“Get a grip.”
He grabbed her hand, pulled it between them, and curled her fingers around him through the material of his slacks. “You get a grip.”
Oh my. That would take one big grip. A huge one.
He rose to his feet, still fully clothed while she lay almost naked on the floor with her legs spread. A distinctly uncomfortable sensation. The last of her almost-there orgasm fled.
“Maybe we should forget this,” she said, rising to her elbows and closing her legs. “It wasn’t such a hot idea.”
Witt threw his jacket over the chair, kicked off his shoes, undid his tie, and started on his belt buckle. All the while he looked down at her. “Hottest idea I’ve had in a long time.”
“I thought the point was that it was supposed to be my idea.”
His shirt gone the way of the jacket, he stopped, his hand on his zipper. He had a very, very nice chest, gleaming in all that moonlight. “You wanna stop, Max?”
Darn. She and her big mouth. She could have let him do it, then said it was all his idea, and blamed him after it was over.
“Your choice,” he whispered, a deadly serious whisper that made her tremble and tingle at the same time. “Say stop, and we stop. Say go, and we’ll take each other to—”
He stopped. She couldn’t stand it. “Take each other where?”
It felt like they’d been sucked into a vacuum. Silence. Total. The longest and deepest she’d felt since ... since the crackle of chip bags and the shattering of salsa jars and the blast of the gun that killed Cameron fading into the stillness of the night.
Finally, Witt broke it. “To heaven, Max. Or hell. That’s your choice, too. But I’ll go there with you. I’ll go wherever you want. I can’t help myself.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Her chest hurt, her eyes watered, and taking a breath made her throat ache. Why the hell did he have to give her this kind of power? She was going to hurt him one day, hurt him badly. Max knew it, she hated it, but she didn’t know how to stop it. Why the hell couldn’t he figure that out and dump her?
The only thing she did know for sure was that today wasn’t that day.
She tugged on his pants leg. “You better make it heaven. Hell does not sound like a fun place. Now get down here because I’m getting cold.”
She hadn’t known he was holding his breath until he let it out in one long sigh. Then he unzipped his pants.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Maybe you should leave your pants on and ... you know, do it with them unzipped.” The thought of him completely naked was the oddest thing. She’d dreamed of it, fantasized about it, but well, she’d never seen it.
He laughed. “No.” Then he slid his trousers and briefs off and tossed them aside. He missed the chair this time. “You, however, can keep the shirt so you don’t get rug burn on the way to heaven.”
She wasn’t listening. Her mouth dried up. The man was magnificent, all defined muscle, broad chest, and perfect skin that gleamed in the moonlight. She felt her eyes go wide as saucers. “Oh my God, that thing is huge.” A joke to relieve the knot of tension in her belly, it was nevertheless completely true.
“Compliments aren’t necessary. You get your orgasm no matter what.”
He tossed something. With a little plop, it landed on her belly. A condom packet. “How long have you been carrying this around?”
“Since the day I met you.”
“Hopeful, weren’t you?”
“Determined.” Then he came down beside her. She thought he’d reach for the condom immediately and get the trip underway. Instead, he slid his fingers into her hair and cupped the back of her neck.
“We’re not gonna fuck, Max. We’re gonna make love.”
“I know.” Not really.
“Say it then. Ask me to make love to you.”
“Make love to me,” she parroted.
“Make love to me, Witt.”
“Please make love to me, Witt.” There. She’d added please to make the phrasing slightly different from his. It’s all in the phrasing, you know.
He saw right through it, and his mouth quirked in the lightest of smiles. “You are a hard woman, Max Starr.”
Yeah. She’d never meant to be. “You know, it was you I was thinking about when I was talking on the phone.”
“Ride ’em cowboy?”
Ooh, he had been listening a while.
He grinned. “Knew it was me you were thinking about.”