “As you wish.”
Brushing his mouth over hers, he slid the tip of his tongue along the seam of her lips in tune to their twin moans.
And kept his promise as he made them both forget their names.
4
NICOLE’S HEART pounded in her chest as pleasure swept through her. She didn’t know how she could be attracted to this man in this way, when he was the last person she figured she should want to feel such aching desire for.
They were polar opposites, for God’s sake. She was tense, an overachiever, dedicated to her work over and beyond all else.
He was laid-back. Easygoing. Not exactly forthcoming with his real self.
Okay, so maybe they shared that last trait.
But what was it Taylor had said about him…he was willing to let life take him where it would. Here. There. Anywhere. Not her, she knew exactly where she wanted life to take her. She’d always known.
And where she wanted life to take her had nothing to do with a man. With sex. With feeling.
She wanted life to take her right along the same path she’d been going. She wanted to be a great doctor. She wanted to try new and innovative surgeries, and be successful at them. She wanted to save people’s lives.
And not think about her own.
Yet there was no denying, he did something to her, something to her insides. He made her yearn and burn for human contact. Physical contact.
And that was something she rarely allowed herself because it made her open. Vulnerable.
She didn’t like to be open and vulnerable.
But that’s exactly what he did, without even laying a finger on her. He could have done it with just his eyes, but he had his hands on her now. She wanted to hate him for that, even as she wound her arms around his neck, even as she tilted her head for better access and kissed him back with everything she had.
Her body’s immediate reaction surprised her. Consumed her. She certainly hadn’t planned on feeling this aching desire, and for a man she hadn’t yet decided to trust. Her fingers ran over the sexy tattoo on his arm, then up his slightly rough jaw. He ran his down her back. She slid her fingers into his short hair and gripped hard. He rocked their bodies together.
“This is insane,” she decided.
“Yeah.” With a sexy growl deep in his throat, he slipped his hands beneath the edging of her top so that his fingers played at the base of her spine, stroking over bare skin, while his mouth danced over hers again, making her do just what he’d said he could do. Making her forget today, forget the stress.
Forget her name.
She wanted to pull away, wanted never to have goaded him into this embrace. Hard to do, since she’d practically climbed up his half-nude body in a desperate attempt to get even closer.
End it, she told herself.
Instead, she continued to kiss him back with every thing she had. Her tongue encouraged his, her hands claimed his sleek, muscled chest, while her insides melted at the hard, hot feel of him beneath her fingertips. She clung crazily to him as the only solid object in her frenzied world. And his lips…Lord, his lips! They were warm, firm and deliciously demanding. She could have said the same thing about his hands, which were at her waist now, his thumbs lightly caressing the quivering flesh just beneath her belly button. A knot deep inside her tightened. Her legs wobbled. And her nipples had long ago hardened to needy points, as if he’d already touched her there.
But he hadn’t, and that she wanted him to more than she wanted her next breath no longer shocked her. She wanted this man.
Then, from somewhere behind them came the ping of a computer snapping her back to reality. For those glorious few moments he’d actually made her forget that she stood in his house, mew
ling all over him, practically begging him for something she was not prepared to give.
“Your computer is calling you,” she said far more unevenly than she would have liked.
Still leaning over her, his mouth wet from hers, he slowly blinked, giving her a heavy-lidded look that made her want once again to melt all over him. “What?”
Pulling all the way free of his hands so she could get her brain functioning again, she stepped away, disturbed by how devastating one simple kiss had been.
Bottom line, when he laid on his easygoing charm, he was dangerous to her mental health, and this power seemed such an innate part of him she just needed to stay the hell away, period. “Your computer,” she repeated, licking her lips and tasting him on her. “It’s calling you.”
It took him a while because first he watched her tongue dart out to lick her lips, but finally he turned his head and looked at his computer screen.
His breathing wasn’t even either, Nicole noticed, just as she’d noticed every little detail about him. Like his bare chest, lightly tanned and hard with lean muscle. Or his faded, soft jeans, and the not-so-soft bulge behind the zipper.
She turned him on. The unexpected knowledge, along with the overwhelming and equally unexpected power of that, blew her away.
She turned him on. She, the original geek, turned on the sexiest, most erotic, most sensuous, passionate man she’d ever met. And that shouldn’t have been so…thrilling. “You have mail.” Her voice sounded breathless again. Not good. If she wasn’t careful, he’d notice and take it as an invitation. “Aren’t you going to look?”
“Yeah.” Blocking the screen with his big body, he read the e-mail, then put the computer on sleep mode. And though his face was carefully creased in one of his trademark easy, slow smiles, tension came off him in waves. “Where were we?” he asked in a light lilt that could have melted Iceland as he reached for her.
“Oh, no,” she said, backing up, right into a wall. “Not so fast.” She slapped a hand to his chest, his bare chest, which radiated heat. Her fingers started to curl into him, wanting more, so she wrenched it back. “I’m out of here.”
“You going to let a little kiss bother you then?”
She lifted a finger and pointed it at him. “You are not going to goad me into another one.”
“Because that would be…mind-blowing?”
“Because that would be…stupid.” She ducked beneath his arms and moved to the center of his office. “I came here to give you the plans and tell you I’m not attracted to you.”
“Which we’ve proved is a lie.”
“Okay, so I don’t want to be attracted to you,” she amended. “And now I’m gone.”
He waited until she got to the door. “Would it be so bad, Nicole, if we gave in to it?”
Not turning to him, not daring to, because at one look from him, she’d cave. Instead she tipped back her head and studied the ceiling. “Yes.”
“Because…?”
“Because. Just because.”
“We’d heat it up good, darlin’, you know that.”
Since her body was still heated up good, she had no doubt of that. Then his computer beeped again, accompanied by a surprisingly low and vicious oath from Ty. Turning back, she caught his unguarded expression as he reached for the keyboard.
