Life of the Party

by Kris Fletcher

  His hands still rested at her waist, gripping tight. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow herself to try to read his face. But his hands told their own story. His fingers were splayed wide over her lower back, all the better to slide and tug. Each one dug into her just a touch, as if he were fighting with himself to stop them from hauling her against him. His thumbs moved in the tiniest circles, probing and pressing and releasing, like he was hunting for an ON button.

  Silly man. Didn’t he know he’d already hit that one?

  “You,” he sighed against her forehead, “are a very difficult woman to resist.”

  “I don’t want to push you into anything.” Not true. She desperately wanted to push him into the coffee shop and pull off his shirt and drizzle him with a shot of every type of syrup they had behind the counter and then play a long and delicious game of Guess That Flavor. But she wasn’t going to say that now. “I don’t want you to think you have to prove anything, or do something because you feel sorry for me.”

  “Trust me, Jenna. That never crossed my mind.”

  “Promise?”

  His fingers tightened just enough to drive home his sincerity. “Promise.”

  “Because when we do this, I want it to be because you want to. Because you have to.” She yielded the littlest bit to need, brushed her lips across his jaw, and added, “Because you know deep down that nothing in this world is ever going to be feel as right as you inside—”

  This time he was the one stopping the conversation, his mouth claiming hers with a fierceness that told her exactly how much he’d been holding back. All restraint was gone now. He was devouring her, molding her to him, his lips dragging and skidding and his teeth nipping and his hands digging tight and pulling her flush against him, so tight that she almost got that wish for him inside of her right there and then.

  “Any doubts now?” he asked when he wrenched his mouth away from hers.

  “God, no.” She swayed back, hips forward, pushing against him and reveling in the way the sparks were already building toward the best damned flame she could imagine. “Does this mean you’ve reconsidered that whole waiting thing?”

  The hand sliding between her legs was either a yes or the most amazing no of her life.

  “Cole. . . . whoa, don’t. . . . Cole, what are you . . .”

  Her voice stopped. Everything stopped, everything froze in shock—oh my God, my skirt . . . my . . . how did his fingers get—my God, he has to . . . oh God don’t stop, don’t—

  He wrenched himself away, chest heaving, staring at her like a man who was so frantic with need that she almost fell over the orgasm cliff just from looking at him.

  “Yeah, I still want to wait,” he said.

  Every almost-there nerve ending in her body bucked in revolt.

  “I think waiting until we get inside is a really good idea.” He swallowed. “But if it takes you too long to open the door, I can’t even promise that anymore.”

  It took an endless second for his meaning to filter through the layers of feeling and pulsing and needing that had taken her over. When she finally understood, she made a small squeaking sound and lunged for him. He kissed her hard and fast and desperate.

  “Keys,” he said against her mouth. “Door. Now.”

  Right. Right. She inhaled, steadying the shaking of her hands and the slamming of her stomach and the wild dance that was her heartbeat. Her purse was—whoa. When did it hit the ground? The keys, thank God, were clipped to the handle. If she’d had to hunt for them she would have given up and pushed Cole to the ground, right there on the pavement.

  Seconds later, the door was unlocked. She forced herself to reach up and punch in the security code before turning and grabbing his shirt and yanking him into the entryway. The moment the door latched behind him she flattened herself against him, pinning him between her and the door, pressing every possible inch of her against him for one long, melding, melting kiss.

  Fighting for a sliver of control, she backed away. Not far. Just enough that she could wedge a hand between them.

  “I am really, really, really glad you reconsidered.” She accompanied each really with a pop of a shirt button, followed by a kiss to the fevered skin she had exposed. “I promise I’m going to make you very, very certain that you made the right choice.”

  He didn’t say anything. Maybe because her mouth was on his again. Probably because her hand had followed the trail of buttons even lower, so one finger was tracing the length of the more-than-promising bulge in his pants.

  “What do you like, Cole?” She was going to make him pay for the way he’d caught her off guard outside. He was going to pay in anticipation . . . and just the tiniest edge of frustration . . . and then in the best kind of pleasure. But she was a woman. She could multitask. She could caress and talk, both at the same time. And he was going to love every minute of it.

  “Tell me what you like most. Do you want to be on top? Or maybe I should be. I kind of like that idea. I like to tease, you know. I think maybe I’ll take just a little of this”—she flattened her palm over the bulge, smiling deep inside at the sound that emerged from the back of his throat—“yes, I’ll take just the tiniest bit of this inside me. Maybe this— Oh, did you like that? Oh, Cole. You have no idea how much better it’s going to feel when I push down, just this little part, right here, maybe to here— Did you say something?”

  She knew damned well that he hadn’t. He couldn’t. He was past the point of words already, and she had never felt so strong or alive or exuberant.

  She nosed his shirt aside and kissed a path up the center of his chest, slow and steady, in rhythm with the light little caresses she was delivering to the rise in his trousers.

