by Diana Gardin
He continued to hold her gaze; he tilted his head slightly, as if trying to read her expression. Then she realized he was waiting for a green light, just as he had the first night he kissed her.
“I want it,” she whispered. God help me.
His hands pulled her even closer as he leaned up toward her face. He reached one hand up and placed it firmly behind her neck.
“You want what?”
His voice had dropped an octave and the gravelly satin was now causing Hope’s mouth to literally water. She felt deliciously helpless in his hands, and she was horrified to find that she was willing to do whatever he may have wanted her to at that moment.
“I want you…” She wet her lips. “To kiss me.”
His mouth was on hers in seconds. He kissed her softly, just a graze of lips against lips, again and again until she was left breathless and quivering in his arms. Then he eased his tongue out slowly, parting her lips with its moist tenderness and dipping inside her mouth to begin an exploration that would render her body completely useless. He delved in again and again, and she wasn’t sure what animal in the room was making those sounds she could hear in the background. And then she realized that they were coming from her own mouth. That she was quietly moaning into the kiss that was just too delicious to stay quiet for.
She was putty, something malleable for him to play with, in his hands, and she was powerless to stop the hold Reed was creating over her. His hands slid up and down her back underneath her shirt as his mouth plundered hers, and on one trip down, the clasp of her bra was miraculously undone. Then she was lying back on the couch as he covered her body with his.
She was so much smaller than he was yet she seemed to fit so perfectly into all the nooks and crannies his body provided as it sank over the top of hers like a blanket. The heaviness of his presence was welcomed, and she sighed as the very obvious erection he harbored inside his slacks pressed insistently into her thigh.
His lips left hers only to rush downward toward her neck, leaving a trail of warmth on her jawbone as they journeyed. She opened her eyes to stare up at the ceiling as she tried to register every sensation her body was currently feeling in so many places. She closed her eyes again as another moan escaped her lips.
She realized Reed’s lips were climbing again, and opened her mouth to him as he covered it once again with his own. He kissed her so tenderly she could have cried, but instead she kissed him back with all the fervor she felt and all the passion he was invoking deep inside her achiest, neediest places. And he pulled away slowly, taking her bottom lip with him as he reared backward, holding himself up with his hands while he hovered above her.
“Was that nice?”
She blew out a breath that caused the hair over his forehead to flutter. She really liked how he looked at this angle, holding himself above her with all of the control. His face was flushed and his lips were a tender, swollen pink that brought the sparkle out in those eyes. The shallow dimple in his chin was a place she wanted desperately to kiss.
“That…wasn’t nice at all.” She breathed.
He laughed loudly, bringing a smile of pure joy to her face. “It wasn’t?”
“Nope. That was the most not-nice kiss I’ve ever had. Thanks for that.”
His laughter echoed under the high, vaulted ceilings and echoed around the huge space, making her smile grow wider.
“Can I just show you another version of a not-nice kiss?” she asked, feeling bold.
His eyes narrowed, and he pushed himself all the way up, sitting back onto the couch and pulling her up to sit beside him.
“Sure,” he said, his voice low and rough. “I’m all yours.”
God, she really hated how much she relished that little sentiment. Suddenly, she really wanted Reed Hopewell to be all hers. She wanted it so badly she could feel the need echoing in her limbs.
Could he be hers?
Nine
Reed had had a lot of women in his condo.
A lot.
But never in his life had he had an experience like the one he was having tonight with Hope here in his space. It was exhilarating, it was mind-blowingly sexy, and it was confusing as hell.
“Is your bedroom this way?” she asked innocently, pointing down the dark hallway.
All he could do was shake his head because words had suddenly left him. She was asking him where his bedroom was? Did he dare to hope?
He had just spent the last few minutes making sure he had the upper hand in the situation, because he had been feeling like she was in the driver’s seat in more ways than one. That she was leaving him twisted up and hanging out to dry with no grasp of his emotions or his massive attraction lighting a fire in his boxer-briefs.
Then, the memory of his conversation with Sam punched him straight in the gut. He’d decided that he wasn’t going to treat Hope like she was just another pretty girl in his bed. That being with her sexually would probably fuck him up for good, and that this current situation in which he currently found himself should be avoided like the plague.
But as she stood in front of him, waiting for him to point her in the direction of his bedroom, he couldn’t prevent himself from gesturing toward the stairs.
“Up in the loft,” he said, his voice raw with want.
She shot him a grin that was somehow alluring and shy at once and he groaned, shaking his head.
He was making a mistake.
He was making the best decision of his life.
He couldn’t stop this from happening if it was what she wanted. He was only a man, for God’s sake.
She took off for the stairs while he watched, helpless to stop her even if he wanted to.
God, he didn’t want to.
She turned at the bottom step and beckoned him with the crook of a finger. He obeyed like a puppet on a string that she controlled.
“Hope,” he choked out as he reached her. She leaned against the wall next to the staircase and gazed up at him with those eyes that always seemed to see so much more deeply inside of him than he wanted them to. “What exactly are we going to my bedroom for?”
