Hot and Bothered (Hot in the Kitchen) (21 page)

“Yes, fast. I want you now.”

Before she could re-apply her avaricious fingers to his zipper, he yanked up her dress, hoisted her up and around his hips, and strode to the bedroom. The sheer manliness of it thrilled and annoyed her equally.

“Against the door was fine,” she said impatiently.

“Nope.”

“Then the kitchen table.”

“Not a chance.”

She bit back a horny girl’s sigh. “Sofa?”

“First time’s in a bed.”

The bed was unmade. “Only time.”

“We’ll see.”

“Stop being so cocky.”

“Stop being so stubborn.” He fitted his mouth over hers and backed her against the wall just outside her bedroom. She felt every inch of his hardness grind into her softness. He wanted her to know how much he wanted her.

She liked that. No mind games, just lust in its most concentrated form.

“Don’t fight me on this,” he said after he let her come up for air. “I’ll always win.”

“God, your lines are terrible.”

“Brat.”

That drew her smile. She loved how he took everything she gave him without taking offense. Tad was comfortable enough in his own skin to recognize that a woman with desires and needs was not a threat to his masculinity.

No wonder he was popular.

“Grab the light,” he muttered between brain-melting kisses as they crashed into her bedroom.

She reached for it, glad that it turned on the more atmospheric lamps rather than the garish overhead. He placed her on the floor near the end of the bed, which had not magically made itself in the last two minutes. What must he think of her?

He’s about to get lucky. He’s not worried about the slatternly bed linens.

With a practiced motion, he unzipped, and her dress fell away in one fluid drop. It puddled at her feet, and she stepped out of it, feeling like Venus emerging from the shell. She would let him take care of her already soaked panties.

Now for the dreaded appraisal. She wasn’t the kind of woman who was overly conscious of her body but dinosaurs had been roaming the earth the last time a man had seen her naked. Her hands went instantly to her stomach, over those last few pounds of pregnancy weight clinging like accordion folds to her bones. She could probably fit a baby joey in there but at least she had the girls to compensate. Since breastfeeding, she had gone up a full cup size; they weren’t so pert anymore but the way that muscle at the corner of Tad’s mouth twitched told her that wouldn’t be a problem.

From under her lashes, she assessed him as he undressed. Was there anything sexier than a guy pulling off his tie?

Slowly—so bloody slowly—he slipped off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt to reveal that dark pelt of hair.
Gimme, gimme, gimme.
She clamped her lips shut. There would be no begging words coming from the mouth that was suddenly as dry as the Sahara.

“You need help?” Not begging, just moving things along.

“Just stay right where you are, baby.” He said it low, but with an unmistakable edge. It surprised her. It also surprised her how much it turned her on.

She squirmed on the bed, sending her breasts into a jiggle. His reaction? Slow his fingers to a snail’s pace. Add a smirk for good measure. She was probably going to kill him before the night was through.

“You’re absolutely gorgeous, you know that?” he whispered as he undid the last button on the shirt placket.

Feeling skittish, she moved her hands over her stomach. “You don’t have to give me compliments, Tad. I’m a sure thing.”

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Turn this into a transaction. It’s not. There is nowhere I would rather be and no one I would rather be with right now.”

She swallowed past the lump in her throat as big as hope. Those words touched a pristine part of her, vibrating through to start a web of cracks across the surface of her heart. He really shouldn’t talk like that.

He shucked his shirt, still slow as cold honey, still never taking his eyes off her. “I’ve thought about you, Jules. About how it would feel to fill you with my cock. How good your sweet lips would look wrapped around me while I hold your head just right. What kind of sounds you’d make while I take you slow and hard. I’ve used it to bring me home more times than I care to admit.”

She let out a gasp. It was one thing to be caught up in the moment but surely he couldn’t mean…

“You could say that my spank bank contains only one kind of currency. Minted in the treasury of one Juliet Kilroy.”

Not a gasp this time, more like a raspy moan of want. He had thought about her, probably not as much as she had thought about him, but still. Maybe she wasn’t such a horny-deviled freakazoid after all.

She launched herself at him, immediately proving
that
conclusion wrong.

“Jules, I told you to wait,” he said indulgently.

“And I need to touch you.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and rubbed her sensitive breasts against all that soft chest hair and steely flesh. So, so good. “I can’t help it, I’m excited. You know, long time. Itch to scratch.”

He sighed. “You’re going to be difficult, aren’t you?”

“Would you have me any other way?”

He filled his big, wide palm with her arse cheek and pulled her flush to his erection.

Best. Meet. Ever.

“I wouldn’t change a thing about you. You’re perfect in every way, even when you get all mouthy. I love how you talk back to me and never let me get away with anything.”

She loved that, too, but right now she wanted to know more about what he had been thinking, and if it bore any similarities to what she had been thinking.

“Tell me about these fantasies of yours. I need details. The dirtier the better.”

He tipped her chin up, his eyes midnight blue magnets. “I’ve imagined burying my nose in your neck, getting that first hint of the pleasure to come. I’ve imagined taking your nipple in my mouth, my tongue coating your skin, my throat tasting the wine between your thighs. I’ve imagined experiencing something so good there might be no coming back from it. I’ve imagined my ruin.”

Oxygen was suddenly at a premium, and she felt light-headed with relief and desire. Those things he said, they battered her breathless.

“Now I know you’re impatient for me to get you off, but as this is going to be the culmination of my fantasies, I’d like to take a few moments delaying the gratification. You got a problem with that?”

