Take a Chance on Me (73 page)

"I think I remember reading that the males fly up in the air and the females remain near the grass." She watched the dance of light on the lawn. "The flash we see is the result of a chemical reaction inside their bodies, and along with the flight pattern, it works like a kind of signal to attract potential mates. That's what all the commotion is about."

Thomas shot her a bemused smile. "Isn't it always?"

Emma said nothing, just studied him, watching the graceful turn of his head as he went back to scanning the yard. She wasn't certain what was happening here, but she knew it wasn't about fireflies. It was about the two of them—two very different people who had some kind of strange affinity for each other that neither knew what to do with.

She gave Thomas a good once-over, and the nervous fluttering in her belly was back with a vengeance.

The man sitting in front of her was beautiful, something she'd known from the first. But tonight, she saw him with greater clarity, and appreciated what she saw—what she sensed. She felt her blood run hot and her breath quicken. She felt the anticipation build.

And she smiled to herself.

Emma knew the accepted theory on the human sexual response: males became aroused primarily from visual stimuli while females responded to an amalgam of more subtle sensory input—ambiance, so to speak.

She looked over at Thomas and nearly snorted with laughter—she was a textbook example of the female sexual response tonight, no doubt about it.

And the stimuli she was getting right now were mighty stimulating indeed. Thomas radiated sexual heat.

He broadcast his sexuality. His voice vibrated with it. His eyes sparkled with it. He smelled like sex.

She looked down at his body. He was wearing a pair of worn but nice-fitting jeans and a soft gray, short-sleeved Henley unbuttoned at the throat and untucked at the waist. He was in his usual Nikes with no socks.

His long legs were slung over either side of the wide, flat porch railing. He rested his palms on the thick surface of his muscled thighs as he leaned back. She stared at the way his golden hair shimmered in the candlelight, and the way the light played on the curly blond down of his ropy forearms. And yes, she let her eyes travel down his flat stomach to his narrow hips and the vortex of those big legs, and did a little mathematical calculation having to do with relative size of anatomical parts. She hoped she wasn't foaming at the mouth.

She jerked when she heard his voice.

"You got to hand it to the little bastards." Thomas caught her eye. "They're out there in their flashiest outfits, facing the possibility of rejection, giving it their best shot. Those little bugs have guts."

Emma had been looking at his crotch—no doubt about it. This was an excellent development, but Thomas didn't quite see how he was going to capitalize on it.

Emma was sparking at him. There she was with her face tilted coyly, flushing prettily with well-deserved embarrassment. Her hair fell loose on her shoulders and her eyes shone up at him. A faint smile pulled on those kissable lips. Her hands caressed Hairy gently and rhythmically—where he sat between her legs.

Thomas bit his tongue and closed his eyes. With indirect communication like this, who needed words?

He opened his eyes and locked his gaze with hers, knowing with certainty that biology had the upper hand tonight, over there on the lawn and right here on the porch railing. In fact, right about now, Thomas could say with confidence that for him, biology had become reason. Biology ruled, biology spoke, and God yes, he was listening.

He wanted this woman. She was special. She was different. He'd been waiting for her.

Could it possibly be that simple?

"I can't help but see that you're flashing at me," Thomas whispered.

Emma's eyes went huge and she laughed nervously. "Only because you've been flashing at me."

"How kind of you to notice."

"Would you like some more iced tea?" She'd abruptly dumped Hairy into his arms, jumped off the railing, and swept away their half-full iced tea glasses before he could even respond. She was already inside the house, and he sat there, stunned.

If Thomas didn't kiss her soon, he would implode—no question about it. He had to fix things so that when she came back, he could nonchalantly get her into a good kissing position.

He placed Hairy on the floorboards of the porch. "Go play with stinky Ray." As if he understood, Hairy toddled over to the much larger animal and circled around by his side, then curled up and plopped down, soliciting only a few curious sniffs from the old, blind dog.

The front screen creaked open, then slammed shut, and Thomas turned to see Emma walking toward him on alluring bare feet. The foyer light shone through her filmy dress and provided a nice outline of her hips and breasts. Her hair lifted off her shoulders in the light breeze. It was like a scene in a wet dream, only better.

Emma gave him a shy smile and bent forward to put the glasses of tea on the table, and oh, yeah, Thomas looked down the neckline of her sundress. He tried not to. He really did. But he was too weak. And her breasts were creamy and full and looked like they'd fit perfectly in each of his big hands. They looked perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

Implosion was imminent.

As Emma resumed her place across from Thomas, sitting cross-legged and leaning up against the column again, she saw that Thomas had done some rearranging in her absence. He'd moved the citronella candle behind him and left his pillar to scoot much closer to her. There was nothing between them anymore, and it made her a little nervous.

"What are you thinking?" he whispered.

That I want to jump you and howl at the moon, she thought. What she said was, "It's a beautiful night,"

and nearly rolled her eyes at her pitiful lack of imagination.

"The most beautiful I've seen in a long time, Emma."

Her heart stopped. "Really?"

She noticed that she'd somehow adjusted her position to mimic his. She'd straddled the smooth wooden shelf with bare legs, shoving the sundress down for coverage. When had she moved? Why couldn't she remember moving?

But she was now painfully aware of the exact location of every part of her body, because certain parts of her were starting to hum. Her breasts felt irritated and confined even in the loose dress. She felt her thighs fall open a bit more, relaxing, parting, and that small fine-tuning caused her to swell and moisten under her dress. She caught Thomas's eye and began to strum and tingle all over.

Hoo boy.

Emma needed to regroup. This was not the way it usually worked with her. She was usually slow to build, slow to burn—but there was nothing slow in the way she responded to Thomas. It was hard and fast and hot and like nothing she'd ever felt before in her life. Not with Aaron. Not with anyone.