She shrugged. “You left it out of the tour.”
“I was trying to be respectful,” he pointed out.
She narrowed her eyes. “Reed. Are you saying you’ve never taken a woman up to your room before me?”
“Hell no, that’s not what I’m saying,” he said in exasperation. “But I’m saying that you’re not…one of those women.”
He waited for her to change her mind, now that he had called her out. But she merely stared at him with her deep-set eyes, challenging him with the slight rise of her delicate chin.
“Well, I’d like to see it.” She was full of confidence, and it was damn sexy.
He leaned forward, just because she was so damn close and he couldn’t help it. He inhaled as he leaned in and her fresh, feminine scent engulfed him now that he was paying closer attention to it. It reminded him once again that she didn’t embody the heavy, cheap-perfume aroma that the other women he’d been with owned. She smelled lighter, softer.
And now that his lips and his hands knew from experience that she felt the same way, he couldn’t be this close to her without closing the distance between.
She met him halfway, molding her body to him in one fluid motion that had him scooping her up into his arms with his hands cupping her ass. He pressed himself into her so that she would be totally aware of what she was doing to him. Grunting as she writhed against his arousal, he devoured her mouth with his own. He took the steps as quickly as he could manage without dropping her, never prying his mouth away from hers as he sped the well-traveled route to his room.
He kicked the door closed behind them and leaned against the wood with her still held fast in his arms.
“You’re blowing my mind today,” he said breathlessly against her lips.
She sighed in response, and pulled back just enough so that she could look at him. Her face was so mesmerizing in the darkness
of the room that he was momentarily transfixed in her gaze.
“I don’t know what this is,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be doing this. But I can’t seem to help myself.”
He smiled, pulling her body even closer to his own, which had become so attuned to her physically. “Good. I don’t want you to hold back with me, Hope. I want to know the real you.”
She pressed her forehead to his. “Shut up and kiss me, Reed.”
He smirked and obliged, and she slid down his body until she was standing directly in front of him. She tugged at the buttons of his shirt impatiently until she had them all undone, and pushed it down his arms without much help from him. Her petite hands ran down the front of his chest and stomach, breathing life into his nerve endings as they went.
He sucked in a breath, tensing his muscles as he luxuriated in her grasp. He’d been touched so many times before, but Hope’s hands held some kind of magical quality that made his body crazy and had his mind swollen with thoughts of her and what they could do together. He didn’t want her hands to leave his skin, ever.
She knelt in front of him—knelt, holy shit—and immediately became his every fantasy come to life as she unbuttoned his slacks and slid them down his thighs with ease.
“God,” he groaned. “Who are you?”
“I’m Hope,” she said surely. “And you’re Reed, and we’re about to get to know each other a hell of a lot better.”
She continued sliding his pants down his legs, and he allowed his fingers to tangle in her long, thick hair as she placed her lips against one of his thighs. He shuddered. He realized he was in severe danger of falling to his knees.
He’d never been so into this before. Sex was always awesome, it was sex. But his body was in overdrive at the moment, and the way he was reacting to her was almost primal. He couldn’t control it, he couldn’t turn it off. This was pure instinct, and tonight he was going to thank his lucky stars he’d been chosen to save Hope Dawson that night in a dark alley.
She rose again, standing in front of him and studying his body with a glint in her eye that let Reed know exactly what she was thinking before the words fell from her lips.
“You…you look even more amazing without your clothes on,” she murmured. “I like the tattoos.”
He glanced down at the swirling ink on his arms. They covered the area between his elbows and the tops of his shoulders. He’d gotten them after he’d opened himself up to the music inside of him, and the fact that she liked them now was just a bonus.
He stepped toward her. “Your turn, Miss Observant.”
She gasped as he lifted her and threw her bodily onto his bed. It was too dark for her to be able to see his room clearly, and he was operating purely on instinct and memory. She landed smack in the middle of his king-size bed, and he smiled in anticipation.
He reached her seconds after she bounced and straddled her body as he gazed down at the woman beneath him. He stretched both hands out to graze the skin of her stomach, lifting her shirt slightly as he did so and raising it up to her neck. She shrugged out of it, and he couldn’t help himself; he leaned down to kiss the soft skin under the lacy bra adorning her plump breasts.
“Holy hell,” he murmured against her skin. “I’ve done this before. I swear I have…why is it all so much…more tonight?”
“Because it’s us,” she said simply. “And there’s something about us, Reed. I feel it, and so do you.”
Still looking down at her, he knew she was absolutely right. He did feel it, and it was an emotion he swore to himself he was never going to feel, because it only led to trouble. Unable to wait any longer to feel his lips against her skin again, he brushed his lips across the rise and fall of her chest. He pulled one of the cups of the delicate fabric covering those succulent mounds of flesh to the side so he could pull one perfectly round, pebbled peak into his mouth.
