Riding Red (6 page)

At the same time, she came to another realisation and a small smile teased across her face.

“No, it was fine, but I’m full.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, delighting in the feminine flutter in her belly when his gaze followed her every movement, his eyes swirling darker as the swells of her breasts stretched the thin cotton shirt.

He shifted against the refrigerator and the growing bulge behind the zipper of his jeans did not go unnoticed, nor did the cocky grin that spread across his face.

“So it’s not food you want…” His eyes sparkled with mischief and before he even spoke she knew what was coming next. “But perhaps I can offer you something
else
?”

The husky edge to his voice sizzled through her, but with her deeper understanding of him, his provocative question did not arouse her irritation as it usually did.

She arched one brow. “Why do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Pretend as if you’re a player, when you’re not. Act as if you’re a real bad boy, when you’re actually a gentleman through and through.”

She caught a fleeting glimmer in his eyes and knew then her statement had caught him off guard but he was quick to recover.

“I’m neither pretending nor acting. I
am
all of those things, Red.”

“
Maybe.
Even all at one time, perhaps, but not anymore.”

She stood and gathered her plate to cross the room where she washed it in the sink. When she was done, she looked at him from over her right shoulder. Only a few feet now separated them. With his body closer, she could feel heat drifting off him to warm her skin. Teresa’s heart jumped in her chest. She could not believe she was prepared to do this, that she so openly flirted with temptation, but she was determined to prove a point.

“You’re a good guy, Jeff Downing,” she said finally.

He chuckled. “If you want to believe that, Red, then fine—”

“Because if you weren’t,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “you wouldn’t have walked away from me earlier.”

The temperature in the room plunged within a matter of milliseconds. Jeff wanted to pretend he didn’t hear her, then he wanted to pretend he didn’t understand what she meant, or even the language she was speaking, but it would have been futile. Teresa was no fool, and she knew that neither was he.

She inched closer, and the only thing that kept him rooted in place was that his pride wouldn’t let him run.

He shook his head when not even an inch separated them. “Don’t do this, Teresa.”

Teresa.

He only called her by her name when he meant business and was serious. Damn the stubborn, impish woman when she smiled. He shouldn’t have flirted with her just then, but he enjoyed the sexual banter between them. Yet, had he not, she wouldn’t be so determined to prove her point, and he could tell by her resolute expression that she definitely had a point to make.

“Don’t do what?” When she placed the palm of her hand against his chest, he closed his eyes, a desperate groan rumbling out of him. “Don’t touch you? Don’t flirt with you? Don’t try to kiss you? What will you do, Jeff? Will you walk away again?”

His eyes snapped open, but he didn’t say a word.

“You would, too, because that’s what a
good
guy would do—”

He clamped his fingers around her wrist to stop her hand from drifting lower past the planes of his abdomen where it now rested.

“Why are you doing this, Teresa?”

“To prove a point.”

Yeah, he’d already figured that.

He glared at her when he tried to fling her hand away and step back, but she refused to budge. She wanted to prove that he was a nice guy, a good guy… Well, he hadn’t always been, and he wasn’t certain he would be able to walk away from her again if she didn’t stop.

“And what if you’re wrong, huh Teresa? Did you ever stop to think about that? What if you start something you’re not prepared to finish, only to realise I’m not the good guy you think I am?”

“I already know you’re a good guy, or we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.” She leaned into him, and he had to remind himself to breathe when her sweet scent assaulted him as if it were hell bent on destroying the last vestiges of his resolve.

Clenching his hands tight, he bit back a groan and held himself completely still, afraid that even slightest movement would shatter what was left of his restraint.

“See…look at you. You’re afraid to touch me, even though you’ve spent a year chasing and hitting on me—”

“Teresa—”

She ignored his warning growl. “But what I don’t understand is now that we’re
here,
why is it you keep hesitating?”

“Because I’m trying to do the right thing, Teresa,” he eventually managed to say, the words rasping out of him.

“What if I don’t want you to do the right thing?”

