by Jill Shalvis
“Where do you want me?” Emma asked softly when the awkward silence had gone on for nearly a full minute.
“Where do I want you?” He looked at her from beneath heavy lidded eyes, wondering how the hell he was supposed to answer that question without sending her running.
“For the shot,” she clarified.
“Ah. For the shot.”
“You do need it, right?”
“Sure. But why isn’t Amber here, Emma?”
“She’s…busy.”
“Really? Because I know she’s back in the country. She called Stone. She could have come, but she didn’t. I find that fascinating.”
“I…” She let out a pent-up breath, and that, of course, drew his eyes to her breasts, which were nearly popping out of the crop top.
His body twitched. Damn it.
“I thought I should come,” she whispered, and tugged at the short, short skirt.
“More research today? For your work?”
“I wanted…to thank you for dinner that night in Tahoe.”
“Thank me.” He laughed. “You wanted to thank me for feeling you up at the table?”
She crossed her arms, which only plumped up those mouthwatering breasts all the more. “You’re still mad at me.”
“Mad?” He shook his head. “No.”
“Then, why are you pouting?”
“Pouting?”
“Sulking, then.”
“I’m doing no such thing.”
“Look, maybe we should just do this.”
He knew what he wanted to do. Her. “Fine. Get up against the lockers, lean in close like you’re going to kiss ’em, stick your ass out and look back at me over your shoulder.”
“All business?” she asked softly.
It was that or grab her. “All business.”
But he hadn’t counted on having to put his camera down and walk up to her, leaning so enticingly on the lockers, so he could drape her hair over her bare shoulder—bare because the white shirt had slipped off one side. She gleamed and sparkled from whatever lotion they’d put on her. He’d been wrong about the skirt—it just covered her ass and was slightly crooked. He put his hands on her hips and adjusted it, ignoring her quickened breathing. That didn’t work so he had to tug on the hem, which had his fingers brushing the very bottom of her sweet cheeks.
She let out a sound that had him jerking his gaze to hers, but she didn’t look at him. She just stared at the lockers, her chest rising and falling rapidly, as if she could barely stand it.
Join the club, baby, he thought grimly. Without a word, he went back to his camera and starting shooting, talking to her only when necessary. She never loosened up, not as he’d been able to coax her to do on the other shoots, but today he just didn’t have it in him.
Some professional.
“Turn toward me,” he instructed. “Hands flat on the lockers at your side. Tilt your head down, eyes up at me.”
Without a word, she did, and he took those shots, too. Her slight stiffness actually worked in his favor—she was the slightly shy, slightly reticent, outrageously sexy schoolgirl. It was wrong, but he wanted her, wanted so damn much. By the time he put the camera down, his fingers were shaking.
“Is that it?” she asked, still against the lockers.
“That’s it.”
She pushed away and walked toward him, every sway of her hips a slam to his gut.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and backed up a step.
She didn’t stop until their toes touched. “I didn’t like that.”
“I didn’t, either.”
She cocked a hip and looked at him from carefully made-up eyes. “I don’t like you, either.”
“Ditto,” he said tightly.
“But I’ve never wanted you more,” she said in a frustrated voice.
Thank God. They lunged at each other.
14
THEY COULDN’T GET AT EACH OTHER fast enough. Rafe slammed his mouth down on Emma’s, open and hot and hungry. Given the sexy little growl that came from her throat, she felt the same way he did. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, just as he cupped a sweet, warm, rounded cheek in each hand and ground her against him.
Baby, oh baby, it was just what the doctor had ordered.
His head was still spinning. Just a moment before, he’d been furious with her, furious and desperate with the excitement she always stirred within him just beneath the surface, and now here she was, arching against him, opening her legs up even wider, which had her short skirt hiked up around her waist, leaving nothing but his jeans and her thin panties as barriers. When she rocked against him, he staggered, and might have dropped them both to the floor if he hadn’t backed to the wall to use it as support.
Her fingers tangled in his hair and held his head for her mouth. Her legs were stronger than he could have imagined, gripping around him so that he couldn’t leave.
As if he wanted to.
When she arched into him again releasing a helpless whimper into his mouth, he nearly whimpered back because he couldn’t touch her, holding her up as he was; he couldn’t get to her the way he wanted to. Instead he staggered away from the wall and carried her into the open prop room. Kicking the door closed with his foot, he reversed their positions, turning them so that she was the one with her back to the wall. Now he could thrust against her in mindless abandon. With her skirt bunched up around her waist and his fingers inside the back of her panties, the apex of her legs cradling his sex like a hot glove, he could hardly stand it.
Bracing her against the wall, he tugged the white button-down shirt off her shoulders, then slid the twin thin straps of her crop down as well. Since she didn’t have on a bra, her breasts spilled free, her nipples already tight and puckered. Even that wasn’t enough, so he reached down and dragged her panties aside. Wrenching his mouth free from hers, he looked at her glorious body. The erotic way he’d exposed her made him groan.
“You are so beautiful.”
She was writhing against him, making those sexy little noises in her throat, her lush breasts against his chest, gripping him for all she was worth.
