I didn’t even know your name.”
She’d been so wrong. Because now not only did she know just exactly who she’d been with and precisely how to find him … she had to see him all the time.
“So, about that….” His fingers curved around her waist, ending her retreat where she stood, balanced on the third stair from the top of the landing in a space she had no right occupying.
Garrett took the next step, closing the distance between them until his chest brushed against hers and their breath mingled warm and wet together.
Her lashes fluttered as better judgment warred against want. “What are you doing?”
“Reminiscing. It was very hot.”
She shouldn’t have liked the sound of that so much. Not when there was no place to go with it. But the part of her that had never been entirely confident in the sexual arena … the part that even after years remained just the littlest bit bruised over the way her last relationship had ended … needed to know. Needed to hear. “My not wanting to know your name was hot?”
“No, that was just kinky fun.”
It was everything she could do not to purr.
Kinky … her?
Oh, that was a first. One she’d savor.
“What was hot …” his voice dropped lower as he leaned closer toward her ear “… were the soft, throaty little moans you made and the way you gave your whole body over to me when I pulled you close.”
Her mouth went dry and even the nervous butterflies batting about her stomach stilled … waited. “You’re whispering me again.”
Those eyes.
“Maybe I am.”
His mouth.
“I thought we were friends. I thought we agreed.”
The heat.
He nodded. “We did.”
“Then why?”
Her jeans were snug with the tightening of Garrett’s fists at her sides, adding to the sensation of his touch, his hold, extending beyond just his fingers to everywhere the fabric touched her. Around her hips, her bottom, between her legs and down her thighs.
“The strings are already there, Nichole. The lines have already been crossed. And if you really want to know, I cross them more every damn time I look at you. I can’t stop thinking about hearing you make those sounds again. Only this time I want to hear them when you’re saying my name.”
“Garrett—”
“Hell, yes.”
And then the space between them that was all potential and unmet need and why and why not was gone. Replaced by contact. Hot and concentrated. The mind-blowing sensation of Garrett’s chest moving up against her own as he took that final step. Hard-packed muscle and cotton created a teasing friction against her nipples that left her breathless, lips still parted on a broken gasp when his head bowed to hers.
“Just like that.” His words were a kiss against her lips. The soft brush before the bruising crush. The taste that warned it would never be enough.
Garrett.
His mouth moved against hers like an unspoken demand, rubbing slowly, telling her what he wanted, what she wanted to give him. He parted her lips beneath the insistent pressure of his own, working back and forth without giving her the “more” she ached for, stroking her need until it surpassed his own and she was wordlessly begging: with her hands—one clutching and releasing and then clutching again at the fabric of his shirt, the other flexed against all that contained strength, riding the peaks and valleys of a musculature she’d only believed existed in the land of airbrush and fiction. Begging with her body—bowed forward in an arch that was needy and shameless; with the same throaty whimper that had brought them to this point in the first place. The one that apparently did the trick, because in the next second she had what she wanted—Garrett’s tongue thrusting past her parted lips, rolling against her own, delivering a deeper, more potent version of the moan he’d been talking about in the process, ensuring they were in fact together in this desperation.
And that was the most intoxicating part of it all. They were together.
Another thrust and the hands gripping her hips tightened. And then she was sucking lightly over his tongue, gasping at the flick of it against her bottom lip, getting lost in all the places only this man had been able to take her—in the physical sensations unique to being with him, in the slide of his arms around her back so one hand came to rest across her bottom and thigh and the other wound into her hair and tightened there so she felt his hold against a thousand points of contact within her skin.
Oh, and she knew what he was going to do next—whimpered in anticipation of a repeat of the move that had haunted her nights so relentlessly.
Garrett’s lips curled against her own. “Say it.”
“Garrett.”
The tension at her scalp tightened incrementally as he used her hair to guide her head back, extending her neck further, opening her mouth to him so the kiss that came next was one he took. One he controlled. One he gave. One that made her groan and melt beneath it.
Made her ache through every point of contact yet to be made.
The hand across her bottom pulled her closer. Held her firm against the straining ridge of his erection.
Another whimper. Another reckless pant of his name.
Another thrust of his tongue into her waiting mouth.
All that mattered was this. More. Easing the almost painful clench of need so deep inside her.
And then the hand in her hair slipped free. Her head came up and in a daze she met the blue flame of Garrett’s eyes … tried to close the distance between them he had opened. She reached for his shoulder, his hair. Leaned in to his kiss, getting less than a taste before he broke away again.
Too much. She’d gone too far again. Gotten carried away—
Except he had her hand in his. The muscle in his jaw was jumping as he raked his other hand through the hair that was standing up in a guilty mess. “There’s got to be a back way out of here. Let’s go. I think I can make it to my car.”
The haze of arousal cleared further and Nichole looked around, stunned to find herself in this state of reckless abandon in the back hall of a coffee house. Oh, God. Mistake!
“Garrett, I can’t.”
He nodded, shoved his hand through his hair again and then grabbed her hips and lifted her up against him in a move so swift and deft she had her legs wrapped around his waist before she’d even realized what was happening.
No, this she had to stop—and fast. Because Garrett was carrying her up the last stairs, groaning some kind of agreement that neither could he. And then her back was against the wall and his
