Ugly Ducklings Finish First (12 page)

“You did. You talked to me when no one else would.” Because she didn’t want the evening to get bogged down, she gave him a quick squeeze. “Are you really cooking me dinner, or will I find a bunch of takeout boxes stashed under the kitchen sink?”

“Go ahead and look,” he invited, sweeping a hand toward the doorway. “I have nothing to hide.”

“You really can cook?”

“I think you’ll find that everything I do, I do very well.”

That made her heart whirl, along with her suddenly white-hot imagination. But before she could come up with a response other than the obvious, he pulled the towel from his shoulder and turned away. “But the first course is still outside. Feel like making yourself useful?”

Payton put a steadying hand to her heart. “Lead the way.”

Chapter Twelve

Wiley watched the tension ebb from Payton as they picked their salad makings from the garden and put the finishing touches on dinner. He was grimly amused that while her tension level lowered, his revved up to the point of groan-worthy anguish. Her fluid movements as they set the patio table tightened his muscles until he all but vibrated. Her easy laughter floating on the twilight breeze knocked the breath out of him. The way her gaze slid over him as if she couldn’t look at him enough had the same effect on his body as a physical caress.

By the time they finished dinner, he was all but frothing at the mouth.

“That was fantastic.” Payton licked the last of the sauce off her fork with a delicate swipe of her tongue. His lower regions pooled with pulsating need, and he gritted his teeth in quiet torture. “Not to mention incredibly impressive. Coq au vin was the last thing I expected.”

“Really.” He was so distracted by the delicious way her lips formed the words, he almost missed their actual meaning. “What were you expecting?”

“Spaghetti, or macaroni and cheese.” She laughed, and the intimate pillow-talk sound of it had him gripping his napkin until his fingers cramped. “Pasta is renowned for being the bachelor food of choice.”

“I’ve had my share of spaghetti nights.” With an uncharacteristic surge of jealousy he wondered just who the hell had made her pasta, and if they had found her far more tasty than anything else on the menu. Probably. “After a steady diet of it, it was either turn into a noodle or pay the cooking channel a visit.”

“And lo and behold, you found coq au vin. My stomach and I salute your pioneering spirit.”

“Thank you.” His jaw was so tight he could barely grind the words out. “Would you like some dessert?”

“You’re going to have to roll me to the car as it is.”

The mere mention of her leaving made him want to put a fist through a wall. “No need to rush.”

“Good, because the only speed I’m capable of reaching on a full stomach is a slow, undignified crawl.” With a satisfied sigh, Payton placed her napkin next to her empty dish. “I suppose since you cooked dinner, the least I can do is help with the dishes.”

“I won’t hear of it,” he corrected as she started to rise, stacking plates as she went. “No guest of mine is going to work for her meal.”

“Does it go against house rules if your guest wishes to clear the table?”

“You don’t have to, Payton.”

“It’s all right, I—”

“
No
.” His hand snaked out to clamp around her forearm as she started to lift the stack of dishes. Startled, Payton lost her grip, sending the plates clattering back to the table, the utensils falling to the flagstone patio floor.

With a muttered curse, he was out of his chair and kneeling beside her. “Damn it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me, they’re your plates.” The heat of anger and something far more volatile threaded through her words. Like a switch being thrown, the tension returned with enough force that it apparently crushed her ability to meet his gaze. “It’s a good thing nothing broke, right?”

“Right.” He reached for a fork at the same time she did and scraped her with his fingers. “Jeez. Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. This evening has been wonderful. There’s no need to end it on a sour note.”

“End it, huh?” The words all but snarled out of him. But damn, what else was he supposed to do when she wanted to leave when he was so hot he was on the verge of panting? “Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. With every word and gesture, you do your damnedest to push me away.”

“Okay, I’m lost. Have I done something to upset you?”

“Don’t play dumb, Payton, it doesn’t suit you. I had to force you to come here tonight, and now you can’t wait to leave. You make everything a fight when it comes to me.”

“You can’t be serious.” At last she looked up, and the desire-edged anger churning in her eyes had him stiffening with such need he nearly groaned with the sweet agony of it. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not fighting you.”

“You’ve
never
stopped fighting me. It’s always been that way between us, and it’s only gotten worse since you came back. I’m tired of doing battle with you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We were getting along great until you decided to turn into Bitchy McSnarkypants. What the hell do you want from me?”

“
This
.”

