Road to Seduction (Kimani Romance) (4 page)

“Everything doesn’t need to be
talked through,
Izzy.” He seemed to have difficulty speaking through his rigid jaw. “I know you’re big on that touchy-feely emotional nonsense, but I’m not. Everything does not need to be debriefed and dissected. Okay?”

Well, okay
. She didn’t need to be a nuclear physicist to know she was skating on thin ice and needed to back off. When Eric got like this, the best thing to do was give him a little space, let him sulk in peace and then wait until he was ready to talk.

Only how on earth was she supposed to give him space like this? They were stuck with each other until Monday.
Monday
. Three days from now.

Enough was enough. Mr. Passive-Aggressive was just going to have to deal with her right now.

“It’s normal for us to feel a little attraction to each other, Eric, and—”

“I’m getting off,” he barked.

With no further warning, he turned the wheel. The car, which was in the fast lane, skidded and hurtled across the other three lanes of the highway, dodging traffic at seventy-five miles an hour and headed for the off-ramp to a rest stop nestled at the foot of a tree-lined hill.

“WILL YOU BE CAREFUL, YOU MANIAC?”

Startled, Isabella stomped the invisible brake on the floor of her side of the car, grabbed the door handle for stability, and glanced around to make sure Zeus and Fluffles were okay in the backseat of this luxury deathmobile. Poor Zeus had slid across the leather and looked a little green under his fur, but his yellow bandana was still in place around his neck and his doggy harness had prevented any real harm. Catching her eye, he yapped and wagged his tail at her in a clear
I’m okay, Mommy
signal.

The car screeched to a halt in a space in front of the rest stop. Eric snatched the keys from the ignition, unlatched his seat belt and threw his door open. He leapt out, slammed the door and stalked away—
Buh-bye, jerk!—
but then he wheeled around and came right back.

Furious she braced herself for the onslaught.

Eric ripped the door open again and leaned down to shout at her. “Use the bathroom. Walk the damn dog. Get a snack. Get a drink. No, wait.
Don’t
get a drink. Do
everything
you need to do because we are
not
stopping this car again until we reach the state of Tennessee.”

Isabella flashed him a sweet smile and a rude hand gesture.

Eric’s face went purple. Vibrating with rage, he slammed the door again, hard enough for the SUV to rock on its wheels and stomped off towards the vending machines. She could almost see steam coming out of his ears.

Isabella leaned against the enormous oak at the top of the ridge and enjoyed the light breeze on her face while Zeus, at the end of his long leash, bounced through the grass like a gazelle. It was probably wrong to envy a dog, but she did. Ah, to be young and free, with no worries in the world other than when you’d get your next slice of bacon. That was the life.

She, on the other hand, felt as edgy as a rat trapped in a tank with a python, and all thanks to her so-called best friend.
Jerk
.

Raising her hands high overhead, she leaned left, then right and tried to work out some of the tension in her shoulders and waist, but no dice. What good was stretching, anyway, when what she really needed was a tall margarita, heavy on the tequila?

She was just about to call Zeus so they could head back to the car and subject themselves to more of Eric’s—she’d started to think of him as Captain Ahab—maniacal behavior, when his furious voice came up the hill behind her.

“Is-a-bell-a!”
he roared.

She sighed and turned, wondering what grievous misdeeds he thought she’d done in the ten minutes since he’d seen her. Maybe she’d dropped another candy wrapper on the pristine floor of his car or, worse yet, gotten out of the car without fully retracting her seat belt.

“Yes, Eric?” She kept her voice sweet, knowing it would drive his blood pressure off the charts.

“I’ve been looking all over for you! I had some woman check the restroom for you! Where the hell have you been?”

“Right here.”

“Here?” He summited the hill and stood under the tree, right in her face.
“Here?”

“Problem?”

“Yeah, you could say that.” Those same cords in his throat, the ones that had merely been vibrating earlier, now thrummed like harp strings, and she watched with detached fascination. “You might not want to hike half a mile away from an interstate rest stop without telling anyone where you’re going—”

“I am
not
half a mile away,” she began in an automatic denial, but then faltered when she glanced over Eric’s shoulder and realized that the parking lot and building were, in fact, pretty far away and well beyond yelling distance.

