Never in a million years would she have guessed what preppy, uptight Alec Grayson had up his sleeve. Literally.
“It’s old. From when I was young and stupid. Most of my teammates in Philly had tats and I thought I was the sh—” He muttered to cover the curse word and ran a hand through the top of his hair, mussing the regimented style. “I’m planning to get it lasered off.”
“Don’t you dare!”
Clarity struck like a shot of adrenaline to her heart. He was ashamed of the tattoo or what it represented. With trembling fingertips, she skimmed the outer line of a dark black swirl of ink tracing the muscle of his pectoral. The muscle jumped at her touch, and he flinched away as if in physical pain.
“Don’t you dare,” she repeated in a whisper leaning in to follow the line with her lips.
2
Alec watched in disbelief as Lilliana Hancock’s dark head moved closer. Tendrils of her tousled, long hair tickled his stomach the instant before her lips made contact with his skin. He took a sharp breath, the action pressing his chest into her touch.
The woman was driving him insane. How many nights had he dreamed about her sassy mouth and flashing eyes? Eyes that followed him at practice like daggers in his back, making him fumble the ball and forget his game plan.
Ever since the city hired him to enforce building codes, he’d learned not to take the townspeople’s ill feelings to heart if he failed to pass their work. He didn’t do favors, and he didn’t accept bribes.
True, he and Lilliana had been at odds the past year over his inspections, but her hostility far surpassed any business interactions. He’d spent countless hours wondering what he’d done wrong.
He always kept things professional with her. Actually, because he didn’t want her to guess at his interest, he sometimes overcompensated by being especially distant and terse. If he was being honest, he’d admit she intimidated him. She radiated light and was uninhabited with her laughter and joy. He felt bereft of both. Watching her surreptitiously at practice was one of his guilty pleasures. People were drawn to her just like he was. He wasn’t unique.
Yet, today was proving otherwise. She’d offered him her smiles and nuggets of what made her tick. It only upped his fascination with her. He’d thought the attraction was one-sided and would remain forever unrequited.
Until this very moment with her mouth on his skin, he’d assumed her flirty eyes and touches were part of his overactive imagination where she was concerned. More than a few solo sessions had been incited by picturing her mouth around his dick while she gazed up at him with her exotic sloe-eyes.
Shudders cascaded through his body, the epicenter where her lips continued to trace the hated ink on his chest. The trail of her lips felt cool on his skin even as his blood tore a burning path through his body, hardening the erection he’d been fighting since she’d cornered him in her tiny office.
She tilted her face up, her lips a mere inch away from his. Every nerve ending reached for her. Her half-lidded eyes were dilated, and arousal blurred her features.
The logical side of him, the one he’d put in place after his life had self-destructed, beat drums of warning in his head. Why was she suddenly coming onto him? Was this about him giving her a pass on the inspection?
But the part between his legs growing bigger by the second shut his brain down. Her oversized T-shirt had fallen off one shoulder exposing a thin white bra-strap through her dark curtain of hair. He’d rarely seen her hair down. She usually had it pulled into a ponytail or braided into a thick rope.
“You’re beautiful,” she whispered as her fingertips glided over his collarbone.
Beautiful? He the one who should be telling her that. He opened his mouth to spout some inane tripping compliment, but she dropped her lips back to his chest, cutting of his ability to think much less form words.
Her tongue flicked his nipple, the one surrounded by ink. She trailed her hands up his sides leaving him a quivering mess of sensation. Sensation that needed an outlet or he would explode.
With his shirt caught at his elbows, he took her face in both hands and pulled her up, his mouth seeking hers. No coaxing was needed. Their lips moved in synchronicity with none of the awkward fumbling of a first kiss.
Her teeth nipped at his bottom lip, and he slid his tongue inside her mouth, rubbing and twining, burying all thoughts but one. He needed inside of her. He needed to feel her nails on his back, her lips at his throat, her legs pulling him closer as she came around him.
