Killing Time

by Leslie Kelly

  But he had to try. “I’m not going to be a diversion for you,” he finally replied, keeping his voice as even as he could given the storm of intensity raging inside him. “I can’t be a distraction for you while you’re in town.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Funny, that sounds like just the kind of thing you would have liked, once upon a time.”

  He didn’t even try to deny it. “Exactly. And if I didn’t give a damn, if I only wanted you for sex, then we wouldn’t have left my bedroom since Thursday night.” He knew his tone held supreme confidence, almost arrogance, but it was merely the truth.

  She rolled her eyes, which made him tense with the need to prove it to her, even if only with his words.

  “I’d have made love to you dozens of times.” He stepped closer again, crowding her back against the counter. “I’d have loved you once for each birthday I’ve missed. Once for every Christmas Eve I didn’t spend with you.” His voice grew husky. “I’d have made up for all the mornings I didn’t wake up with you next to me and all the nights I was in bed with someone else, wishing she was you.”

  She drew a shaky hand to her heart, obviously shocked, but Mick couldn’t stop his mouth. “I’d have licked every bit of your body to remind myself that nothing ever tasted as good as you. And I’d have buried my cock inside you as often as I could just so I could lose myself, remembering how tight and hot and perfect you always felt. I’d be insane and inside out and helpless and stupid.”

  True. All of it true. But so was this. “And so would you, Caroline. So would you.”

  She said nothing. There was no response she could make when they both knew he was right. They both continued to breathe raggedly, a sea of unspoken words churning in the few inches between them. All one of them had to do was keep talking.

  The silence stretched on. Finally, Mick took a mental step back, then a physical one. Lifting his shoulders in a helpless shrug, he said, “But I can’t do it. I can’t be casual about you. About this.” Turning slightly away, he put his spoon in the sink, and the ice-cream container back in the freezer. “Hell, maybe I’m finally growing up.”

  She lifted her hand, as if reaching out to touch him, but Mick wasn’t in the mood for a comforting word or a tender touch. He hadn’t liked what he’d said, hadn’t enjoyed admitting that he was still vulnerable to her. What man would? With some women, the weapon he’d just handed over could be deadly.

  “You’d better go upstairs,” he said, his words almost a growl as he fought an inner battle with a sudden, unexpected anger.

  She didn’t move, merely looked at him, waiting for him to continue. But he had nothing else to say. They’d reached no agreement because there was none that could be reached.

  She wanted him to be something he couldn’t. And he wasn’t willing to prove to her that he was right about the constant nature of their relationship. That they were lovers. Only that, and could never be something more simple or basic. It was taking every bit of control he had to stick to the decision he knew was the right one. To stay away from her, emotionally, physically, in every way possible. Even though she lived under his roof, he didn’t have to put himself under her thumb.

  But damn, it was hard. Those brief touches of her lips, the look in her eyes, the way her soft shirt brushed against those sweet curves of hers, the spicy, womanly smell of her body. He wanted her more now than he’d ever wanted a woman in his life.

  And he’d wanted a lot of women in his life.

  Never like this.

  Which was why he had to be strong. If she stepped one bit closer, raised those perfect lips of hers or studied him too intently with those beautiful eyes, he’d be a lost cause. Right here in the kitchen, he’d show her what they were to each other, in deed as well as word. Lovers.

  “Good night,” he said, turning away and walking toward the rec room. In his mind he screamed, Go, go, go now.

  He heard her drop her spoon to the counter. Then heard her sweep it to the floor. “Goddammit,” she snarled, “if I have a lover why the hell haven’t I had a real orgasm in two years?”

  He froze and turned around, not sure if she meant what he thought she meant. That she’d had no one—no sexual involvement—in that long. Cursing himself for pausing, he couldn’t help but state, “You must have had some lousy partners.”

  He silently urged her to admit the truth. He should have known she’d never do it.

