Off Kilter

by Donna Kauffman

  “Please. Stop. I could get a swelled head.”

  “Shhh, let me finish.”

  He shushed her? Worse, he was amused.

  She merely arched a brow.

  And his smile grew to a wicked sexy grin. “There is absolutely no reason I should attempt a pursuit of you. We’re all wrong for each other. You’re temporary. I’m no’ leaving here. And it’s quite likely we’d kill each other long before we’d get to any kind of payoff for the work it’s going to entail.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Her heart was thumping so hard it made the pulse in her ears thrum. She surely hadn’t just heard him say something to the effect of him wanting … her?

  He lifted one hand from hers, and caught at a red curl that was dancing in the wind swirling about. He wrapped it around his forefinger, and gently, so very gently, tugged her face closer to his.

  “I’m talking about the kind of want where a man doesn’t wait. No matter what. Because I have every reason to go in that croft and do exactly as you say. And no reason—no sane reason—to do what I’m about to do. And yet, that’s all I can truly think about.”

  “D-do what?”

  He was far too close, and his mouth was far too perfect, and those eyes of his were fair to dancing as he looked quite happily into hers. And she wasn’t even going think about that damn dimple and how impossibly adorable it was.

  “This,” he said simply, then did the least simple thing any man had ever done to her.

  He kissed her.

  Chapter 7

  He hadn’t planned to do it. In fact, he’d spent the drive to Kira’s place listing all the various reasons why he should do exactly as Katie was prompting him to do—ask Kira out. Then put Tessa out of his mind completely. He thought he’d had himself convinced.

  Yet, the longer Tessa had stood there, trying to convince him to do the very same thing, the more he knew something was missing. Yes, he cared about Kira, he worried about Kira … but if he’d honestly thought she was the one—he’d have done something about it.

  Sort of like he was doing, only with the very last person he would have ever considered doing such a thing with.

  Her lips weren’t soft or pliant. At first.

  Her fingers had curled under his hand, and he’d heard her breath catch in her throat. But he had no interest in kissing anyone who didn’t want the attention. He lifted his mouth, just a breath from hers. “Have I been mistaken that we’ve just spent the past few weeks in some kind of perverse foreplay?”

  Her eyebrows rose, but her gaze dipped to his mouth. “What?”

  He smiled, and brushed his lips across hers. She moaned. Softly. But he heard it. “We dinnae want to want each other,” he said, crowding her a wee bit closer to the car, so she had to tip her head back, just a little more.

  “No—”

  “But we do,” he said, then very, very lightly brushed a soft kiss on her lips. “Want each other.” He caressed her cheek with his curl-wrapped finger. “Don’t we, Tessa?”

  “Roan—”

  He brushed her curl across her lips, and felt her tremble.

  “We shouldn’t,” she said, her voice a husky rasp that did surprising things to his control.

  He trembled a bit. “But we will.”

  Her gaze lifted to his. It wasn’t the annoyance he saw that almost made him step back. It was the vulnerability. He hadn’t expected that.

  “Nothing good can come of this,” she said, her gaze dipping once again to his mouth.

  His body leapt in response.

  “You don’t want to start anything with me.”

  “You don’t scare me,” he said, and it was true. Mostly. She didn’t scare him, but the feelings she stirred in him were downright terrifying. Especially because she wasn’t even trying.

  “I should,” she said quite seriously.

  “I’m certain you’re right about that,” he said, then wanted to laugh when she looked the tiniest bit outraged. “But in this case, the fire looks so much more enticing than the frying pan.” He toyed with more of her red curls, then slid his hand under them and cupped the back of her neck. “And I do think this is going to be like fire.”

  “Is that what turns you on?” she said, pliant in his hands, yet still keeping her gaze on his. “Playing with fire?”

  “No’ usually, no.” He pulled her up against him. And she held on. Tightly. He moved so his mouth was next to her ear. “But, you know what they say, Tessa, darlin’.”

