He lounged back on the bed, propping himself on one elbow. The sight of him like that, with his shirt open, his chest just begging for her to run her hands over it, nearly took her breath and her reason away. But Adam just stared at her intently, as if they hadn’t just been tearing each other apart moments before.
“So, a DNA match is someone who smells good to you,” he mused.
“I guess that’s a simplified version of it, yeah. You know how some mammals use their sense of smell to find a likely mate. Well, humans do it, too. We still have that ability on some instinctual level, even if we aren’t always consciously aware of it. So when you’re just unreasonably attracted to someone, especially if it’s someone who isn’t particularly hot, or who’s not your normal type—”
“Basically, you’re saying it means you’d make great babies together.”
He was looking at her again with that look, that one that made her feel as if he were looking deep down into the depths of her. She took a deep breath. “Yeah. Basically.”
“So should I be insulted or flattered that you had that feeling about me?”
“First off,” she sputtered, “I didn’t say I had that feeling about you. And second, why would you be insulted?”
He grinned. “Because you just said, someone who’s not your normal type, someone who’s not even good-looking—”
She shoved at his shoulder. “Shut up! You know exactly how hot you are. Don’t even try to pretend you don’t.”
“But I don’t know how you see me.” He wasn’t laughing anymore.
She lowered her gaze. Couldn’t he tell the effect he had on her? Couldn’t he see, just looking at her, how her pulse rate rose whenever she was around him, how many times he made her blush, how he made her fidgety and trembly, and reduced her to a bundle of nerves?
“I—” She stopped, her throat suddenly feeling untrustworthy. Just be honest, she thought.
It all came out in a rush. “Adam, I’m more attracted to you than I’ve been to anyone in a long, long time. I have been from the first time we met. So, yes, I think we have a DNA match. That very first day you came to the spa for a massage, I tried to get Willow to take over the appointment, but she couldn’t. So I had to do it. And I’ve been trying to ignore your effect on me ever since, because it—it scares me. I’m scared of how much I feel for you.”
There it was, out in the open. She waited, her breaths coming in shallow and just a little bit shaky, for whatever he might say in response.
After a moment, he spoke. “That first day we met,” he said, his voice low and intimate, “I couldn’t believe the reaction I had to you. I thought you were so gorgeous.” He grinned wickedly. “And you smelled even better.”
“That was just my perfume oil,” she protested breathlessly.
“With vetiver in it,” he said with a smile.
She felt surprise flare within her. “That’s right. You remember.”
“I think it’s safe to say I remember every single detail of every encounter I’ve had with you,” he said gravely. “You’ve made a huge impression on me, Lisa.”
Her heart kicked up a fast beat. Did he truly mean that? Could she possibly have made as deep an impression on him as he’d made on her?
“I really like you, Lisa,” he murmured, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “I’ve felt this crazy pull toward you since the very first time I met you. I don’t know what it means, but I really want to find out. And if you’re scared, well... I’m scared, too. This is a strange situation we find ourselves in.”
He was sitting up again, touching her hand, and she didn’t trust herself to speak. Her voice would probably shake if she tried to say anything at all.
“But,” he said, and looked up at her, into her eyes. “I’m more scared of not exploring this. Of never figuring out exactly what’s between us.”
Lisa didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know if she could speak, not with her heart hammering in her throat the way it was.
“You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to,” Adam said, and again she marveled at his ability to sense what she was feeling. “And we don’t have to do anything, tonight. We could just, you know.” He nodded at the TV. “Turn on the boob tube. See if we can find any Law & Order reruns, or some house shows on HGTV, or something.”
“House shows are my favorite.” It popped out of her mouth and made him laugh, and she would have laughed too except for the crazy pitching sensation going on in her stomach.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Back when I had cable, if I had a bad day, an hour or so of HGTV would make everything better. There’s something so soothing about those shows. About getting to look into other people’s houses and see how they fix them up.”
“So you like looking in other people’s houses,” Adam said, making her laugh.
“I’m not some kind of voyeur,” she protested, swatting at him.
“All right, all right.” He fended off her playful swats by catching her wrist midair, and then held on.
“So...you feel like being soothed, right now?” he asked.
He was watching her carefully. She could tell he was waiting for her answer. Waiting to see what she wanted to do. Whatever she wanted, she knew, he would support. He would want it for her, because that was just how he was, and for some reason she didn’t yet fully understand, he seemed to care about her.
“No,” she said, slowly. “I don’t want soothing, right now.”
“What do you want, then?”
She raised her gaze and looked him fully in the eye. “I want you,” she said, simply, lacing her fingers with his.
This connection between them—she’d told him the truth when she’d said it scared her. She hadn’t felt anything like this in so long. Maybe ever. The last time she’d felt anything approaching this, she’d gotten beyond burned. And here she was, feeling all these wild feelings for a man with whom she would be staging a very public breakup in a matter of weeks.
Maybe the non-disclosure agreement she’d signed hadn’t explicitly covered their exit strategy from this farce, but the breakup was coming—their fake breakup, to follow their fake engagement. That was fine. It was what she had agreed to, when she’d agreed to the entire scheme.