With that singular goal in mind, he gripped her hips and guided her to a straddle over his leg. She rocked against him and moaned into his mouth. He clenched her ass with one hand while the other wandered her back, pressing her full, soft breasts to his chest.
He grabbed a handful of her shirt and pulled upward, helping her fight the fabric over her head until it was gone. Taking a deep breath, he pulled back and looked down. Her simple, unadorned bra had not been chosen with seduction in mind, yet the shadows and peaks of her nipples through the thin white cotton dried his mouth.
Her breasts were large for her petite frame. He cupped them, and they filled his hands naturally. When he thumbed her nipples, she gasped and arched her back, her fingernails digging into his shoulders.
“Lilliana.” Her name rolled off his tongue like poetry. “What are we doing?”
“It’s been a while, but I think you’ve rounded second base and might be headed for a grand slam.” She didn’t play coy, but met his gaze and caressed down his tattoos, her hand landing between his legs. His hips bucked.
Her other hand joined the first to work on his belt. Each brush of her fingers across his erection and her every mewl of frustration grew the staticky white noise in his head. First the buckle, and then the button and zipper of his pants surrendered. He rose to his knees, and she pushed his pants down his thighs leaving him in boxer briefs. He didn’t dare look down at himself, knowing his erection was prominent, feeling both embarrassment and urgency.
She had no such qualms, casting her gaze down with a Cheshire cat smile. “My God, I thought I’d exaggerated.”
“Exaggerated what?” He hooked a hand around her nape and forced her to look at him.
“You’re big everywhere.” Her eyes were huge and glassy, her lips reddened from their kisses.
“Fuck me,” he muttered, letting his head fall back and closing his eyes. He was officially a goner.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she chanted, taking his curse as a call to action. She lay back, half on the pink tile and half in the guest bedroom across the hardwood floors, pulling him on top of her. He caught himself on his elbows, his legs tangled in his pants.
Shifting, he kicked off his boots, socks, and pants and dropped back over her. She wrapped both hands around his neck and kissed him. Sensual yet frantic, their lips, tongues, and teeth explored. She kissed his chin, nipped at his jaw, and ran her tongue over his erratically beating pulse point.
He scooched and rolled them to the rug with her pressing kisses along his jaw. The bed seemed an impossible distance in the air. They ended up with her on top.
Straddling his hips, she sat up, a wave of doubt crossing her face. Unlike him, she never shuttered her emotions from the world, and her sudden shift from seductive to vulnerable made his chest ache. Was that his heart?
He stared into her dark eyes and brushed her hair back from her face, caressing her cheekbones with his thumbs. “You’re gorgeous.”
The doubt disappeared and she leaned over him, the hardened tips of her breasts pressing into his chest through her bra. The kiss was less frantic and with an unexpected tenderness that destroyed him.
He didn’t know how long they kissed, but when she pulled away, he was breathing hard and his body was alight. She made her way down his chest, her lips and hands paying special attention to his tattoo. Her soft breasts left a burning trail down his middle while her hair tickled his sides, sending shudders through his body. The effect was mind-blowing.
&nb
sp; She knelt between his legs, grabbed the edge of his underwear and tugged. He raised his hips automatically, and his underwear landed across the room. She wrapped her hand around him, skin on skin. Pain-pleasure shot into his system. His eyes wanted to close, to focus on the sensations battling in his body, but they didn’t. Because he couldn’t stop staring at her.
She was built like a screen siren from long ago. His gaze traced the transition from full breasts to narrow waist to rounded hips over and over. Why did she hide under the constant rotation of old, baggy T-shirts? He wanted to flip her over and explore every dizzying, hypnotic curve, but what she was doing to his dick trumped the compulsion. She circled the head of his erection and back down to the base, the pressure enough to torment, not satisfy, him.
“I’m afraid you’ll hurt me,” she said without looking up, but with worry etched into her voice.