And the kicker was he hadn't even touched her. She'd been rendered stupid just from looking at him.

Being near him. Thinking about what it would be like to press her lips against his, place her palms against that muscled wall of a chest.

Thomas captured her eyes with his, so penetrating, and the corner of his mouth hitched up. Her head began to spin—had she really ever thought him cold and unfeeling? Had she called him "Robot Boy"?

Hadn't she seen right from the start that this man was burning, scorching alive?

Of course she had. But she'd been protecting herself, staying smart, considerations that were apparently no longer important because the only thing that mattered to Emma was that he touch her. Now.

"Thomas?" she whispered, not sure what she was asking for, just that she was asking for it.

He scooted forward another notch and balanced his weight on his hands as he leaned in. Emma found herself doing the same, the inside of her wrists widening her legs as she leaned closer to him. She was buzzing with awareness and knowledge—of the proximity, the heat of him.

He moved closer, and Emma took in the masculine contours of his face in the low light, the solemn look in his eyes, and bit down on her lower lip in anticipation of his kiss—because kissing was exactly what was going to happen now and she damn well knew it.

Then Thomas narrowed his right eye—taking aim—and slowly dipped his head. His lips parted, showing a hint of his white teeth.

And he fired—his mouth was hot and smooth and as soon as his lips covered Emma's, she was lost.

Thomas shook, his whole body tensing and shuddering from the power of the kiss. For a blissful moment, he slipped his tongue along the seam of her sweet mouth, taking it, taking her, as if he was absolutely certain this was the right thing to do.

But the certainty was soon replaced by a sickening panic. She was a woman! He didn't trust women! And even if he could, she wouldn't want him. How could he have forgotten that little detail?

But then Emma parted her lips to receive him and the response was so earnest and trusting and female that he lost his train of thought. He moved his mouth against hers mindlessly, blindly, trying to remember what it was that he was concerned about, what was at the crux of his hesitation.

Right. This woman deserved the best. She deserved it all. And he'd never be able to give it to her.

He tried to pull away, but Emma's soft hands slipped up the sides of his neck and her fingers eased into his hair and a small gasp of need flowed from her mouth into his.

And that's when it happened—a great surge of confidence came over Thomas, clearing the way to her, disintegrating all his doubts, shouting a resounding "Yes!" to everything that was Emma. He didn't know where it came from, but he thanked God for it and rode the crest of this baffling force, feeling himself grow hotter, stronger, harder, until it took everything he had not to attack her like a platter of buffalo wings at a Super Bowl party.

God, she tasted sweet and smooth. She felt like wet silk, as soft as he knew she would. And somehow, for some reason, he was suddenly sure this would all work out in the end. It would be all right. It would be great. No doubt about it.

Thomas's kiss left Emma dizzy.

His lips were firm but gentle, and they slipped delicately, lovingly, over hers. His tongue was doing all kinds of remarkable things—sliding along her bottom lip, tasting, tempting, pushing, flicking. It was almost as if he was sampling a delicacy he'd never had before, something exotic. Then she heard him breathe her name against her mouth—"Emma"—and it sounded profoundly carnal, so much desperate need packed into two simple syllables. She was going down fast.

He pulled his lips away and hovered just inches from her face.

"I need you closer. I need to get my hands on you or I'm going to die."

His voice was strained, the look on his face pure need, and she found that all she could do was nod and swallow. Instantly, he cupped her bottom in his two big hands and pulled her to him, closing the gap between them with decisiveness. She fell forward, her hands slapping down onto the tops of his thighs. The worn denim did nothing to hide the muscle and heat beneath.

Then—oh, damn. His hands began to move over her bottom, stroking up and around, lifting from underneath with wicked fingers, squeezing, then finally coming to rest on her hips. It was a thoroughly possessive gesture that stunned her, and though somewhere in the back of her mind she realized she should be worrying about the fact that his hands were on the biggest asset she had, it didn't matter.

Her self-consciousness had melted in the heat of his gaze, his touch. His hands and eyes stayed locked where they were for a very long moment, enough time to pass a message to Emma: there was no turning back.

Then he grabbed her thighs and pulled her legs up and over his, scooping her up in his arms. She thudded against the hard, muscled front of his body and her head fell back from the force of it. He arched over her.

He took her with his mouth.

Now this was some kiss, and Emma felt her body dissolve and become profoundly alive at the same instant. She held on through the shock wave of wonder and pleasure that came from being clasped in his powerful arms, prodded by his slick tongue. This was nothing but pure sensation, complete sensory overload, and she brought her arms around his rock-solid back and heard herself groan.

God, he was amazing! So big and dense and her hands wouldn't stay put on just one spot—they pushed down his hard biceps to his elbows, across his back and into the nape of his neck, and oh, she needed to feel his skin—skin on skin! Her fingers wiggled underneath his shirt, smoothed up his stomach, and landed on the scorching surface of his chest.

Oh, daddy!

Never in her life had she had anything remotely like Thomas Tobin in her hands. She could hardly believe he was real, and a single word throbbed through her brain like a mantra: More. More. More.

Then he hoisted her up onto his lap and there was no mistaking what had just jammed between her legs and she nearly screamed with the thrill of it. Thomas was a big man—just as she'd hypothesized—and the knowledge of that caused her brain to short-circuit.

So she pushed her sundress up around her waist.

Then she felt her hips begin a slow rotation, back and forth, up and down, side to side against his fabulous erection, as though—if she wiggled in just the right way, rubbed up against him in just the right spot—she could get through the barriers of silk, denim, and zipper to what she really wanted.

Him.

It slowly dawned on her that she was acting like a crazy woman.