  “What do they say?” Her voice was barely a whisper of sound.

  He grinned, and pressed a hot kiss to the side of her neck, then gently bit the lobe of her ear. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  “Roan,” she said, half warning, half … want.

  “I know,” he said, “me, too.” Then he turned her head to his and took her mouth like it was the last kiss he might have on this green earth.

  There was perhaps a split second while she didn’t respond. Then she tugged him against her, until she was leaning half back across the open trunk, and took charge of the kiss.

  And he let her.

  Fire, indeed.

  Her kiss was aggressive, claiming. It was hot, and intense, and equally intoxicating.

  He got caught up in it immediately, his body responding so swiftly he wanted more. A lot more. Right there on the car, if necessary. It was a primal reaction that shot him straight to the edge, like an untried youth who lacked any control, without a drop of finesse.

  She was sliding her tongue into his mouth, slipping her hands up the back of his neck, then raking her nails across his scalp, and all he could think about was getting her naked, getting her under him … getting her.

  Instinct took over, and he pulled her up against him, moving them until the side of his truck was at his back and she was pressed up against him, between his thighs. She was tall, with lean hips, and legs that went on forever, but he was taller. She fit perfectly.

  His hands were in her hair, and he tilted her face, intent on staking his own claim in that visceral mating dance. He felt a gut-clenching, voracious thirst for her, as if he’d been near death and she was the oasis within which he could quite literally drown himself. He took over the kiss, the duel of tongues, intent on assuaging his every need. And hers.

  She tasted sweet and he craved more. Their tongues dueled and tangled as he pulled her legs over his hips, then slid his palms up to cup her breasts. She moaned into his mouth and arched hard against him, her thighs clenching tight around him as he pushed harder between her legs. She grabbed his shoulders so she could move against him, and he moaned. He rubbed his thumbs over hard nipples pressing through her shirt and nipped her lower lip even as she broke off and nipped his chin.

  He cupped her cheek, wanting to bring her mouth back to his, to plunge into it because he wanted to plunge into her, but as he shifted her mouth, he caught her expression. Her eyes were open, her body was tense … but she was a million miles away, going on instinct. Nothing more was there.

  That should have been enough. He’d known she wasn’t personally invested when the kiss began, that it was purely an animalistic response to the sexual tension screaming between them.

  They were breathing heavily. She tried to grab his face, move his mouth back to hers. Still mindless, just wanting the escape. He understood that. It was tempting.

  “Tessa,” he said against her mouth.

  “Roan, please, just—”

  “I could,” he said. “It would be easy.”

  “Easy is good,” she said, her breath coming in gasps. “Easy is perfect.”

  “Easy is cheap,” he responded, and she pulled back as if he’d slapped her.

  He took her face in his hands. “I wasnae saying you were. The opposite, Tessa. You’re worth so much more than just this.”

  “You have no idea what I’m worth,” she said quite heatedly. “Maybe this is all I’m capable of. If you can’t handle that, then we should stop this
right now.”

  Roan stroked his fingers gently over her cheeks. She didn’t smack them away. He considered that a small victory. “I think you’re capable of anything. Everything. Maybe you only want that much. Because it’s safe.”

  “Or because it’s all I can handle,” she said, and there was a thread of something other then defensiveness in her tone. One that he picked up only because he saw the flicker of fear in her eyes.

  “Have you reached for more?” he asked, keeping his hands on her. She was still entwined between his thighs.

  “Have you?” she challenged.

  “Fair question. I want to. I want it all. It’s only been for lack of having someone to reach for.”

  “Kira’s not worth reaching for?”

  “The lack of having the right someone to reach for,” he amended. “I don’t know what stopped me from reaching for Kira. I didn’t stop with you. I couldn’t. That’s the difference.”

  “What makes you think it’s been any different for me? I’m not stuck on an island, but I’m stuck in a life cycle that’s not exactly conducive to long-term anything.”

