by Isabel North
One more kiss, she told herself. One more, and another, and then, “Burke, stop.”
He stopped the second she said it, but it took twice as long for him to let her go. The effort to do it was as obvious as his earlier refusal to hold her had been. He slid her down his body, made sure she was steady on her feet, then he backed up.
Lila followed.
Burke clenched his fists at his sides and looked at her from beneath his lashes. “Don’t,” he said.
Lila stepped into him, rested against him, and pressed her forehead into his chest.
His heart was pounding.
Almost as fast as hers. “All I need is a moment,” she told him, smoothing her hands down his sides before settling at his waist. She let out a shaky laugh. “I’m not trying to tease, I swear. I need a moment. I need to catch my breath. Have to think.”
His arms closed around her, and she relaxed in relief.
This was all her fault. What was she doing to him? She shouldn’t ever have kissed him in the RV. She shouldn’t have let him kiss her now. Except she did. She had. She wanted more. And more, and more.
So did Burke. She knew by the restless drift of his fingertips, brushing up and down her spine, by the arm wrapped low around her back. By the still-rapid beat of his heart.
And by the enormous erection pressing into her stomach.
Sighing, Lila eased away. She leaned her head back. He angled his down. They watched each other in silence.
“What is it?” Burke asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do this. I’m leaving.”
All emotion was wiped from his face. He gave a short nod and gently set her away from him. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you again. Do you need a ride home? No, you drove here, didn’t you? Of course you did. So. Thanks for coming by. You’ll call about the viewings?”
“I didn’t mean I’m leaving here. I’m leaving Emerson.” He didn’t seem to understand. She clarified, “I’m moving. To Seattle.”
“No.”
Lila laughed, startled at his vehemence.
Burke blushed. “When?”
“I don’t know yet. Soon? Soon as I get a job.”
He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and scowled at the floor. “You have a job. You’re my realtor.”
“I quit a few weeks ago. I’m working out my notice period. Be done in a few days.”
“You’re leaving.” The words were hollow and final.
“Yep. Don’t tell anyone. I don’t know why I told you. I shouldn’t have. You’ve just got that whole I’m-trustworthy-snuggle-into-me-and-tell-me-your-secrets vibe.”
“I’m snuggly?”
“I want to snuggle you.”
He smiled at her. Lila sighed. “You’re a hard man to resist.”
“I don’t know why you’re trying.”
“Because I’m leaving.” She thumped down to sit on Burke’s chair, wishing that she was still sitting on him, but knowing it was for the best that she wasn’t. “There don’t seem to be any real opportunities in Emerson for me anymore. Please don’t tell anyone. Especially Derek. Do not tell Derek. He’ll tell Jenny, and she’ll freak out and then kick my ass. Or she’ll try to.”
“There’s nothing here for you?”
“I’ve been feeling trapped for a while now, you know?”
“Been there.”
“I knew you’d understand. So, I’m sorry for kissing you. It wasn’t fair.”
“I kissed you.”
“I kissed you first.”
Burke came to stand before her, and stroked her hair away from her face. “You can do it again, if you want.”
When his hand fell away, she caught it and held it. “I want,” she said, playing with his fingers. He really did have beautiful hands. Strong. Finely-made. Capable. “I want, but I can’t.”
“Can.” Burke drew her up to standing.
She kept her attention on his hand. He had nice wrists, too. She rubbed her thumb over the veins on the underside. “Shouldn’t.”
“Definitely should.” Burke raised the hand she held, turned it so hers was uppermost, and kissed it before settling it on his chest. “Definitely.”
She didn’t know how he managed it, but what looked like a gallant, old-fashioned gesture felt dirty as hell. Lila loved it. “I can’t offer you anything,” she warned him.
His ribs expanded as he took in a deep breath.
“Anything more than tonight,” she said, making a snap decision. “I can’t start a relationship when I’ve got one foot out the door. I’m not going to lead you on, Burke. You don’t deserve that.”
“Hmm.”
“But if you’re okay with… No. Forget it. It’s a bad idea.”
He shifted closer but didn’t say anything.
“I suppose I was thinking…” Lila began. She glanced up at him. His eyes were on fire, suggesting he knew what she was about to propose, and he was on board with it. She still felt nervous. “Would it be a terrible idea if we were to say, oh, let’s have one night? A one-night-friends-with-benefits-stand?”
It wasn’t a terrible idea. It was a great idea.
They should totally do it.
Get it out their systems. Because Lila felt like she might die if she didn’t, just once, know what Griffin Burke felt like inside her, over her, making love to her.
Sex.
Making sex.
Having sex, damn it.
“Well?” she demanded. Burke hadn’t replied.
“Eh.”
Lila frowned at him. “I think it’s a great idea. In fact, I’m upgrading it to fantastic.”
“Fantastic?”
“Nope. Upgrading it again. Spectacular. It is a spectacular idea. It could be my best idea ever.”
He was still holding her hand to his chest. And she was stroking him, a soft back and forth she hadn’t even been aware of.
Lila tightened her grip. “You in?”
“I’d be a fool to turn down spectacular.”
