Truth or Dare (13 page)

Wet.

Warm. And moaning against the slow thrust and stroke of him within her mouth. And that needful sound—if he wasn’t careful it would be the end of him. But he
would
be careful, because this he wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet.

Keeping one hand threaded through the soft silk of her hair, he used the other to pull her into closer contact. Letting the kiss escalate by controlled degrees, spread from their mouths to the press of their bodies. The firm swells of her breasts, pillowed against his chest. The flat of her belly and small jut of her hips.

He almost pulled away to look at her face, see if she felt what he was feeling, but caught himself before making the fatal error that would be the end of this one kiss he wanted to hold on to.

Only then it wasn’t up to him any longer and he didn’t need to look, because Maggie’s hands were crawling up his ribs, clutching at the fabric of his coat on one side before the opposite hand moved higher, taking hold at his shoulder, and then—
fuuck
—his hair.

And that sweet tongue of hers was sliding against his, drawing him deeper into her mouth as she pulled him harder against her.

Moaned again and clutched tighter.

Her mouth was so hot. And wet. And—

Gone.

She pulled back, a stunned look in her eyes as she sucked air a scant inch away.

Her fingers were knotted in the hair at the back of his neck and threaded up against his scalp, her breath feathering against his lips in ragged, broken little puffs.

Their one kiss was up. Only neither of them was letting go. And it suddenly occurred to him why he should have kept walking that afternoon rather than coming back and demanding this date. He should have known—one kiss would never be enough.

“Wow, that was— I didn’t really— But I should have—” Maggie stammered breathlessly, trying to force herself to let Tyler go. Step away and put the distance they needed back between them. Only with their eyes locked, breath mingling in the chilled night air, and the kiss she should have known better than to ask for still fresh on her lips, the most she could manage was flexing her fingers enough so her hands were free to coast down the thick column of his neck, over the front of his coat, and when the temptation was too great, back up again.

She didn’t want to let him go—didn’t want their moment to end.

“With your other dates,” Tyler began slowly, his eyes squinting closed. “Do you ever let them kiss you more than once?”

She wanted to laugh, because the idea of willingly letting any of those other guys back at her mouth was beyond ludicrous, something she ought to have had some smart quip about—only in that moment nothing seemed funny.

This was the end.

Forcing a shaky breath, she shook her head. “No. Never.”

Tyler nodded, his eyes dark and unsettled. “Good.”

His jaw set as though he were getting his head back into the right place. The place where they moved on from a kiss the intensity of which she couldn’t remember experiencing before and, putting it behind them, went forward as friends.

Like she wanted.

Deep down, she knew it was true, even if it didn’t feel that way right then.

The hand at her hip tensed. And when she looked back into Tyler’s eyes, she saw the dying embers of a conflict she hadn’t realized he was fighting. A conflict she didn’t fully understand until the divide between them closed again. Tyler’s lips came down on hers, hard, and then he was holding her so tight, and her hands were in his hair again, pulling him closer as he bowed her back, devouring her mouth like he was starved for the kiss he’d just had. Groaning against her when she met his hunger with the equal of her own.

Her back hit the door and everything inside her went hot and liquid, needy and intense. Any shred of control or restraint tore free of her grasp, violently stripping her thoughts of reason and rules. Because all she wanted was this.

Tyler.

Reminding her of everything she’d forgotten.

Teaching her things she hadn’t even known.

Waking the places within her that had been numb for so long, they
burned
coming back to life.

His big hands were beneath her open coat, sliding up and down the silk of her dress, which was good, because it made the fact that she’d already gotten inside his seem somehow less desperate. Or more acceptable. Or something.

She didn’t care—not about anything except that he was palming her breast with one hand and kneading the curve of her ass with the other. Holding her close so she could feel the hardness of him, thick and long and—God, was that
all him
?—as he rocked into the press of her hips and his tongue speared between her lips. She gasped beneath the onslaught of sensation ricocheting throughout her body, the need rising like a cresting wave that threatened to crash over everything they’d agreed to.