She sucked in a breath underneath him and grabbed at his hair. It stung, but it was the sweetest pain he’d ever experienced. Jesus, if he died tonight, he would just thank God he’d had the chance to touch this perfect specimen of a woman before his demise.
Tap, tap.
A knock at his bedroom door had them both frozen, Hope staring in alarm at the door and Reed cursing wildly under his breath.
“Yo, Reed! You in there?”
“Yes.” Reed’s response was strained. “I’m in here, Tate. What the fuck do you think?”
“My bad, man. Brought dinner. You want?”
A real, animal-like snarl left Reed then, and Tate took the hint, tiptoeing back down the stairs.
Hope breathed a deep sigh that lifted her whole body from the bed. “Fun’s over.”
Reed let loose another stream of curses and lowered his body so that he was lying next to her.
“Doesn’t have to be,” he said. “You can stay, Hope. I want you to.”
She stared straight up at the ceiling. “Actually, I needed the wake-up call.”
What? She was reverting back to the guarded, reserved shell he’d met the night in the alley. Damn Tate!
“Don’t do that, Hope. What we had going on here was real, and you were into it. Don’t deny it. We don’t have to do anything if you stay. I just…want you here.”
“I’m not denying anything, Reed, I swear. I was just caught in a haze of…of you. I wasn’t thinking straight. We can’t do this.”
“We can do this, Hope,” he insisted, his voice strained. He stared at her in the darkness, but she wasn’t meeting his gaze. “We don’t have to do…you know, this. But we can do…us. I want to. You want to. Why wouldn’t we?”
She sighed again. “There’re a million reasons we don’t have time to get into tonight, Reed.”
She stood, and the absence of her in his bed immediately felt cold and wrong. He sat up, scrubbing a hand across his jawline in frustration.
“Give me your phone, Hope.”
She hesitated, straightening her shirt back in place over her torso. “Why?”
“Because I’m not letting you leave this damn condo without being able to get back in touch with you. It was a fucking miracle that I ran into you today. I want to see you again.”
He vacated the bed and came to her, wrapping her up in his arms and breathing in her scent. “I want to see you again. Soon. No interruptions, no excuses.”
He pulled back to inspect her face in the moonlight streaming in through his floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean. “Okay?”
“Okay.” Her voice was tiny in the stillness, but the fact that she agreed let him know that he wasn’t insane. This was really happening. She was happening, and he wasn’t about to let her go without a fight.
And when he laid eyes on Tate, his roommate would likely be leaving the condo on a stretcher.
Sitting in her car, away from the hurricane of manly sexiness and intense emotion that was Reed, her good sense slowly began to ease back into her consciousness.
What had she been thinking? She hadn’t been thinking with her brain, that’s for sure. She’d been thinking with her body, her heart, maybe even her soul.
She wasn’t sure which part of her being was most attracted to Reed.
Ten
Three days following her impromptu outing with Reed in Nelson Island, and after a long day at the Center running around at the level of a first grader for the most part, all Hope wanted to do was have a long, tension-releasing swim and a steaming hot shower.
She knew she’d be arriving home close to the same time as Violet, and she planned to help her sister with her algebra homework after she relaxed for a few minutes. Math had been a strong suit for her when she was in school, and while every subject was a strong suit for Violet, she enjoyed working through the problems with her older sister.
Shock permeated her features and her insides turned gelatinous when she pulled up the long driveway and found Reed and Violet perched on the tailgate of his Silverado, chatting like a couple of old friends. She sat in he
r car for a moment, just watching them as she faced off in front of them. Reed appeared totally calm and cool, and Violet eyed her with a smug “I-know-what-you’ve-been-doing” grin.
“Oh, brother,” muttered Hope as she opened her car door and unfolded her diminutive frame from the car. But even as she uttered the words, a shiver of delight and something else altogether jumped along her spine.
Neither of the pair spoke as she strolled, a bit cautiously, toward them.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Reed? Everything okay?”
He hopped down and reached up to pull Violet from the tailgate.
“Everything’s fine,” he answered easily, approaching her. The velvety side of his voice was in full effect. “I needed to talk to you, and this one came along before you got here. I got out of the truck and introduced myself.”
“Yeah,” Violet added. “And he’s pretty damn cool, Hope. Were you keeping him a secret, or what?”
Reed smirked at Hope, a triumphant gleam in his eyes.
“Okay, okay,” said Hope. “Enough out of you. And don’t say damn! Homework, Vi. Go. See you inside in a few.”
“Oh, there’s no rush,” Violet said with a sly smile. “I got my algebra in the bag. And it looks like you need to bag something else.”
Hope groaned. “Oh, my God. Go!”
Violet laughed and walked up to the huge house, tossing one last look at Reed and Hope as she went.
Hope turned to Reed, her eyes accusing. “You were trying to win over my sister?”
He shrugged. “Hadn’t planned on it. But she was a lucky surprise.” His face turned serious. “She’s pretty freaking awesome, Hope.”
Hope smiled in spite of herself. “I know she is. She’s the best kid there ever was. She’s the reason I work with kids in the first place.”