  “I watched you dancing tonight.” She murmured the words against his heart. “I watched you move and I thought, oh, there’s a man who knows how to feel the music. Who knows when to speed up and when to slow down. Who knows when to hold back and when to dive in, all hot and—”

  “Jesus, woman, do you ever play fair?” His words came out in a strangled rush against her neck.

  She smiled, inside and out. “All’s fair in love and war.”

  “Which one is this?”

  She slid a hand inside his waistband, flattening her palm against his heated skin. “I’m thinking somewhere between the two.”

  “You said your place is upstairs?”

  “Yep.”

  His only reply was to peel her away from him and twirl her around so quickly that she almost lost her balance. “Show me.”

  “With pleasure.” She reached back for his hand and started her slow ascent. She was on the fourth step when he said, “Damn, Jenna. I never thought—”

  “I do them every night.” She refused to let the Pity Train interrupt this ride. “Sometimes two or three times a day.”

  He didn’t say anything. Thank God. If he had offered to help, or tried to do the he-man thing and carry her up the stairs, she would have lost all respect for him.

  But when they reached the top and she paused for a second to take her customary, deep breath, he slipped an arm around her waist from behind and pulled her close.

  “I’m not going to ask if you’re okay,” he murmured against her ear. “I know you’ve got this.”

  Smart man.

  “But,” he continued, “I will say that I owe a debt of gratitude to those stairs.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Two reasons. First, it gave me a chance to inhale again. You were making that damned difficult down there in the hall.”

  “Yep. Rob them of the ability to breathe, then ravish their unconscious bodies. That’s my usual modus operandi.”

  “And let me tell you, you excel at it. The second reason, though, is because I was stuck behind you and got to watch. Did you know that you are as enticing from the back as from the front?”

>   Jenna never would have believed that someone could find a silver lining in her continuing struggle with stairs. The warmth that rushed through her was only slightly tinged with lust.

  Cole Dekker wasn’t just hot and smart. He was nice. And he had an ability to surprise her, to catch her off guard, that she—who’d known a world of men in her time—found as refreshing as a backyard pool on a hot summer day.

  She tipped her head back against his shoulder, letting herself rest against his chest. One of his hands splayed over her waist, holding her close. The other was in her hair, slipping through the strands, toying with her ear, tickling a line down her neck. Light. Playful. Restful. And even though she ached for his hand to move either higher or lower, there was something equally as enticing, equally as seductive, about this . . . this gentleness. This teasing. This unspoken assurance that no matter what happened next, it would be okay.

  It was a good thing she had a limited time with Cole. He would be too easy to fall for. She’d worked too damned long to get herself to this point to worry about falling for a hometown boy now.

  “I have a question.” he said. “Not sure if there’s a better way to ask this, so if I say it wrong, bear with me, okay?”

  “Okay. But if the question is about condoms, the answer is yes. I have some.”

  “Good to know, but not what I was thinking.”

  She reached behind and between them for a groin check. “Oh yeah. I can tell you weren’t thinking about that.”

  “Fine. You want the truth? I’ve been packing since practically the first time I met you, just in case.”

  She tipped her hips back a touch, searching for a better angle. “I’m flattered. So what was your burning question?”

  “Is there anything I should be careful about, any movements that would be too hard for you? Anything that would hurt you?”

  She should have expected the question. He was that kind of guy. But the tenderness of it had her swallowing down her reflexive light dismissive answer.

  He was right. That wasn’t an easy question to ask. And if he had the guts to ask it, then she owed him a solid answer.

  “Like I said, this is my first time since the accident. I don’t think there should be any problem, but this is going to be an . . . an all-new experience, in some ways. How about, I promise that if there’s a problem, I’ll let you know the moment I know?”

  “Okay.” He kissed the side of her neck. The shivers started up again, slower and deeper but still as irresistible.

  “There aren’t any bad scars,” she said, for once grateful that Kendall’s need to make himself look good had compelled him to insist on the best doctors. “There are lines, and marks, but plastic surgeons can work miracles. There’s nothing that should gross you out.”

  “Jenna?”

  She wanted to answer properly, but his hand had finally crept up to her breast, slowly teasing the underside and rendering her capable of nothing more than a, “Hmmm?”

  “Nothing about you could ever gross me out, okay? Even if there were scars. Even if you lost your leg. Even if you were covered in oozing, bubbling boils.”

  Laughter gurgled out of her. “You lawyers. Such a way with words.”

  “Okay, I was lying about the boils. But all that matters to me is making sure I don’t do anything to hurt you, or make you uncomfortable. Understand? Because you, Just Jenna”—his hand inched higher, one finger traveling up the curve of her breast to draw a slow circle around the nipple, making her gasp and arch and reach behind her to grab his hips—“you are one of the most gorgeous and amazing and intriguing women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. And the more I get to know you, the more pleasurable it is.”

  She tipped her head back to catch his eye. “Trust me, Cole. There’s still a whole lot of undiscovered territory just waiting for you.”

  “Good thing I’ve always liked exploring.”

  “Good thing I’ve always liked being a guide.”

