Baddest Bad Boys(53)

“But?” she said, keeping in the game with her wide eyes and sultry tone.

“That’s all I want. To f*ck you and forget about it.” The want part was a given, the forget-about-it part? Not such a sure thing.

She froze in place, the smile slipping from her face. She looked away briefly. “I guess I should have expected that.” Her smile came back, but it was weak and wobbly, and she kept compressing her lips. “You look at me and you see a bed, a babe—and sex.”

His lungs seized up, tight. “Tommi, I—” He was going to apologize. Like hell!

She held up a hand. “Forget it. You were honest. That’s something.” Her wobbly smile held, but the shadow in her eyes darkened. “I’ll admit to a time in my life when I, uh, looked for love in all the wrong places, but I’m not the girl who, as some of my so-called friends in high school predicted, was ‘the graduate most likely to suck her way to the governor’s mansion.’”

Silence.

“What kind of girl are you?” Mac felt like Jell-O—at least most of him did. The rest felt like hell.

“For one thing, I’m not a girl, not anymore. I’m a woman—and like every woman, I work hard, try to do the right thing—when I can figure out what it is, and—”

“And,” he prodded.

She laughed, a thin laugh, soft and regretful. “And I try to stay away from men who have nothing to offer but sex in an emotional vacuum.” She moved away from him, settled herself on the rock ledge across from him, and sank deep into the water.

“Or in a hot spring?”

It was as if she didn’t hear him. “Reid McNeil was the first man I’d dated in two years. And I blew it again. I don’t feel good about that.” She looked at him. “And now I’m here…with Hugh’s younger brother in hot water again—literally, this time—about to make another mistake by seducing him.” She slanted him an odd look. “A younger brother who didn’t, maybe still doesn’t, like me all that much.”

Mac’s heart, which had finally slowed to normal, kicked again, but he said nothing. He might need to revisit some faulty thinking, but he wasn’t ready to deny her accusation.

“I never slept with Hugh. You should know that.” She hesitated. “He wanted to. I didn’t.”

The weight that lifted from Mac’s chest was a semi-load.

“He was—is—too good a friend. Sex would ruin that.” She crossed her arms over her breasts, rubbed her shoulders. When her foot brushed his under the water, she pulled it back.

“Sex doesn’t ruin things. People do.” He moved through the water until he was braced over her. She put her hands on his chest, held him back. He let her.

“You haven’t denied it,” she whispered, her voice catching.

“Denied what?”

“That you don’t like me. Will you tell me why?”

“I’m starting to like you. Is that good enough?” Now wasn’t the time to answer her question, and he didn’t wait for her answer to his, because he wanted her mouth put to a better use.

Her lips were moist, her mouth welcoming, and her eyes, wide and wary when he lowered his head to hers, closed when their mouths joined. Her hands curled into his chest hair and, finally, his tongue entered to taste her. His sex lay heavy, achingly ready, against her black silk triangle. Before their kiss sapped all his strength, he lifted his head. Ignoring the sear of tension between his thighs, he watched her eyes come open, languid and dazzled.

Good. Dazzling women was what he liked to do best.

He touched a finger to her cheek, then ran it down her throat. When her eyes opened and fully met his, they went from dazzled to guarded. “You’re good at it, aren’t you?”

“Sex?”

She nodded.

“Very good.” He drew a line with his index finger between her breasts, then circled one hard nipple before gently rotating it. “And when the prize is as good as this”—he bent to blow on her damp nipple, watched her breathing stall—“I do my best work.”

Instead of giving him a shot about his boast, as he expected, she flattened her palms against his chest and gave a slight push. “I think we should go back.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not going to have sex with you until I think about it.”

He kissed her again, this time without pressure. “You’re afraid.”

“Not of you.” She ran a hand under the water, cupped him, took the weight of his balls, ran a finger up his straining erection. “And definitely not of this”—she squeezed him—“this I like. It’s that emotional vacuum I mentioned.” She took her hand away. “If I’m going to let you…use me, I need to be ready for the lack of follow-up.”

She squeezed again, then let him go. Hell of an object lesson.

Mac concentrated on dragging in some oxygen and bringing moisture back to his dry mouth. Hell, he’d damn near come in her hand. Tommi wasn’t the only one who needed to think. He liked sex—what red-blooded American male didn’t?—but so far, he’d managed not to lose himself in it, stay one step removed. Until now it hadn’t been all that difficult.

But imagining Tommi thrashing under him, hot and wild, he wondered if holding the line would be possible.