At First Touch

by Tamara Sneed

  Anger flared in her eyes and, for some reason that made Wyatt feel even more out of control. For so long, she had ignored him and now he had her attention. He felt his muscles tighten with the need to grab her and drag her to the nearest flat surface.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Wyatt. I wore this dress because I like this dress.”

  “You wore that dress because you knew that I would not be able to take my eyes off you in that dress. Especially after that kiss you laid on me this afternoon. What was that about?”

  She flushed slightly, then snapped, “If Dorrie is the love of your life as you claim, then you should have no problem having eyes only for her. And, if I recall correctly, you kissed me first.”

  “Work with me here, Quinn,” he practically begged. “You know that your body…your body…” His voice trailed off as his eyes zeroed in on her breasts.

  Quinn’s jaw clenched, which he should have taken as a warning sign for the impending eruption and apologized. But it was too late.

  “You ass,” she spat out.

  “Quinn—”

  “If you don’t want to sully your precious Dorrie with your dirty thoughts about me, then maybe you should find someone you can sully your thoughts with, instead of pretending that I’m this big temptation. I’m not the problem, Wyatt. You are. Instead of admitting that maybe, just maybe, you don’t want Dorrie, and that you should find someone who you could have the picket fence and family without her being boring as plain toast, you blame me. This afternoon in her office, I had to resist the urge to take her pulse to make certain she was still breathing. My God, Wyatt, how do you stand it?”

  “I take full responsibility for the fact that I am easily distracted by you in a dress like that. Any man would be. But you could also admit the truth. You wore that dress with me in mind.”

  She sputtered in outrage, “What do you want me to do, Wyatt? Should I wear jeans and a sweatshirt? Would that make you feel better? Maybe I could wear a pair of your overalls? You do have overalls, right? All cowboys have overalls—”

  Wyatt couldn’t take it anymore. Her eyes were flashing; her honey skin was flush with anger and maybe the same undeniable heat and lust that he was feeling. He cursed and closed the distance between them in two long strides. She must have seen the intent in his eyes because she looked momentarily panicked and tried to step back from him. Wyatt forgot the towel, grabbed her arms and slammed his mouth against hers at the same time that he molded her body against his.

  Quinn gasped, and he took the opportunity to ram his tongue into her mouth. To plunder her mouth. To crush any resistance she may have thought of having. He was tired of being the nice guy around her. No more. Not until he had gotten a good taste of her. And he did. All the strawberries and honey he could want.

  One second, Quinn had been fighting the need to run across the room to grab Wyatt’s towel and see if the rest of his body matched his impossibly sculpted chest; the next, she was in his arms, with his tongue inside of her. And it was like being quenched with water after being thirsty for years.

  When she had walked into his apartment, she hadn’t expected him to be half-nude and dripping with water, like her own private adult entertainment show. He had a body that should have made every personal trainer in Hollywood cry in envy. Miles of gleaming brown skin, well-defined arms, a narrow waist and long lean legs. He had hidden all of that underneath his denim and tacky shirts. The man had been rocking the towel like a Calvin Klein model and looked good enough to eat.

  His mouth continued to devour her, his tongue continued to demand more. The muscles, the hardness under her hands. She moved her hands around to his chest. His pectoral muscles flinched under her touch, and his nipples beaded against the palm of her hand. She moved her hands lower to his stomach and realized that the towel had slipped and was in danger of slipping farther.

  His hands moved to stop hers. “We should stop, Quinn. We have to stop,” he groaned against her mouth, his voice impossibly deep and sending rumbles of ecstasy against her mouth.

  “No,” she whispered. He stared at her for a moment, then devoured her mouth once more with a passion that slightly scared her. No man had ever wanted her this much. No man had ever looked at her the way Wyatt had looked at her.