  “Yeah. A whoooooole lot of them.” Without another word, she swung around and stalked out of the kitchen.

  A whole lot. He felt like he’d taken a punch to the gut. He had absolutely no reason to question whatever choices she’d made. Just because he’d been her first didn’t mean he was entitled to be her only. Though, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t cheerfully consign any man she’d been with to the pits of hell in a heartbeat.

  A whole lot. Jesus, he flinched just thinking about it.

  Unable to help it, he turned and followed her. “How many is a whole lot?”

  She never broke stride. “None of your business.”

  “Caroline…”

  “Leave me alone.”

  He couldn’t. Anger and attraction and emotion and curiosity and, damn it, lust, were clouding his head, making him react from his gut instead of his brain. “Tell me.”

  She stopped in the hall. Her expression was both angry and challenging. “Too many to count,” she said with a flick of her hand, dismissing the subject. Then she walked away again. “Maybe I’ll just pull one of your tricks to solve my little problem. Don’t have sex with my lover,” she said, emphasizing the word with derision, “but find somebody else to distract me while I’m in town.”

  That image flooded his brain, made his blood get hot and his pulse pound wildly. He’d meant to keep them from making a mistake with each other, not to push her into making one with someone else.

  “Like hell you will,” he yelled, stalking after her. He reached the foyer just as she’d started up the stairs. “I’m not finished with you.”

  She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Apparently you are.”

  “You’re not falling into bed with anyone else while you’re living in my house. In my town.”

  “You know what? It’s none of your business what I do, Mr. Landlord. You’re not my friend. You’re not my colleague. You’re not my lover, or whatever you think you are to me.”

  “I’m serious, Caroline.” He started up the stairs after her, slowly, one deliberate step at a time. “You get involved with someone else while you’re here and you’re going to have a fact-based reality murder show.”

  She turned around to look down at him, her eyes widening in apprehension. Then she moved one foot up and back, climbing one step higher. “Was that a threat?”

  He stepped up, following her, until his eyes were level with her chin. “More like a promise. Any man you set eyes on is going to have to go through me first.”

  She stepped up again. “You’re crazy.”

  He followed. “Yeah, maybe I am. You accuse me of being too laid-back, of not reacting. You want to see a reaction, you just think about letting some other man give you what you’ve been begging for since the minute you hit town.”

  Her jaw dropped. She stepped down, pushing him back as she stuck her index finger in his face. “Begging for? You’re psychotic!” Then she dropped her hand. “Besides, what would you care, anyway? I’ll bet you moved on two hours after I left back in college.”

  More like two years. It had taken him two years to touch another woman. But he wouldn’t tell her that.

  “Don’t push me. You don’t want to see the kind of emotion I’m capable of. It’d make you run away and hide. As usual.”

  She groaned in fury, her mouth working but no sounds coming out. Electric heat, sharp and dangerous, snapped between them, as real and tangible as a frayed wire. “Leave me alone, Mick. You made your point. You don’t want me, so just leave me alone.”

  And while she stared at him, enraged, aware, furiou
s, Mick clenched his teeth, wondering how she could know him so well and not know him at all.

  “I can’t do that. This ends here. Now.” He grasped her arm and held her eyes with his, wondering if she could see the storm of emotion raging behind them. “Right now.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CARO SENSED that something had changed between the kitchen and here. Her confrontation with Mick in the other room had still held some of that playful teasing.

  Now there was none of that.

  This wasn’t play. It wasn’t teasing. It was elemental truth. Something was happening. Something she felt powerless to control. Mick was almost someone she didn’t recognize.

  “Let me go,” she murmured, not sure whether she wanted him to comply or not. She stepped up and back again, feeling her way to the next step with her heel, pulling herself away from him with every ounce of strength she possessed.

  He shook his head. “It’s too late.”

  Part of her knew immediately what he meant. It was far too late to let him go. On the other hand, he was far too late to take what she’d offered Thursday night. The pride in her wouldn’t allow that. “I don’t want you,” she said, lying through her teeth and knowing it.

