Sweet Surrender (Sugar Rush #3)

by Nina Lane

  She felt him looking at her, and she tore her attention from the screen to face him. A faint tension stretched through his body. His eyes gleamed with both curiosity and growing heat.

  “So what rules have you broken, Darling?” he asked.

  The one about not letting my heart get involved in a fuck buddy arrangement.

  “Kissing you in the library is probably one of them,” she said.

  “We could do a lot more in the library, you know.”

  Kate made a tsking noise, even as her mind filled with images of Tyler fucking her against a library bookshelf. She shivered.

  “Have you ever done something like that?” She gestured to the TV, where the actors were still going at it hot and heavy.

  “Sure.”

  Her pulse sped up. “You’ve had sex with a woman on a desk?”

  “I’ve had sex with women in a bunch of places.” He turned his gaze back to the movie. “A desk has been one of the most ordinary.”

  She tried to scoff. “A bed isn’t the most ordinary?”

  “A bed can be the most extraordinary place for a good fuck.”

  He said the word fuck the way he’d said Kate when they’d first met. Like he was crunching into a piece of hard candy. Like he was about to lean across the sofa and kiss her, using his tongue to urge her lips open so he could slide the candy from his mouth into hers and deepen the kiss until they were lost in a wave of sweet, hot pressure and the taste of melting peppermint candy…

  Her body throbbed with longing. She closed her arms over her chest, her hard nipples chafing against her bra. Onscreen, Higgins had already approached Eliza and was giving her her first acting lesson in masturbating for the camera. Eliza rubbed her round breasts and spread her legs to reveal her glistening sex before she slid one long tapered finger into her channel and thrust it back and forth. Higgins, standing beside the bed, nodded his approval and directed her to draw her legs up further. She tilted her head back and moaned, circling her thumb around her clit.

  Kate blushed hotly. She did the exact same thing—though of course when she was alone.

  God. Too much more of this, and she’d come from the visual stimulation alone.

  Was Tyler as aroused as she was? She shot a quick glance at him. Her breath caught, fresh heat spiraling into her core. An unmistakable bulge pressed against the fly of his trousers—one he was making no effort to conceal. He had one arm behind his head, and a taut energy coiled through the long muscles of his torso and thighs.

  He returned her gaze. Electricity charged the air. Kate’s heartbeat hammered in her head. He took her hand and tugged her closer. Her whole body was primed, ready for him to kiss her, to take her…

  The music of “Super Freak” burst through the room suddenly. Tyler muttered a curse and pulled away from her, grabbing his cell from the coffee table. He glanced at the screen and started to toss the phone aside, then stopped.

  He hit the reply button. “Yeah?”

  Seriously? He was answering the phone instead of kissing her?

  “That’s awesome, man, thanks. I’ll be right over.” He ended the call and pushed to his feet. “Sorry, sweetie, I gotta go.”

  “What?”

  “Really sorry.” He touched her hair, regret flashing over his expression before he started toward the door. “But I’ve been waiting for, like, months, and they’re finally in.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He grabbed his keys from the foyer table. “You want to come with me?”

  “Where?” With a grumble of irritation over the fact that he was choosing an errand over hot, porn-inspired sex with her, Kate picked up her bag and followed him to his car.

  “Where are we going?” she asked again, when he reversed out of the driveway.

  “You’ll see.”

  Kate spent the drive into Rainsville attempting less-than-successfully to quell her lust. Evening sunlight slanted across the windshield of the Trans Am. Tyler bypassed Wild Child and the downtown shopping district before heading into a sparsely populated neighborhood.

  After a few turns, he pulled up beside a somewhat rundown garage. Old cars sat in the grassy lot outside, their hoods flipped open to reveal the grimy innards.

  “What are we doing here?” Kate got out of the car, reaching down to pet a black lab that bounded up in greeting.

  “I’ll show you.”

  Tyler tossed the dog a treat as they walked over a gravel-strewn path to the garage, where a grizzled man of about fifty held up a hand from the open bay.