“Rafe. God, Rafe, how do you do this to me every time?”
Just the way she said his name made him want to come, but he managed a low laugh. “What I’m doing to you…? Baby, it’s the other way around. You’re killing me, just killing me.”
Now she was nibbling at his throat, taking hot bites out of him, each one making his hard-on twitch. He was pressed between her legs as they moved their hips, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing in slow circles that were going to drive him right out of his mind.
“More,” she panted, and pulled his T-shirt up so that her breasts brushed against his bare chest.
His knees went a little wobbly—more so when she tried to work open the buttons on his Levi’s.
“You want to come again, Emma? With me?”
“Yes!” Her fingers fumbled ineffectively on his jeans.
Reaching in, he helped her, their fingers tangling together until the jeans were open, a huge relief as they’d been cutting off his circulation since the moment she’d walked into the studio. His penis jutted out from his shorts hopefully while she continued to move those hips, driving them both closer to the brink.
“Rafe—” She pushed at his jeans, tugged at his shorts. “In me,” she gasped. “Inside me now.”
He wrapped a fist around himself and poised at her slick entrance before he remembered and went still.
“Rafe?”
“No condom,” he said roughly.
Her eyes opened and she looked at him in trembly dismay. “No.”
He could only shake his head.
“I’m going to cry,” she whispered.
Slowly he released her legs. Then, holding her gaze, he dropped to his knees. He put his hands beneath her skirt and pushed it up. Kissed one thigh, then the other.
Then between.
Her head thunked back again
st the door. “Rafe—”
He kissed her again.
Then he used his tongue.
Her knees buckled, but he held her up, and when she shattered, he let her fall into his arms.
IT TOOK HER A MOMENT to regain control of her senses, but when she did, she felt the tension that remained in his big, rigidly controlled body. “I want to nibble, too.” She dropped a kiss on his right pec, over his T-shirt. With one hand on his arm, restraining him, she used her other to shove up his shirt. He was all sinewy and hard flesh, and when she put her lips just above his nipple, his muscles quivered. He let out a sound—a rough one that thrilled her—and lifted his hands toward her.
Catching them, she set them at his side and looked up at him. “No touching.” She added a smile. “You’ve watched me go wild for you. I want to watch you go wild for me for a change.”
“Shouldn’t we—” He broke off with a strangled groan when she licked his nipple—just one little lick, as if he were a delectable treat. “Emma—”
“Shh.” Dragging hot, wet kisses down his torso to his low belly, she paused to look up at him.
His face was a tight grimace. “Emma, we should—”
She pulled apart his unfastened jeans and kissed the spot, the tender, beautiful spot of skin she’d exposed. It wasn’t tan like the rest of him, and somehow that seemed achingly vulnerable.
“Em—”
She tugged at the opening again, a little harder this time, and hummed her pleasure as his erection sprang out, hampered only by his knit boxers.
“Stone might come back—” he started to say, but he broke off with another heartfelt groan when she pulled the fabric away from his body and let him free.
He was smooth and long and thick, and she let out a murmur of excitement. “You weren’t worried about that a minute ago.” She ran a finger down his rigid length. Feeling incredibly empowered and bold, she kissed the very tip of him.
“Emma.” His voice was no more than a harsh whisper, so she did it again. His head fell back, his fingers tightened in her hair. “What are you doing to me?”
In truth, she wasn’t quite sure. She wasn’t a virgin—she’d slept with three different boyfriends, but none of them had been relationships where she’d been sexually comfortable.
And not one of them, as she’d already admitted to Rafe, had been able to bring her to orgasm.
But Rafe had and it wasn’t just gratitude that had her wanting to please him orally, but a burning desire to try this, to bring him to pleasure, too, and make it her own.
His hands were fisted at his side now, his belly and legs rigid as he lay there letting her explore. She eyed the very tip of him, straining so desperately toward her mouth. It seemed no effort at all to take him inside, to run her tongue over him.
“Emma—” As if he couldn’t help himself, his hands tangled in her hair. “Don’t stop.”
“I won’t.” And she didn’t, not until Rafe lost the reins on his control and shuddered as helplessly as she had only moments before.
He still hadn’t returned to normal breathing when suddenly, from outside the prop room door, came voices, startling them into silence.
“You say they were just here?”
Emma blinked. That was Amber’s voice! What was her sister doing here?
“I said so, didn’t I?” Stone sighed. “Look, I left them right in this very studio when my sister paged me thinking she was in labor. False alarm.”
“Hmm…wonder how the shoot went?”
“With those two? Fireworks guaranteed.”
Inside the prop closet, Emma closed her eyes. Fireworks had definitely gone off.
“What do you mean?” Amber asked.
“Don’t you know?”
“Know what?” Amber’s voice went from wary to annoyed. “Don’t tell me he’s playing with her.”
“You really don’t know,” Stone marveled. “Well, you’re going to love this. As much as you and I can’t stand each other, they have the opposite problem—only, as far as I know, neither has admitted it.”
Inside the prop room Rafe stared at Emma. Emma stared right back.
