Down & Dirty (Lightning 1)

I tug a little, not hard enough to hurt, but definitely hard enough that she feels the sting. And just that easily, her whole body melts against mine.

Yes. Triumph roars through me as I realize my first instinct was right. For all of her mouthy independence, Emerson likes a little burn. A little pain with her pleasure. Isn’t it lucky that I’m more than happy to be the guy who helps her ride that edge?

I tug again, a little harder this time, and her whole body lights up, her hips moving restlessly against the leather seat even as her skin glows a luminous peachy-pink. So I do it again, this time hard enough to have her head lolling to the side.

It’s all the invitation I need as she exposes the long, slender column o

f her neck. I rip my mouth from hers, ignoring her little whimper of protest and the way her fingernails dig into my shoulders—though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the sting, too—and fasten my lips on the vulnerable curve where her neck meets her shoulder.

I suck just hard enough to leave a bruise, then nip at the delicate skin. She cries out at the bite, and I immediately lave it with my tongue, soothing the hurt with a series of soft licks that have her nipples growing even tighter against my chest.

My dick is hard as a rock now, and I’m about to come in my pants—something that hasn’t happened to me since I was a fourteen-year-old freshman in the back of the head cheerleader’s car.

With any other woman, I’d be sliding a hand under her skirt and into her panties—if she’s wearing any. I’d be using my other hand to unbutton her sweater, unhook her bra, lift one of her lush, full breasts to my mouth. But though Emerson is letting me kiss her, though she’s letting me lick along the hollow of her throat, instinct warns me if I push it—if I push her—she’ll shut me down hard and fast.

And since that’s the last thing I want, I keep my hands where they are—tangled in her hair and pressed against the small of her back, respectively—and concentrate instead on the way she tastes. The way she feels. The way she smells, like rain and sex and the same strawberries that are even now lingering on my tongue.

My heart is racing, my whole body thrumming with the need to bury myself deep inside of her. It feels good, feels real—feels right, when nothing has felt right in a long time. In eight months, five days and three hours, give or take a few minutes, to be exact.

Maybe that’s why I pull away when all I want to do is sink deeper.

Maybe that’s why I untangle myself from her when all I want to do is lift her into my lap and let her wrap around me.

Maybe that’s why I stop when all I want to do is possess her every way a man can possess a woman.

It takes Emerson a moment to come back to herself, her dazed blue eyes staring sightlessly into mine for one second, two. Seeing her like that—as affected by this one random encounter as I am—makes it nearly impossible for me not to kiss her again. More, not to say to hell with it and fuck her right here in the ridiculous driveway of this ridiculous house.

But instinct tells me that would end things before they ever began and while I don’t know what I want from her yet—and am in no place to want anything, if I’m honest—I know that I want more than a quick tumble in the front of my truck.

She blinks, once, twice, awareness slowly creeping in. When it does, her eyes widen and her skin flushes a soft pink that I want nothing more than to touch.

“What was that?” she demands, her voice husky and a little rough.

I don’t know what to say to that—God knows, I can’t tell her the whole truth, that it all started because I had to get out of my head and kissing her was a convenient way to do that—so I concentrate on the other half of the truth. The half that is undeniable.

“I like you. I want to take you out.”

The look she sends me is unimpressed. “Thanks to your own machinations, I am now your real estate agent. I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to take me anywhere.”

“Seriously?” I can’t help but laugh. “You aren’t my shrink. I’m pretty sure there’s no rule against sleeping with your clients when you’re a real estate agent.”

“I thought you wanted to take me out?” She shoots me a look. “No one said anything about us sleeping together.”

“I thought it was implied.”

Now she just looks incredulous. “I’m supposed to sleep with you because you offered to buy me dinner?”

“No. You’re supposed to sleep with me because”—I reach over and run a thumb over one still tight nipple—“you want me as much as I want you.”

To her credit, she doesn’t deny it. And she doesn’t blush anymore, either. Instead, she looks me dead in the eye and says, “I want a lot of things. Doesn’t mean I can have them. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean they’re good for me.”

Not going to lie, I’m even more intrigued now. “Like what?”

“Like Fruit Loops. Tequila. Chocolate cupcakes.”

“And me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Given the choice between you and cupcakes, I pick the cupcakes.”