Only then the world started to spin, and she found herself suspended inches above the ground, held firm between the hard plains of Ty’s body and the powerful strength of the one arm banded around her. She was moving in a dizzying rush, but the only thing that mattered was the hot wash of Tyler’s breath at her jaw, the bare scrape of his stubble along her neck, and the light grasp of his teeth at her ear.

She startled, finding her feet on solid ground, or some staggered variation of it. The stairwell?

He’d gotten them inside the security door, where no second-date kiss had gone before, and without her even being aware it was happening.

The man had
skills.

Skills too incredible to spend her time contemplating when his mouth was working down the column of her neck and toward the V of her neckline.

“Tell me to stop,” he growled against her flesh before licking deep into her cleavage.

What?
That was crazy.

“No, no, no, please, don’t stop,” she begged.

He moaned, gripping her harder, pulling her hips in tighter, so even through the confines of her dress she could feel him pressed so very close to exactly where she wanted him to be.

Another wet thrust of his tongue between her breasts and she shuddered, a near painful clench at her core driving a single word past her lips. “More.”

Tyler swore, his hands skating down her thighs before pushing back up—bringing enough of her skirt with him that he could press his leg between hers.

Their eyes met as he rocked into her. For an instant everything froze—her mouth dropped open, her lungs stalling with her heart as the thick, hard feel of his thigh against her center became the singular point in her universe.

And then she was pulling at the buttons down the front of his shirt with shaking hands, switching to his belt and when it didn’t come easily enough, back to shirt buttons again with a frustrated whimper.

“Fuck. Maggie, I need—”

“Yes.” Whatever it was, he could have it. Her. Here. Now. Anything.

“You’re so—”

She didn’t care. Maybe tomorrow she would, but in that moment only one thing mattered.

“Clothes.”

His mouth slammed down on hers again and somehow they were making it up the stairs amid the groping and rubbing and hot, wet kissing.

Halfway up the flight, she gasped into his mouth as they bounced into the south wall. Her dress was unbuttoned down to her waist and he’d found the taut peak of her nipple with the rough pad of his thumb.

At three-quarters, Ty’s shirt was open and free of his trousers, and they were in some sort of crab-crawling, full-contact, desperation-driven migration toward the landing. Because, God help her, that was as far as she needed to go. Just beyond the rail where they couldn’t be seen from the security door if Ford came home.

Only then their mouths were fused and Tyler’s tongue was sliding over and around hers and she suddenly didn’t care if they made it to the next stair, let alone the second-floor hall. She was shoving at the shoulders of his open coat, trying to shrug free of her own, when he broke the kiss, and in some move she couldn’t track, he had her hiked up in his arms.

He cleared the last stairs and made it as far as her door, growling into her neck about keys as, one arm braced against the wall above her head, he rocked forward, giving her another taste of the steely ridge of his erection. A taste that had her following with her hips, begging with her body for Tyler to take her where she so desperately needed to go.

He caught a handful of the skirt that had fallen back into place, rucking the silky fabric up, freeing her knee to coast up the outside of his thigh and his to push in and—
oh God, yes!

“Jesus, Maggie,” he groaned, meeting the tilt of her hips with the rock of his own, starting a cycle of pleasure-driven motion that was ratcheting higher with every revolution. He was so hard, rolling against that singular spot of
want
again and again.

“Tyler,” she gasped, clutching at his shoulders as years of neglect coalesced into a pulsing, hot ache.

It was too much.

Not enough.

“I need,” she begged, breathlessly, “I need…oh please…”

His hands were on her ass, one dipping beneath the satin of her panties from behind, coasting lower until his fingers found her sex and their mutual groans came together where their mouths met.

