by Audra North
“Yeah.” He pushed his cock against the heat of her palm. He couldn’t stop himself from rubbing against it, trying to increase the pleasurable pressure.
She pulled her palm away and he nearly groaned, only to realize that her fingers were curling around the edge of his waistband, starting to pull it down.
If she touched him with nothing between their skin, he’d come. He was too close. Too wound up, too—just too.
In a flash, he grabbed her wrist and smiled down at her. “Ladies first.”
Before she could say anything, he leaned down and captured her mouth with his, pushing her back against the headboard with deep, sure strokes of his tongue. Her arms came up around his neck and she made a low sound of pleasure in her throat, making his cock throb in response.
Closer. He needed to be closer.
He lowered himself down, straddling her hips and curving his back as he continued to kiss her, and her hands slipped lower to run over his back, rubbing and lightly scratching in turns as she licked and sucked into his mouth.
Holy fuck. This was incredible. She was incredible. He’d never been so aroused in his life, torn between wanting to bury himself in her so he could come immediately and wanting to draw out this heavy, heady just kissing forever.
Forever?
The thought had him pulling back for a moment, her hands slipping off his body as their mouths parted on a soft, wet pop. She stared up at him, her eyes glazed, and ran her tongue over her bottom lip.
He wanted her so badly, it was going to kill him.
Slowly, without breaking eye contract, he slid his legs down and lowered his body so that he was lying half on top of her, his face so close to hers that he could focus only on those beautiful, changeable eyes. They were now pressed together from chest to toe, but the way she looked at him was the most arousing thing of all.
He felt her hips rise, pressing up against his erection, and the groan of pleasure that escaped him practically shook the walls as his body reacted, his hips pushing back as he rubbed his shaft between her legs, only the thin layers of her panties and his sleep pants stopping him from being completely inside her.
She was the one who kissed him this time, bringing her hands up to his neck and gently tugging him forward until she could reach his lips with hers. It was a hot, wet kiss that matched the movements below, a rhythm that was starting to pulse in his very blood.
Supporting himself on one elbow, he brought his free hand to her waist, spanning the place where it curved into her hip, and squeezed.
Fuck. He’d been wanting to do that for so long, and hadn’t even realized. There was just something about that spot that brought out the possessive side of him, and now that he’d marked it—
She rolled her hips again, and whatever he’d been about to think disintegrated into a haze of pleasure. He slipped his hand under that teasingly thin T-shirt, over smooth, firm skin, the bump of her ribs, until his palm closed over one perfectly rounded breast, his thumb rubbing over the taut nipple as he rubbed the ridge of his cock ever harder between her legs.
She broke the kiss on a gasp, arching into his hand and moaning softly.
It was an approval, encouragement to go further. But without the push and slide of her lips over his, his mind cleared long enough for panic to set in.
What the hell was he doing?
He was leaving in a matter of months. Less than that, if he could get the team in good enough shape to hand off this project to someone else. What did that mean for Kerri? She might not mind if they spent the next couple of months having a good time, and frankly, he usually wouldn’t mind that, either. In fact, it was usually his preference. No strings attached. No chance for broken promises or hurt feelings.
But watching her with her crew, her mother, her brothers in the past couple of days, had done something to him.
He couldn’t do this. Not knowing that he would only end up leaving her. Wasn’t that what Al had done to Ranger’s mom?
“Ranger.” Kerri reached for him again, but he rolled away and pushed off the bed, forcing himself back to his feet.
She was rumpled and flushed, and he couldn’t believe he’d just done that to her. He wanted to do more. And at the same time … he ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath, trying to calm down. “Kerri, I—this is wrong. I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. I-I have a job to do and I can’t do this.”
Oh, God. The way her eyes first went wide, as though she were shocked beyond belief, and then her face simply crumpled …
“Kerri—” He tried to comfort her, which wasn’t exactly easy or credible when he still had a raging hard-on, but he couldn’t bear to see her look at him that way.
“Get out, Ranger.” She pulled the blankets up to her neck and turned her face away.
“Kerri, please.”
“I said. Get. Out.” Her jaw was tight, her shoulders stiff.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, but she didn’t answer, and eventually he turned and left.
Chapter Twelve
The flight to Kansas City had been more tense than any race Kerri had ever driven.
She’d had the window seat, with Mom in the middle and Ranger on the aisle. It had taken all her willpower not to glance over at him every five minutes. She’d spent the flight staring out of the window in silence.
Whereas he had used the opportunity to twist the knife a little deeper into her heart. He’d joked with her mom, jabbered with Lee and Grady, who had been sitting just across the aisle this time, and basically made it clear that he wasn’t giving a second thought to what had happened between them the night before.
I have a job to do. Meaning that he couldn’t spend time making love to her when he had more important things to do. Not when she might distract him from what he believed was truly important— making money.
Asshole. She’d thought she’d simply misjudged him. She should be thankful that he’d corrected that assumption before things had gotten too serious.
And yet, her feelings didn’t seem to be listening to that particular argument.
