Jaded (Walkers Ford #2)

More nerve endings lit up, this time in her lips. A sweet heat ignited along her jaw. Never before in her life had a man like Lucas Ridgeway wanted to kiss her, let alone wanted her to kiss him.

Is that what this was? Could she call the brush of lips on skin a kiss? Hesitantly, she touched the tip of her tongue to the bristly hairs emerging from his cheek. His breath stopped, just for a moment, just long enough for his thighs to tense under hers.

He liked that. He liked what she’d done, so she kept on doing it, mouthing her way to his jaw, using teeth on his chin just to hear the rasp before she gathered her courage and lifted her mouth to his.

He didn’t shape his lips to hers, or try to take control of the kiss, but his body grew taut under hers as she nibbled and licked her way around his mouth, luxuriating in the paradox of rough scrape and soft heat. His breath heated her lips, somehow trickling along her nerves to her nipples, then lower to pool in her belly.

When she lifted her head, his eyelids drooped, and a heated flush stood high on his cheekbones. “How did it feel?”

“Scratchy.” She stroked her own lips with her index finger, feeling how the stubble brought heat and tenderness to the surface of the skin.

A corner of his mouth lifted. “I can go shave.”

She shook her head slowly and felt her hair slide free from her ear as she did. “I want to know how it feels other places,” she said.

The hand resting on the kitchen table flexed, then he exhaled and it relaxed. Trapping her gaze with his, he palmed her ass and snugged her up against his erection. One hand still cupping his jaw, she steadied herself on his shoulder and bent to kiss him.

Chemistry incinerated the air between them. It was hot and sliding and wet, but better than the slick stroke of his tongue on hers was the way he didn’t rush things. He sat back, his hand flexing on her hip, yes, but he simply sat there and let her kiss him. Slow and not at all sweet, not until she nipped at his lower lip. Then his hand slid into her hair, gripped the back of her head, and held her for the same treatment.

Lightning flashed from her mouth straight to her sex. She jerked back to stare wide-eyed at him, but his hand stayed on her hip and head, his brown eyes unrepentant. The message was clear: she wasn’t going anywhere, and she better be ready to take whatever she dished out.

“More,” she breathed.

With a twist of hips and shoulders he surged to his feet and pressed her into the narrow space between the fridge and the door to the dining room. She wound her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck, the better to revel in the sensation of his arm under her bottom and that delicious, sensitizing scruff against her mouth.

When her hands scrabbled at the back of his T-shirt, he leaned into her, using his chest to keep her in place and reached back to haul his shirt over his head, then drop it to the floor. Greedily she skimmed her palm up his ribs, feeling bone and muscle shift as he ground against her.

A car door slammed across the street. Lucas dragged his mouth from hers and peered over his shoulder at the screen door. “Better take this somewhere more private.”

His voice was a low rumble that rasped like velvet against her nipples and sex. “Agreed,” she whispered. She expected him to set her on her feet, but instead he carried her down the short hallway to her bedroom. Again, she expected him to put her down, but instead he bore her backward onto the bed. The sensation of hips between her legs, a warm, lightly furred male chest and broad shoulders looming over her, and those deep brown eyes sent a kick of arousal against her chest.

“Tell me what you want now.”

? ? ?

WHEN ALANA’S EYES widened, Lucas gave himself a hard mental shake.

Slow down. Forget that it’s been months since you had sex. It’s only been a couple of days. Maybe even a couple of hours. This woman thinks she can hurt you. That’s how inexperienced she is. She can’t see who you are, what you are. If you rush her into anything she’s going to furl up like a flower.

Alana had covered the bed with an old-fashioned chenille spread tucked over the pillows. Spring twilight darkened outside the windows, casting soft shadows over the dresser and the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. Roller shades with beaded fringes covered the windows. In an effort to make a house with a frankly ugly kitchen more appealing to a tenant, he’d stripped the wallpaper before she moved in, and painted the walls a soft white. The room felt old-fashioned, delicate, much like Alana.

The contrast between ladylike furnishing and demeanor and the tension thrumming between them seeped into his veins to pool in his cock.