  He knew it, too. “Liar.”

  She stepped again, but this time her heel caught the edge of the step. She stumbled a bit, fell to her butt and landed on the step above him.

  He didn’t hesitate. Before she could think, could breathe, could decide anything, he was kneeling one step down, his body between her thighs, his chest in line with hers. “You’re not going to sleep with anyone else here in Derryville, Caroline.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  “I can and I am. Now lie back,” he bit out.

  “No.”

  “Lie back.” He pushed closer, until the hard, thick ridge of him pressed against the seam of her pants and his chest touched hers from collarbone to tummy.

  God, he felt delicious. Hard and solid. Warm and complete. Like only Mick had ever felt.

  She laid back.

  “You make me crazy,” he growled as he bent low and nipped at her neck. “So crazy, I can’t be noble even when I want to.” His hands instantly moved to tug her cotton shirt out from the waist of her pants. “If you need it so bad, I’ll be the man to give it to you.”

  She didn’t even think to demur, to admit that she’d lied. About wanting anyone else. About having anyone else. There’d been no one, not in a long time. But she wasn’t going to tell him that, didn’t want to hand him that ammunition.

  “I’ll take you places no other man could ever dream of taking you.”

  Reason struggled to prevail against sensation. She slid up one step, guiding her body up, trying to get away from his sensual words, his hot, hard body and his heated touches. “No.”

  He followed. “Yes.”

  Then his hands were working her shirt up and over her head, tossing it away as he looked down and his eyes feasted on her body. Caro was caught someplace between anger and insanity, knowing she was a fool to let this happen but dying for it anyway.

  But it was only when he paused, looked down at her and said, “Yes?” so obviously giving her a chance to say “no”—and mean it—that she knew for sure what she was going to do.

  “Oh, yes.”

  Once Caro made the decision to do what she’d been wanting to do since she’d first seen Mick weeks ago, she suddenly felt ravenous. She reached for the collar of his shirt, yanking it open, not caring that buttons went flying.

  “I have to touch you,” she murmured, knowing the physical need was audible in her voice.

  He didn’t protest, instead shrugging the shirt off and tossing it away. She could only look up at him, at the hard planes and shadows of his body. God, his chest was impossibly big, hard and broad. So strong she wanted to bite it and stroke it and sleep on it and wake up on it.

  She couldn’t resist leaning up and running her tongue and her teeth on his collarbone, then sucking his sweat-moistened skin. “You taste so good, Mick.”

  He did. Her own senses fell into memory and she inhaled his scent, his taste, the feel of him against her. Everything was as perfect as she remembered. More so, because the passion was more intense, more adult than it had been when they’d been two horny kids impatiently exploring.

  Oh, they were impatient now. But it was a different kind of impatience. This was teasing and hungry. Each caress was deliberate and provocative, made more so because they knew what was to come.

  “Tell me you were lying about taking up with some other man while you’re in town,” he whispered as he ran his tongue down her front. He worked open the buttons of her blouse with his teeth. His breath touched her skin along with those perfect lips and she shivered and grew weak beneath them.

  “You know I wouldn’t have.”

  Another button popped. Then he made quick work of unfastening the front of her bra with one easy snap of his fingers. Her breasts exposed to his gaze, she opened her eyes, wanting to see him looking at her.

  His eyes glowed with heat and intensity and pure, visual desire that rocked her where she lay. God, to be looked at that way by such a man. It was every woman’s fantasy.

  And hers for the taking.

  She reached for him, pulled him down, wanting his mouth on her. She tangled her fingers in his hair.

  “You were just tormenting me.”

  She nodded, arching up, silently answering while silently begging, More. Now. Everything. Please.

  His hands worked her shirt completely off. It went flying over his shoulder, probably joining his at the bottom of the stairs. “We should go to bed,” he murmured.

  She shook her head. “I can’t wait.”