By the time they’d touched down in Kansas City, she’d gone through every possible emotion. Sadness, anger, hope, anger …
They’d arrived at the hotel and settled in. Lee, Grady, and Mom had left shortly after that to do the interviews that Lee had scheduled with local media stations. He was the youngest driver in the truck races this season, and because of that everyone wanted to talk to him and his mom. And Grady usually went along, just to make sure Lee didn’t say anything too stupid. It would be hours before they’d return, and the crew wouldn’t arrive until evening.
She tried flipping through the television stations, but nothing distracted her.
She was alone with her confusion and her hurt.
She’d just switched off the television when someone knocked at her door.
A peek through the peephole revealed Ranger. Kerri scowled. What was he doing here? Come to rub it in?
But she shook her head. Not likely. Even if she’d been wrong about his motives when it came to her, she’d seen how he behaved with the rest of the crew. He wasn’t petty. He might care more about money than relationships or—whatever it was they had, but he hadn’t been nasty.
Most likely, he was probably here to make sure that their fake relationship wouldn’t suffer. That might end up hurting their revenue, after all.
She made a face at herself. Now she was being the nasty one.
Enough. If he could play it cool and professional, so could she.
She opened the door. “What do you want?”
Yes, very cool. Very professional.
He looked haggard. “May I come in?”
“Why?”
“We need to talk.”
“Your mouth works just the same in the hall as it does in my room.”
“Kerri—”
“Oh, fine, come the fuck in.”
He eyed her warily as he stepped over the threshold. She shut the door behind h
im, leaned against it, and crossed her arms over her chest. “You wanted to talk, so talk.”
She knew she was being hard on him, but she didn’t care. He deserved it.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” His expression was sincere, but she didn’t allow herself to be moved. She couldn’t take that chance again.
“Well, A for effort and too bad it didn’t work out.” She moved a hand to the doorknob.
“My dad abandoned me and my mom when I was a baby.”
She froze, something shuddering down her spine, and slowly dropped her hand.
“Is this some kind of sick ploy to gain my pity so that I’ll keep pretending to be your fiancée? I gave you my word and I won’t go back on it. But I’d rather not be subjected to your presence unless I absolutely have to be.”
He drew a sharp breath at that, and she immediately hated herself for wounding him. But before she could apologize, he spoke again. “It’s not a sick ploy. It’s—I had to at least try to explain that it wasn’t about you. I wanted—I still want you.”
“Then why did you stop last night?” Shit, she sounded pathetic. She hated it.
“Because I can’t give you what you deserve.”
“And what is it that I deserve, exactly?”
“I don’t want to do to you what Al did to my mother.” He looked so downtrodden that she couldn’t help herself. She took a step forward, not missing the way his face lit up when she did.
“I’m not saying I forgive you.” Talking to him like this, face-to-face, was making her want to kiss him, but that would be a bad idea right now, so she abruptly moved away. She walked over to the bed and sat down, patting the cover next to her. “But I am listening. So … talk.”
For a second, he hesitated, but ultimately he sat, so close that when the bed dipped with his weight, they ended up pressed together side to side.
Maybe this hadn’t been the beter alternative to talking face-to-face. Now she wanted to do a lot more than just kiss. He had to feel the intense attraction between them, too, despite the tension, because she didn’t miss the way his breath shuddered a bit when they touched. But he didn’t try anything else. Just started talking.
“When I was a baby, my mother left my father because he spent all his time at work and none with her or me. She tried to work things out, but he bought her off every time. Or at least, he tried to. Expensive presents, vacations—except she always ended up alone. Even on the vacations he did manage to go on with her, he ended up working. A few months after I was born, she finally got fed up and walked out. Took me and went back to her mom’s in Tennessee, thinking that Al would finally realize what he was missing.”
Oh, God. She already knew how this story ended.
“But instead of coming after us, my dad called and told her that wouldn’t fight her for custody of me as long as she agreed to forego all financial support. We ended up living with my grandparents for years. And not in a nice house or with any of the things that my dad could have given me if he’d given a damn. We lived in a trailer, Kerri. A two-bedroom, falling-down trailer. While Al Colt lived in a fucking mansion.
Kerri’s anger with Ranger was completely gone now. For all that he had suffered, he was still trying to do the right thing.
His mouth twisted in a grimace. “When I was fourteen, I overheard my mom rehashing all of this to my aunt. We were going through some really tough times financially, and she actually said that she wished she would have stayed with him and suffered emotionally if it meant that her kid was going to be able to eat three meals a day and go to school without being hungry or cold. I’d never known before what had happened between her and my dad.”
“Ranger…” Kerri squeezed his hand in sympathy. What must that have been like, learning at fourteen that his dad had thought that money was more important than him?
Probably a million times worse than the way she’d felt last night.
“After that, I promised myself that someday I would be even more successful than my father and I would do it without hurting other people. I got a job busing tables. I finished high school with straight A’s. I got a scholarship to college and worked my ass off, then took a job at Colt’s biggest rival. I pulled my way up the ladder, rung by rung.”