What could he say? He didn’t even know how or why they’d ended up almost naked on the floor. He had spent years making sure no one ever got close enough to hurt him again. Yet, here was Lilliana, shattering his defenses in one afternoon with her sweet smiles and soft kisses.
“You’re really big.” She stroked him again, squeezing him at the base.
Along with primal satisfaction came an embarrassed heat. He was an idiot. This was not about building a lasting connection. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d attempted to fill the vacuum of loneliness with sex, but he’d thought he’d left that part of himself in the past. Even though he could sense the guilt building up behind a dam, ready to flood him later, he wasn’t strong enough to deny himself what he’d wanted for a long time.
If a no-strings, one-time fuck was all she was offering, then he would savor the experience and bank the memories to revisit during the dark of night. If he were lucky, he’d get to reenact the sex in his dreams.
“I won’t hurt you.” His voice turned gruff.
With no ambiguity to the encounter, he shook off his out-of-control emotions and took charge. He sat up to unbuttoned and unzipped her shorts. After she kicked off her shorts and panties, he lifted her into a cradle hold and deposited her on the blue and green comforter, crossways on the bed, positioning himself between her thighs.
He considered turning her over on her stomach so he could run his hands over her phenomenal ass. He’d nearly had a stroke when he’d arrived to see her on her hands and knees in the bushes, her ass high, her shorts so short he’d seen a flash of her pink panties.
The sun cast diffused light into the room from the partially opened drapes. Even more than her ass, he wanted to feel her naked breasts pressed against his chest and watch the shadows play across her naked curves. God, he needed to get his mouth on her nipples. He snaked a hand to her back to release her bra clasp, but she grabbed his arm.
“No,” she whispered softly in contrast to the nails digging into his forearm. He wanted to insist, to coax her out of her bra, but her unguarded expression reminded him of his mixed feelings over his tattoo.
Instead of pressing the issue, he cupped her hips and rubbed himself against her. The easy slide nearly had him pushing inside of her, but he wanted to draw this out for his own pleasure as much as hers. But, even more, he’d promised not to hurt her.
He ran his hands through the dip in her waist and over her cotton-covered breasts, squeezing and toying with her nipples. Her back arched and her spine twisted, emphasizing her voluptuousness. He typically attracted tall women with angles and edges—catwalk women.
But, it was Lilliana he dreamed about—petite and curvy and sexy as hell. He dropped to kiss her breast where cotton met skin. Moving lower, he skimmed his teeth over her covered nipple. Unable to help himself, he hooked finger over the thin fabric and pulled it low enough to expose her nipple, pert and dark pink and begging for attention.
He let out a long slow breath to marshal the last of his control. He kissed the delicate skin before sucking her nipple into his mouth, all while tormenting her with his tongue.
“Alec, what are you doing?” Her words came out on a long moan.
“Doing what I’ve wanted to do forever.” He grasped her breast and gave it a gentle squeeze.
She writhed against him. Her feet on his butt were trying to force him closer. He shifted away, wanting more time to savor her breasts. If he was only going to get one shot with her, he had to make it last. She had other ideas, taking his erection in hand and rubbing the tip between her legs.
She was wet and ready for him. Her cry was one of frustration. “For goodness sake, fuck me, Alec.”
There was so much more he wanted to do with her, so many things he’d dreamed about doing, but hearing the dirty words come out of her sweet mouth was too much. He fisted the base of his erection and slid inside of her a few inches. Their moans intertwined in the quiet room.
She was tight, and for the first time with a woman, he worried his size might be a very real problem. He pulled back but couldn’t bring himself to leave her hold entirely. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, but he wasn’t sure if she was in the throes of pleasure or pain.
“Am I hurting you?” Please say no, please say no.
“Don’t leave me. Please.” Her knees tightened around his hips.
His heart accelerated even as his brain recognized she only meant leave her in a physical sense. “I promised not to hurt you.”
She ran fingertips down his face and let them trek over his tattoo. “You aren’t hurting me. You feel amazing. So much better than before.”
