The song ended and Lara pulled away. She tried to plaster a smile on her face, but there was a riot ofsomethinggoing on inside of her that she had to…avoid or sidestep somehow, but her gaze snagged on his—all blue and intense.
When she tried to step away, his hands came around her elbows and kept her there. Another song started to play, but Lara didn’t really hear it. Not over the pounding in her heart.
She opened her mouth to say something, anything. To get out of this somehow, but she couldn’t quite manage. Not when he looked at her like that, not when his grip was tight and fierce and the air around them seemed to press their bodies closer together.
“I have failed everything I’ve ever done,” he told her, so seriously, with such vulnerability she wanted to cry for him. And she couldn’t help but defend him, even to himself.
“No, no you haven’t.” She put her hands on his chest, like she could press her rebuttal into his heart. “You’re too hard on yourself. You?—”
His grip on her elbows firmed. “But I won’t fail you.”
Her words caught in her throat. The only thing she could manage to squeak out was his name. “Ty…”
But he was pulling her closer.Hewas closer. The blue of his eyes intense and sure. Certain. Determined.
His mouth touched hers. Gentle. Not testing, exactly, but giving her the space to back away, to stop things before they changed.
She should. She knew sheshould. There were a million warning alarm bells going off in her mind. She didn’t wantanythingto change.
Kissing him back was a mistake. It was wrong. It was everything she didn’t want. She should be panicking. Running away.
Instead, she sank into the feel of his mouth on hers. Slid her hands up his chest to wrap them around his neck. And she kissed him back, the wild, riot of feeling and sensation overwhelming any rational thought. Anxiety replaced by a warm flood of need.
His hands skimmed down her sides, his long, lean body was pressed to hers as his hands anchored at her waist. The warning bells were still sounding, but they were muffled. Under the warmth of him, the pulse of need. It had been a long time since anyone had kissed or touched her like this.
No.
No onehad ever made her feelthis.
She shouldn’t want it, allow it, enjoy it. Taking this any farther would change everything, and it was already too much.She didn’t want to change anything. She wanted things to go back the way they were.
But when his hands moved up her ribcage, fingers splayed wide, all while his teeth scraped against her lower lip, thought stopped completely.
She moaned into his mouth, arched into him. Sensation was too much and not enough. And in those extremes, all the warning bells went silent.
“I never let myself dream about this, Lara.” His mouth moved down her neck. “I couldn’t. But things are different now.”
She didn’t want different. She didn’t want change.
But when he kissed her again, she didn’t tell him that. She didn’t tell him anything.
Ty hadn’t exactly planned this. Certainly not the way it all seemed to explode into something…bigger. Hotter. Needier.
He’d had the fleeting thought that there might be an awkwardness, but there was only the perfect molding of body to body. Lara mounted no protest. She met every kiss, every touch, every need.
He tugged down the neckline of her dress so his mouth could explore more, taste more.
He hadn’t been lying about never letting himself think about this. He’d considered it a very off-limits topic, and being away made that easier, but there had been times he hadn’t been fully in charge of where his mind wandered.
It had certainly wandered here a time or two. What would the soft swell of her breast look like, but he hadn’t allowed himself to imagine taking the taut nipple into his mouth and rolling it to a tighter peak as she whimpered against him.
He hadn’t allowed himself to really consider what it would be like to run his hands up her smooth, soft inner thigh. Higher. Lara wanted him just as much as he wanted her and it swamped him with too many feelings to sort through. Maybe he should take her somewhere else, take this slower, but he didn’t want to.
He wanted her. So he explored her with his fingers first, testing and teasing, determining what she liked, what she needed. When her grip in his hair tightened, her body clenching then releasing, a shaky whimper escaping her mouth, he forgot all aboutslower.There was only now.
She met his gaze, hazel eyes unfocused and a little lost.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, not because he thought she did, but because he had to be sure.