“—because this is a good setup for a woman to get abducted, although I imagine anyone who abducted
you
would regret it before he got to the on-ramp.”

“Oh, knock it off,” she said. “I’m as abduct-able as the next woman.”

“Is that an
I’m sorry I worried you, Eric?
” Cocking his head to the side, he held a hand to his ear as though he wanted to make sure he heard her forthcoming apology.

Now she felt bad, but this whole situation was
not
her fault. She’d only wandered so far because she was trying to work off a little of the stress
he’d
caused. If only he would stop being so stubborn and discuss the incident like the adult he pretended to be, they could have a perfectly lovely trip to Florida and back.

“No, I’m
not
sorry.” Jamming her fists on her hips, she stuck out her chin and stood her ground. “If you would just snap out of your black mood and
talk
to me, we could—”

“Talk?” he said. “You want to
talk?
”

Some combination of the wild, glittering light in his eyes and the dangerous quality in his low voice cut through her bluster and struck fear in her heart. This was that strange Eric again, the one she didn’t know and couldn’t predict. The one she was wildly attracted to and needed to avoid.

She tried to shake her head
no,
but it was too late for backtracking and she could tell he was beyond listening anyway. In a burst of fluid movement, he stepped to her, slid his hands up under the bottom of her blouse and around her waist, backed her up to the tree and pressed his hips to hers.

“Let’s talk, Iz.”

“O
h, my God.” She couldn’t think or talk while
Eric
—her best friend turned complete stranger—stroked the small of her back with hot, gentle hands and stoked that fever in her blood. “W-what’re you doing?”

“I’m talking.” His lips one inch from hers, he circled his hips and let her feel the incredible, terrifying evidence of how much he wanted her.

Panting and trembling now—this was
Eric!
—she dropped the leash and tried to push him away, with zero success. She wound up involuntarily clinging to thick, satiny arms as strong and immoveable as the tree against her back.

Her body, which was now far beyond her control, refused to acknowledge what her brain already knew: she was not supposed to know him this way. She was not supposed to know how big he was or how wonderful his hard length felt pressed against her aching sex or how passionate he could be.

This
was never supposed to happen between them.

“You need to let me go,” she whimpered.

“You started this, Izzy.” He spoke in a husky bedroom voice he had no business using on her. “So let’s talk.”

“No.”

“You want to know what’s wrong with me?” He nuzzled her ear, burning her with hot, minty breath that sent bolts of electrifying sensation directly to her breasts and sex. “Here it is—I’ve got a serious jones for my best friend—”

“
Stop
it, Eric—”

“—and I’m a little freaked out by it.”

“Don’t.”

“I’ve pretty much been hard since I saw you walking down the street yesterday.” His gleaming gaze, dark with passion and need, focused on her face, which he cupped and stroked in a rough grip. “I want you, Isabella.”

“No—”

“I want your mouth.”

He flicked his tongue across her lips, tormenting her with the kind of kiss that inflamed but didn’t satisfy.

“Eric.”

“I want your breasts.”

His hot hands slid higher under her shirt, skimming over the satin cups of her bra and hefting her breasts to test their weight. This was torture enough, but then he ran his thumbs over her nipples and she almost passed out. Ecstasy called to her, drowning out her self-protective instinct’s feeble attempts to shout a warning.

“I want your thighs,” he continued. “I want them wrapped around my hips.”

No. Not that.

But his hands had already started their slow descent down her sides and hips to her skirt. Inching underneath in a belabored process designed to drive her insane, he spread those long fingers wide and kneaded as though her solid thighs were not a problem to be exercised away but a treasure to be worshipped.

“I want you. Want you.
Want you
.” Eric slid his hands out from under her skirt and up to her nape, tugged gently until her
head fell back and buried his lips in the side of her neck. “Aren’t you glad we talked?”

Dazed with pleasure, she clung to the smooth column of his neck. “You need to let me go so I can think.”

“I’m
not
letting you go. Stop asking.”

She could barely speak, but she gave it what she thought was a valiant effort, all things considered. “Y-you’re blowing this all out of proportion. You had a little too much wine last night at dinner, and then you saw me in my p-pajamas and now you think it’s a
thing,
but really it’s just a passing attraction and you’ll get over it.”