  “Hey, man, I put them on the worktable. Finally, huh?”

  “You’re not kidding. Charlie, this is Kate. Kate, my friend Charlie.”

  “Hi, Charlie.” Kate extended her hand.

  He grinned, wiping his greasy palm on his overalls before shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you. First girl Tyler’s ever brought over here.”

  “Most girls aren’t interested in cars.” Tyler grasped Kate’s elbow and guided her into the garage.

  The familiar smells of engine oil and grease filled her head. Cars sat in several different bays, some perched on hydraulic lifts, and tools lined the tables and benches.

  Her father’s garage hadn’t been anything like this—just an attachment to their little house—but the feel of it was the same. Two other men lounged in lawn chairs outside the garage, and they gave her and Tyler nods of greeting.

  At the end of the garage, a car sat beneath a blue cover. Tyler stopped and tugged the cover up over the hood, then rolled it back over the windshield. Before he’d even gotten the cover halfway off, Kate was staring at the silvery blue car in astonishment.

  “Is that a California Special?” she asked.

  “’68.” He shot her a grin across the hood. “I thought you’d appreciate it.”

  Kate ran her hand over the fender. “Where in the world did you get this?”

  “A few years ago, a fellow over in Salinas called Charlie about a bunch of barn finds. You know, cars that’ve been found abandoned in old garages or barns.” He patted the car. “This was one of them. I’d just dropped out of college and was spending all my time futzing with old cars, which my father didn’t like. So when I heard about the barn finds, I figured I’d piss him off even more by spending his money on an old junk car. So I bought this car, had it towed over here, and told Charlie I wanted to learn how to restore it. After he finished laughing, we sat down and came up with a plan. I stripped the car down to the bones and have been working on rebuilding it from the floor pan up.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Kate walked around looking at the car from all angles. “How long has it taken you?”

  “A few years. It’s been hard to find all the original parts, so we’ve had to do a lot of searching and waiting.” He went to a workbench, where two red lights sat. “The taillights just came in. That’s what Charlie called about. I’m still looking for a ’68 gas cap with the Mustang emblem, but we’re close to being finished.”

  “What will you do with it when you’re done?”

  “Charlie wants me to take it to car shows.” Tyler went around to the back of the car to study the tail section. “Mostly I just did it to see if I could.”

  “Why did your father not like you restoring old cars?”

  “At the time, I was just hanging around the garage changing oil and whatnot,” Tyler said. “It wasn’t so much the car repair my father didn’t like as the fact that I’d dropped out of college to do it. And it wasn’t even a job…just something I did when I had nothing else to do. The president of Sugar Rush doesn’t like it when you don’t have anything else to do.”

  Kate could see the president’s point, but Tyler was downplaying his accomplishments.

  “Restoring a Mustang is no easy task,” she said. “It takes serious dedication, commitment, attention to detail. Does your father still not realize that?”

  Tyler shrugged. “He knows I’m into old cars and that I’ve been working on the Mustang, but he’s n
ever seen it. It’s just a hobby.”

  “Would you stop putting yourself down?” Kate rounded the car and paused next to him, her ire rising at the discovery that no one, not even his family, not even Tyler himself, realized how much he had to offer. His value.

  “I know about car restoration, Tyler.” She poked him in the chest to emphasize her point. “It’s an art. It’s taking something that’s been ruined and making it fresh and new again. It’s about unearthing hidden beauty and bringing history to life. If your family doesn’t understand that, that’s one thing. But don’t you dare try and tell yourself you’re not doing something extraordinary here.”

  He didn’t look at her, rubbing at a spot of dirt on the fender. Kate stepped back. Uh oh, had she crossed a line? But hadn’t they been doing that since the beginning? They’d been breaking all the fuck buddy rules.

  Maybe friends with benefits had a different set of rules. Despite him telling her the terms meant the same thing, Kate didn’t think so. Friends did things together. They talked, had dinner, shared interests, went to the movies. They let each other into their lives. Maybe when the benefits part between them was over, they’d still hold on to the friends part. Because her life would be very empty without Tyler in it.