“And that is what you’re about to get. Choose wisely, now. In or out?”
Burke jerked his chin at the open doorway. “You know where the bedroom is,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Come on.” Lila ran for the stairs, surprising a laugh out of Burke.
She put all her strength into dragging him after her. Burke allowed it, but held back enough that she had to work to move him. It sparked ever more determination in her, and Lila determined was a sight to behold.
It didn’t hurt that it served to affirm for Burke that this was what she truly wanted. Because once they made it to the bedroom, Lila was going to find out that he wasn’t quite as easy to maneuver as she thought.
It was starting to dawn on her already. She glanced back at him and stumbled at whatever she saw on his face, in his body language, the tension in his muscles. Yeah. She wasn’t leading him anywhere. She was being pursued.
Lila gave a shocked giggle, dropped his hand, and sprinted for the guest room.
She went the wrong way.
Burke was right behind her. She darted into Kurt’s room, whirled around, and rushed back out, cannoning into Burke. He continued walking forward, lifted her off her feet, and pressed her into the wall beside the door.
Lila squirmed. “Ack,” she said. “Stupid skirt.”
He let her struggle for another few seconds, enjoying the feel of her rubbing against him.
“Do something!” she told him.
He adjusted his grip and swept her into his arms as if she was his bride, carrying her over the threshold of the guest room.
“Ooh,” she said. “How very romantic.”
Started to say.
Halfway through, Burke tossed her on the bed and the end came out in a squeak.
He leaned over the mattress and caught her hands as she reached for him. He lowered them either side of her head and pinned her.
Lila seemed thrilled. She tested his grip without making any effort to
break it. “Be more romantic if you took my shirt off.” She arched her back restlessly. “Or let me take it off.”
He released her hands and she shuffled up to her elbows, getting to work on her buttons. He brushed her fumbling fingers aside and slipped the top two buttons free. The skin of her chest was hot and satin smooth. Burke didn’t even try to hold back the rumble of approval. He felt her eyes on his face as he tugged the shirt from her waistband, and hauled it over her head.
He took in a steadying breath and paused to stroke a reverent hand from her throat down between her breasts to her belly. He circled her navel then stroked firmly back up to palm a breast.
Glancing up, he met her wide eyes and popped the front clasp of her pretty lace bra open with a pinch and twist.
The cups of her bra fell to the side as Lila scrambled up to sitting. She slid to the edge of the bed, tucking her legs between his as he stood before her. She took hold of his T-shirt, shoving it up. As he peeled it up and over his head, she leaned in and kissed his abdomen.
Burke was a big man. He was solid. He was in shape, thanks to his running habit and no thanks to his cupcake habit. Feeling the feather-light brush of her lips and teasing scrape of her teeth on his stomach, he wondered if Lila liked what she saw. She spent a lot of time at the gym., among men with hairless chests, waxed or natural. Men with fitness-magazine-worthy six-packs.
Burke’s stomach was flat and he had light muscle definition, but he sure as hell didn’t have the time or the patience to sculpt himself into a woman’s wet dream.
Lila looked up. There was nothing but desire and anticipation in her eyes. She liked what she saw just fine.
She undid his jeans, and whipped the zipper down.
Grinning, Burke slid his hands under her armpits and tossed her up the bed. Putting a knee to the mattress, he crawled over her. She stretched beneath him, humming with delight as she wound her arms around his neck to haul him down.
The moan that slipped from Burke when he felt her skin against his was loud, involuntary, and he wasn’t even sorry.
Lila bumped her hips into his.
Oh, god. She was amazing. They were amazing. This was good. So, so good. Her softness under him, the way she couldn’t seem to get him close enough… Burke was about to lose his mind.
He settled more of his weight on her in self-preservation, in an attempt to corral her movements.
He hadn’t been this hard in forever.
Possibly since his teens.
At the thought, a warning flag went up. Lila shimmied her skirt out of the way enough to hook a thigh over his hip.
Shit. Did she still have her heels on? Burke leaned his weight into one hand and glanced behind him. Yep. Still wearing her stilettos. He looked wildly from her flushed face and passion-ruffled hair, her bare breasts, her sexy shoes, and he really, really did feel like a teenager again.
Not in a good way. In an about-to-lose-it way.
Lila tilted her hips and palmed his ass. The friction dragged rhythmically over his cock.
Burke hissed. He was going to come.
Holy shit.
Right now.
If she didn’t stop moving against him like that, lying under him soft and demanding, her hair spread out on his pillow and her lips swollen from his kisses and…
“Wait.” Somehow, he managed to rasp the order.
“Problem?” Lila kissed his neck.
Burke flexed against her. “Lila,” he gritted, “I’m going to come.”
She smiled up at him. “That’s the idea, big guy.”
“No, I’m going to come right now if you don’t—”
She licked his neck, bit down, and sucked.
Burke swore as his world exploded. Ecstasy rushed through his veins, scouring everything from his mind but Lila, Lila, Lila.
When his vision and hearing returned, the room rang with silence. Burke levered himself up, and glared at her.
As their eyes clashed, Lila nibbled her bottom lip and aimed a smile at his violated jeans. “Oops,” she said.
