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“I’m still open to strip Scrabble if you want to lose a couple of layers. Or that massage. You seem a little tense.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Your turn.”
Tamara was grateful when he returned his frank gaze to his letters. He seemed to stare for an age at his tiles and she started to get nervous at what exactly was running through his head. Then he lifted those blue eyes and speared her with a look she was fast coming to recognize as trouble. Her pulse rate trebled as the seconds ticked by.
“Luke?” she prompted. The words felt tight and rough in her Cheeto-dry throat.
“My turn?” he murmured. “Okay.” Then in one swift move he whipped his T-shirt up and over his head.
Tamara stared at him flabbergasted. “Luke,” she squeaked.
“My letters were crap,” he said innocently as he ditched them and plucked new ones from the pool. “It was my penalty. Plus…” He paused. “I was hot.”
Oh Jesus, was he ever.
The mature, responsible thing to do would have been to tell him to get dressed immediately, but firelight on acres of broad, tanned chest was too damn distracting and Tamara’s eyes demanded she take full advantage. Her fingers itched to join them.
“Your turn.”
Tamara dragged her gaze back to his face. “Wha...?” she asked, trying to clear a heavy fog from her mind and a jettison of hormones flooding her belly and rushing to the apex of her thighs.
He smiled at her. “Your turn,” he repeated as if he were talking to someone who’d been a little short-changed in the brains department. But her gaze had already obeyed the powerful dictates of her body and was back to warm skin and toned muscles.
“Can’t go?” he prompted. “That means I get another move, right, if you forfeit?”
Tamara wasn’t capable of responding. In fact, she barely heard him as his throat bobbed and beckoned with each word from his mouth, his carotid pulse sure and steady.
Finally she got the vampire thing!
She nodded her head absently because he seemed to be waiting for some response from her, but when his gaze fanned across her mouth like the stroke of a feather, everything came back into sharp focus.
“Luke,” she murmured huskily as the carnal intent in his eyes turned them to blue flame.
It was meant as a warning but it came out sounding all breathy and needy. Like a plea. Luke certainly seemed to take it that way, because he didn’t back off. Suddenly he was looming closer, breaching the board-width distance between them, his eyes locked on her mouth. “You know this is date nine, right?”
Tamara swallowed as her mouth burned hot and her throat caught fire. “Scrabble’s not a date.”
“Sure it is. We’ve been talking dirty for almost an hour. Plus,” he lifted his gaze to hers, “you took my shirt off.”
Tamara’s tongue swiped across her lower lip and she could have sworn she heard it sizzle. “You took your shirt off.”
He smiled at her like he knew exactly what she was thinking and she swallowed again. “Only because you’ve been undressing me with your mind. I merely...” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Obliged.”
Tamara’s gaze snagged the movement and panned out to take in the rest of his chest. The flickering light turned his skin to honey and played over slabs of muscle, both emphasizing and shadowing all at once. Had she ever seen anything this magnificent? “I can see that was a hardship for you.” She wanted to touch him so bad she curled her hands into fists to stop herself from reaching out.
He looked down at them, all tight and tense resting on her thighs, and then back at her, his smile broadening, and she knew he did know exactly what she was thinking. He slid his palms onto her knees and her belly went into free fall. He reached for her fisted hands, covering them with his own, picking them up, placing her flattened palms on a smooth, warm pectoral each.
Tamara sucked in a hot, ragged breath as firm male flesh melted to velvet beneath her touch. She glanced at him, noticing the bob of his throat. “It’s okay to touch,” he said, and his voice sounded as thick and unsteady as hers.
And then, even as the proper schoolteacher inside rejected his suggestion, her hands moved of their own accord. They slid up onto his shoulders. His breath hissed out, his eyes fluttered closed. She traced the rounded contours before moving down his arms, his skin warm and supple, tensing then relaxing beneath her touch. Her heart fluttered in her chest as the round bulk of two biceps filled her palms and did funny things to places much farther south.
Luke’s eyes opened, their gazes entwined, and her breath hitched in her throat. She could see the black of his pupils, so large, leaving only a thin rim of brilliant blue. They stared at each other, only the crackling of the fire and their breath disturbing the loud screech of anticipation. Luke brought his left arm up and h
er hand slid off into her lap. He tilted his wrist, consulting his watch briefly before letting it drop.
“Guess what?” he said.
His inquiry broke the spell and Tamara looked at him bewildered, removing her other hand as well, trying to figure out how she’d come to be touching him in the first place. But that didn’t seem to matter as Luke took over the touching now, his hand sliding up her neck, gliding into her hair.
