Something Reckless(8)

“We need rules,” I say quickly.

He takes another step closer. And another. Until I’m looking at his chest, smelling his aftershave. He tilts my chin up with his index finger then traces my lips with his thumb. “Hold that thought?”

I nod, nearly breathless at nothing but the touch of his thumb skimming my lips.

“I need to do this first.” He cups my jaw in his big hand and brushes his lips over mine. My lips part in surprise at the gesture that’s almost . . . sweet. He deepens the kiss, slanting his mouth over mine and sliding his tongue inside.

He tastes like beer, and I want to get drunk on this kiss—to overindulge until I can’t see straight, to imbibe until sobriety is a distant memory.

This is how kisses should be. I love the way his hand slides into my hair as he samples my lips, love how his kiss manages to be simultaneously gentle and demanding. It’s the kind of kiss that makes your toes curl, the kind worth remembering in five years when you’re lonely and bored and wondering if kissing had ever been so sweet.

When he pulls back, his eyes are hooded, darker. Sexy as sin. “Now, what were you saying?”

I have no idea. “Ru . . . rules?” I manage.

“Ah, yes. Well, I’ve never done well with rules, but tell me yours and I’ll see what I can do.”

I take a breath and try to figure out a rule that isn’t just Kiss me like that every time, or Please don’t make me fall for you.

“You keep looking at me like that,” he warns, “and I’m going to kiss you again, and we may never get to discuss these rules of yours.”

Right. “We can’t tell anyone,” I say. Cally and my sisters will try to make more of this than the one-night stand I know it to be.

His expression shifts and becomes unreadable. “Okay. What else?”

“This doesn’t change anything between us. We’re friends.” Something in my chest objects to that rule. It feels like a betrayal. But I want to say it before he does. I have to.

“Sex changes everything, Liz. That’s half the fun.”

“It doesn’t have to. I want us to still be friends after tonight.”

“Oh, we can be friends.” His breath ruffles my hair as he skims his fingertips down my bare arms, sending delicious shivers through my body that land low in my belly and turn my insides to goo. “But it’ll be different.”

“How so?”

“We won’t be able to look at each other without remembering what it was like. And if I have my way—” He dips his head to my ear and tugs the lobe between his teeth. A shudder rocks through me. “—every time you look at me, your panties will go damp as you remember what I did to you.”

“Oh.” I can’t begin to form a more intelligent response, not while his lips are running along the side of my neck. His hands move to my hips and his fingers massage delicious circles there.

“And I have my own rules.”

I blink up at him. His honey eyes have gone dark and intense. “What are they?”

“No expectations beyond tonight. If you give me tonight, I’m going to touch you and taste you and fuck you until your legs shake.”

I swallow. Because dear God, I want that.

“And then I’m going to walk away.”

“Understood. What else?”

“You tell me to stop if it’s too much for you or if you don’t feel completely safe. We can always slow down or stop.”

My lips part as questions fill my mind. Namely, what on earth does he plan to do with me that might make me feel unsafe or make me want to stop? But instead of asking, I say, “I trust you.”

He takes a fistful of my dress and tugs it up to my waist, then he lifts me onto the conference table and steps between my legs. “We don’t have much time,” he whispers. “They’re going to be looking for us. But I can’t go back out there until I feel you.”

Then his hand is between my legs and he’s rubbing my clit through my panties. From our talk alone, I’m already wet and swollen, and my back arches at his touch. My hips lift off the table, pushing into his hand.

“I love that you’re already wet for me.” He tugs my hips to the edge of the table, and I have to balance by propping myself up on my hands behind me. He steps back to peel off my panties. Then he spreads my legs and looks at me.

For a second, I feel ridiculous and want to cover myself. I must look absurd, sitting on this table with my dress bunched around my waist, the most private part of me bare, exposed to him.

Then I look at him and I stop worrying. I stop thinking. His eyes are locked on that intimate flesh between my legs, his nostrils flaring as his breathing goes shallow.