The Harder They Fall (12 page)

“It’s the twenty-first century, sweetheart. You’d be a fool not to ask.” He smiled. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, it’s that you are no fool.”

She took a noisy breath, but she met his eyes squarely. “I really want to go to bed with you, Michael. Does that make me foolish?”

He didn’t know. But he
did
know what that declaration made
him.
It made him hot. It made him needy. It made him hard as marble. “I think you need more than one night to make certain what you want. I’ve pushed a lot of stuff on you this week, just because I tend to be an impatient man. Think about it for a couple of days, and then we’ll talk.”

He couldn’t believe he was giving her yet another opportunity to change her mind. Where was the intelligent man who never passed up an opportunity when presented with one?

Shaking his head, he said, “Just promise me one thing.”

“What?” she whispered.

“After you’ve thought about it, and if you decide you still want this, please let it be with me.”

Her smile was shaky. “What if I fall head over heels in love with someone else tomorrow?”

The thought jabbed him more than it should have. He wanted to shout, “I won’t let you!” Instead, he managed a smile. “Okay, okay. Let’s just say that if you want to have sex, merely for pleasure’s sake, you let me be the one to give you that pleasure.”

She shook his hand. “Deal,” she said, with a smile that lit up his heart.

“Come on, I’ll walk you to your apartment.” He climbed out of the car and came around to open her door.

“Michael?” she asked, as he helped her out of the car.

“Yes?”

“Would you come in for a little while?”

“If you want me to, sure.” He looped an arm over her shoulder. “Why?”

“Because, I agree that I should probably think it over before I make the leap, but I’d still like to get in a practice session on kissing.”

Michael nearly fell over. “Kissing?”

She looked up at him with a dreamy smile that he knew he could never resist. “Yes. I’ve really liked kissing you.”

Kissing her. Damn. He didn’t know which danger was greater. The danger to his body, or the danger to hers.

Darcy’s apartment seemed smaller
with Michael in it. He seemed to take up so much space, command so much awareness. He was larger than life in so many ways. And she wanted to make love with him more than anything in the world.

But she didn’t want to appear easy, and she didn’t want him to think she’d take the sex act lightly, so she knew she wasn’t going to demand his company in her bed tonight. But, God, she was looking forward to it.

She prayed she wouldn’t disappoint him.

She took his jacket from him and hung it in the hall closet, secretly brushing the collar over her nose to inhale the scent of leather and aftershave. God, even his smell was seductive.

“Do you want a drink?” she asked when she turned around.

He stretched his long legs out as he settled onto her sectional couch and draped his left arm along its back. Darcy knew which side of the couch she would sit on.

Michael smiled, making her insides turn all mushy. “Sure. What do you have?”

Darcy went to the hutch in the dining room and pulled out a bottle of cabernet. After popping the cork, something she prided herself on doing well these days, she brought two goblets back to the living room.

She handed him his wine, then set hers on the oak coffee table. “What kind of music do you like?”

“Do you have any old classic rock?”

“It’s my favorite”

“That’d be great.”

Darcy put an Eagles
CD on the player and Hotel California began playing in the background. She kind of like the part where “you can never leave.”

A loud crash sounded from above and she looked up, shaking her head.

“What the hell was that?” Michael asked, standing.

She wrinkled her nose. “The guys who live above me are notorious for their parties.”

Returning to the couch, she picked up her wine. For some reason, she was feeling unusually competent tonight. Maybe it was the two glasses of wine she’d had so far. With that thought in mind, she took a large sip of the burgundy liquid. It tingled down to her belly.

Michael’s lips twitched with humor.

“What?” Darcy asked, bemused.

“Are you fortifying your courage?”

“Do I have a reason to need courage?”

He took her glass and set it on the coffee table with his. Then pulled her into his arms. “I won’t ever do anything you don’t want me to. You’re calling the shots, pretty lady. All of them.”

She felt giddy with power. Testing his honesty, she said, “Kiss me.”

“You want that, do you?” he murmured, his blue eyes going all smoky.

“Yes,” she breathed.

Darcy watched as Michael lowered his lips to hers.

At the first feather touch, her tummy lurched. At the second it dropped straight to her toes. At the third, she threw her arms around him and pressed herself to him, loving the steely hardness of his chest, his arms.

Something about that seemed to affect him. With a groan that sounded so very provocative, he gripped her lower back and deepened the kiss.

Darcy decided the man’s lips were lethal weapons. They molded hers, shaping them to his, slowly, surely, coaxing them farther apart.

Darcy willingly let him direct the movement of her mouth as the world seemed to explode around her. Nothing existed but this man, his lips pressed to hers, his hands shaping her body to his.

She gasped when his tongue invaded her mouth. It was wonderful. Not disgusting at all. In fact, his tongue sweeping through her mouth excited her so much, she was afraid she’d do something dumb again.