  His laugh was low and hot against her ear. Or maybe that was just the fallout from the heat burning all through her.

  “You’re determined to be the leader here, aren’t you?”

  She could have said something about it always being that way . . . about not knowing anything else . . . about needing to have the upper hand, or place, or whatever. But all those words were getting in the way of the feels, and dear God, the feels were getting so good. Especially when he dragged his hand slowly down her side like that, pressing his palm against each curve and dip, flexing his fingers as he moved so there were little pleasure massages following in the wake of his motion. It was lazy and teasing and driving her pulse into the danger zone, and they still hadn’t taken off a single piece of clothing.

  It might be time to do something about that.

  Chapter Nine

  “Come here, Mr. Dekker.” She pulled his hand from her hip and used it to tug him into her bedroom. Yay for Mom’s insistence that she and all her sisters always made their beds and tidied their rooms in the morning. She really would have hated to interrupt things to make the room presentable, or frantically turn off all the lights. There was a time and a place for sex in the shadows—preferably enhanced with glow-in-the-dark stickers—but this time, she wanted enough light that she could see the delightful package she was more than ready to unwrap.

  He followed as ordered until they stepped into her room, whereupon he stopped and turned in a slow, staring circle. “Whoa.”

  She followed his gaze, taking in her room through his eyes, feeling ridiculously pleased as his eyes lingered on the gauzy fabric hanging around the bed, the twinkle lights that lit the room from their hiding places and behind the fabric, the strings of tiny gold bells suspended from the ceiling. “You like it?”

  “I feel like I stepped into the Lawrence of Arabia movie.”

  “That’s what I was going for.”

  He did a double take from her to the room. “You did this yourself?”

  “Mmm hmmm. I didn’t . . . Kyrie owns this building, so I didn’t want to do anything super permanent. But I wanted to make this mine. I have a thing for desert spaces, so I thought, you know, why not go for it?”

  “It’s amazing.” He tipped his head, transferring his focus from the room to her. “And not what I would have expected from you.”

  “Are you saying I’m not amazing?”

  The little quirk at the corner of his mouth . . . it was going to push her into the rapture zone all by itself. “Stop fishing for compliments. I would never have thought of you as a desert person.”

  “And why is that?” She grabbed a corner of the closest fabric, held it in front of her lower face like a half veil, and did her best imitation of a belly dance—for about three seconds, until she wiggled her eyebrows and started him snickering.

  “Not me, huh?”

  He shook his head and pulled her closer. “You’re no desert, Jenna.” His fingers trailed down the side of her face. “You’re the oasis. The life in the middle of the barrenness. The water that bubbles up in the most unexpected places.”

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. “You lawyers really do have a way with words.”

  “You know what else?”

  “What?”

  He leaned down, pressed his lips to the hollow between her breasts, and said, “We do our best work with our mouths when we aren’t even talking.”

  And with that, she was officially past the point of restraint.

  His shirt went first. She yanked and pushed and let it fall to the floor while she propelled him toward the bed. Not that he resisted. His only hesitation, she was pretty sure, was caused by his own efforts to get her out of her blouse.

  “Wait,” she said, and stripped away the offending top. She reached behind for her bra but he moved in.

  “Let me.”

  She started to turn but he obviously
had another path in mind. He pulled her into a slow, lips-only kiss while his hands slid slowly along the sides of her bra, his fingers slipping below the band and tracing the path to the back. His kiss never faltered as he flicked the hooks. When she would have shaken the bra off he stopped her with a steady hand on her shoulder before letting his fingers retrace their earlier path, this time skin on skin, sliding slowly forward until each palm cupped a breast. Only then did he break the kiss, and only to nose the straps from her shoulders. Each hand in turn slid slowly down before returning to tease each tingling breast. She was dimly aware of the moment when the bra hit the floor, but it barely registered. Nothing mattered anymore except getting naked and getting Cole against her.

  With that one thought blazing in her mind, she pushed her skirt and panties low with one efficient motion, stepped out of them, and kicked them aside. Cool night air against her skin was a sharp contrast with the heat being generated wherever he came in contact with her, which was still far too sparse for her wishes.

  “I see a problem here, Mr. Dekker.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m naked and you’re not.”

  “Oh, Jenna. Don’t you know what they say? There are no problems. Only opportunities.”

  A moment later she was on her back on the bed, her head whirling as she tried to figure out how it had happened. A moment after that she decided she didn’t give a rat’s ass about the details and focused solely on the amazing sensation of Cole kissing the inside of her knee. Who knew that there were so many nerve endings there?

  Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that she had let him take the lead. Somewhere in an even dimmer corner, she registered surprise that she had stepped back so easily, that it didn’t bother her.

  The rest of her being was too busy to care, what with needing every bit of effort to remember how to breathe as his lips moved higher. And higher.

  And then brushed the spot where breathing stopped and thinking stopped and the ability to do anything but whimper was yanked away from her. Even more so when his lips trailed lower again, leaving her squirming and aching for what had almost happened.