  “Neither can I. But in spite of what some people may think, I don’t go around carrying condoms in my pocket.”

  She shook her head dismissively and stroked his hip, teasingly moving lower, beneath his pants and briefs. He hissed in response. “I’m covered.”

  “Thank God.” Without another word, he moved his hands to the waist of her jeans. She reached for his as well, wanting nothing between them—not their pants, not even the air.

  Somehow their clothes disappeared and Caro nearly cooed at how good his lean naked hips felt between her legs.

  “Say it,” he urged her, dropping his mouth to her throat where he pressed a hot, moist kiss.

  “We’re lovers,” she admitted. He growled deep in his throat. Then he moved lower, sampling her skin, his slightly grizzled cheeks creating a delicious friction everywhere he touched.

  She writhed and twisted, wanting his mouth on her breast, his hips between her thighs, but he tortured her, touching, kissing, stroking everywhere but where she most wanted him.

  “Please, Mick,” she said with a whimper, lying back on the carpeted step. She raised one leg, curling it around his hard butt, tugging him close, so close to where she wanted him.

  Then, finally he caught her mouth in a deep, wet kiss and slowly sunk into her body. “Oh, yes,” she moaned, unable to believe how good, how utterly good he felt inside her.

  He didn’t plunge hard, merely teasing her with ever deepening strokes until she thought she’d go out of her mind with want. “Please.”

  “Slow down,” he whispered. “Don’t you remember how very much I like to go slow?”

  She whimpered and shifted on the carpeted step, trying to pull him with her legs. “You go too slow and we’re both going to go tumbling down these stairs when I smack you for tormenting me like this.”

  He stroked again, then kissed her cheek, licked her earlobe and nibbled on her jaw.

  “Mick,” she moaned, starting to shake with the tension of having him half inside her body. “Fill me up or I’m taking over.”

  He chuckled. “I’d like to see you try that in this position.”

  She pushed, shoving against his chest, forcing him to roll over until he was half-reclining on the step and she just above him. She met hi
s beautiful green eyes, giving him one second’s warning that she was about to take what she wanted. His cocky smile told her to go right ahead.

  So she took. She plunged down, filling herself to the brim with Mick. Filling her body with him, filling her eyes with the perfect sight of him, her ears with his groan of pleasure, she was surrounded by his masculine scent.

  She was completely filled—in every way—for the first time in years.

  She rode him, slowly, deliberately, without any of the awkwardness their long separation should have inspired. They fell into perfect sync, as if they’d never been apart.

  But when she started to move faster, Mick grabbed her hips, slowing her down. “When did you get so impatient?” he asked, leaning his head to capture one sensitive nipple in his mouth. That sent another shock of sensation down to her lower body, where she and Mick were joined, and she felt her first orgasm begin to build.

  “I’m just…taking what you didn’t…give me Thursday night,” she replied brokenly. Then she couldn’t talk at all, she could only urge him with moans and sighs, until he reached down and plucked the sensitive skin at the apex of her thighs with his fingertips, bringing her to the edge and sending her screaming over it.

  When she finally could breathe again, she opened her eyes and looked at him, seeing the look of pleasure he didn’t try to hide. He liked bringing her to climax. Over and over again. He always had. And that was way back when he wasn’t as controlled and patient as now.

  This was shaping up to be one of the most amazing nights of her life.

  “Bed,” he ordered, not waiting for her to agree.

  He held her around the waist as he stood up and urged her to wrap her legs around his hips. They were still deeply joined and as he walked up the stairs, Caro dropped her head back, reveling in the movements of their bodies. “Oh, God, yes.”

  They reached the top of the stairs and he stopped, backing her against the wall, as if unable to help himself. “You drive me to the brink of insanity,” he growled, plunging into her three or four mind-blowing times. The wall scraped her back, but it was a delicious roughness. She responded by digging her nails into his shoulders, demanding more, taking all he had.