At the unexpected touch of his lips, a sweet wave of hysteria roiled through Robin; her heart was suddenly slamming against her chest. His hand was on her nape, pulling her closer, caressing her neck while the other hand found her shoulder, drifted lower, skimming torturously over her breast to her waist. His lips moved languidly on hers, savoring the taste of them, softly shaping them to his own.
The sensation rocked her; Robin heard herself whimper, and his tongue flicked across her bottom lip, sweeping inside, entwining with her own.
Her beer slipped through her fingers; her hand went around his waist, and she stepped more closely into the circle of his arms, wedging her leg between his. He cupped her face; his rough thumb stroked her cheek while he pressed her harder into him, anchoring her to his solid body.
A delicate pressure began to build in her, filling the space around her pounding heart. Jake delved deeper, caressing her, drinking her in, and Robin slipped unconsciously into a pool of shimmering desire, a throbbing that spilled into her breasts and her groin. She grabbed Jake’s wrist, clung to it so that she would not melt right there, into the wildflowers, and was numbly aware that he effortlessly held her up and buoyed her.
At the very moment she thought she would disappear in his kiss, he lifted his head, gazed into her eyes, traced her swollen bottom lip with his thumb, and said, “Yeah. You want me.”
Robin blinked, dragged a shaky hand across her mouth. “Do not,” she muttered breathlessly.
“Liar,” he murmured and kissed her again, kissed her so hard that Robin’s blood began to boil. Kissed her so thoroughly that she was suddenly flat on her back on an old, rotting picnic table, amid beer bottles, beneath a live oak tree and the most virile, absolutely-wrong-for-her guy she had ever met with a tattoo of barbed wire sneaking around his bicep.
And it felt glorious.
Chapter Fifteen
How long they lay there, Jake had no idea. He had slipped into a dreamy, sensual world where his imagination and his hands ran wild, until at last he decided she might be uncomfortable on that hard wooden table. Reluctantly, he pulled her up and handed her another beer. Robin smiled a little deliriously toward the sky. “Isn’t it a glorious day?”
It was glorious, all right.
They sat side by side, their fingers entwined, talking about everything and nothing, listening to the rustle of the spring breeze in the trees around them and watching the sun dapple the river.
They talked about baseball, Robin continuing to insist, for reasons that seemed insane to Jake, the merits of the pitcher Moz, who had not delivered a game since opening day. They talked about peanuts, the edible kind, with Robin reporting the fat content in an average serving.
“Why do you do that?” he asked as she cracked a peanut and studied the contents. “Life can’t be too much fun if you worry about every bite you put in your mouth.”
“Because,” she said, popping two peanuts in her mouth, “there is a fat girl in me dying to get out. And the world does not like fat girls. Especially men. Admit it.”
“Men like women with some meat on their bones. They like someone they can grab hold of and not be afraid of breaking in the heat of the moment.”
Robin looked at him from the corner of her eye, a dubious smile on her lips. “So . . . the chunkier the better?”
“Yeah. Sort of.” He imagined having hold of her, driving into her warmth while she gripped him with all the strength she had.
Jake had to look away.
Robin cracked open another peanut, oblivious.
They talked about music.
“I guess my all-time favorite has to be The Rolling Stones. What’s the name of that song?” Robin asked through a mouthful of peanuts, her concern about the fat grams apparently forgotten. “You know . . . I saw her today in my reflection, a timeglass in the sa-aa-and,” she warbled in the most godawful, tone-deaf voice Jake had ever heard.
He burst out laughing. “You’re butchering the lyrics.”
“I am not!”
“Yes, you are. It goes, I saw her today at the reception, a wineglass in her hand . . . .”
Robin frowned thoughtfully and tossed another peanut shell into the little pile she had created, and then tried to pretend she was mad when he pondered aloud how someone could get such simple lyrics so terribly wrong.
They talked about his school, how he had come to study architecture, how he hoped to expand his business. “I admire you for it,” Robin said. “It must be hard with work, and Cole, and you know, everything else.”
He wondered briefly what everything else meant, but the talk turned to her work, why her father had demoted her the way he had. “I used to travel all over the world as an ambassador for LTI. Now I am sitting in my house trying to get Eldagirt Wirt on the phone.”
“Yeah, well, I bet the Eldagirts of the world have more impact on what LTI does than a bunch of VIPs looking for a party.”
They talked about Zaney, with Robin looking genuinely distressed for the injury that Zaney had suffered in the oil fields many years ago, which left him with a mind about as deep as a birdbath. “He’s a good man. No sense at all, but a good, well-meaning man,” Jake said.