  Her chest constricted. She turned and started back out to the Trans Am.

  “Hey.” Tyler came up behind her, touching her arm. “What’s going on?”

  “I just think…I mean, you’re better than everyone else seems to realize.” Kate swallowed past the sudden tightness in her throat. “Even you. I get that your brothers are all mature and accomplished, but that doesn’t mean they’re better than you. And it doesn’t mean you don’t have something to offer. You’ve hidden behind this party-boy image for all these years because you’ve thought you’ll never be like your brothers. But you’ve never realized that you don’t have to be. Yeah, you’ve acted like a total ass…a speedboat, for God’s sake…but you don’t have to do stupid things like that for attention. All you have to do is be you, Tyler. That’s more than enough.”

  The sunlight reflected off his thick hair, the ends glowing blond. His eyes were golden-brown, the color of topaz, his skin bronzed. Kate knew that at no time in the future would she ever again meet someone like him. A comet who had swooped into her path and set her life on fire.

  Before she’d realized he’d moved, he was pulling her into his arms. She fell against the hard wall of his chest the instant his mouth came down on hers. The world dissolved to nothing except the pressure of his strong arms around her and the quest of his lips.

  She put her arms around his waist and held on as if he were an anchor in a shifting sea. He slipped his tongue into her mouth, licked the corners of her lips. Through the thin material of his T-shirt, his heart beat faster, the thumping sound echoing through her and settling in her core.

  Only when the whoops and cat-calls of the other men filtered through the haze of lust did they finally ease apart. Tyler smiled at her, moving to block her from sight as he flipped the men off behind his back.

  Seconds later, they got back into the Trans Am and headed back to her house. Kate thought they’d return to working on the historical candy proposal, but when they went inside, Tyler closed the door, spun her around, and backed her right up against it for a hot kiss. He pushed his hands under her pants and tugged them down her thighs.

  “Oh…um…” Kate squirmed, breathless. “Should we go into the…”

  “We will,” he assured her. He trailed his lips to her neck and bit gently at her collarbone while his hand wiggled into her underwear.

  Kate’s head spun. Before he’d even gotten a finger inside her, she was melting from the inside out. A sudden fire lit in the air, and then he was yanking impatiently at the rest of her clothes, his body lacing with tension. His urgency fired her own. Kate shoved her hands under his T-shirt, stroking the slopes of his pecs as she jumped up to wrap her legs around his waist.

  He grabbed her ass and stalked into the bedroom, where he lowered her onto the bed, stripped them both out of their clothes, and planted himself solidly on top of her. Kate lost all track of time, the surroundings, even her own name as he plunged inside her and started to thrust. To fuck.

  God in heaven, she loved it—this stunning, delicious plunging in and out, the friction and heat flooding them both, the wet smacking sound of their bodies. She loved their sweat running together, the bite of his teeth on her neck, the flex of his shoulder muscles beneath her fingers. She loved the way he hooked her legs over his forearms to deepen his penetration, and she loved his raw, throaty whispers of encouragement when he sensed she was close to the edge.

  She came over and over, with cries, screams, and whimpers, until Tyler spent himself inside her and they collapsed, exhausted, against the pillows.

  She loved him. She only wished she could tell him that.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Dude, you’re in my light.” Spencer slanted Tyler an exasperated frown.

  Tyler couldn’t help it. He was almost jittery with anticipation.

  Spencer’s work in the lab had always seemed mystical to him—like his brother was some sort of wizard with his formulas and potions—but watching him recreate historic Sugar Rush recipes had been downright cool.

  Spencer had walked Tyler through the processes of roasting and winnowing the cocoa beans, then grinding them into chocolate. Then he showed Tyler how to use the tempering machine, which formed the chocolate into bars.

