To be able to smile like that. Like there was no past, only future, and it would all come out all right in the end.
“You’re right,” she said. “I think it does help to say ‘fuck.’ ”
Something welled up in him. Gratitude and desire, all mixed together, bigger than he was remotely ready for.
He gave her his hand, pulled her to her feet, and kissed her.
At first, Amber was so surprised, she didn’t respond. Too many things were happening to her body at once. She was suddenly vertical, rain beating down on her head and her shoulders, chilled and soaking wet. She was furious about her car, slightly hysterical and overwhelmed—and then his arms came around her, strong and sure, and his mouth met hers, and she sort of blanked out and became just lips for a while.
Soft. His mouth was soft. His breath fanned over her face, and one of his hands came up and held the back of her head, moving it and tilting it just so. A new angle. A different kiss.
She inhaled sharply through her nose as goose bumps broke out all over her body.
He made that noise again, that grunting male noise that sent her pulse into the stratosphere, and she realized in a more conscious way that he was kissing her. Tony. Kissing her. He splayed one hand across the middle of her back, the other still behind her head, and he kissed her, open-mouthed and commanding, and she was just standing here like a limp puppet when this was her chance to touch him and kiss him back.
She brought her hands up to his shoulders. He was hot even through the wet red cotton of his T-shirt, hot and hard and broad, and oh, man, she didn’t ever want it to end. His hand on her back coaxed her closer. His knee nudged her legs apart and lodged there. Tony’s thigh. Between her legs.
Oh holy Mary.
Her fingertips had developed a mind of their own. They skimmed over his neck, plunged into his hair, memorized the shape of his head, and then trailed over the caps of his shoulders and down those amazing, muscular arms.
His tongue flicked out over her bottom lip. Hot and wet, everything was wet, her whole body damp and perspiring, cold on the outside except where Tony touched her. There, she was all moist heat, practically steaming.
Amber parted her lips, and his invading tongue swept into her mouth. She made a little noise then, a kind of squeaking mmph as her nipples came to attention at the stroke of his tongue, so aggressive and male and—and copulatory. A word from Animal Planet, but the right word, because his tongue was having sex with her mouth, and it was as though nobody had ever kissed her before.
She had been doing it all wrong.
The hand on her back dropped to her ass and hauled her up his thigh, higher and tighter, plastering their bodies together and putting pressure on the deep ache between her legs. She skimmed her palms down his back, searching for the bottom of his shirt because she wanted his skin, the wet, slick heat of him, under her palms. She wanted their hot bellies pressed together, soft against hard. She wanted him to do something about how crazy he was making her.
“Tony,” she said, because
she couldn’t not say it.
She fumbled her way into his shirt and got her own up out of the way, fumbled her tongue into his mouth to experience the taste of him as she pressed her skin against his. He was as rich and dark as she’d expected, and ten times as good.
She’d always approached kissing carefully, as if it were a skill she needed to master, but this was messy and haphazard, dirty and careless and completely amazing. She bit his lip and slicked her tongue over it, carried away with a giddy kind of power she’d never experienced before.
Tony sucked in a breath. “Fuck me,” he said, and he picked her right up off the ground and carried her, staggering several feet until her back bumped into the oak tree and his pelvis pinned her in place, a thick, perfect heat between her legs.
“You’re hard,” she said, because she couldn’t quite believe it.
“Not now,” he muttered, and his mouth moved to her neck, his hands to her breasts, cupping them through her wet shirt and her bra. His thumbs rubbed over her nipples, sweeping, pressing as he pushed between her legs and ground into her softness.
She was too turned on to think, but something didn’t quite make sense about his denial. “You are, though. I can feel your … your—”
“Don’t say that now, Amber, or I swear to God I will fuck you up against this tree, and you will like it.”
That made her shudder. Or maybe it was the way he rubbed her nipple between his thumb and finger, a pinch through two layers of fabric that reverberated at the spot where his erection pressed against her panties.
“Oh my gosh,” she said when she could breathe again.
“Shut up and kiss me.”
His mouth came down again, and she was lost, her hands all over his torso, exploring the muscles of his back and sides, his arms, tugging at his butt so he’d thrust even harder against her, because the mimicry of sex was so far superior to her experiences of the real thing.
He tore his mouth away. “We gotta stop.”
“No.”