Jeff froze, and his gaze searched hers, probing deep into her eyes. She was serious. He closed his eyes, blew out a shaky breath, and opened them again. He’d wanted this for so long—he’d even set out to seduce her over this week—but when he took her he wanted her to know he would want all of her, and when he was done, he would want her again…and then
again.
And finally, when he was spent, he wanted to look into her eyes and see only
one
thing…and that didn’t include shame or regret.

“Trust me when I say, you do. Trust me when I say you’re not ready.” As he spoke he twisted her around until her back was against the fridge. “Because when I make love to you, Teresa, I will demand all of you, every part of you, and then I will demand more.”

He towered over her, hovering on the fence of indecision. He could succumb to their mutual desires and risk hurting her—risk losing her—or he could walk away now, which would kill him.

When she lifted her hand to cup the back of his head, he knew the decision had already been made
.

He called her name, one last desperate plea for her to stop.

She didn’t.

Chapter Four

Teresa could feel Jeff’s hesitation. He still held himself back, his voice unsteady and hoarse as he called her name. With her hands twisted in his hair, she closed her eyes and lifted on her toes, bringing his lips to hers.

The moment their mouths touched, a fiery, pulsing wave of need shattered her and she moaned against his lips, but even then he resisted. His hands fisted against her hips, as if he wanted to push her away. She knew if she let him he would try, just as she knew that was the last thing he wanted.

Her tongue teased the seam of his lips, coaxing him to let her in.

“Jeff.” His name came out on a soft sigh, mixed with longing. She wanted this, despite her protests, even despite his. BJ was right. How long had it been since she’d held a man intimately, since she’d felt the heavy weight of a man pressing her down into the bed, nestled within the crook of her thighs, pushing inside her body, stretching her?

She shuddered.
Too long.

Jeff hesitated because he wanted all of her, he wanted
more
. She hadn’t realised it before, but she did now. Jeff wanted something from her she no longer had the power to give a man, not after another had nearly shattered the foundation of who she was.

She couldn’t give Jeff that part of herself, but she wanted this… She
needed
this.

“Please,” she begged him, as she nibbled against his closed lips.

The sound that rose out of him shook her, as it vibrated out of his chest to quiver through her.

Jeff wanted to resist her, but as the thick, hard bulge of his shaft dug deeper into her belly, she knew that he no longer could.

One moment she was coaxing him, urging him, and in the next, he had her back pressed against the refrigerator, his mouth claiming hers in a toe-curling kiss that melted her bones.

His tongue swept inside her mouth with hot, wet glides. He probed deep, melding his lips to hers until her every breath was his, and his hers, as she drew him into her lungs.

Jeff’s hands began to roam from her hips, at the same time he wrenched his lips from her mouth. A whimper rose out of her, only to be replaced by a sharp gasp when in one smooth motion, he lifted her shirt over her head and tossed it aside.

His every movement was urgent, and she understood that this first time would be quick and rough. She welcomed his hot, urgent lovemaking. This unrelenting attraction had been burning between them for a year now—so strong that, at times, Teresa had felt overwhelmed by her desire for Jeff. So she understood his desperation, because it pulsed just as hot and insistently through her. Once the demands of their bodies were satiated then they could explore one another at leisure, but not this time.

Teresa was bare beneath his baggy clothing, and Jeff cupped the weight of her breasts in his hands when they spilled forth. Pleasure arrowed from her belly to the space between her thighs, and she gushed with wet desire as he massaged her flesh. She gasped when he plucked at her nipples, and her head rolled back to rest against the fridge.

“Look at me,” Jeff demanded, his voice a throaty rasp.

Her eyes fluttered open and she lifted her head to meet his gaze. She glimpsed the steadily pulsing vein at the base of his throat as lust stole across his handsome features.

Teresa did not break Jeff’s intense, mesmerising stare as he dipped his head to capture a stiffened peak with his lips. The air rushed out of her chest as he sucked her nipple, drawing it deeper into the warm, wet cave of his mouth. Her pussy flooded with her juices while heat crawled across her flesh, tremors raking her. She gripped his head, watching him as he alternated back and forth, suckling her tender nipples until she thought she would come with just his mouth upon her.

