CHAPTER EIGHT
Matt waited while Eve unlocked the door leading to her apartment. The air was dark and close, heating around them as she fumbled with the key. Goose bumps lifted on Eve’s bare shoulders. Without thinking he put the tip of his index finger to her spine, tucked between her sharp-edged shoulder blades as she struggled with the sticky lock. A hitch in her breathing, then the bumps disappeared into smooth flesh.
“Cold or nervous?” he asked. Find an angle. Make her stay dressed, make her rethink her determination to get you in bed.
Christ. If he were anyone else, he’d find this hilarious. Alone in the dark with the sexiest cocktail waitress in Lancaster, and he was trying to make her put on more clothes and keep her hands off him.
“Neither, now,” she replied, looking over her shoulder through the tumbled mass of black hair gleaming in the red light from the EXIT sign over the office door. Inside the apartment she shed her bag and laptop on a small table by the door and walked into the kitchen to turn on the light over the stove.
“Water? Soda?” she asked as she opened the fridge.
“I’m fine.” He sat gingerly on the arm of her love seat, and refined his strategy as she poured herself a glass of red wine. He would not undress. He would not unfasten, unzip, unbutton, or unhook anything on her. He would keep her hands off him, focus entirely on her. He would not walk through the open bedroom door to his left. He would stay on the love seat that was too small for any real trouble.
Who was he kidding? He’d gotten into plenty of trouble in smaller spaces. Like the front seat of his Jeep.
Wine in hand, she strolled back into the living room to set her iPod in the sound dock and clicked through to a playlist. The sounds of Maud Ward’s latest hit drifted into the air, the volume too low for him to make out the words but high enough for him to hear the melody and bass line. His brain peripherally occupied with filling in the words to the song, he savored the way she was put together. Under his gaze her body relaxed, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth, disappearing, then reappearing as she looked over her shoulder at him. She looked happier, calmer, as if she wasn’t carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, and he hadn’t even touched her yet.
She took another sip of wine, then set the glass down on the shelf next to the sound dock and walked over to stand in front of him. He reached out and set his hands on her hips, let his thumbs stroke the bare skin between the bottom edge of the corset and the waistband of her skirt. When he closed his eyes, he couldn’t tell where the leather ended and her skin began except by the way her breathing stumbled.
He kept his eyes closed, because with him sitting down, the smooth, pale tops of her breasts and the sharp line of her collarbone were right at eye level, but darkness only heightened the sensation in his fingertips and the scent of Eve, mint and rosemary and a delicate soap underneath it all, rising into his nostrils. She slid her hand into the hair at his nape and bent forward, resting her forehead on the top of his head. The limitless black space in his mind blasted wide open, the heat and scent of Eve dissolving through him, opening him.
I need this.
I can’t want this, let alone need this.
She pushed at his shoulders as he looped his arm around her waist, and then he was on his back on the love seat, the sweet soft weight of Eve all along the length of his torso. Their legs tangled together as he shifted back to get as flat as possible, and she pressed her mouth to his. He took her at her word and wove his fingers into her hair, gripping her skull and holding her to him for kiss after kiss, the click of teeth and the wet slide of tongues audible as the song selection changed. He was delirious, losing himself in the music and Eve’s mouth, now moving over the scruff on his jaw to the spot where his pulse pounded in his neck.
She was lying between his sprawled legs, which wasn’t going to work for either one of them, so he left one hand in her hair and bodily shifted her so her legs clasped his. Then he curled his fingers in body-warm leather and hitched her skirt up until it barely covered her ass, allowing her knees to drop to either side of his. Mouth open against his, she gave a little gasp and pressed her mound against his hip bone, the movement grinding against his cock. Involuntarily he gripped the curve of her ass and pulled her closer. His shirt rode up just enough to press the soft skin of her belly against his abdomen, another tantalizing reminder of what he wanted and couldn’t have.
She was slowly going up in flames in his arms, breathy kisses and a rhythmic grind against him, and for a moment he thought he was off the hook. Then she stopped and looked at him.