Then, eyes locked, Tyler pressed one thick finger against her slick opening and slid inside. In and out he stroked before adding a second finger. He pushed deeper, waking every wet sensitized nerve until—

“Tyler!” she cried into the empty hallway as everything inside her seized, clamping down hard around his slow thrusts. Her orgasm slammed through her like a tidal wave, hammering her center with a force that left her stunned, breathless, weak…and then suddenly, desperately
aching for more.

For all of him.

“Fucking beautiful.”

She nodded, distracted as, hands shaking, she tugged at his belt.

They were seconds away from taking this where it desperately needed to go. And it would be worlds better if they were inside her apartment when they got there—better, but at this point, not necessary.

Only then the call of reason echoed from across the void. And she froze. “We need to go to your place.”

His mouth stopped its marauding path over her neck and he pulled back to meet her eyes. The look on his face was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. His cheekbones were flushed dark, his eyes intense and focused on her with a singular purpose, those unbelievable lips parted for the ragged breaths he was sucking.

Hot.

“We can’t do it here. For one thing, Ava and Sam let themselves in pretty much whenever they feel like it, and because I don’t…um…ever…have company, they don’t even knock anymore. And even if I put the chain on the door, it would be sending up a signal flare that I wasn’t alone—which would mean they’d basically camp out, one at the front door, one at the back, with Ford standing beneath the window if they could catch him, just to make sure they found out who it was and had enough information to tease me about it for the next millennium. But that’s just reason one. Reason two is even if they didn’t catch us in the act…
condoms.
I’m not on the pill and Sam has a sort of unhealthy obsession with this three-pack of condoms he keeps replacing for me every time they expire. He’s always playing with the box and…he knows the expiration date by heart, so it’s not like I could even go out and replace them really quickly with another three-pack of the same brand. He’d know!”

She sucked in a breath and shook her head, stunned there’d been that much brain function happening when thirty seconds before, all signs were indicating it had tapped out at the word
please.

Having gotten what she was certain was a pretty sufficient explanation for why they had to go to his place instead of hers, she reached for the collar of his shirt and pulled him in for another kiss because the ones he gave were crack-cocaine addictive. And probably at least as bad a habit to pick up. But like any good junkie, all she cared about was getting her next fix. Consequences be damned.

Only instead of grabbing her thighs and hoisting her up to carry her the remaining flight of stairs at a jog, Tyler slowed the kiss, cooling it down before pulling away with a quiet but potent curse. One she instinctually understood signaled the return of his reason as well.

“Maggie,” he started, his voice sounding more pained than she could stand to hear after the taste of heaven he’d given her. “You’re beautiful. And you know I want to—but we can’t.”

She shook her head, unwilling to accept it. “I know what we agreed, Tyler. But seriously, we pretty much already have, so I think we can.
We should.
We’ll just put the hard-stop we’d intended for earlier…right after. What’s one night?” she asked, her body still vibrating with need. “We can come back from it no problem. Tomorrow we’ll be friends, but tonight…tonight we give in. Give each other something good. We don’t need to stop because of some silly rule—”

“It’s not about the rules, Maggie.”

“Then what?” Her hands were on his chest, coasting up those hard planes and around his neck, leaving their bodies in an intimate press that felt so completely right. Even more so when Tyler’s hands rested at her hips, his thumbs brushing softly in a way so natural, she wondered if he realized he was doing it. “We’re both adults. And it’s not like there’s someone else.”

Silence answered and her heart started to pound, though this time for a wholly different reason.

Throat tight, she forced a short laugh, because there was no way.

“There isn’t, right, Tyler? You aren’t involved with anyone. Because if you were,” she swallowed, searching his eyes, “you wouldn’t have taken me out. You wouldn’t have kissed me. You wouldn’t have.”

“Maggie.” His voice was all gravel and glass, somehow filling her name with more apology than she would have thought possible. “It’s complicated—”

Her breath rushed out in a punch.

Complicated?

This wasn’t happening.

Icy dread slid through her veins, and her skin started to prickle. The walls around them pressed in as the low roar of her blood pumping past her ears escalated like an approaching freight train.