  He leaned closer to watch Spencer pull the chocolate from the candy mold. Shiny and a rich, earthy brown, the rough-hewn block almost glowed under the light.

  “Is it staying together?” he asked.

  “So far so good. And no mutton suet needed.” Spencer extended his gloved hand to show Tyler the finished lump of chocolate. “Pure chocolate with only sugar, salt, and spices.”

  Tyler picked up a knife and broke two pieces off the block. He handed one to his brother before taking a bite. Though grainier in texture than modern chocolate due to the traditional process of stone-grinding, the chocolate was pretty good—semisweet with hints of pepper, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  “I think we got it.” Spencer took another bite. “The brittleness is a result of the manufacturing technique. This kind of chocolate would probably have been grated and melted into milk to make hot cocoa. There’s another recipe that includes musk, ambergris, and pistachios. I’m going to work on that next. After I figure out if musk and ambergris are even food safe.”

  “What about the Gold Rush bar?” Tyler asked.

  “It’s a more recent recipe, so it’s smoother and sweeter. As close to the original as we can get.”

  Tyler broke another piece of chocolate off the block. “And the other candy recipes?”

  “The honey candy isn’t too different from what we’ve done recently,” Spencer mused. “I’d like to give the lollipops a try, though based on the formula I think they might be too soft.”

  “They were supposed to be,” Tyler said. “Edward Stone sold them in food carts on the street, and he put them on sticks because it was more convenient for people to eat on the go. So the candy itself had to be soft so it would be easier to fit onto the stick.”

  Spencer’s eyebrows lifted. “Sounds like you’re doing more than just shuffling books in the library. Good for you.”

  “It’s neat, this whole history thing,” Tyler said. “I never knew Stone Confectioners sold chocolates and candy that we don’t even make anymore. Don’t you think that stuff is an important part of the company’s heritage?”

  “Well, sure, but times change,” Spencer said. “Maybe they didn’t sell, or there was a problem with suppliers and the company had to cut back.”

  “Still, we have all the recipes.” Tyler spread out his hand to indicate the digitized pages he’d given his brother. “Cream candy, molasses candy, vinegar candy. How many of them do you think you could recreate?”

  “As many as we w
ant.” Spencer shook his head, amusement lighting his eyes. “Man, I’ve never seen you so into anything that didn’t have big tits and long legs. What’s going on with you?”

  Tyler was too excited to be insulted. He and Kate had come up with a big idea that could be even bigger, if he could get his brothers on board. And why wouldn’t they want to be? This was Stone Confectioners and Sugar Rush’s history all bundled up with shiny gold foil and ribbons.

  “Text me when you finish the bar and the truffles,” he told his brother. “When do you think you’ll have them ready for tasting?”

  “Soon as I can, man.” Spencer still looked amused. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tyler left the lab and hurried across the campus. He was eager to get back to the library and see what else he could find about the Stone Confectioners’ recipes.

  As he approached the Gumdrop Bistro, the door opened. His father and Julia stepped out, their heads bent in conversation. With Warren in his tailored suit and tie patterned with candy hearts and Julia in a navy sheath dress, they looked like they should be holding court.

  Julia saw him first and came to a stop. “Tyler, I sent you an email about a fundraiser for the Cocoa Bean Team. Don’t forget to reply.”

  “I won’t. Hey, thanks for helping Kate out. She looks great. I mean, she always looked great, but she’s been wanting to get new clothes.”

  Julia blinked, as if she couldn’t fathom why he was thanking her. “You know Kate?”

  “Sure.” Suddenly realizing he should have been less obvious, Tyler shrugged. “I mean, she’s helping with the tech stuff at the library.”

  “She’s invaluable,” Warren said. “Luke is lucky to have found her.”

  So was Tyler, but he wasn’t about to confess that to his father and aunt. He switched the topic so he didn’t inadvertently say something else to give himself away.

  “We’re well into getting the library resources installed in the system,” he said. “And we’re initiating proper handling procedures as well. Nothing has been stored right, but we’re fixing it all now.”