Later, she would take her pick of what to blame: the wine, the candlelight, or the intimacy of sitting in the near dark as a thunderstorm crashed around them. Cara set her cards down, rose to her knees, and settled back on her heels, watching him. The slight movement caused the candles to flicker, illuminating the ripple of his jaw where the muscles tensed, his eyes boring into hers.
Moving slowly, anticipation fizzing low in her belly, Cara rose on her knees and inched toward him, giving him more than enough time to stop her. The cards crinkled under her knees, and Wes shifted forward to meet her. She would have smiled, but it was taking all of her concentration not to throw herself against him.
Every fantasy she’d had, since moving in, streamed in front of her.
The urge to feel his skin under her hands, to finally taste him, was almost unbearable. Cara placed a hand on his firm shoulder, his skin scorching her through the thin material. She met his eyes.
Is he going to back away again?
Cara would have collapsed with relief when his large hands settled on her hips to pull her closer if the movement hadn’t set her body humming. He tugged her against him, her knees on either side of his hips. Cara ran the back of her fingers from his temple, down over the scruff of his jaw and swiped slowly across his soft lips.
Wes growled, surging forward, and pulled her flush to him. His rigid length pressed hard against her, and she moaned. Wes lowered his head. From the tremors she felt rippling through his body, she expected the kiss to be fierce… wild. Instead, he stopped a breath away and licked his lips. Cara caught a slight whiff of beer, and what would normally be a turn-off was suddenly sexy as hell.
Agonizingly slow, Wes slicked his lips back and forth across hers, until he pulled her lower lip into his mouth sucking it between his teeth, before releasing it with a groan. He angled his head, deepening the kiss, his hand tangled in the back of her hair holding her still as his tongue stroked inside to find hers.
Cara thought she might be having a heart attack.
Her pulse thundered in her ears running straight through her body until it was centered between her legs. Her breasts tingled as she tried to get even closer, rubbing against the sculpted planes of his chest. Cara scratched her nails at the nape of Wes’s neck, slipping her fingers through the waves of silky hair and pressing her full weight against his erection, desperately seeking the pressure she craved.
Wes trailed kisses from her mouth to the shell of her ear, sending shivers down her spine. His nose nuzzled under her jaw, inhaling deeply.
“I’m never going to smell honeysuckle the same again,” he muttered, sounding so aggrieved Cara chuckled. “It’s not funny.” He pulled his head back to give her a wolfish grin. “It’s one thing to get a sudden hard-on when you are a teenager, not so much for a thirty-year-old man.”
“That’s a shame,” Cara breathed, rolling against him. Wes sucked in a harsh breath and closed his eyes as she repeated the motion.
His mouth was back on her neck, sucking at her tender skin. Wes recaptured her lips—gone were the slow, drugging kisses. In their place fierce demand, his mouth moving over hers as if he couldn’t get enough of her. Hungry. Impatient. One hand slid from her hair to cup her face, the other stroked her back to the base of her spine, and then a few inches lower under the waistband of her leggings. Cara ran her fingertips down his chest and grasped the hem of his T-shirt, pulling it free to slide her hands underneath.
She splayed her hands over his ribs, Wes’s heart thumped wildly under her thumbs. His hands fell, his fingers digging into her hips as she moved against him. Tearing his mouth from hers, he groaned low in his throat.
Needing to feel his skin, Cara tugged at his shirt, hauling it over his head. She leaned back admiring the ridges of his stomach. Her nails had just begun to trace the fascinating line of hair lower when Wes yanked her forward, crushing her breasts against him and trapping her hands. “Cara.” The sound was more plea than a name.
Her heart stuttered.
“I want you.” His eyes flared at her stark words.
Cara pulled her hands free from where they were trapped between their heated bodies. She slowed her movements on his lap, and in one fluid motion, her own shirt was gone, only her thin, cotton bra between them.
His lips parted slightly as he ran his fingertips from her collarbone to the valley between her breasts and back. He seemed mesmerized by the action, almost as though he were trying to memorize the texture of her skin.
Wes bowed his head to drag open-mouthed kisses across the top of one creamy swell.
“Wes!” Cara cried.
He lifted his heavy-lidded eyes to watch her reaction as he dipped beneath the fabric. Pinching and rolling the tight buds between his fingers. Cara’s head fell back with a whimper.
Wes’s mouth soon replaced his fingers, sucking hard at her nipple through the cloth, as his hands molded the muscles in her back. Cara moved urgently, her breath coming in short gasps. Rising and falling over him as she reached a fever-pitch.
Something pounded at the door, and through the haze of lust, they both froze.
Wes drew back, his eyes glazed.
The pounding came again, followed by “Atlanta Police Department! Is anyone home?”
Cara climbed off Wes’s lap and grabbed for her shirt.
“Coming!” he called to the door.
“Or not,” Cara muttered. She expected Wes to laugh at her joke, but he stood staring at her with his shirt in his hand. Her stomach fell to her feet.