The only problem was, she wasn’t at all certain she was going to like it, when the time came.
“I have an idea,” Adam said, his deep voice breaking into her thoughts.
“What is it?”
He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb, briskly, as if asking her to look into his eyes. She did, and saw he was smiling at her.
“My idea is, let’s take this really slow.” He turned her hand over and ran a finger down the center of her palm. “Like this.” He moved up to her wrist and encircled it with his thumb and forefinger, as if testing its diameter.
“Okay.” Taking it slowly sounded good, although she wasn’t certain she knew exactly what he meant.
“Here.” He took her hand and placed it on his knee, silently encouraging her to explore him. The fabric of his dark slacks was smooth under her fingers, and she rubbed it experimentally, marveling at the newness of it—of him. This is his knee, she thought wonderingly, and his thigh. I’m touching him. I’m touching Adam Masters.
He reached up and traced a fingertip down her cheek. “You’re so soft,” he murmured. “Soft all over.”
Kiss me, she thought, thought it hard. Screw the exit strategy. Screw the fact that in just a few weeks, they would no longer be together.
That was exactly why they needed to take advantage of the present.
Kiss me, she thought again. And as if could hear her thoughts loud and clear, Adam leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers.
Chapter 21
____________________________________
This kiss was softer and more exploratory than their earlier one. Adam ran his tongue along her lower lip, tasting her, and then drew it into his mouth for an experimental tug before releasing i
t.
Lisa sucked in a sharp breath, and he grinned against her mouth as his groin tightened.
Her mouth turned him on. It was so soft and yet firm, just like her, and she tasted incredible—dark like a promise, sharp like a surprise. Perfect, like what he’d been waiting for.
She moaned against his mouth and pressed closer, seemingly mindless of her hands chasing up his thighs, making him throb with their heat and their nearness to his groin. God, how he wanted her to put her hands on him, to wrap her fingers around him. But he wanted to take it slow, for his own sake as well as hers. He wanted to make sure they both had time to adjust to the intensity of their connection.
He let her push him back onto the bed and breathed in deeply as she bent over him, her hair falling like a thick, dark curtain over him. Staring up at her, he locked his arms around her, holding her close, not wanting to let go.
It had been so long since he’d touched a woman. For a long time after his divorce, he had stayed single and alone because of the feelings it had brought of failure and heartbreak. Then, as the business had begun to take off, throwing himself into that had seemed as good an excuse as any to continue avoiding relationships.
But as soon as he’d met Lisa, he’d known he wanted to be with her, like this. He’d wanted her, with all her softness and curves, her scents and textures and secrets, to be his reintroduction into the world of the female body.
Her dark gaze dropped to his lips. He wanted to lean up and claim her mouth with his. But instinctively he knew she needed to go at her own pace, so he stayed where he was, letting her make the moves.
She surprised him by dipping down to press a hard, fast kiss to his mouth.
“Adam.” She murmured his name against his lips, and he almost lost it. Then her tongue flicked out and teased his upper lip. He groaned against her and closed his eyes. He couldn’t take much more of this torture.
She deepened the kiss, and he could taste reluctance as well as something much deeper—desire, he thought, mingled with surrender to the inevitability of their connection—on her tongue.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she murmured, almost to herself. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
When she started to push away, he cupped her elbows to hold her still. “What’s wrong with doing this?”
“Lots of things. For one thing, we’re here on business, and I learned a long time ago that I’m no good at mixing business and pleasure.”
She was referring to her ex again. He was surprised at the pang of jealousy that shot through him. “Stop thinking about Roger. I command you.” He said it jokingly, but he meant it. Somehow, some way, he needed to excise that idiot from Lisa’s mind and heart. Or at least from this hotel suite.
Lisa laughed, then sobered. “Look, you need to understand that Rodney was my business partner and my fiancé, and it went about as badly as it could possibly have gone.”
Adam blinked. “The guy wears baggy purple pants. Of course it went badly. He’s a moron.”
Lisa stared down at him for a second, clearly working at appearing incensed. “I feel like I should be insulted. I was with him for almost two years. I mean, I’m very much over him now, but I used to be in love with him. God knows why, but I was.”
He settled his arms around her lower back, clasping one hand over his other wrist to hold her close. The intimate contact felt perfect, even as it drove him a little bit nuts on a purely physical level. “I guess he was your Ivana.”
She didn’t answer immediately, as if considering. “I guess so,” she finally said. “So, the takeaway here is, never commit to a woman named Ivana or a man who wears baggy purple pants and considers himself God’s gift to women.”
Adam grinned. “Good rule.”
She smiled back down at him.
“But that whole thing about not mixing business with pleasure?” He wrinkled his nose. “That’s not such a good rule.”
“No?” She raised a dark, skeptical eyebrow at him.