Before? Before what? Confronted with her red, kiss-swollen lips and flushed cheeks, he ignored the brief spike of confusion. Her dark eyes held mysteries and secrets, even as every other emotion flitted across her face as easily read as a child’s primer. What did she see in his eyes? And, did she even care?
The need to be buried inside of her extinguished any caution. Her squirms and moans drove him forward. He wanted to pound into her, chase his own pleasure, but he fought his instincts, keeping his rhythm slow and deep. Every drive forward bounced her breasts and made it that much more difficult to maintain a thread of control.
Her breathless cries mixed with his grunts. Her pulsing orgasm sent white-hot sensation up his spine. Her body grew slicker and clamped him even tighter. He managed a few hard, driving thrusts before coming in a blinding wave, his hips grinding and bucking, pushing her farther onto the bed with the force. His legs tingling and weak, he fell over her, his face buried in her hair.
Her scented hair niggled his memories, casting him back to college parties. Alarms buzzed, and a sense of reality intruded, overriding the sexual satisfaction. Still inside of her, he uncurled his toes and pushed up.
She stretched her arms above her head. Her eyes were closed, her legs still spread around his hips, her hair fanning around her smiling face, her nipple peeked over the edge of her bra. The picture of a woman satisfied. He swallowed hard. No matter the fallout, this snapshot in time would remain with him forever.
She opened her eyes, and her sexy smile fell into the continuing awkward silence. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself. It had been years since he’d dealt with the aftermath of a one-night stand. Back then, he would have sauntered out with a casual wave and a promise to call. A promise he never kept.
He missed her the instant he pulled out. Turning away, worried she’d sense his vulnerability, he gathered up his clothes and pulled them on as quickly as he could. She followed his lead, and he couldn’t help but watch her cover herself bit by bit out of the corner of his eye.
He gathered his clipboard and tool bag off the bathroom floor, not sure what to do next. Continue his inspection? Walk out the front door? Offer to take her to dinner?
“That was . . . unexpected.” Humor laced her words.
He let out a gusty laugh-sigh born from awkwardness. “You could say that.”
She’d propped a shoulder in the doorway of the bathroom, and he forced himself to meet her eyes. She waved a hand toward the spaghetti-like tan
gle of wires. “Are you going to finish?”
The aftereffects of mind-blowing sex rippled through him, and his concentration was shot to hell. “I’m done.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll give me a pass?”
Her question didn’t sound rhetorical. A numbness replaced the warm satisfaction, and a sense of being used incinerated his confusion. “Don’t think you can manipulate me with sex.”
She straightened in the doorway, the tease gone from her eyes. “Alec. I was joking.”
He pushed past her, heading to the staircase. He was an idiot. She didn’t actually want him. She had been using him like the others. When would he ever learn?
She caught his arm in the foyer before he could open the door. “What happened had nothing to do with the inspection.”
“Doesn’t seem that way.” He rubbed his forehead and stared at the jumble of shoes under the bench. “Yesterday you couldn’t stand the sight of me, and today, as I’m uncovering a major wiring issue, you can’t keep your hands off me? Let’s call this what it was—a distraction technique. Well, congratulations, it worked. But I’ll be back and that mess up there better be fixed. No more favors.”
Her fingernails bit into his arm, her eyes even bigger than normal on her pale face. She looked as shocked and shattered as he felt. He twisted free, walked out the door, and didn’t look back.
3
Lilliana sidled down the row in Walmart, holding the surge protector close to her chest. Feminine hygiene products lined one side of the aisle, but her goal was the contraceptive needs at the end. She’d spent the past two days hiding out in her house in a state of humiliated confusion.
After hands-down the hottest sex of her life, Alec Grayson had accused her of whoring herself for his signature on the inspection papers. He’d turned from lover to hater in two seconds, not even giving her a chance to explain. Although, what could she say that wouldn’t make things worse? To top it off, she wasn’t sure who was the jerk in this scenario.
Melting into You Page 3