“Yeah.” He raised his head, and in his glittering eyes she saw excitement and relief, as though he were thrilled that she understood him so well. “
Yeah
. That’s what
I
thought, too. Just a…a temporary insanity type thing that would go away in the cold light of day.”

“Exactly.”

Relieved to realize they were on the same page after all, she pulled back as much as she could and wondered how soon he’d let her go. Only he didn’t let her go. His hands came out of her hair and slid around to cup her face, and her hopes fell even as her breasts throbbed again for his touch. When he stroked her cheeks with his thumbs, gently this time, she groaned, closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the tree, knowing she was lost.

“Here’s the thing, though, Iz.” He lowered his voice. “Open your eyes. Look at me.”

Somehow she lifted her heavy lids and subjected herself to the fierce intensity in his expression. Even worse were his determination and raw passion, which he did nothing to hide. How could this be happening?
How?

He smiled a lazy, wry, regretful smile—a devastating smile—and smoothed her cheeks again. “Here’s the thing—you feel really good and this
thing
is strong. Really strong. It’s not going to go away.”

She shook her head in a gesture he didn’t bother to acknowledge.

“Do you want to know what I’ve been wondering, Iz?”

Yes. “No.”

His hands slid to her butt and he pulled her closer, wedging his hard length against the spot that ached and wept for him. “I’ve been wondering what it would be like to be inside you.”

The seething image filled her mind and made her writhe against him even as she issued a meaningless denial. “No.”

“Yeah.
Yeah
.” He pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to one corner of her mouth. “And I’ve been wondering how you’ll look and sound when I make you come.”

I’ve been wondering the same thing about you.

It was difficult to hold back those words as, bit by bit, the struggle left her, but somehow she managed. It was one thing to fight his touch—that was hard enough—but there was no way to resist his tender words. Listening to his husky voice say such unbearably sexy things to her was like rolling around on satin sheets or sliding into a hot bath. There was simply no way to resist the sensations or to keep her body from going pliant, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to. When he kissed the other corner of her mouth, she ran her hands up to his nape to anchor him close.

“And when I was in your room last night—Isabella? Are you listening to me?—when I was in your room last night, I kept thinking that
that’s
where I belong. Watching that TV with you. Watching you put lotion on those legs. In that bed with you. Making love with you.”

Her brain felt so sluggish now, her thoughts vague and loose. Was she dreaming? Was that it? Because this couldn’t be happening. Not to her, not with Eric. And did he
mean
to do this? To jeopardize their entire seventeen-year friendship for the pleasure of having sex with each other—even if it did turn out to be the best sex of their lives? Did he think anything could be the same after today?

“We shouldn’t do this. We both know it. It’s too dangerous.”

He nodded, but she wasn’t fooled. She knew that while he agreed that a physical relationship between them was dangerous, he was past caring about the consequences.

“There’s something here, Izzy. Maybe has been for a long time.” He stared at her, perfectly still except for his restless hands, which roamed to her waist again, and then up her torso until his thumbs just brushed the sides of her breasts. “We need to figure out what it is.”

She’d been afraid he’d say that.

Crooning deep in his throat, he kissed her, taking another irrevocable step down the road that separated friend from lover. There was no question of her kissing him back, not when she felt the vibrating urgency in his body, the warmth of his lips and tasted the peppermint in his mouth. Not when she wanted him as much as she did.

She automatically opened for him and sank deep, surging forward and up, searching and tasting him as he did to her. Groaning, he unleashed his hands and suddenly they were everywhere—in her hair, roaming over her back, kneading her butt, stroking her thighs—driving her higher, making her wilder than she’d ever thought she could be.

Her cries filled the air, embarrassing her, but she couldn’t keep quiet. Not when he affected her this way. Eric. This was Eric. Eric…Eric…
Eric.

For years she’d thought she’d known him, but now it was clear she’d known
nothing
. Not about his lips or his hands or his tenderness or his passion. This whole time he’d been a stranger to her, but now she wanted to learn
everything
. She needed all his secrets, had to open all the doors that had never before been options for her, had to discover everything about him.

“I want you,” he whispered between deep, frantic kisses, over and over again. “Isabella? I want you…Want you.”

“I want you, too.”

Her confession loosed something in him and he shuddered, unable to suppress his body’s reaction to her. A hint of a smile softened his swollen lips, and then he dove in again, kissing her with a ferocity that matched her own.