She called his name as she gently but firmly nudged his head. He chuckled against her belly as he began to slide down the length of her body. His hand dipped within the waistband of the sweats and he pushed them down her legs until she could step out of them.

Standing before her, she followed his every sensuous, erotic movement as he shucked off his own shirt and then slowly undid the fastener of his pants. After tugging the jeans down his legs, he tossed them aside. Hard muscled thighs, dotted with coarse black hairs, brushed against her smooth legs as Jeff pressed her flush against the fridge at her back. She barely had a moment to glimpse the chiselled, bunching muscles of his abdomen, although she’d seen him bare-chested many times before. Often she’d spied upon him working alongside Jackson at Cottonmouth, but this time was different.

With his body pressed to hers, she could feel every ridge and sinew of muscle. Teresa no longer had to imagine what it felt like to have his hot, taut body sliding against hers, his skin beading with droplets of sweat from the humidity in the air. She no longer had to imagine many things as the thick, hot length of him bumped against her belly, leaving a small stain of wetness in its place as his cock leaked with his growing arousal.

Jeff trailed his hands across her thighs, her stomach, her breasts, as if memorising every plane of flesh, every dip and valley of her figure. She sucked in a sharp, startled breath when he settled his palm between her legs, his fingers dragging through her moist curls, parting the lips of her drenched sheath.

“Next time I will taste you here,” he breathed out, his every word uneven. She experienced the same unsteady feeling as he pressed a single finger inside her. Teresa could no longer hold his gaze as her head lolled back and she let out a soft moan.

Jeff’s groan joined hers, his finger ploughing through her slick passage.

“You’re so tight,” he whispered. “So wet and tight.” He did not break the questing motion of his digit as he fingered her faster. “I can’t wait to feel this hot, wet cunt wrapped around my cock.”

Teresa’s eyes snapped open, his lewd words fanning the molten flames of desire already scorching through her. Jeff pulled his finger from her body, and her legs almost gave out when he drew that same finger within his mouth and groaned. He sucked on his finger, licking at it until it glistened with his saliva.

Before she could take her next breath, he slammed his mouth against hers, his tongue plunging to the back of her throat. Every breath she exhaled, he took inside his body, as his tongue mingled with hers, and she tasted herself on his lips, the entire kiss an erotic melding of lips and tongues.

She heard the distinct sound of foil tearing, and Jeff pulled away just long enough to sheath himself in the condom, which he’d plucked from his jeans before casting them aside. When he returned to her, he grabbed her hips and hoisted her higher against the refrigerator.

“Wrap your legs around me.”

With her arms twisted around Jeff’s neck, she coiled her legs around his hips and locked her ankles tight. Holding firm to her hips, he braced her deeper and harder against the fridge, leaving her spread wide and open for his penetration.

The first nudge of the thick head of his cock against her opening forced a small gasp from her lips. It had been so long, and he was so large…

“Baby, relax for me. Relax and let me in, sweetheart.”

His breathing was uneven, his body unsteady as he trembled against her from the restraint he exerted. He fed her another inch of his length, and her body slowly eased around him, stretching to accommodate his girth. He thrust inside, dipping inside her with shallow strokes, before pushing forward again, going deeper each time.

Her tunnel coated his length as he ploughed farther inside, and Teresa’s belly fluttered with each probing stroke. She felt so stretched, so full. His every thrust dragged against bundles of nerve endings centred within her pulsing cunt, and she gasped and moaned with every push inside her body.

Jeff claimed her lips again, at the same time he held firm to her hips and drove home. She cried out, and he swallowed it deep into his throat. Her body struggled to adjust to the size of him, and even as she experienced a twinge of discomfort, the pleasure that wafted over her was heady—intoxicating, until she thought she would drown in the wondrous sensations of Jeff pumping and thrusting inside her.