Page 19 of Tangled Up With You
“Yes,” I answered plainly. “I saw you heading in here and I followed you.”
She scoffed, giving her head a shake and pushing off the wall. I moved quickly, panic setting in when she started for the exit. I closed the space between us in two steps and wrapped my fingers around her bicep to stop her. “Ivy, please.”
Her head shot around, her eyes narrowing in on where I was touching her. I snatched my hand back as soon as I realized I was touching her without permission. “Please,” I said, holding them up in surrender. “I only want to talk. I want to try and explain.”
She let out a bark of caustic laughter. “You really think there could ever be an explanation that I would want to hear?”
I didn’t, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try. “I thought I was doing the right thing. For you.”
Her head fell back, a humorless smile that didn’t belong on her beautiful face stretching across her mouth. “What a fucking cop-out.”
“It’s not a cop-out,” I insisted, that pressure in my chest increasing by the second. She had to understand. I had tomakeher understand. It was the only way I could fix what I fucked up. “Look, I know it sounds like bullshit, but I swear, the only thing going through my head when I took off on you was that you deserved better. That night...” My mouth suddenly felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. I tried swallowing but there was no relief. “That night, the things I felt... I wasn’t prepared. I know what I did was fucked up, and it’s not an excuse, but I was scared. I knew I couldn’t give you what you deserved. I’d wanted you for so fucking long, but after we?—”
“Fucked,” she clipped out, wrapping her arms over her chest, the gesture more protective than anything, like she was trying to give herself a hug, almost. “That night, after we fucked.”
That night had felt like so much more than that. Than just a fuck. So to hear her boil it down to its root parts felt like a slap in the face. A well-deserved one, sure, but it still fucking hurt.
“I knew I wasn’t good enough for you. I’mnotgood enough for you. But there hasn’t been a single day that’s passed since I left that I haven’t thought about you. I can’t get you out of my head.” I was making a mess of this whole thing. But I didn’t know how the hell to put into words everything I had been feeling that night—what I was feeling in that moment. It was like the more I tried to explain, the worse I was making it.
I scrubbed my hands over my face with a groan, raking my fingers through my hair in frustration. “Christ, I’m not saying any of this right.”
“No, you’re really not,” Ivy said dryly. “And I’m done listening. I don’t want to hear anymore bullshit excuses or watered-down apologies. As far as I’m concerned, it was a mistake. End of story.”
Dread made my heart rate slow and my brain short-circuit so I wasn’t thinking when she started away from me. All I could do was act—desperate to do anything that would get her to stay. My hand shot out just as she started to pass me, wrappingaround the back of her neck and propelling her back around. She stumbled on her heels, but I was there before she could fall, letting her crash into my chest to keep her upright before slamming my lips down on hers. The kiss wasn’t soft or graceful. It was full of every ounce of need that had been clawing at my insides since I walked away months ago. I swiped across the seam of her lips with my tongue, begging for entry, and when they parted on a surprised gasp, I didn’t hesitate to dive inside.
With one hand tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck, I tipped her head back and plundered. Adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream like a dam breaking. My dick was so goddamn hard I could feel my pulse in it.
When she finally pulled away several seconds later, we were both breathing like we’d just sprinted a mile uphill in the heat of the day. I stood, waiting for whatever her reaction might be. I had no right to kiss her, and I fully expected her to slap the shit out of me for taking such liberties, but I hadn’t been able to help myself. It was like trying to survive without breathing.
Impossible.
“What happened between us wasn’t a mistake,” I panted, the breaths sawing in and out of my lungs. “I fucked it up. I ruined everything, but it wasn’t a mistake.”
My words spurred her into action. One moment she was standing across the alleyway from me, her eyes wide and glassy, her delicate fingers held over her lips in shock, and the next she was lunging for me.
Chapter Eleven
Connor
Her smell enveloped me as we crashed together once more in a kiss even hungrier than the last. That fresh lemon and basil had become my favorite scent long ago, and as my tongue ravaged Ivy’s mouth, tangling and twisting with her own, I tried to breathe in as much of it as I possibly could. I tasted the bitterness of the vodka and tonic water and the citrus of the limes from the vodka tonics she’d been drinking all night. That was her go-to cocktail: vodka tonic with two limes squeezed into it. It was one of the many things I’d learned about her during all those months we’d been friends. During those months I’d been heading down a path I’d sworn to myself I wouldn’t go down again.
The blood pumping in my ears sounded like whitewater rapids but I still managed to hear the greedy little whimpering sounds Ivy made that I gladly swallowed down. Her hands fisted the lapels of my tuxedo jacket, using her iron grip to keep me close as she rose up on the toes of those sexy-as-fuck heels to take the kiss deeper.
A growl worked its way up my throat as I gripped her hair, wrapping it around my fist and using it to tug her head back so I could drag my tongue down the column of her throat. I nipped at her collarbone before traveling back upward, stopping to take my time at the spot right beneath her ear that drove her absolutely wild.
A low, throaty moan slipped past her lips as she dropped her head farther back, giving me better access. From our night together, I knew that spot was one of her buttons, and it might have made me an asshole to jab on it right then, but I wasn’t above playing dirty. I teased and kissed and licked until she was panting for air. I dragged my teeth along the cord of her throat and kissed my way down, down, down to that tantalizing dip in the neckline of her dress that had been driving me crazy all goddamn night.
I sucked at the skin across her chest just above the swells of her round tits, leaving red marks along her cleavage.
“Mmm, Connor,” she hummed, lifting her head. Her pupils were blown, the black swallowing up so much of that crystal blue that there was only a small rim around the very edge. Her cheeks were rosy with want, her lips swollen from my own. Her gaze was hazy as she blinked her hooded eyes at me.
“What do you want, butterfly?” I rasped. I banded one arm around her waist, holding her to me as tightly as possible. I grabbed behind her right knee and hiked her leg up to my hip, exposing her thigh from beneath the slit in her dress. I could feel the warmth of her pussy through the layers between us, and it was enough to make my hips buck involuntarily, rubbing my steel erection against her core through our clothes.
She replied by reaching up and gripping my hair, yanking my mouth back down to hers. My tongue thrust against hers in the same rhythm as my hips, my rock-hard cock teasing her clitthrough her panties. I could feel her wetness seeping through the layers.
“Tell me, Ivy,” I demanded, my words gritted out as I slid my hand upward so I could drag the pad of my thumb over her nipple that was puckered hard beneath the slinky material of her dress. My girl wasn’t wearing a bra underneath—that much was obvious thanks to the non-existent back—and I could see perfectly that her nipples were painfully hard, begging to be sucked on until what I knew from memory was a soft petal pink turned bright red. “Tell me what you want.”
She kept her leg hooked over my hip of her own accord as she trailed one of her small hands down the front of my shirt, curling her fingers so I could feel the scrape of her nails. Her tongue darted out and licked across my Adam’s apple just as her hand reached the waistband of my pants. Before I knew what was happening, she had my fly undone and her hand slid inside, gripping my cock so fast I grunted at the unexpected contact.