There was no telling how long they might have stood there,
or what else they might have done or said, if the distant sound of a dog barking hadn’t pierced the absolute, primitive lust that engulfed her.

Slowly, by degrees, she remembered that she had a dog…she’d been walking the dog…the leash wasn’t in her hand…

With a horrified gasp, she broke the kiss and looked wildly around. Eric clung, his fingers tightening in a reflexive refusal to let her go.

“Oh, no,” she said.
“Oh, no.”

“What is it, Sunshine?”

“Zeus is gone.”

It took several long seconds for her words to penetrate his sensual daze. She’d just opened her mouth to repeat herself when Eric blinked, cursed and wheeled around to look for the dog.

She looked, too, but there was no sign of Zeus, not in any direction, not for as far as her eyes could see. And on the other side of the rest stop, Isabella saw the highway, six concrete lanes of certain death for any living thing that trotted across its path.

“Oh, God,”
she said weakly.

Following her gaze, Eric took her hand. “We’ll find him, baby.”

Trying to hold back her panic, she nodded. All she had to do was look into Eric’s face and see the resolve there, and she knew that if it was humanly possible for her dog to be found, Eric would find him. Tugging her hand, Eric took off at a run and they raced down the hill together.

Zeus, they quickly discovered, had made himself at home with a mountain of garbage bags outside the back door of the rest stop near the dumpster and had eaten…everything. They found the furry little idiot being sicker than, well, a dog. He lay there, groaning, amidst McDonald’s wrappers, a pizza box and God only knew what other trash Eric didn’t even want to think about. Isabella went into worried mother mode, scooped up the Yorkie—Eric wasn’t about to touch him—and insisted that they get medical assistance.

Which was how they found themselves sitting side by side in red plastic scoop chairs in an examining room at an emergency veterinary clinic twenty minutes outside Knoxville, waiting for Zeus’s prognosis.

Eric glared at the colorful poster of dog species by country against the far wall and wondered what the hell had happened to his life in the last eighteen hours to make it so unrecognizable. Driving to this stupid wedding instead of flying first-class or, better yet, taking the Lear. In a vet’s office waiting for a dog that wasn’t even his to have his little stomach pumped on account of gluttony.

Lusting after Isabella.

Man, was he lusting. If the crotch of his shorts got any tighter he’d no doubt have a potential career as a soprano for the local opera.

Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes and tried—
tried
—to put what had happened under that tree in perspective, but perspective was in short supply today. All he knew was that he burned for Izzy.
Burned
. With a fever that left a perpetual sheen of perspiration across his forehead and would no doubt melt the cheap plastic chair he was sitting in before the next ten minutes had passed.

Isabella. Who’d have thought that sweet, little, girl-next-door Izzy was so…so…
Everything
. So passionate. So responsive. So indescribably sexy. So
right
in his arms.

Opening his eyes, he shot her a sidelong glance and discovered her looking as shell-shocked as he felt. Her shapely legs were crossed, her lush, luscious mouth was slightly parted and her unfocused gaze had settled on the steel examining table. She wasn’t doing anything especially tempting—holding Fluffles in a white-knuckled death grip didn’t qualify—and wasn’t exactly a nude Halle Berry beckoning to him from a satin-sheet-covered bed, but he wanted her just as much.

No, more. He wanted Izzy more than he’d ever wanted a woman. More than he’d known he
could
want a woman. The want settled into a hard knot low in his belly, tightened around his groin and squeezed his lungs until he could barely breathe with it.

Panic was right there, too, agitating him until he couldn’t sit still and had to jump up, stalk over to the window and stare out at the supremely uninteresting view of some major intersection with a Burger King on one corner and a BP gas station on the other.

His rampaging thoughts refused to settle down. How could Isabella have done this to them? The list of her transgressions was long and serious. Changing the landscape between them by becoming so sexy that he couldn’t ignore it. Awakening him to her sexuality and tempting him in unearthly ways. Scrambling his brains to the point where he couldn’t think a coherent thought. What the hell was he supposed to do about all this?

And when—
when?
—would his throbbing erection go away?

His frustrated turmoil pissed him off because he hated not knowing what to do. Naturally he took it out on her. “I don’t see why we couldn’t have just given the dog a TUMS.”