Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(40)

Slowly, he reiterated his earlier question, this time in the form of a statement. “Is it fair. To you.”

Fair? To her? “Fair to her” didn’t come into play. Yes, in a way she had lost Rae, too, but Rae wasn’t her spouse, the mother of her child, or her soul mate. Losing Rae had devastated her, but it couldn’t compare to Evan losing Rae. To Lyon losing his mother.

“I… don’t understand.”

“I know.”

His hand squeezed her neck, then released. His eyes went to her mouth for such a long time, she got light-headed and then realized it was because she hadn’t taken a breath since he touched her.

“I’m going to kiss you. Better stop me if you don’t want me to.”

It was like she’d been injected with venom that paralyzed her body but left her brain aware. She wanted to say stop, to bring up Rae again, but only intellectually. Her body—and every last cell in it—wanted to feel Evan’s mouth on hers.

So she said nothing.

And he kissed her, as promised.

When his lips lowered, she lifted hers and met him in the middle. The pressure increased on her neck as he adjusted the angle, and she lifted a palm and laid it on his firm chest, feeling his heart pound, feeling the earth shake, and tingling and fluttering everywhere capable of tingling and fluttering.

She lost track of hands and feet, the whole world. Everything but their mating mouths fell away as he tasted her. Their tongues speared, her head swam, and the pulse throbbing low in her belly relocated to in between her thighs.

He held her steady—and it was a good thing because she might teeter if it wasn’t for the strong hand gripping her waist. The thought came to her, though she had no idea how the thought-making part of her brain was functioning at the moment, that no one had kissed her like Evan was kissing her now. Like he needed her mouth on his. Like the air they shared was paramount to survival. Like their hands, skimming and sliding over clothes, and exploring planes and curves, were as necessary as if neither of them had sight.

The same passion he’d poured onto the canvas behind them, he poured onto her lips now. It dripped like honey, the sweetness too much for her to deny.

He pulled away from her mouth and she came down hard. And when she did, she found one of her hands had wound itself into his hair while the other one clenched on to his T-shirt. That her breasts had mashed against his solid frame, that the whole of her, from thighs to knees to shins, had leaned into him so far that if he moved, she’d fall to the ground. She appropriated her weight so that she was supporting herself, then loosened her grip on his hair. She didn’t let go right away, testing the strands. Soft. Thick. Just like she’d imagined.

Evan didn’t seem to mind that she’d buried her fingers in it. Russell had very carefully arranged hair but never let her touch it. Evan had not only let her touch it, he’d let her mangle it.

Ungripping the hand fisted in his T-shirt, she attempted to peel away her body pressed to his like cellophane stuck to itself. He clutched her closer, not letting her back away, and most of her—the throbbing, fluttering, tingling parts—was glad. Because she didn’t want to back away yet.

The hand on her waist moved to splay across her back. “Do you paint?” he asked, his voice low and rumbly and far too sexy for such a weird question.

“Finger-paint,” she joked. “But that was a long time ago.”

His smile turned wicked.

Her heart kicked against her rib cage.

The hand left her back and grabbed hers, and she had to remind herself how to use her knees as he led her in three wide strides across the studio. In front of the easel and small table covered in, and with, paint, he stopped and positioned her much in the way she had been standing on the other side of the room. Facing him, very close, one of his hands once again splayed across her back.

She watched his face, then his hand as it lowered to the palette on the table. His finger lifted, and when it did, she saw a dab of bright blue paint on the tip. He dragged it down her cheek to her jaw, the cool sensation of the paint causing her flesh to pucker with raised goose bumps.

She sucked in a breath as he lowered his hand again. Then he returned, this time with red, and dragged another chilly line down her neck.

“How come you never asked me to tattoo you?” he murmured.

The bizarre line of questioning kept coming.

“Um…”

The truth was Charlie had wanted Evan to tattoo her. He was amazingly talented and she wanted something on her body that had meaning. She’d picked out what she wanted a long time ago but lacked the courage to approach him.

For one, Rae hadn’t been tatted at all, and Charlie felt weird asking Rae’s husband to ink her skin when his own wife wouldn’t let him do it. For another, Charlie wanted the tattoo very close to a… um… private place, and the idea of Evan Downey’s face that close to her boob was, well… it wasn’t right.

Then Rae had died and any idea of entering his intimate space and asking him to tat her in an intimate place went right out the window. Getting someone else to do it was out of the question. Evan was the best.

None of which she could tell him, so she said, “Never got around to it.”

Another dab of blue, but this time, he ran his finger along the V-neck of her shirt. “Where.”

“Um…”

The finger dipped past her shirt, skimming along the top of one breast.