With one finger, she swept a thatch of hair behind his ear, and the light touch curled his toes. She threaded strands through her fingers, letting it waterfall away, and exhaled in a raspy moan that speared his hard-on. That had to be the sexiest sound ever.
Deep in her throat, she moaned again. “I want you to kiss me. Do you know how bad I want it?”
At least as badly as he wanted to. He tried to think about something unsexy. Not happening.
“I have a pretty good idea,” he muttered.
One hot hand wandered over his chest, delving into the dips of his muscles and tracing the line of his collarbone. Pushing him toward insanity. He wished she’d find the hem, slide underneath the T-shirt. Touch his bare skin and say his name again.
“I’m dying for you to kiss me,” she said. “But you can’t. We can’t.”
Can’t? Says who?
He shook his head, hard. No, it was true. They couldn’t.
Then she leaned in with the smallest incline of her head, offering up lips puckered in a superb O. Just before she hit the point of no return, she whispered, “Kristian.”
Her breath brushed his jaw, swirled down his throat and spread through his body, heating it, warming corners he’d have insisted weren’t cold. The space between them slowly disappeared. Too slowly.
His control vanished. He shoved fingers through her hair, cupped the back of her head and kissed her. Hard. Openmouthed. Tongue seeking, sliding along hers in a fiery path. Tasting every crevice of her smart mouth. Unleashing the frustration he couldn’t ease any other way.
At last.
He dragged her half into his lap and worked a hand under her shirt to thumb one of those taut nipples. Perfection. One should be in his mouth. Right now. He growled.
More.
He changed the angle and drew her tongue deeper into his mouth, sucking on it with quick little pulls then broke away to bite his way down her neck, back up to her earlobe. He took it in his mouth and nibbled on the sweet flesh.
He needed more.
Her hot lips locked onto his. Hot, so hot. He guided her hand to his groin and dragged her palm across the rock-hard bulge, nearly exploding right then and there from her blistering touch.
With a lurch, the Ferris wheel started up again and jolted them apart. Bleary-eyed, he fought through the lust-induced haze, taking in VJ’s mussed hair and swollen lips both screaming take me fast. He barely resisted yanking her back.
“Good thing you’re so, um, reserved,” she said without a trace of irony, her irises molten and seductive. “That was so tame, I invited the Baptist Knitting Club over to watch.”
A good, honest laugh burst out in spite of it all, and he winced as vibrations traveled through his throbbing erection. He’d never had a chance. Hadn’t wanted one. “Okay. You made your point.”
And how.
It was disturbing how easily she’d snapped his control and how much he’d liked letting go into that dark free fall of passion. Disturbing how accurately she’d gauged the truth. Disturbing and unprecedented.
“Kissing is stage four,” she said. “By the way.”
Of course it was. A sin and a shame he liked her so much because only the worst kind of slime could pretend to be engaged to Kyla while having an extremely satisfying side-thing with VJ. That wasn’t fair or respectful to either woman.
No, VJ was the marrying sort of woman. He knew that. Now that his brain was functioning—the real one, not the one he’d been using five seconds ago—he had to face that he’d crossed so far over the line, it was but a distant slash.
It couldn’t happen again. He probably wouldn’t be able to look in the mirror as it was. No matter how much he burned to dive into the pleasure VJ promised, he had to stay in control from now on. It was totally not cool to lose it like that. He kept himself in check for a reason, usually without any trouble. VJ was exceptionally unique in more ways than one.
And he was still so hard, he couldn’t walk.
While Kris took a moment in the portable bathroom, VJ slumped on a bench with a great view of the Ferris wheel and fingered her chafed lips.
The vilest word she’d ever said aloud slipped out. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Mama was surely rolling over in her grave. Her daughter was nothing but a cursing harlot. The only thing VJ had proven at the top of the Ferris wheel was that a small-town girl like her couldn’t handle the highly specialized, foreign engine beneath the hood of Kristian Demetrious.
Kissing him had been like licking a nine-volt battery. A stun to the tongue and ill-advised.
A man who could kiss like that, and likely had many other talents, chewed up women and spit them out on a regular basis. She’d set him free, all right. Naively, she’d assumed her vast understanding of men in books would transition to men in real life and the truth put a huge chink in her delusions.