Brave Enough(18)

He’s leaning toward me very slowly, giving anticipation plenty of time to collect into a liquid ball in the center of my stomach. I’m so focused on his mouth drawing close that I don’t even see his real intent coming. Tag grips me around the waist and hauls me around and into his lap, my legs automatically straddling him. Heat pours into my cheeks at my position, but I don’t have one second longer to think about it before Tag is consuming me once again.

He drives his fingers up into my hair, holding me still for the crush of his mouth on mine. This kiss is different. It is dark and deep. Tag’s lips open mine, his tongue shooting hot and ready between them. It licks relentlessly along mine, coaxing and convincing, begging me to give up all thought and control to him.

And I do.

I’m completely lost in sensation when his hands skate down my body to settle at my hips. His fingers dig in and urge my lower body closer to his, rubbing me along the ridge of his very obvious erection. I sigh into his kiss and his answering groan vibrates through the moist recesses of my mouth.

“Damn you,” he growls when he wrenches his lips away. Before I can respond, Tag pulls me into his body again, grinding his hardness between my legs. I gasp, my back arching involuntarily. “You’re gonna make me embarrass myself anyway, aren’t you?”

“Th-this embarrasses you?” I ask, my core on fire with want. I don’t even have the energy to feel ashamed or to second-guess what I’m doing. I wanted to let go, and the moment I did, Tag was right there to catch me. To catch me and to make sure that I couldn’t think twice.

“To act like a damn horny teenager every time I see you? To have my cock come throbbing to life every time I think of you?” He releases my hips and I wish for a second that he hadn’t, that we could sneak into the half-finished cabin and finish what we started. His boyish grin doesn’t help to settle me down either. “It’s not the most flattering thing for a man not to be able to control his own body when he’s around a woman. But you’re not just any woman, are you?” He studies me with those hypnotic eyes of his and I feel myself falling further and further under his spell. “You’re a woman with a body made for sin and a mind full of delicate sensibilities.”

“I don’t have delicate sensibilities.”

“I’d bet my life that you do.”

“Well then maybe I don’t want to have them while I’m here.” And I don’t. I don’t want to be the same old Weatherly. The same old cautious, self-sacrificing Weatherly I’ve always been. This might be the last time in my life I’ll have a chance to be who I want to be, to do what I want to do. I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste it.

I reach for Tag’s glasses, pulling them off so that I can see his swirling silver eyes. Even in the light, the pupils are dilated.

His expression isn’t playful anymore. He watches me with all the seriousness in the world.

“Do you want to be a risk-taker, Weatherly?” he asks, his voice as dark and deep as the kiss and the merlot grapes. “Do you really want me to push you?”

My insides quiver. I nod, afraid that my voice will tremble with the last little bit of uncertainty that I’m hanging on to.

“Starting now?”

I nod again, my pulse picking up the pace.

Slowly, purposefully, his eyes never leaving mine, Tag raises his hand to my left shoulder. He slips one finger under the strap of my tank top and starts to ease it down my arm. I’m immediately uncomfortable, my instincts telling me to stop him, to cover myself. They remind me that we are out in the open and that I hardly know him. They tell me to stop him.

But his eyes tell me not to. They dare me to hold still and let him push me.

So I do.

Tag repeats the movement with my bra strap, tugging it down my arm until my breast sits in the cup like my flesh is being offered to him on the half-shell.

He drags his finger along the strap until he meets the lace of the cup. His eyes are still holding mine, daring me, pushing me. And then he pulls. One short, sharp pull that forces the material over the stiff peak of my nipple.

I gasp, responding to the action itself, the sensation of air and sun on my bare breast, the eroticism of what he’s doing, out in the open, all the while watching me. We stare at each other as he brushes his thumb over me, each stroke resonating in my sex as though he’s touching me there. Like I want him to. God, how I want him to.

Then Tag drops his gaze. I can almost feel it the instant it clicks to a stop on my nipple. My muscles tense, my blood boils, and the hiss of air through his teeth only exacerbates it.

He leans forward just enough to capture the tip between his lips, laving it with his tongue in a chaste way that makes me ache even deeper. I want to grab his head and force myself into his mouth, but I dare not. We are still out in the open and I am still trying to shake my sensibilities.