Her eyes were wide. “I don’t understand. How did you end up at Colt, then?”
He gave a sardonic smile. “Colt bought out the company I worked for. By then, I was the second-in-command in the operations department and came into Colt directly under the VP of Operations. I thought about quitting, but in the end I refused to give my father the satisfaction of driving me away. I decided that beating him from the inside would be even more satisfying. I wanted to prove that I could do a better job in his own company than he could and didn’t have to act like people didn’t matter in order to do it.”
She frowned at that. She knew he cared about people, and he did mean well. She’d seen it in the way he’d treated the team. But this revelation bothered her. If she were being honest, it sounded a lot less like he was after money and more like he was after revenge.
“And you think that if you got involved with me—for real, I mean—and then left at the end of the season, you’d be somehow doing to me what he did to your mom?”
He nodded.
“That’s … incredibly fucked up.”
“Hey!”
She laughed. “I mean, chivalrous, in a way, but did it even occur to you to ask me how I felt? That I might want to just have hot, meaningless sex with you and not have a problem with saying good-bye when you go?”
He gaped at her.
“Do you really mean you would be okay with me using you like that?
She eased out of his grip and put both her hands on his thighs, smoothing them up to his hips and curling her fingers around his belt. He inhaled deeply, and she could feel the fabric of his jeans drawing tight.
“I mean that I would be okay with using you, Ranger.”
That’s all it could be, anyway. He might have decent enough intentions, but she wasn’t going to fall for a guy who was hell-bent on revenge on his own father, no matter how justified it may be.
It didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy him physically, though. She slid her hands together, cupping them over the thick bulge in his jeans.
He groaned and thrust up gently, pressing against her hands.
“In that case, don’t take this the wrong way, but … use me, sugar.”
* * *
He’d never been undressed so fast in his life. Her hands were a blur, tugging and unbuttoning and pushing at his clothes. She’d practically jumped on top of him as soon as the words Use me were out of his mouth, sliding her tongue over his and making little sounds of arousal in the back of her throat.
His cock was so immediately, incredibly hard that when she unzipped his jeans and pushed everything off, boxers and pants all in one go, he nearly hissed with relief. She’d pulled her own shirt over her head, unclasped her bra, and pulled off the leggings she wore, tossing everything to the floor before lying back on the bed, this time pulling him on top of her.
She was surprisingly strong for such a small woman. He had to put some muscle into his efforts to pull away a bit, groaning when his erection brushed the soft skin of her inner thigh. God, he wanted to fuck her so badly. But this was moving too fast. He hadn’t had any time to stop and appreciate those beautiful firm breasts, now laid out beneath him, or to nibble a trail from her neck to her navel, or massage her sweet firm ass. She still wore her panties, and the see-through lace made him want to press his mouth against that glimpse of dark curls at the juncture of her thighs.
“Kerri, sugar. Baby. Slow down. We have time. It’s okay.”
She arched, hard nipples seeking the friction of his chest. “Yeah yeah, Ranger. We have time to do all the stuff you want later. But right now, I am using you.”
He had to laugh at that. “Touché.” He lowered his chest, just enough to give her a taste of what she was seeking, and she moane
d. She brought her hips against his, rubbing herself against his cock, making his eyes roll back in his head.
“Ah, fuck, that feels so good.” He rolled off of her long enough to grab the elastic of her panties in his fist and yank them down her legs before she pulled him back to her again, sliding her hands down to his ass and grinding his cock against her.
“It does. God, it does.” She stared right at him as she moaned her need, desire blazing in her eyes. He could feel the wet heat gathering between them, so good and so hot, but he needed more. Every part of him was crying to be inside of her.
“Fuck, Kerri. I’ve got to get a condom.”
“I’m on birth control. I’m clean.” She was panting, barely able to get the words out past those shallow breaths.
He hesitated for a moment. He knew she was healthy. Her medical records and physical results had been in the portfolio he’d read. Had even seen her prescription for birth control.
But the trust she was placing in him … it felt overwhelming. And maybe a little stupid.
Hell. They were both fools when it came to whatever was between them. He just needed a minute to think …
In the next second, though, she pushed her hips again, and his erection slid down her body, slipping through wet, slick—
“Ohhhh,” she moaned and arched as the head of his stiff cock found her entrance and she bucked against it.
“Hell.” He practically bit out the word as the heat engulfed him, the broad head pushing just inside of her body. She was wet and tight, and he wanted to slam all the way home, but with the last shred of his control, he forced himself to ease in on a slow thrust. By the time he bottomed out inside of her, she was squeezing him so tightly that he had to stop and rest his head in the crook of her neck to try to gain back some control.
“Shit, Ranger, your cock is really big.” The whispered words nearly shut him down, and he half laughed, half groaned through his teeth.
“God, sugar. No offense, but I’m gonna need you to be quiet for a little bit if you need this to last more than ten seconds. Give or take five.”
