“Really bad.” Cole’s whispered reply was almost lost in the folds of his shirt where she clutched it with both hands. But she had been miserable for so long, been lonely without him so long, that getting hurt again might feel better than feeling nothing at all.
At the moment, nothing hurt. Kissing Scott felt like the most right thing she’d ever done. She wanted nothing more than to kiss him and go on kissing him until she was saturated with his taste and smell and touch.
She lifted her head and curled a hand behind the nape of his neck.
“Cole—” He sounded as desperate as she felt.
“Shut up, Scott.”
She lifted her face and brought his head down for another kiss.
He moved a hand from her waist down over the fabric that covered her hips where he flexed it under her butt and pressed her sex hard against his throbbing groin.
Yet the hunger building between them was more urgent. It blocked out light and sound as they concentrated on the warm sinuous play between them of lips and tongues. Kissing had never felt better, sexier, hotter.
For two years Cole had been replaying over and over in her head the reasons she had fallen for him. And wondered, had her imagination played her false? First love was like that, swamping good sense with the ecstasy of the moment. He couldn’t have been as good as she remembered. They hadn’t been as happy as memory said. She just needed to be clear about what she had walked away from, to erase memory with reality. That’s all she wanted, a little hard evidence to counteract too many lonely, sweaty nights alone in her bed.
She felt sorry for women who claimed no man had ever kissed them in a way that made them want to strip and get busy right then and there. She’d said as much once, and gotten a tableful of ugly female glares.
All evening long she had been hypersensitive to Scott’s every move. He had sat so still as he drove, as if only a certain set of muscles were required while the rest of him remained at ease. As they had walked in silence to the pizzeria, his posture was militarily erect. It was as if he’d only trusted himself on a very short leash.
She’d thought that his attitude was her fault; that he didn’t want to be here with her. But now his restraint was broken. Desire, liquid and molten, was surging between them, connected by soft damp lips and warm tongues. He wanted her. He was all but screwing her through their clothing.
Suddenly she had a much bigger problem. She wanted to feel it all again. Everything she’d felt that night in the shower. Only she didn’t want this time to be a game between Noel and Sam. This was her very real life. She needed it to be about Scott and Cole.
She breathed in a long shaky breath and tried to think. But his mouth was so warm and inviting, and the hands on her back were cupped and holding her body so perfectly against his that she couldn’t catch her breath. And she needed, badly, to do that.
She pressed against him, trying to gain a little space between them, until finally he lifted his lips from hers.
“Right.” He shook his head, as if to dispel a dream. She could feel the tension in him where his hands still held her. The breath he inhaled shuddered through his chest. He wanted her. But he was backing away from her. His fingers were flexing away from her body, one by one.
In the space it took him to unhand her, she clocked about eight good reasons why this was insane before her mind sputtered to a stop.
She reached out to—something, shove him farther away, out of her way, some decisive move that would end the madness. Instead, the moment her fingers touched his shirtfront they curled and grabbed, jerking him closer to kiss him again.
Scott resisted her kiss, not quite trusting her lust. Yet there were no words for what he was feeling. A kernel of desperation struggled to life within him. At any second she could decide that this—that he—was not really what she wanted.
He muttered something urgent against her lips but her overstimulated senses couldn’t work out the words.
She did register the instant he tried to move away from her. Pride tossed aside, she grabbed on to him. “No. Don’t—”
He looked down into Cole’s face, which expressed the sexual invitation he so badly wanted to see there.
He smiled at her in perfect understanding. “I’m not going anywhere. We just need to get off the street, okay? Come on.”
He scooped her about the shoulders and urged her across the street into an alley opposite the pizzeria. A few yards in from the street he guided her into the shallow dark alcove of a bricked-up warehouse entrance. He backed her up against the wall, his body blocking out all other impressions of the night. Bracing himself with a palm flat against the wall above her head he leaned into her until they touched everywhere from thigh to shoulder.
His free hand moved from her waist to lift her chin as he dipped his head, blotting out even the distant light.
She murmured something she thought would be a protest but in reality was relief as his lips settled over hers in slow but complete possession.