Slap Shot(28)

“Wait,” he said.

I sped up my movements.

“Dana.” A rigid forearm circled my waist and my back connected with solid muscle. “Wait.”

“No, Rick, please let me go.” Sharp tears nipped my eyes. “You don’t have to say anything, but I just ask that you keep what I told you to yourself, the way I will your secrets.”

“What do you think I am, fucking stupid?” he asked hotly against my ear.

He gripped me tighter and I squirmed against him. “I have to go.”

“Like hell you do.”

“Rick.”

“You really think that I’m such a hypocrite as to not still want you because you danced in clubs and hung out with the wrong crowd? Jesus, don’t you see it just makes us alike.”

I stopped my wriggling.

“We’ve both got a past, histories we’re none too proud of, but we’ve risen out of it, worked damn hard and come through the other end.” His lips pressed against my hair, his breath hot and hard on my neck. “It just makes me admire you all the more to know you worked your cute little butt off to turn your life around, to make it what you wanted it to be.”

He spun me in his arms and my breasts crushed against his chest. I gripped his biceps as they wrapped around me.

“I find independence and determination amazing qualities,” he said in a low, gruff voice. “And I find honesty and mutual trust the sweetest aphrodisiac of all.” As if to prove his point, he pressed his steely erection into my stomach.

I looked into his face, searching for signs that he was lying, that he was telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. I was greeted with nothing but the naked truth. His gaze burned with a heady combination of need and respect, desire and admiration.

“I don’t care what you did in the past,” he said. “I accept it about you the way you so readily accepted what I’ve done. Why should it be different for you, Dana? Why shouldn’t you be afforded the same understanding?”

I was falling for him. Falling fast and hard. My armor dropping away as he eased my fears and regrets and surrounded me with strength and kindness and a male sexuality so potent, so addictive, I didn’t know if I would ever get enough.

“Don’t look at it as a negative—hard work and determination is a good thing, a positive,” he murmured, his mouth just skimming mine. “So please, stop fighting, stop fighting us, ’cause I have the feeling we could be so great together.”

I curled my hand around the nape of his neck and pulled him into a kiss, a kiss that was desperate and hot and spoke a thousand words. I couldn’t keep up this damn fight another second. I wanted him, needed him. We already knew we were great together.

He responded with enthusiasm, sliding his hands down my back, cupping my butt and hoisting me into the air.

Locking my legs around his waist, I clung to the compact muscle and tendons of his shoulders. Feeling tiny in his embrace, I fed off him, devoured him, writhed against his body seeking closer connection.

“Stay with me tonight?” he asked breathlessly. “Please, don’t go. I want to hold you, make love to you, wake up with you.”

“Yes,” I said, fisting the soft material of his shirt. “Yes, I want that too, I want you to make love to me. I want you to make love to me knowing who I am.”

He was walking toward the staircase. “Oh, I know who you are, wild thing, and I know just what you need. I’m going to make you so damn ecstatic you’ll need to be peeled from the ceiling.”





Chapter Five



He took the stairs two at a time.

The next thing I knew, he was laying me on a soft bed. I opened my eyes, the lights were dim and his handsome face hovered over mine, his eyes stormy with raw desire and his lips moist from our mating of mouths.

“Damn it, I want you so bad but I don’t want to rush,” he said in a rasping voice.

“So we’ll do it more than once,” I said, toeing off my sandals and pushing them to the floor with a clatter. “First time to get it out of the way then again slow and lazy.”

“Hell, I like the way your mind works,” he said, stepping out of his jeans.

He rid himself of his shirt and as I wriggled from my own blouse and pants I became mesmerized by the broad, bronzed width of his shoulders and his hard, dark nipples.

Gaze still on him, I arched my back and released my bra. Shimmied it down my arms and dropped it to the floor. In a second he was over me, taking my nipple into his hot mouth.

“Oh yes.” I squirmed and threaded my fingers into his thick hair. He began to suckle, his teeth rasping around it. “Rick,” I groaned, reaching for my other nipple at the same time as he found it. Suddenly there was more touch, more pleasure. He was caressing and tormenting, making me desperate for more, the sensations extreme, rolling through me and making my body squirm for his touch. What he could do with his tongue was a talent.