Burke wrenched away and sat on the edge of the bed, breathing ragged.
He couldn’t believe that had happened. He’d lost every shred of control he possessed, pleasure had hit him with a force he could barely comprehend, let alone have any chance of withstanding, and he came.
In his fucking jeans.
The bedclothes rustled as Lila shuffled over to kneel beside him. She laid a hand on his back.
Burke lunged to standing. He tilted his head enough to catch her expression in the corner of his eye, but he didn’t face her. He couldn’t.
The hand that she’d set on his back rested in the air between them, her fingers slowly closing.
“I warned you,” Burke snarled. He hated how he sounded, harsh and resentful, but he was furious with himself. Furious.
“Okay,” Lila said. “You warned me.”
Burke hesitated a second, then made a disgusted noise and strode for the door.
“Hey!”
“What?” He stopped, trembling with tension. He didn’t turn around.
A pillow smacked him in the back of the head. Burke whirled to face her.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Lila demanded.
He gestured crudely at himself. “Gonna go clean up.”
“Oh no, you don’t.”
Burke narrowed his eyes.
Lila narrowed hers right back. She was on her knees, fists planted on her hips. She pointed at the space in front of her. “You get back here right now.”
Burke moved for the door.
Another pillow clipped him in the back of the head. “Stop throwing pillows at me!” he yelled.
“Then get your cranky ass back over here and give me an orgasm! Unless this is how you roll, Griffin Burke? You get yours, and that’s it? Sexy times over?”
Burke didn’t move a muscle.
Lila’s jaw dropped. “Oh my god. That’s it? What is wrong with you?”
“You made me come in my jeans, woman!” he roared.
“You are welcome!”
“You are supposed to orgasm first. You!”
“Well, I didn’t!”
“I know!” Burke flung his arms out.
Lila sat back on her heels. “Are you really this angry because of the order of orgasms?”
She made him lose control. That’s what he was angry about. He was angry with himself. He’d lost sight of everything.
Burke had wanted to make this so special for Lila that, even though she’d said it was just once, maybe she’d change her mind. If she didn’t, then at the very least he wanted her to remember him as the best sex of her life.
But no.
Instead, he behaved as if he didn’t have the first clue about how to please a woman, pinned her to the bed, and climaxed on top of her.
Lila took his silence for agreement. “That’s sweet of you, Burke, but you should know, I’m not remotely interested in paint-by-numbers sex. I like it wild, I like it unexpected, do not waste my time being polite, and I damn sure don’t care about who goes first. I am not afraid to ask for what I want, and what I want right now is for you to get over here and catch me up. But I guess that isn’t happening, is it?”
Burke had gotten distracted halfway through her tirade, watching her wrangle her breasts into her bra. He was mesmerized by all that soft skin and the way she—he swallowed—the way she did up the clasp and sort of…lifted them and…squeezed them to settle them in the cups.
He blinked when his view was obscured by her shirt as she shrugged it on. He tuned back in to her muttering.
“My judgment when it comes to men is deeply questionable,” she was saying, half to herself and half to him. “First Kurt, now you. Am I projecting? Maybe I am. I’m attracted to a guy physically, I want him to be a nice guy, want there to be more to him than—” she waved a hand at him in a comprehensive sweep, “—all that, and you all turn out to be—”
“Kurt?”
Lila snapped her mouth shut.
Burke said it again, low and dangerous. “You and Kurt?”
“Yeah.” She kicked her chin up. “Kurt. He didn’t think I was worth the effort, either.”
“Explain.”
“Hah. Not a chance.” Lila swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. She smoothed her hair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a hot date with my vibrator, because someone thinks it’s okay to turn me on and leave me hanging.”
Burke closed the distance between them in two long strides. He glared down at her.
Unimpressed, Lila tipped her head back. “You’re going to have to move. Sooner would be better. I need to stop by the store for more batteries. Burke. Move.”
He did.
He raised a hand and laid the tips of his fingers on her sternum in a light touch, right between her breasts. He ducked his head and said in a rough whisper, “You want an orgasm?”
She leaned into him. “What was your first clue? Was it me yelling, ‘get over here and give me an orgasm’?”
“You sure?”
“Did I stutter? And to clear up any further confusion, allow me to clarify: some time tonight would be nice.”
Burke gave her a light push. She toppled back and landed with an oof. Half a second later, he was on top of her.
Lila grinned and went for her shirt.
Burke put a stop to that, sweeping her arms to her sides. Then he grasped her hips and flipped her face down. He dragged her to the edge of the bed and stood over her.
She wriggled as he pushed a hand between her and the mattress. “Wait,” she said “Burke, I want to be naked. I want you naked.”
Burke ignored her, slipped his hand under her skirt, found the hem of her panties, and shoved them out of his way. He found her heat, and began to move his hand in a deliberate rhythm.
Lila gasped, arching into his touch. “I want—”
“Don’t care.” Burke increased the pressure, and she cried out.
Sliding her farther up the bed, he put a knee between her legs and placed his free hand between her shoulder blades, holding her there with ease.