Fury, plain and simple.
Wondering what was wrong, she sidled up behind him almost without realizing it, so that when he whipped around hiding the screen, she would have fallen backwards if he hadn’t grabbed her around the waist.
Fingers gripping her tightly, he lifted a brow. “See anything interesting?”
“No.”
His voice had lost all of its warmth. “You were right to run, Nicole. You should run. Now.” He let go of her, and she stumbled back. By the time she regained her balance, he had turned away, hands fisted on the windowsill as he stared outside.
She stared at his stiff back. “I didn’t see anything.”
“You’ll have to be quicker next time, huh?”
His temper stirred hers. Whirling, she stalked through the door, then down the hallway, and was reaching for the front door when he wrapped his long fingers around her elbow and spun her around. He had both his hands on her arms now, holding her still. He towered over her, her dark-haired, blue-eyed mystery man with the low, gruff voice and the sexy mouth that she was attracted to only every breathing moment she looked at him.
She struggled to free herself, but he wasn’t having it. “I can bring you to your knees with one well-placed kick,” she warned him.
“A moment ago I might have been in the mood for an all-out, drag-down, dirty fight, but not now.” His hands gentled, and he used one to cup her face. “I snapped at you and I’m sorry.”
“Fine.”
He sighed at her unbending, rigid stance. “Look, I was feeling nasty, all right? And I tend to take it out on anyone around me.” He sighed again. “Which is why I don’t often have anyone around me.”
She wanted to stay mad. Mad gave her energy to leave. But with him looking at her in that disarming way, with his hands still on her…it all dissolved.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated softly.
“I said fine.”
“Forgiven?”
She had to shake her head. “I’m usually so nasty when I’m not working, no one wants anything to do with me. My own family would rather I just— Damn it. Damn it.” She slapped her forehead. “I forgot to go to the family dinner my mom planned. There’ll be hell to pay for that.”
“Why?”
“You don’t have a family like mine, I take it,” she said wryly. “Big, bossy, noisy and more demanding than any work schedule I ever face.”
“No, I don’t have a family like that.” His eyes were curiously flat again. “I don’t have one at all.”
No. No, that wouldn’t tug at her either.
“I really am sorry,” he said very quietly, cupping her face, letting his long fingers stroke her skin. “Don’t let me and my foul mood chase you off.”
“I…need to go.”
“You know, I never would have pegged you for a chicken,” he taunted softly, and stopped her in her tracks.
She put her finger to his chest. “Take that back.” No one called her a chicken, and— And his chest…damn! His chest was captivating her all over again.
His smile reached his eyes again, when instead of continuing to poke him she ended up dragging her finger in slow circles from one pec to the other. “I am not going to sleep with you,” she said, but mmm, he had the best body. When her fingernail scraped over his nipple, he made a little hiss through his teeth. The sound shot straight to her good spots. “I’m not.”
“There you go, your mind in the gutter again.” His voice was a little rough around the edges now, even rougher when her finger ran over his nipple again.
“You weren’t thinking it? Not even a little?” she whispered.
“Well, I know you were.”
“I can lust after you and still keep my distance.”
“Can you?”
“Watch me.” She whirled to the door, put her hand on the handle, and…hesitated. “Are you…going to be okay?”
“Okay?”
“After that e-mail.” She glanced at him, but he’d perfectly shuttered his expression.
“Don’t you worry about me, darlin’.”
She had the feeling no one did. He had no one, which was almost beyond her comprehension. Her own family was a regular pain in her ass. But they were also always there for her, no matter what, and always had been. She couldn’t imagine being totally alone.
“I can see those wheels turn, doctor.”
“I was just wondering how it was you came to be all alone. What happened to your family?”
“Personal questions? From you?” His smile seemed a little off. “Tell you what. I get a question for every one of yours. Let’s start with this one. How is it you’re so beautiful and sexy, and yet the fact that
we turn each other on makes you nervous as hell?”
Beautiful? Sexy? Those weren’t adjectives she attributed to herself. Brainy, yes. Technically minded, yes.
But sexy? The man needed glasses. Only there didn’t seem to be a thing wrong with those amazing eyes of his. She opened the door to his soft laugh.
“Let me guess…you have work?”
“Right,” she said. “Work.”
All the way home it wasn’t that mocking laugh of his that Nicole thought about, but the flash of a shocking emotion she’d never imagined from Ty Patrick O’Grady.
Vulnerability.
TY WORKED the next few days as if he had a demon on his heels, and he did.
Her name was Dr. Nicole Mann.
But he was a man used to ignoring his emotions, and he could continue to do so through this job.
So why he made more trips to Taylor’s building than was strictly required, he had no idea. Today was no exception. It was late afternoon, three days after The Kiss.
And damn, it had been some kiss. Truth was, he wanted another taste. He wanted her gripping him tightly, wanted her weak for him. He wanted her to care.
Odd, when he didn’t want to care. God, how he needed not to care.
TAYLOR CAUGHT Nicole sneaking up the stairs to her loft apartment after a long day of work. “Hey, come in for a sec.”
“Um…well…” As always, she thought longingly of her bed, and of her plans to be in it within ten minutes. Of the new medical reports in her arms that she was dying to dig into.
“Oh, save the puppy-dog eyes, I’m immune. You can’t just work, read about work and sleep.” Taylor crooked her finger, a gesture she expected to make people come running. “Come on and take your medicine like a woman, Dr. Mann. I’ve got Suzanne inside and she’s so excited it’s almost making me think there’s something to this love crap after all.”
“Then why don’t you go get married?”
“Not in this lifetime. I told you, you and me, single forever. Now get in here. It’s time to try on the dresses I got us for the engagement party.”