  “Was there someone—anyone—you would have reached for, if things had been different?”

  “Things weren’t different. Whatever might have been for me was so long ago I’ve forgotten it. That was another life. A life before the one I’m leading now. I’m not mourning the loss, trust me.”

  He set her back just enough so he could see her entire face. “And now this life is changing, too. Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what my life is anymore.”

  He could see as well as hear the stark, almost bald honesty in that statement.

  “Whatever this is,” she said, jerking his hips against hers, “one thing it isn’t, one thing it can’t be, is anything more than this.”

  “And that’s enough for you?”

  She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “It’s more than I’ve had in a while. A long while.”

  He was fairly sure she’d meant to toss that off as a little verbal swat, intending to put him squarely in his place. Provider of cheap thrills. What she might not have realized was that her sharp mouth was saying one thing, but the yearning in her eyes was saying something else entirely.

  “Do you truly believe that?” he asked.

  “That this is more than I’ve had in a while? Oh, that is pretty much fact. For the past nine months, sex has been the last thing on my mind. Probably for some time before that, too. It shouldn’t be on my mind now. But you make that kind of difficult to remember.” She was trying to tease him, taunt him out of his probing questions.

  His body surged to a more painfully erect state with her all but grinding against his hips. A large—and getting larger—part of him was more than willing to say bugger it and take what she was so willingly offering. It had been a long while for him, too, and he had a pretty good idea that Tessa could quite easily eclipse anything in recent or long-term memory. Hell, she already had. Just the taste of her was downright intoxicating.

  But some other part of him refused to give up the fight. He couldn’t have said what the bloody hell he thought he was fighting for. The situation had zero chance for improvement beyond the moment. He should take the fun and be thankful for the dalliance.

  “That’s no’ what I meant,” he said instead, stilling her questing fingers, then twisting so he had her pinned against the lorry, stilling her hips along with the rest of her.

  “Let me go.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Roan—”

  “Tessa,” he shot back, feeling a tweak of anger himself. “I don’t know what I want from you. But what I want—from anyone—is more than being a convenient piece, and more than a quick toss.”

  “Aww, you’re more than a pretty face, is that it?”

  “Stop it,” he demanded.

  “Stop what? Telling you the truth as I see it? I don’t know what fairy-tale world you live in, but my world is as far removed from make-believe as it comes. So you’ll have to forgive me. I can’t spin some lovely story for myself to make this all okay. I know exactly what I’m getting into here. Your pants. And you into mine. That’s it. It can’t be anything more. What is so hard to understand? And what man on the planet doesn’t say, ‘thank God’ and take what I’m offering? It sure as hell is the best deal you’ll ever get.”

  “This man,” he said, every bit as intensely fired up as she was. “This man doesn’t take a side dish when the main course could be everything he’s ever wanted.”

  He felt her entire body tense under his. Her eyes flared. Her mouth parted. There was yearning in all of it. Just a flash of it. But so deep, so clear. Then she got a grip. A shield dropped over her expression, as impenetrable as if she’d put up a wall between them. “You don’t know what you want. Not if you’re considering tangling yourself up with me. I’m a disaster, Roan. There would never have been a good time for us to cross paths, but this is the absolute worst.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  He took her face in his palms and had to stifle the urge to shake her. He was angry and confused, and never more serious in his life. He had no earthly idea why. But it felt monumental to him, in that moment, to make her understand. “I know I want to know you. The good, the bad, the ugly. I want you in bed, I want you right here, I want you every last place I can have you. Then I’ll very likely want to start all over again and see if we can improve on the first round.”

  Instead of making her shore up her defenses further, his heated declaration caused the wall to crack. Her pupils had gone wide, and the irises were vibrant, captivating pools of teal. Like liquid flame. He’d never wanted to leap into a fire more.