“They’re hot for each other?” Amber went quiet for a moment. “This I can’t imagine.”
“Why not?”
“Because Rafe isn’t hot for anyone ‘Hollywood’ and, although Emma isn’t typical Hollywood, she works there, and her work is her life. And even if he’d lost his mind and decided to go for it, there’s the little fact that Emma wouldn’t want him in return. She doesn’t have time for me, much less anyone else. She doesn’t have time for anything but her writing.”
“So explain why she’s been acting as you on and off for the past month,” Stone said.
Amber laughed. “That’s simple. I begged her. I needed her help.”
“You needed her help,” Stone said doubtfully.
“Mmm-hmm. And just so you know, I don’t…not like you.”
Stone laughed. “That’s why you tell everyone I’m gay.”
“No, I tell everyone you’re gay to explain the fact you don’t want me.”
There was silence. Then Stone said in an odd voice, “Whoever said I didn’t want you?”
“You did, that night—”
“That night you came on to me when you already had a date with you? Did you ever think maybe I just didn’t want to share?”
“So…what are you saying?”
“Do you have a date now?”
“You don’t see one, do you?”
“Ask me now, then,” he said.
A pause. “Okay. Stone, do you want me?”
“I’d like to explore the options.”
There was no sound, then Stone let out a choked noise. “Why are you leaning against the lockers like that?”
“Just giving you time to explore your options.” Her voice became sultry. “You know what I just realized, Stone? I think you’re going to like the options.”
“You still have a boyfriend?”
“I left Kenny in the Caribbean.”
“I thought it was Ricardo.”
“Stone, Stone. Keep up.”
Stone let out a laugh that didn’t sound too convincing. “Stop doing that.”
“Stop doing what?”
“Stop lifting your skirt like that and showing off your thong.”
“I don’t think you want me to stop.”
“Amber—”
“Stone,” Amber mocked, then laughed. “Oh, come on. Stop resisting. Let’s get the hell out of here, stud.”
Stone must have agreed, because the studio door shut and suddenly the place was quiet. Embarrassed now that the afterglow had dimmed, Emma began to straighten her clothing.
She heard Rafe doing the same, though she didn’t look at him.
“A damn closet,” he muttered. “First a pool, then a restaurant and now a damn closet. You’d think I could manage to get you into a bed.”
“They’re going to see our cars in the lot,” she said, crossing her arms, wishing she could say she’d never wanted to come today, wishing she could say she wished they had never started this whole thing.
But she didn’t wish that at all.
“Probably,” Rafe agreed.
“Maybe I should go.”
He just looked at her.
“And, anyway…I have some writing to do.”
“Well then, you’d better run, hadn’t you.” He waited until her hand was on the door. “But don’t fool yourself, Emma, or even try to fool me. You running now has nothing to do with getting caught or even your precious work. I’ve gotten too close again and you need out. Plain and simple.”
She didn’t question that. Silly to, when he spoke the truth. She reached for the door.
“Emma?”
She hesitated but this time didn’t look back.
“We still have to do the nurse shoot.”
Damn it. “Right.”
They finished the shoot in perfect silence and, when it was over
and she’d changed and again reached for the door, he said softly, “See you next time.”
NEXT TIME. Emma drove, the words racing through her head. What did he mean next time? There wasn’t going to be a next time!
What had happened?
Had she really just had oral sex in a closet?
She put her shaking fingers to her mouth as she waited at a red light to get onto the freeway. She’d meant to go home, to shower and crawl into bed with her laptop, where she’d get the most out of the experience and use it to her advantage.
Instead she passed her exit and drove to her sister’s condo. Her sister’s car wasn’t there. Of course not—she was off with Stone. It wouldn’t take long because Amber rarely lingered, so Emma sat on her porch and waited.
True to form, fifteen minutes later Amber pulled up in her red convertible Mustang, music blaring, hair snapping in the wind, cheeks rosy from the drive.
Or possibly from her little rendezvous with Stone.
She hopped out of the car, singing to herself, grinning like the cat who’d just eaten the canary, until she saw Emma sitting there. Then her step faltered, her smile froze and a wary look came into those eyes so like Emma’s own.
For one brief moment.
Then it was gone and Amber was sauntering close, swinging her hips, chewing her gum, looking like she’d just won the lotto. “Sis!”
“What happened to Kenny?”
“Well…”
“And how long have you been back in town?”
“I just…”
“And why the hell am I still doing this photo shoot for you?” Emma demanded, just before she horrified both of them by bursting into tears.
Amber’s bravado was gone in a flash and she sat next to Emma, her voice hitching. “Don’t you start now. Don’t you start. I’m not wearing waterproof mascara today.”
Emma ruthlessly swiped at the tears she hated shedding. “I wouldn’t be starting…if it weren’t for you.”
“Please don’t cry,” Amber begged, looking traumatized. “You never cry.”
“Never say never.” Emma would have said she’d never want a man to do half of what Rafe had done to her, and she sure as hell would have said she didn’t need it, or him, but it was exactly that which was keeping her up at night wondering, aching, needing.