  Wyatt plunged his hands into her hair, almost to the point of pain. His tongue plunged into her mouth over and over, his teeth nipped at her lips. His hands moved roughly from her arms to her back and down to squeeze her behind. Quinn moaned and moved closer to him, cursing the towel that prevented her from feeling every single inch of him.

  Through mutual, unspoken consent, the two stumbled into the bedroom, lips and arms jumbled and entwined. The world shifted and they were in the middle of Wyatt’s king-sized bed. Wyatt moved in between her legs, fitting perfectly, more perfectly than she thought possible. Her hands wrapped around his back to his lower back, to massage and knead, to push at that cursed towel.

  Wyatt’s mouth moved to her neck while she tried to breathe. He paid erotic homage to her neck, licking and nicking, as his hands made their way down her body, burning through the thin material of the dress. Her eyes squeezed closed, and she arched her back at the feel of his callused hands on her bare legs. His hands were so hard and her skin was so soft. The friction made her feet flex in sheer need.

  His hands stopped their perusal of her body and landed on her breasts. He squeezed. Quinn instantly froze. He was touching her body. The private parts of her that were only hinted at in pictures and film. The parts that everyone thought were perfect, but they weren’t. At all.

  She bit her bottom lip to prevent the protest at the edge of her tongue. She cursed herself and told herself to enjoy him, to enjoy the feelings, but she suddenly felt self-conscious, uncertain. Soon, he would take off her clothes and he would notice that the reality of her didn’t match the retouched, well-lit image on the screen or magazine covers. And he would compare, like all men inevitably did. The men never told her in the heat of the moment that she came up short, but she could always see it in their eyes the next morning, or in the fact that they never called again. Once a man slept with the infamous Quinn Sibley, what more did he need to brag about to his friends?

  Wyatt continued to plant kisses on her neck and shoulders, then slipped the straps down her arms. Quinn squeezed her eyes shut. He was getting closer. He pushed the dress down past her breasts and to her waist. Cool air touched her already hard nipples, but now she just felt cold, instead of aroused. She clenched the cool sheets in her hands. She started thinking of ways to position herself, where the light would hit her just right. It was all about the lighting, after all.

  She shifted on the bed and Wyatt mumbled something against her neck that sounded like a protest, then gently moved her back into the worst absolute position to hide her flaws, flat on her back. He moved back to her mouth, his tongue plunging inside, flickering the dying embers.

  Quinn tried to be excited. She wanted to be excited. She dueled with his tongue. Wyatt was beautiful as he hovered above her in the moonlight. His jaw clenched, his eyes flowing with passion and his lips slightly plump from their ravenous kisses. His hips were undulating against hers and even through the towel, she could feel the hardness. He was long and thick. She prayed that she could, for once, just enjoy and be enjoyable and not be the “wet blanket,” as one man had called her behind her back. Another man had told her to her face that, like most beautiful women, she was a bore in bed.

  She suddenly realized how important Wyatt was to her because she didn’t want him to think that about her. She would die if he thought that about her. She forced herself to focus on his weight on her. She liked that. He felt warm and heavy, like a big ol’ comforter.

  “You okay.?” Wyatt whispered as he touched the tip of his tongue against one nipple. She heard the towel hit the floor. She flinched as she felt his hardness against her thigh.

  Quinn faked a moan and glanced at the computer on the large desk in the corner of the room. She
was just starting to twist to get a look at the other side of the room when Wyatt’s eyes abruptly opened. She froze.

  He stopped moving, hovering above her, staring directly into her eyes. He gently brushed hair from her face, and Quinn felt a small spark of something again under his gentle ministrations.

  His voice was soft as he whispered, “Are you still with me, Quinn?”

  Quinn gulped down her sudden nerves. He could see her. For the first time, a man could truly see her in bed.

  “I’m here,” she said, moving her arms back around his waist. She squeezed him to encourage him to continue.

  He remained still even though she could feel the strain in his arms as he held himself above her. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “No, you’re not. Talk to me.”

  “I’m really here, Wyatt. I promise.”

