Waking Up in Vegas(41)

Every instinct screamed for me to peel off every last bit of our clothes and bury myself in her, but I shoved it all away and slammed the door. No way was I going to speed things up. Every tiny sound from her lips was a treasure, and I wanted to collect them all.

“Oh, God, Tack,” she gasped when I reached the curve of her neck and shoulder and scraped my teeth over her skin. Her fingers squeezed into my scalp and, taking the hint, I did it again. She quivered in my arms and, once more, the voice in my head screamed to get her naked with her knees pulled up to her ears.

I knew that if I didn’t stop now, I never would until that voice won, and I wasn’t ready to go there. Yet.

This was a fragile line, but we could still go back from here. If I got my cock inside her (and Lord knows I wanted it there with every molecule of my being), there’d be no retreat. Everything would change.

So instead of going lower, which was probably what she expected, I nibbled my way back up to her mouth, teasing her lips with light brushes and passes until that hand she still had buried in my hair practically smashed my face into hers.

Such a two-way street we had going on here.

Her tongue invaded my mouth, and this time it was Jensen who got to swallow my groan. Every time I drew back, she pursued, threatening to pull us back to that place where the need lurked and danced in the dark.

This could not continue. I’d finally leashed that lust and the bitch was straining at the shackles.

With the strongest act of will I’d ever displayed, I raised myself from Jensen’s intoxicating curves, staying on hands and knees above her and looking down. (Resolved enough to pull away, yes. Crazy enough to stop all contact, no.)

Her face was flushed and her lips were stained a deep red, fuller from all the attention they’d received. Her lids fluttered open and she looked dazedly up at me through the haze of want. “Tack?”

I tried to contain my rapid breathing, but decided to just say fuck it. She knew I wanted her, why try to hide it? “We should stop, sweetheart. Before we do something we can’t take back.”

She let go with a shuddering sigh, but gave me a shaky nod. “Too much beer,” she joked. It sounded hollow, and I knew that she, like me, was just trying to shake it off.

I agreed, even though we both knew it was a total lie. She was intoxicating all on her own.

And I had four more days with her under my roof.

God truly hated me.





Chapter 12




*Thunderstruck*



We’d moved to opposite ends of the couch after that, both of us afraid that any sort of contact would trigger one of us to combust.

Something sultry by Black Bone Child was playing on the stereo, and though I was intentionally staring at the wall behind the television, out of the corner of my eye, I caught Jen’s toe tapping out the beat.

“Good song,” I said, just to break the awkward silence.

“Did you pick this Pandora station on purpose?” Her voice was low and rough, and once again I didn’t know what to make of her.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I picked it because it’s one of my favorites.”

“So you didn’t put it on because someone told you that, second to AC/DC, I love blues rock.” It was a statement and not a question.

“Why would anyone tell me that? For that matter, who do I know that would know that about you—and then would feel compelled to tell me?” I quit studying the texture of my living room wall and turned to look at Jen for the first time since I’d climbed off her breathless body. “What exactly is your point here, Jen?”

She looked down at her fidgeting fingers. “I don’t know. It just seemed too…” she flipped her gaze back to mine, “coincidentally perfect.”

I sighed and did my best to quash the flash of temper that she only slightly deserved. “I’m a little raw and sitting here with the biggest set of blue balls of my entire life, so I might be a lot thick right now, but let me try to decipher this, anyway. You think I arranged a seduction just so I could put the brakes on in the middle of it?”

She shrugged and said, “Then you could be blameless when you left me hanging and I attacked you?”

“Wait—what?”

“Love ’em and leave ’em, every time. I know what you’re like, Tack.”

I could not believe the turn this conversation was taking. “What I’m like?”

Jen’s head bobbed in assent. “Yeah. I’m handy and you’re randy.”

She did not just Princess Bride me. “We are not playing rhyme time.”

She gave me a tremulous smile. “It could be sublime.”

I knew she was just trying to diffuse the tension, but still. “It would have been sublime if I had continued kissing my way down your body. But I remind you that I was the one who stopped—and left myself hanging, too.”