Darcy tried to conjure the image of a pool. Mentally, she tried to dive in and swim. But the only swimming going on was in her head, where pleasure floated and spiraled down through her, until she felt lost and weak. She had the feeling that if Michael let her go, she’d puddle to the ground. Her legs felt completely boneless.

He broke the kiss and stared down at her, a gleam in his eyes that Darcy thought might just be desire. “You’re a—” he cleared his husky throat “—a quick study, Ms. Welham.”

“Did I say you could stop?” she asked, amazed at her own brazenness, but desperately wanting to continue with the kissing.

“If you keep kissing me like that, I won’t be able to stop. At anything.”

She liked that idea. Cool, calm, note-taking Michael Davidson, out of control. “Kiss me again,” she demanded.

He laughed softly. “Yes, ma’am.”

And then he did.

Something funny was happening to parts of Darcy that weren’t even connected to the lips he assaulted with such pleasure-giving thoroughness. Her breasts started aching, but not in a bad way. The heavy feeling in her stomach dropped to her thighs, where it stimulated parts of her that some might call shameful.

But she felt far from ashamed. In fact, she felt feminine and vulnerable, yet desirable and powerful. It was a strange, erotic combination. And so new to her, she had nothing to compare it to, no frame of reference.

From the way Michael’s hands were roaming over her back, waist and hips, and by the way he groaned occasionally, and by the way this kiss was growing increasingly frantic, she knew she must be pleasing him, too. That thought made her heart soar. She wanted so badly to make him feel good, as he was making her feel.

Michael broke the kiss again and stared down at her. That was when she realized he was taking very deep breaths, and his eyes were so filled with passion, it made her heart leap with anticipation and fear.

“Am I doing everything right?”

He threw back his head and groaned. “Lady, I’m about to catch fire.”

“Is that good?”

His laughter sounded a little desperate as he looked down at her again. “What you do to a man should be illegal.”

That was good, wasn’t it? She was almost positive it was. Especially when he was staring at her lips as if he wanted to devour them.

“Yes, that’s good,” he said, apparently seeing some doubt in her expression. “Want to feel how good?”

“Yes.”

His hands slowly strayed down her back to cup her bottom. Darcy jumped a little but she didn’t protest. Not when it felt so wonderful.

He pressed his hips to hers, giving her no doubt about how much he was enjoying their kissing.

“I want you,” he said simply. “Feel how much I want you.”

“I feel it,” she whispered. “It feels great.”

He laughed, low in his throat. “I’m very, very happy to hear it.” He let go of her bottom and bracketed her face instead, brushing his thumbs over her cheeks. “Please ask me to stop, Darcy. I can’t take much more without taking it to completion.”

“Completion,” she repeated. Yes, definitely, that’s what that ache inside her was. She wasn’t yet complete. And she knew enough about sex to know that to get there, she needed him inside of her. The thought made her already rapid pulse jump some more, and made the heaviness in her thighs and belly even heavier. Oh, yes, she wanted completion.

“I’d be lying if I said I wanted you to stop,” she said.

His neck muscles corded. “Darcy, please . . . you have no idea how much it hurts a man to get so aroused and then not get to release all of that pressure.”

The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him. She stepped back sharply. Unfortunately she forgot about the coffee table behind her. It hit her right behind the knee, and her leg buckled. She struggled to maintain her balance.

Michael, who was fast turning into her hero and tormentor both at once, grasped her arms before she could fall. He grinned. “I didn’t want you to stop that fast.”

God, she wanted to kiss him again. He tasted so yummy, and the sensations he created in her with just his lips were more than incredible. “Michael,” she whispered. “Maybe we should . . . go to the bedroom.”

His grin vanished. “Don’t offer it to me, Darcy. I’m no philanthropist. I’ll take it, take you.”

“I’m pretty certain that’s what I want you to do.”

He gently moved her, then picked up their goblets and handed her one of them. Pointing toward her balcony, he said, “Let’s get some fresh air, cool off, and talk about this a little more.”

The last thing she wanted to do was talk. The very last thing. “Are you afraid to have sex with me?” she asked.

His head jerked back in surprise. “Afraid?”

“Afraid something bad will happen to you?”

He smiled, but still pulled her toward the door. “No, Darcy, I’m not afraid. I fully expect that if and when we make . . . have sex, it’ll be one of the best things to ever happen to me.”

“Then why are you refusing?” Her voice sounded a little sulky to her own ears. She hoped it didn’t sound that way to him. “I don’t understand.”

Michael opened her sliding glass door. Immediately loud party sounds hit their ears. Music, voices, laughter all rang in the cool night air. He gestured Darcy out, then followed her and closed the door.

They moved to the iron railing, both leaning their forearms on it and gazing out at the midnight-blue sky. Stars winked overhead, and the air held a light floral scent.

Darcy decided to let him talk first. She felt a little hurt and confused that he wasn’t taking what she so obviously wanted to give him. Especially since he had shown her just how much he wanted to.