Below the Belt(19)

The instant his lips touched hers, Marianne’s arms wound around his neck and pulled him closer. He groped with one hand to find the doorway to keep both their balances, then used the other to palm her lower back and pull her body into his.

She tasted like summer. Like cool lemonade, with a hint of the key lime tartness from their shared dessert. He licked inside her mouth to see how long the taste would last. Her tongue met his, circled around, danced in an instinctive move that made him moan and press against her until her back slid into the doorjamb.

She gasped into his mouth, but didn’t break the contact. His hand bunched in her shirt until he could feel the smooth skin of her back with his thumb. He stroked there in the same circles his tongue made, and she melted even more into his body. That tender patch of skin, so simple and yet so sensual, nearly had him rocketing off without her, like a horny teen who had held off for too long.

A door opened and closed somewhere else on the floor of her building, and it was the signal he needed to break the spell. He gripped her shoulders with both hands—damn that sweet, bare skin again—and pulled away, waiting until her eyes popped open before letting go.

“Steady?” he asked cautiously.

She blinked, then looked down at one of his hands. The tanned skin of his fingers, hand and wrist made hers seem even more pearly white. Luminescent.

“Yeah, Romeo. I’m not going to swoon, if that was your hope.” She grinned, then shrugged one shoulder until he let go of that one. But he couldn’t quite break the contact altogether. She raised a brow, then shrugged the other.

He held on.

She blew out a breath, stirring the blonde hairs that clung to the corner of her mouth, but not moving them. She growled and swiped at them with an impatient push of her hand, but they stubbornly clung to her lips.

Not that he could blame them.

Before she hauled off and punched herself in the face, he brushed the hairs back behind her ear, tracing the outer shell before caressing the lobe and dropping his hand away.

“Lip gloss,” she muttered.

What that had to do with hair, he had no clue. But he wasn’t going to ask. Women were a rare, special breed. It was best to not get too many details, or it might scare you off permanently.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly. Then she glanced around, like she was waiting for someone to pop out and scare them. “I’m fine.”

“You said that already.”

She nodded quickly, and it was like she couldn’t stop once she’d started. Her head just kept bobbing. He cupped the back of her neck and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

That stopped her.

Clearly, she wasn’t fine. But he wasn’t about to push. He had no clue what the hell had just happened, or why he’d been the one to initiate it. But he knew he needed one gigantic step back to assess the situation.

More than that, he just needed to get the hell out of there before he did something embarrassing . . . like kiss her again and not stop.

Shoving his hands in his pockets—good-bye, temptation—he took one more step toward the stairs. “Thanks for dinner.”

“I didn’t pay,” she reminded him, one corner of her mouth quirking with a smile. That her humor was returning was a good sign. It meant maybe they could just . . . ignore whatever the hell had happened. And she wouldn’t be turning his ass in for harassment or whatever.

“Right. So I’ll see you tomorrow then.” When she opened her door all the way and took a step in, he waved and beat a hasty retreat.

Cowardly, maybe. Or just smart.

Sure. We could go with smart.


*

SHE’D kissed him. Oh, God almighty, she’d just kissed one of her athletes.

For the second time that night, Marianne let her head beat against her front door. No need to worry about him coming back this time. Brad had hustled it out of the building like his boxers were on fire.

Did he wear boxers? Or was he a briefs man? Maybe a boxer briefs kind of guy . . .

No, Marianne. Bad Marianne.

She was about to embark on a serious campaign to move up in the ranks of the training world. How the hell would she explain to future bosses that she had a habit of lusting after her clientele? No NBA star wanted a trainer staring at him with puppy dog eyes, and no coach or team owner wanted their investments being cared for by a woman with a record of dating the players. They wanted a serious businesswoman with talent, end of story.

Walking into her kitchen, she forced herself to pull in a few deep breaths, then let them go again. Just like Kara had taught her.

Yoga was so not her thing, but the deep breathing had been a godsend on more than one sleepless night.

With a calmer head, she took one more breath. This was not a problem. Opening a cabinet, she got down a glass for some water. Not a problem at all. They were both adults, and they could both laugh about it tomorrow morning. Chalk it up to a couple of good Yuenglings, a great meal and decent company.

No, not decent. Excellent company. Sexy company.

Bad Marianne.

She would act like it was nothing, and so then it would become nothing. Wasn’t that what Kara was always preaching? Visualize the goal, sense the goal, blah blah blah, reach the goal?

Come to think of it, maybe that blah blah blah part was more important than she had thought.

Draining the water, she put the glass in the dishwasher and went to get her cell phone out of her bag. Three missed calls from her mother. Fantastic.