  “But that’s not all I want, Tessa. That’s not all I’d accept. There’s something here. And it isn’t just about sex. If that was all it was, we’d have been on each other within five minutes of saying hello. Instead, we’ve been trying our damnedest to avoid each other. There’s a reason for that.”

  “It’s called sanity. But I’m pretty sure my grip on that is tenuous at best, so you’ll have to forgive me if I’ve made some less than sensible decisions in the past twenty minutes.”

  “Stop it, Tessa. I told you, you don’t scare me.”

  “Then you’re too dumb for me. Certainly too dumb for your own good. I’m trying to warn you here, don’t you get it?”

  “Why? Why are you so damned invested in making sure I know what I’m gettin’ into? Why not just tell me what I want to hear, take what I’m offering, and the hell with what I’m feeling? If I dinnae matter to ye, if I canno’ matter, if this is just about getting our respective rocks off, then who the hell cares if I know the first or last thing about you?” He pinned her more tightly with his body when she began to squirm. “It’s uncomfortable, having to face that it matters. That I could matter. That anyone could matter. Maybe it’s you who should be afraid of me. I think you are afraid of me.”

  “In your dreams.”

  “This is no dream.”

  She laughed. Harshly. “No, it’s a nightmare.”

  “No,” he said, and pushed his face right up into hers. “It’s reality. It’s your reality. Your new reality. So you’d better get used to it.”

  “To what?” she shot back, but he could see the cracks in her control starting to fissure.

  “To me,” he said gently, his fury spent, leaving only the core of the new, raw, and very disconcerting feelings he felt for her. “I’m not letting you run and I’m not letting you hide.”

  “I don’t want you.”

  “You’re not exactly pushing me away. Or haven’t you noticed?”

  Her legs were wrapped tightly around his and her arms were twined so tightly around his neck, he thought it might cramp. He touched his forehead to hers. “What’s in your head is pushing me off, but the rest of you is hanging on. Tightly. So … hang on to me, Tessa. Just … hang on.” Then he leaned in and k
issed her, softly, gently, on the lips.

  Her moan was one of almost pain. It made something inside his heart break, but he kept kissing her, the sides of her mouth, her cheeks, her jaw, softly, sweetly, as gently as he knew how. “You can, you know,” he said. “I’m no’ going anywhere.” He kissed the side of her jaw, then the other side. “All you have to do … is hang on.” Then he kissed her mouth again, and kept his there, gentle, but with intent.

  The fissuring turned into a swift shattering. She shook against him, and he thought she might be crying, but he kissed her cheeks to find them dry.

  He didn’t know if it was fear, anger, or something far worse making her shake … but he didn’t let go. And she didn’t struggle to get down. So he kissed her again. And again. A sweet, tender assault he didn’t even know he had in him. “Open for me,” he said against her lips. “Tessa …”

  Her lips trembled, her jaw jerked, her knees were pressed so tightly against his sides, he thought they’d leave marks on his hips. He didn’t pull away, didn’t dare, just kept kissing her. Slowly, purely.

  And … she stopped fighting him. Her nails dug into his back as she let him kiss her more deeply. She didn’t try to take over, she just accepted him. When he finally lifted his head, and she opened her eyes, he knew he’d taken on the most important challenge of his life. He’d spent his adult years feeling the acute pressure of keeping his island’s economy thriving, and it had been an all-consuming, stress inducing, gratifying mission. But it felt like child’s play compared to the pressure he felt looking into her eyes, to not let her down.

  She was right. He had absolutely no idea what he was signing on for. No idea whatsoever, what trying to engage in her world, her life, her mind … her heart … would do to him. Or for him. Or, worse, what it might do to her. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her.

  Yet, he’d never felt so certain that he was meant to be doing exactly what he was doing.

  And that was all he needed to know.

  “Don’t let go,” he told her, knowing that much was imperative. “As long as you hang on, I have you. Do you understand?” he asked, knowing she couldn’t possibly, because he didn’t. But he knew it was a vow he would keep. “I have you. Somebody has you.”