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“Nope. Just ski and I don’t care if Kell thinks it’s for wimps. He felt bad because he’d sort of dared me into taking the snowboard.”
“You were just boys. Your grandfather should have stepped in.”
“He thought that kind of thing was good for us. He said we should always stay hungry.”
“Well, I don’t agree with that. I’m not raising DJ that way.”
“Good. I’m not complaining about the way I was raised, but I want DJ to have a more comfortable childhood than I did.”
“Is that why you are trying to have a relationship with me?” she asked.
“Part of it. I don’t want him to ever think that I didn’t want him. I know how I felt knowing that my biological parents… Well, that’s old news. What about you? Any scars?”
She didn’t want to let the subject change. She wanted to know more about Dec and dig into his psyche, but she could tell he wasn’t going to answer anything else about his past.
“I have one scar and if you guess where it is—”
“I get to kiss it,” he said.
“Why would you want to?”
“So it’s some place naughty?”
She just shook her head. “No.”
“Ah, okay. And I can kiss it if I guess correctly?”
“Sure,” she said. There was no way he’d guess it.
“Stand up,” he said.
“Why?”
“So I can make a thorough examination of you. How am I going to make an informed decision without all the evidence?”
She rolled her eyes and realized that Dec wanted to keep things light between them tonight. So different from his usual serious and brooding manner. And so she pirouetted for him. That took a little of her joy from the evening. He was letting her see the parts of himself he deemed okay and keeping the real man hidden from her still.
And she was being her usual open book. She knew she had to change, but how? She wondered if there was a way she could learn from Dec. Maybe stop letting her heart be so open….
“The back of your knee,” he said.
Her eyes widened and furrowed her brow as she looked at him. “Yes. How did you know that?”
“It was a guess.”
“No way,” she said, glancing down at her legs covered in trousers. “Confess.”
“I’m guessing you’re going to renege on the kiss,” he said.
“No. We made a deal. I just want to know how you knew.”
“I saw you naked, Cari,” he said. “And I’ve revisited that night many times in my mind. Don’t think for a minute that I didn’t memorize every inch of your lovely body, from that scar on the back of your knee to that strawberry birthmark at the base of your spine.”
She melted. That he’d remembered those details…it meant nothing. All it meant was that he was a thorough lover, which she already knew. But it felt like it meant something more to her tonight.
She looked at him and felt that sinking feeling in her stomach as she fought against doing something she shouldn’t. Instead she lifted her hand and beckoned him to her with one crook of her finger.
He stood up and walked over to her slowly. She stopped him when he was a few inches from her with her hand on his chest. “I can’t decide if you are a big flirt, a serious lover or the biggest mistake of my life.”
“I am a big flirt and will always be serious about loving you. As for the other, this doesn’t feel like a mistake to me,” he said, pulling her into his arms and kissing her.
* * *
There was nothing light or tentative in the way that Dec’s mouth moved over hers. His hand on the back of her neck was strong and he held her where he wanted her as he ravished her mouth. He was aggressive and strong, taking what he needed from her, giving her what she hadn’t known she craved until this very second. Every move of his body seduced her into letting go of her own reservations and giving in to her need, as well. His tongue teased hers with a parry and retreat until he thrust it deeply into her mouth. His hands soothed their way down her back to her waist as he drew her in closer to him.
She felt the muscled strength of his chest and his pecs under the crispness of his dress shirt. She felt the tension in his fingers as he squeezed her waist and drew her up off her feet and against his body. She felt his hardening erection and knew that for tonight the games had ended.
There was no playing around with this kind of lust, and she didn’t want to. She’d told him about his son, they were slowly working out how to deal with their companies and it had been a long eighteen months for her without sex. Without a man’s hands on her body. Not just any man—this one.