“No, no, please carry on.” She backed up until her legs hit the messy bed. Laid out, she stretched her body like a satisfied cat and lay there, waiting. She could hear her chest rising and falling, her pulse quickening, life charging through her.

Life
changing
with every beat of her heart.

He pulled down his pants’ zipper about halfway, then gave a short tug. It got stuck and he made a face.

“Taaaad…”

“Just foolin’.” There it was, that devilish smile that had been rocking her pulse for the last two years. How he could move from that take-charge guy to the insouciant charmer astonished her. Playing parts, that’s what he was doing, and it struck her that in giving her the full Tad DeLuca experience, he might be playing her. Fulfilling that special request to make her the center of his world for this one special night.

You know what else struck her?
She didn’t care.

He removed his pants and well, that was worth the wait. Black, silky boxers above marvelously sturdy and erotically hairy thighs. She’d had glimpses of his calves when he wore board shorts during the summer but the thighs
au naturel
were something else. Tree trunks to match his matted arms, thick as oak branches. An impressively weighty erection strained the dark fabric.

Yum.

She crooked her finger.
Come and get me, babe.
His eyes darkened to night, consuming all that soft blue. The predator was back; her heart thudded at an alarming rate.

He leaned over her, his hand cupping her jaw. The spread of his fingers against her neck felt gentle, possessive, and unbelievably sensual. The moment held, suspended on a taut string between them. He drew back, sending the pulse at the base of her throat into a fluttering panic against his thumb pad.

“It’s okay, honey,” he soothed, like he had done so a million times before. “Just let me look at you.”

She thought he meant her body, so when he maintained his single-minded focus on her eyes, she almost turned away. That familiar gaze seared her soul and reached into a private place.

He shuttered his eyes, and her imagination strayed to the fanciful notion he might be committing this moment to memory for unpacking later during long, lonely nights.

She closed her eyes and did the same.

“Last chance,” he whispered.

Did he think she could back out now while she was this close to heaven? A cavalcade of clowns rolling through the bedroom wouldn’t be able to stop this. She was too far gone and from the dark, smoky lust in his eyes, so was he, but they needed to tick the boxes. Agree to the terms and conditions.

Only one requirement for this job.

“If you’re not inside me in the next ten seconds, Tad DeLuca, we’ll have words.”

“Right answer.” That dangerous grin, the one she might never recover from, lit up his handsome face. With an abundance of care, he peeled down her panties, his eyes still focused on her with an intensity she would never have expected.

“So do you typically orgasm more than once per session? Or is one your limit?”

“Wh-what?”

“I need to know how far I can push you, baby. If you can handle what I can give you.”

“You arrogant piece of sh—
oh!
”

He slipped two fingers inside her and she groaned at the pleasurable invasion.
This. This. This.
Slowly he pumped through her warm, slick heat. With his free hand, he cupped her bum and pulled her roughly to the edge of the bed, then pushed her to the erotic edge with a brush of his thumb over her throbbing clit.

“Show me how you like it,
mia bella
.” He grasped her hand and placed it over his. She guided his fingers to the tempo she needed. A little faster, a little rougher. Inexorable spirals of pleasure uncoiled throughout her belly while his dynamic digits worked wonders.

“Open your eyes, Jules. I want to see those beautiful eyes of yours when you come for me.”

The eyes she hadn’t realized she’d closed fluttered open and met his too-intimate gaze. Its intense focus thrummed through her. The pleasure was already too much. Too, too much.

“Kiss me,” she begged.

He did, slowly, his tongue exploring her mouth with the same rhythm as his fingers. Those electric blue eyes never wavered from hers.
Hold on,
she thought,
make it last,
just as her orgasm crashed through her so hard she saw tweety-bird stars.

“Oh my God,” she muttered against the sensual curve of his lips.

“Just Tad, babe.” And then he added the so-help-her-Tad smile, melting her bones and heart and soul into soup.

“You need some time?”

She blinked a few times to focus on what he was saying. Coming back to herself after an orgasm had never been this labored before. That was… she had no words for what that was.

“Time for what?”

He rubbed his sandpapery jaw against her cheek. “Time until your next orgasm.”

Blimey, were they on a schedule here?

It took a moment but she reached for a calm she never knew she possessed. “I think I can handle whatever you can give me…
baby
.”

His eyebrow scooted up in challenge as only Tad’s eyebrow could, before he lowered his head to her breast and suckled her expertly with an unbearably arousing suction that drove her senseless with pleasure. Then the other got his expert ministrations, the perfect combination of nip and suck, rough and soft. Too soon, he moved his lips on a sexy trail south. Just as her reached her navel with a whisper of a kiss across her overheated skin, he looked up.

“Touch your breasts, Jules. Slowly.”

Orders! Oh, she liked that very much. In her fantasies, he took charge but it was so different from the Tad she knew that it had never occurred to her he might actually
be
dominant in the bedroom.

She brushed the underside of her breast, luxuriating in the tease. Hesitantly, she hovered with her hands, partly to torment but mostly because her limbs felt heavy and pleasure-drunk. Her nipples had remained in sensitive peaks from his torturous manipulations.

“Baby, don’t try my patience. I said to touch your beautiful tits. Squeeze those pretty pink nipples.”

She could do better than that. She dragged a hand along her stomach then dipped it between her legs. With fingers glistening from her own dewy sex, she massaged slow circles around her nipples. The dark flush flagging his cheeks signaled his approval.

He shot to his feet. “Don’t hate me but I can’t wait another second, Jules.” Quickly, he stripped.

Please let him be big. Please, pretty please.

She gasped at the sight of his huge erection, full and proud with a slight lean to the left.