  He muttered a curse and dropped his head to her shoulder. He kissed her again, and she threw herself into the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. Trying to remember how much she loved the feel of his slick tongue inside her mouth. It took him several seconds, but then he began to move again. His hand traveled up her leg and to her center. She hid her wince as one finger invaded her. Deep inside of her. Where she was completely dry.

  She prayed that he wouldn’t stop so they could go back to cuddling and kissing…fully clothed. Maybe he would allow her to turn on the light in the hallway to cast a better environment for her body. But he stopped. Wyatt rolled off her and onto his back next to her. He laid his arm across his eyes and took several deep breaths.

  Quinn released her own deep breath and bit her bottom lip to squeeze back her tears. She had been called cold and not good in bed before, but she knew that it would hurt more coming from Wyatt.

  Chapter 11

  The moment Quinn froze under his touch, Wyatt was reminded how strange it was that he was in his bedroom with Quinn. His gaze dropped to her beautiful bare breasts and then to her flat stomach and her flared hips, where the dress was bunched. He swallowed the perpetual lump in his throat. This was either a dream or a nightmare and he would wake up hard as a rod and in need of a cold shower like he usually did whenever he thought of Quinn.

  Except no matter how much he told himself to wake up, he was wide awake and Quinn was right here. She was right there, looking petrified and about as aroused as a woman at a gynecologist exam. She glanced at him, then quickly looked away. Wyatt’s heart broke a little and something shifted in his heart. Quinn was gorgeous. No one could deny that, but there was so much more to her, and for the first time, Wyatt wondered if he had never noticed that.

  “What’s going on here, Quinn?” His voice in the still bedroom caused her to jump slightly.

  She kept her gaze on the ceiling. Her hands clenched at her sides. “You’re the one who stopped.”

  Wyatt wanted nothing more than to climb back on top of her and insert any part of his body inside of her, because as hard as he was, he didn’t exactly need her active participation. But there was something in her eyes that stopped him. That dampened his own ardor. Maybe all this time he had been like every other man out there, just focusing on the outside, and that was why she had treated him like crap. He should have treated her like he did Dorrie. He should have started by getting to know her. Getting her comfortable with him. Wooing her.

  Instead he had yelled at her, lusted after her, told her that she wasn’t good enough for him and now he had treated her like a common slut. For a supposedly nice guy, he was an ass.

  “Maybe we should try this another night,” he said, gently.

  She turned to him, surprised. “No. Let’s finish. I’m ready.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Quinn started to move off the bed, but Wyatt grabbed her arm. She glared at him and tried to tug out of his grip. He gently tugged her back onto the bed and tucked her against his side, their barely clothed bodies fitting perfectly. He shifted his lower body slightly to move his still stiff penis away from her.

  “We don’t have to go so fast, Quinn,” he whispered.

  “Who’s moving fast?”

  He didn’t answer but smoothed hair from her face then traced his way to her ears. She looked confused as he gently tugged on her ears.

  “I don’t think your ears are too big. In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that I’m one of those men who has an ear fetish,” he confessed.

  She gave him a begrudging smile like he wanted her to, and his chest grew tight. He realized in that instant that this woman could make him do anything with that smile.

  Wyatt pressed a kiss on her forehead, then just laid next to her on the bed, staring out the window at the star-filled sky and the moon. Her breathing became soft and deep and her body relaxed against him until Wyatt almost feared that she was asleep.

  He cursed himself. He had Quinn Sibley in his bedroom and he had stopped her from undressing. But as she snuggled closer to him, and her soft breasts pressed against his arm and her legs moved over his and she relaxed, Wyatt realized that was the point.

  “I like all the plants and flowers in the apartment,” she said, breaking the silence. “This interest in gardening…It’s not just an interest, is it?”

  “It’s a business, whether I admit it or not.”

  “I heard you did all the landscaping on Main Street, and every house in town that has a beautiful lawn seems to have your handprint, too.”