For all his talk of her fighting, she didn’t struggle when he pulled her to him, her mouth open and eager. Frenzied desire swamped him at the first touch, and the frantic instinct to claim her as his own pumped through the blood that throbbed in his groin. He wanted to bury himself inside her until the feel of her was tattooed onto every cell. He was done with playing it cool. There was no hope of pulling that off anyway, not when her mouth melded to his as if she were just as starved as he.

“We’re going to do this.” He bit at her lower lip, sucking on it before his mouth slid to her lobe to sink his teeth into that as well. If he wasn’t careful—and at that moment he didn’t give a crap about being careful—she was going to have bite marks all over her body before their night was through. “For the record, I didn’t invite you here to have sex. I wanted to go easy and just enjoy your company. But we’re doing this.”

“At least this falls under the heading of enjoying my company.” Her breath was fast and light, and he couldn’t stop a shiver of delight as she rubbed her thumbs over his nipples through his shirt until the brush of fabric alone was a tormenting seduction. “Or are you thinking you won’t enjoy me?”

“Don’t tease a man on a mission.” He plowed his fingers into her short hair, pulling on the cool silk in a kind of gentle punishment. “I’m going to do my best to seduce every damn nerve in your body until you can’t go five minutes without my hands on you. I’m going to make you wonder how you ever existed without me inside you. The one thing I’m
not
going to let you do is regret giving up the fight.”

“I’ve tried everything else.” For a heart-stopping moment he thought he glimpsed something dark in her eyes—fear or resignation or a terrible mixture of the two—before she dropped her head. Her mouth opened on his neck and sucked in his flavor, leaving what would be nice-sized hickey. But he didn’t care, not when it felt so good. “I’ve tried ignoring it, talking about it, even trying to deal with it like some rational, cold-blooded Vulcan. But damn you to hell, I’m not rational when it comes to you.”

“Thank heaven for small favors.” He cupped the swell of her bum and ground her into the rock-hard thrust of his manhood. The sinuous surge of her hips against his pulsing stiffness nearly made him explode right there. “You feel so good, lady. There’s no way I’m letting you back away now that I’ve got you.”

“As far as I’m concerned you can hold on for the four days I have here before I go back to Houston.”

His heart seemed to hesitate. “In between your conference workshops?”

“You’re more important. I want to enjoy every minute we’re together.” Her voice was breathless, aroused. It stroked along his nerve endings until he shook with pleasure. “What do you want?”

“Time.” An irrational desperation closed in until he could hardly breathe. He crushed her to him in the insane need to imprint the feel of her into his flesh. “I want more than four days to get you out of my system.”

“Okay, so I’ll give you four nights. Five, if you count tonight.”

“I’m counting it.” He was helpless to stop himself from dipping his tongue again and again into her mouth. “As of now, we’re on the clock. I swear I’m going to make every second count.”

* * *

The fiery colors of sunset flooded Wiley’s comfortably messy room, throwing warm shadows over a carved oak highboy and the wide stretch of his quilt-covered bed. But Payton wasn’t aware of the play of fading light. Instead she saw only Wiley—her secret fantasy, her truest desire. There was a sweet, wet ache growing between her legs, until her yearning for him was a magnificent torment to bear. But even more than that, the giddy sense of joy winging through her stole her breath, even as two undeniable words whispered through the stillness of her mind.

At last.

Wiley caught her face in his hands, and for a small eternity he did nothing more than simply look at her, the tension of anticipation and excitement building until she wanted to cry. Then he kissed her, a deep, penetrating kiss that seemed more like a search for her very soul, and Payton knew from this moment on, life would never be the same.

His taste was intoxicating. For the first time she held nothing back, her mouth devouring his like it was her sole mission in life. Their bodies molded together with sensuous perfection, and she tugged his shirt free from the waistband of his pants so she could fill her greedy hands with the feel of his skin. Nothing mattered but satisfying the rush of desire burning so hot inside her it turned her blood molten. As she undid his pants and pushed them from his hips, she was determined to discover that satisfaction with him.

“Payton.” Whatever he wanted to say seemed to fade when she flattened her hands against the small of his back beneath his shirt and rotated his hardness against her pelvis. His eyes drifted closed on a drugged groan, causing the tight coiling between her legs to clench all the more with aching delight. “Damn, lady, slow down. Don’t rush me when I’m so hot.”

