“I think you should come home with me tonight and we can talk about it,” she said.
“Ready when you are.”
EIGHT
JENNA HAD CONSUMED ENOUGH CHAMPAGNE TO KNOW she was inebriated, but not so much that she was dead drunk and unaware of what she was doing.
In other words, when this was all over, she wouldn’t be able to blame this on the alcohol.
There had been something in the air tonight. Maybe it was all the love she felt between Mick and Tara, and it reminded her of her way too solitary existence lately.
She was tired of coming home alone, and why should she? She was an adult, and if she wanted to bring a guy home and bang his brains out, she was entitled.
Ty didn’t seem like the fall-head-over-heels-in-love-after-one-night type of guy. She didn’t think he wanted to marry her or be her boyfriend, which made him perfect. He wanted to get into her panties, and she really needed a guy to get into her panties. The two of them had abundant chemistry, so she had no idea why she kept pushing him away. She was just foggy enough that all the valid reasons why she didn’t want to go out with him had fizzled away like a glass of flat champagne.
Besides, they weren’t going out. They were going to have sex.
Since her parents had picked her up this afternoon and taken her to the wedding, she didn’t have her car. Ty drove them to her place after she had said her good-byes. The wedding was winding down and only the die-hard partiers were left.
“Keys?”
She lifted her gaze. She and Tyler stood on the front step of her condo. “What?”
“Your keys.”
“Oh. Right.” She dug into her bag and produced her keys. Tyler took them and unlocked her door, pushed it open, and waited for her to walk in.
She flicked on the light switch. He closed the door behind them.
“This is nice.”
“You lie. It’s a wreck.”
“You’re right. I’m shocked. You keep the bar in tip-top shape.”
She turned to face him, only to find him grinning at her. And okay, she was embarrassed. She dropped her purse on the coffee table. “Yeah, well, I had to get out of here in a hurry today because my dad was laying on the horn, and I was running late.” She dashed through the living room to pick up her yoga pants and socks and tennis shoes.
He grasped her wrist.
“I was kidding. Drop that stuff.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “I’m not a good housekeeper.”
“I don’t give a shit. If you came to my place right now you’d find last night’s pizza box on the table, empty beer and soda cans, and about a week’s worth of laundry thrown around.”
“Really?”
“Really. I don’t care what your place looks like. That’s not why I’m here.”
She exhaled.
“Would you like something to drink? We could sit and talk.”
He rubbed her wrist with his thumb. Her pulse sped up.
“Is that why you invited me here? You want to have some drinks and talk?”
She swallowed, knowing that’s not at all what she wanted. Not from him. “No. I don’t want to talk.”
“Okay, then.” He looked down at her. “You’re dressed way too nice for what I have in mind to do to you.”
Her heart pounded, her br**sts swelling against the top of her dress. She couldn’t breathe. She was primed and ready—had been for months. She felt like she’d been dancing around this with him for a long time, and she didn’t want to wait just because she was in a fancy dress.
“I don’t care.” She wound her arm around his neck and pulled his head down.
When his lips touched hers, a lightning bolt of sensation exploded inside her. This was what had been missing from her date with Joe. This blast of heat, this chemical reaction her body had to being touched and kissed. When Ty put his mouth on her, she felt it all the way to her toes—a tingle of awareness, a promise of what he was going to give her.
Ty wrapped his arm around her waist and tugged her hard against his body, and she went up in flames.
She swept her hands over his arms, feeling the steel-like strength of him. She slid her palms over his shoulders and tangled her fingers in his hair, something she’d thought about doing for a long time.
It was just as she imagined—thick and soft, a sensual delight for her fingers. And when he deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding inside to sweep alongside hers, she grabbed a handful of his hair and held on, her entire body trembling in response.
Never had she been kissed like this. Oh, she’d been kissed before. Hard, soft, and somewhere in between, but this was a full-on assault. Ty used more than his lips in the kiss. His hands roamed all over her, pressing in gently at the small of her back with one hand and cupping the nape of her neck with the other, while the front of him—the hard, oh-thank-God-he-was-a-man front of him—pushed her against the wall.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for as long as I’ve known you,” he whispered, his voice harsh with strain as his fingers flexed against her hip.
He leaned over and kissed her jaw, then her neck, moving to her left ear. She shuddered when his tongue swept across her earlobe, flicking at her earrings.
“I like these earrings, Jenna. They’re sexy.”
“Thank you.”
He swept his tongue across her throat, then turned her around and kissed the back of her neck.
Jenna shuddered, her knees weakening when she felt the tug of the zipper.
“I need you out of this dress.”
She couldn’t agree more.
When he unzipped her, she started to turn around, but his hands on her hips stilled her.
“Jesus.”
“What?”
“This tattoo on your back.”
“My dragon.”
“Yeah. It’s amazing. And when I’m not so damn hard I want to explode, I’m going to lick it all over. But right now there are other parts of you I want to lick.”
She sucked in a breath and could already imagine his tongue on her, on the parts of her that ached and throbbed.
He pushed off her dress, laid it over the back of the sofa. When he came back to her, he knelt, this time cupping her ankles to sweep his hands up her legs.
“Your legs are so sexy.” He pressed a kiss to the back of her knees. “And your thighs. I can’t wait to feel them wrapped around me.” He kissed her there, too, before turning her around to face him again.