  “My major in college was landscape architecture. I always thought I’d be traveling the world, creating green spaces for businesses and private residences, but then my dad died, and I had to drop out of college and return home to run the family business. The mortuary has been in the family for four generations.”

  “And you love flowers so much because growing something—anything—is exactly opposite from all the death you’ve dealt with your entire life,” she guessed.

  Wyatt paused for a moment, absently running his hand across the smooth skin of her shoulder.

  “Maybe,” he finally admitted.

  “Why can’t someone else run the mortuary? You obviously hate it.”

  “There is no one else. There’s just me. The last male Granger in Sibleyville. Actually, the last of the Grangers this side of the Mississippi. We have a whole slew of relatives on the East Coast running their own Granger Funeral Home.”

  “A family of morticians? Just like some families are in show business generation after generation. Your family is in the funeral business?”

  He abruptly laughed and said, “As crazy as this sounds, I don’t want to talk about the mortuary business while I have you in my bed.” He saw her smile in the moonlight and gently traced her plump lips with the pad of his thumb. “So you want to tell me what just happened here.”

  “The only thing that happened was you stopped.”

  He wanted to protest, but then she climbed on top of him and pressed her mouth against his. He heard a moan, not certain if it came from her or him, and her sharp fingernails dug into his shoulders. He slipped his tongue into her mouth and once more stroked the dark, moist places that he liked to think were reserved just for him. Her body sank into his and he remembered that she was completely bare, except for the dress bunched at her waist and the scrap of lace material that passed for her panties.

  He gently flipped them over, with her on the bottom. He kept her mouth busy as his hands moved to her breasts. Like a repeat on television, she became completely still again. Wyatt stifled a curse of frustration and started to move off her again, but her hands moved to his, keeping them on their breasts.

  “My breasts are fake,” she blurted out.

  He stared at her face, illuminated in the moonlight. He had expected to hear her say many things, but not that.

  “What?” he croaked.

  “My breasts are fake,” she repeated, sounding close to tears.

  He thought of multiple responses, then settled on, “I know, Quinn.”

  “And my thighs are flabby because I don’t do enough lunges�
��okay, I don’t do any lunges—and my stomach isn’t as flat as it should be. In movies and on television, they can hide all that. The right light, the right shading, the right placement of a sheet or a prop. It makes everything look perfect. It makes me look perfect. And that swimsuit calendar was all retouched. And most men expect me to look like that. Most men expect me to act how I look. To act like this sex kitten, but I’m not. I’m just…me.”

  She finished and looked at him expectantly, almost as if she expected him to run screaming from the room.

  “I don’t go to the movies much, and I don’t watch a lot of television, except sports. And I think you’re beautiful just as you are, Quinn.”

  Quinn stared at him for a moment. Then tears filled her eyes as she whispered, “I’m also horrible in bed.”

  Wyatt coughed to hide his shock. “I find that very hard to believe.”

  “I am. I was labeled The Worst Lay in Daytime Television.”

  Wyatt instantly grew angry, but kept his voice gentle so as not to scare her, “What jackass called you that?”

  She swiped at her eyes and said, warily, “Calm down, Wyatt.”

  “I am completely calm. I just want to know what jackass called you that so I can find him and shove my foot up his ass.”

  She giggled and gently punched him in the chest. “You’re supposed to be the mild-mannered one.”

  He fought a grin as he said, “I’m as mild-mannered as Clark Kent.”

  “That’s pretty mild-mannered,” she agreed. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and her thighs widened a little to allow him more access.

  Wyatt felt her body slowly relax. She ran her hands down his back, and he tried not to convey how unrelaxed he was. He was still between her creamy thighs, gradually growing hard as rock as heat and moisture radiated from her core. She stared at him with such trust in her eyes that he instantly felt like a Neanderthal for even thinking about moving.

  “I want to try again,” she said softly. “But I’m warning you that I’m pretty awful.”