“I can’t help it.” And she couldn’t. The ability to temper her reactions was gone, swept away by a passion she’d assumed only existed in the poems of long-dead romantics. How wrong she had been. What was consuming her now was a live-and-die-for-it passion the world must only see once in a generation, and she was eager to explore every inch of it.

“Let me savor you.” Wiley pulled the bolero jacket away to plunder the bared skin of her shoulder with his mouth, even as her fingers made quick work of the buttons of his shirt. The breath he sucked in was jagged when she glided eager hands down his torso, from his defined pectorals to the muscled ladder of his rib cage. “God, Payton, you’re killing me. Be careful.”

“I’m seriously sick of being careful. Oh...
yummy
.” Payton pushed the shirt from his shoulders, her eyes luminous as she drank him in. She lowered her head, first to simply breathe in his spicy warmed-musk scent, before gliding her lips along the graceful sweep of his collarbone. A groan of pleasure rumbled deep in his chest, and it was the most exciting sound she’d ever heard. He pressed his hand into the back of her head in a wordless plea for more, while the red-hot iron rod that was his arousal pulsed against her pelvis. A helpless shudder of need echoed from him to her, and it spawned in her a firestorm only he could extinguish.

His fingers caught on the dress’s zipper at her back, and within seconds it was at her feet. With the exception of a lacy pair of black panties cut high over her hips she was naked, and his breath stilled as he stared at her. She knew her torso was long like the rest of her, and that she’d never had the earthy curves of some women. But with his eyes worshipping her as if he had never seen a more magnificent woman, she suddenly felt beautiful.

“You’re more perfect than even the hottest fantasies I’ve had about you.” His voice was unrecognizable with hunger, and with a surprising lack of finesse he hauled her to him. “I’m going to devour every inch of you.”

All thought of going slow vanished. Flesh sizzled and fused to flesh. The rounded softness of her breasts flattened to the muscled wall of his chest, her skin pale against the allover gold tone of his. Wiley bit into her mouth, the sensation of their shared nakedness so exquisite Payton thought she would lose her mind with the piercing joy of it. She plunged her hands into his hair, her eyes squeezing shut to savor the descent of his mouth as it traveled down her neck. A shiver danced along her spine as his tongue dipped into the hollow of her throat, the raw beauty of his touch so delightful it filled her with a dizzying exultation. Her breath strangled as he descended lower to the slope of her breast, his tongue making moist whorls against her skin. His name whispered from her lips when he first nuzzled the dusky pink nipple with his cheek, readying it to a straining bud before he turned his head and pulled it into the warm suction of his mouth.

Helplessly her back arched, her knees buckling under the sheer weight of desire crashing through her. She had the sensation of falling, weightless, a moment before the coolness of the bed pressed against her back. Her legs entwined with his, and it felt so good, so right, that a shudder of satisfaction rippled in her belly like a small climax, only to tighten anew.

He was her fantasy, her reality, and she never wanted it to end.

The outer swell of her breast was cupped in his palm as his mouth worked its erotic magic, while the other was teased without mercy by his clever fingers. Just when she was wondering how long he would keep her teetering on the precipice between pleasure and pain, his mouth lifted, the air cool on her skin dampened by his kiss. She had no more time than to murmur his name before he transferred his tender ministrations to the other breast, his whole body intent on pleasing her. She savored the shivery pleasure he gave her, but she wanted to give as good as she got. She gripped his bottom to grind his hips into the juncture of her thighs, needing to make this as life altering for him as it was for her. Even if she was destined to be just another woman in the Coyote’s long line of conquests, at least she wanted to be memorable.

“
God
.” Tremors racked him, and the incessant friction against the thrust of his erection had his body arching as if he were being tortured. Her hips undulated with a rhythm that made her wish he was already buried deep inside her. She felt him growing harder still, his length pulsing with a need that was answered by the searing heat between her legs.

“Wiley, you’re killing me.”

“I know.” He groaned deep in his throat as he stripped her panties away at last to leave her open to his devouring perusal. “Payton.” Her name sounded like a reverent prayer and it brought her heavy-lidded gaze to him. His broad shoulders were made for her hands to caress, and his muscular chest was painted with the intriguing lights and shadows of a waning sun. He was as long and lean as she was, his torso tapering down to narrow hips, and his fully aroused manhood shielded by the last of his clothing made her catch her breath. He was as perfect as any sculpture, and she could only worship him with her body that now belonged to him.