“Not always. I mean, sometimes it’s the right thing to do. But,” he said, and rolled with her until she was lying on her back beneath him. Looming over her, he allowed his hips to settle into her, to press against her intimately. “This is a special circumstance,” he continued, huskily. “We’re supposed to be engaged. So even behind closed doors, in private, we need to practice, so we can play the part convincingly in public.”
She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth, so he laid a fingertip across her lips to still any protests she might have. “Plus, sometimes, when it comes to rules...you just have to break them.” He dipped his head and pressed a slow kiss to her collarbone, allowing himself to taste her skin there.
He was gratified when her chin angled up as if asking for more. He moved up to nuzzle into her neck. “Sometimes,” he murmured, “you have to go against common wisdom to follow your heart.”
There was a long, pregnant beat of silence between them as he realized just what he’d said—follow your heart. He’d pretty much just admitted, to her and to himself, that his heart was definitely involved.
He froze. He’d learned from his marriage with Ivana that he was an emotional guy—always had been, always would be. Of course, that didn’t mean he had to wear his feelings on his sleeve. Yet here he was, as good as telling Lisa, the very first time they kissed, that he was already heart-deep and falling fast.
But if his admission alarmed her, she didn’t say so. Instead, she ran her palms down his sides, and then she was tugging the hem of his shirt upward.
He pushed away so she could draw it over his head. His heart was bumping in his throat, and he had to work to keep his breathing somewhat steady as her fingers traced ticklish little paths of flame over his back and stomach.
Then she took him completely by surprise by leaning up and running the tip of her tongue over his nipple before sucking it into her mouth for one hot, fierce second.
The acute pleasure of it nearly overwhelmed him. He couldn’t help but draw in a sharp, ragged breath.
She stopped and pulled back abruptly. “Did that hurt? Was it too much?”
When he opened his eyes to gaze down at her dazedly, he was surprised to see genuine anxiety in her eyes, and something that looked like shame.
“No. God, no, not at all.” He nearly laughed, but cupped her face instead, caressing her cheek with his thumb. He could sense she needed the soothing. “It felt amazing. Too good. It almost made me lose it.”
“Oh.” Still looking slightly embarrassed, she glanced away. “Rodney never liked it much when I did that.”
Adam sighed and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then rolled again onto his back. He pulled her on top of him so that her hair was once again falling into his face.
He reached up and laid a finger lightly on the tip of her nose. “I need a couple favors from you, all right?”
She nodded slowly.
“All right. One, I want you to do that to me as often and for as long as you want. But I can’t be held accountable for how crazy it might make me go. I mean, I might start howling or something.”
She giggled, and he counted that as a point in his favor. “Two,” he went on, and leaned up to nip at her earlobe before murmuring into her ear, “try not to mention Rodney anymore, all right? At least for a little while. He can wait till we’ve got our clothes on again.”
She blushed deeply, and he instantly felt sorry for embarrassing her, but then she was kissing him again, and her hands were tugging at his belt and tickling the skin below, so he forgot all about Rodney and whatever bad things the jackass might have taught Lisa during their ill-advised relationship, and concentrated only on the gorgeous, luscious, curvy woman currently straddling his mid-section and just about driving him over the edge.
She licked and kissed her way down his chest to his stomach, making his cock go tight and hard with need. God, if he didn’t find release soon, he might split open from the pressure—
And then she sat up and stared down
at him again. Her dark eyes were almost black. “I want—” She stopped.
“What?” It came out in a grunt, the most coherence he could manage. “Anything.”
“I want you to take off your pants.”
The desire, spoken with such bravery and uncertainty, was all it took to drive the last little bit of his self-control over the precipice. He reared up and caught her in his arms, pressed a hard, wild kiss to her lush mouth, and then pushed her off him to settle her, startled, on the comforter.
He shoved out of his pants and his boxer briefs in about two seconds flat. Her eyes rounded as she took him in, which pretty much made him feel like a king.
“Um.” She swallowed. “Wow.”
He pumped a fist in the air and pantomimed bowing to an invisible audience. “Yes. Just what every guy wants to hear when he gets naked.”
She laughed and then shivered.
He climbed back onto the bed and ran his palms down her arms. “Are you cold?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m fine, I’m just...”
“Are you all right?”
She nodded mutely.
“We don’t have to do anything. We can just hang out and play cards, or something.”
She grinned. “Did you bring a deck?”
“Always.”
Her smile turned wicked. “I guess strip poker would be pointless, since you’re already down to nothing.”
“Then let’s just say I lost and you won,” he murmured, and took her chin in his hand to pull her mouth to his.
Chapter 22
____________________________________
Lisa was currently existing on two levels of consciousness: the one in which she was feverishly kissing a devastatingly naked Adam Masters and enjoying every sizzling second of it, and the one in which a part of her was standing back, in awe of what was happening between them.
The man was just so insanely hot. And gorgeous, and kind and sexy, not to mention hot as hell, and sensitive and sweet, and had she included hot? Because, hands down, Adam was about the hottest guy she’d ever seen naked, ever.
Mister Match (The Match Series Book 1) Page 19
