Animal Attraction

Twelve

They had unfinished business?

Assuming he meant their near physical miss, Jade hesitated.

With another small smile, Dell shook his head. “I meant your training. You left early.”

“Figured we were done.”

“Yeah. That got a little out of hand.” He paused, but she shook her head.

“If you’re going to try to apologize again, don’t.”

He just looked at her with those dark eyes, and she let out a breath. “Look,” she said. “We both know the truth is that I kissed you, so if anyone should be apologizing-”

“I’m not apologizing for the kiss.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “Then…?”

Instead of answering, he sat on her couch in the same place she’d just vacated and took in the movie playing on the TV, the spread of fingernail polish, the half-eaten bowl of popcorn, the opened laptop.

Too late she realized what she had up on the screen.

He smiled, then laughed out loud, his amusement eradicating the lines of tension in his beautiful face. He leaned forward to read more.

“Hey,” she complained. “That’s private.” She moved toward him to shut the laptop, but he held her off, easily grabbing both her hands in one of his wrists and tugging her down beside him.

“Watch the freshly done toenails!”

He grinned and did just that, taking in the pale blue polish. “Pretty.” Then he went back to her screen, reading her things-to-do-in-her-spare-time spreadsheet:

1. Organize junk drawer.

2. Clean hairbrushes.

3. Relax.

4. Don’t think about Dell.

Dell slid her a look but didn’t point out the obvious, that she wasn’t doing anything on her list.

“Cute pictures,” he said of the piglet and calf pictures on the other half of her screen. Both were close-ups of two adorably earnest but wary faces. “Friends of yours?”

She sighed. “Yes.” When he only looked at her, brows up, she shrugged. “I’ve adopted them from Adopt a Farm Animal.” She tugged her hands free of his and refilled her wineglass.

“You adopted a pig and a calf?”

“It’s the late-night commercials. They play sad music and show pictures of abused, neglected animals.”

His smile widened.

“They look right at you! Oliver, the calf-” She pointed at the picture. “He’d been abandoned and had nearly starved to death before he was rescued. And Miss Piggy was heading to the bacon factory. Now I write a check for fifteen bucks a month and they live happily ever after. What’s the big deal?”

“Christ, you’re cute.”

“I-” She narrowed her eyes at him. Cute? “You take that back.”

“Okay, you’re not cute. You’re… sexy as hell.”

They both looked at her attire and he laughed when she winced. “You are,” he maintained.

“You’re a very nice man to lie like that.” She grabbed the laptop from him, shutting the screen. “And now you’ll forget about the fact that I’m so pathetic that I watch DVDs on Friday and Saturday nights instead of going out.”

He looked at her for a long moment and she groaned and covered her face. “Don’t tell me that’s why you’re here, that you thought I was feeling… vulnerable.” She dropped her hands and glared at him. “Because if you say that, I’m going to kick your ass, Dell, I mean it.”

Reaching for her wine, he helped himself.

“Say something,” she demanded.

“Are you kidding? I don’t want to get my ass kicked. And you could do it now, too.” He flashed a grin but she just stared at him, deadpan.

He sighed. “I’m not here because I thought you were vulnerable. I’m here because you ran off rather than face the fact that we-”

“Hey. I didn’t run off.”

“Jade, you left smoke in your wake.”

Okay, so she’d run off. Bad habit. “It was just a kiss.”

He slid her a look.

“Okay, it was an unexpectedly great kiss.”

He nodded. “Yeah.” His voice was low and a little rough, and she felt her nipples harden at the sound of it. “Each time gets even greater.”

Oh so true. “But we’d be stupid to keep doing it.”

“Right.” He looked at her. “Why’s that?”

“Because…” God, his eyes. And that gorgeous mocha skin, sun-burnished and so smooth, except for a five o’clock shadow across his jaw after a long day. She already knew how it felt beneath her fingers, which were itching for another touch. “Because we work together. Because you date like other men change socks. Because I’m leaving soon. Pick one.”

“Right,” he said, nodding agreeably. “I almost forgot about all that.”

She nodded.

He reached out and ran a finger along her temple, making her… yearn. She leaned into him and closed her eyes.

“And we’re more than co-workers,” he said quietly.

“We’re friends.”

He didn’t say anything and she opened her eyes.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re friends.”

“Friends don’t kiss like we did without becoming… naked friends.”

“And?”

“And you have a no-relationship decree in place. You’ve told me so yourself. And even if you hadn’t, your actions speak louder than words.”

“What does a relationship have to do with becoming naked friends?”

Okay, he had her there. There was a silence, and she waited for him to push the issue, but he just started eating her popcorn. Then he took another drink of her wine. “I thought maybe you were upset about something else,” he finally said.

“Like what?”

“I thought maybe me touching you brought up some bad memories.” His eyes never wavered from hers so when she grimaced, she knew he saw it.

“I… No. Not like you’re thinking.” She looked down at her hands, which twisted together until her knuckles turned white. She hadn’t talked about this. She didn’t want to talk about this. But she could admit he deserved a few answers. “I wasn’t raped.”

He covered her hands with one of his as he let out a low breath that had a lot of relief in the sound. “I’m glad. But something happened to you.”

“Yes.” His skin was warm on her suddenly chilly fingers and she found herself turning her hand palm up so she could hold on. “A long time ago.”

“Eighteen months.”

She stared down at their entwined fingers. “Eighteen months.” She shook her head. “But I’m fine now and getting more fine all the time. I don’t need a babysitter, Dell. Or a shoulder to cry on.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I never know what to do with tears.”

Not true. Just this morning she’d seen him holding forty-eight-year-old Missy Robinson, who’d fallen apart in the exam room when he’d had to tell her that her Alaskan husky had cancer. He’d held her for as long as she’d needed, looking devastated for her but perfectly at ease in the role of comforter. “With all those women you date, I’d think you’d have a lot of practice at tears.”

She had no idea why she said that. His dating, or not dating, wasn’t her concern.

Dell grabbed the bowl of popcorn and the remote and leaned back. “Maybe I’m not quite the hotshot you think I am.”

She stared at him. He was good at letting people come to their own conclusions, and he’d certainly never tried to be anything he wasn’t. His eyes met hers, clear and warm and open. “What are we doing, Dell?”

“Well, I’m hoping to watch a movie and eat the rest of your popcorn.”

“Because…?”

“Because I like this movie and I love popcorn. And because Adam’s at my house barbecuing chicken and vegetables. Vegetables.” He shuddered again.

After Oceans 11, they switched to SNL. “I bet this isn’t how most of your dates end,” she said.

He was quiet a moment. “Was this a date?”

She met his gaze. “If it was, it’d be my first since-” She paused. “A really long time.”

“How long?”

“Eighteen months.”

“How does it feel?”

She thought about it. “Good,” she said honestly. “But what about you-”

He put his finger on her mouth. “I’m good, too, Jade. More than good. Don’t worry about me.” He ran his hand up and down her back until she relaxed again. At some point she realized her eyes were closed and she lifted her head in shock.

She was curled up against Dell’s side. He was asleep on his back, one arm around her, his torso rising and falling with his slow, steady breaths, even with Beans sitting on his chest.

“Hey,” she said, sitting up and poking Dell in the side.

He mumbled something beneath his breath and didn’t budge.

Jade scooped the kitten off of him, set her on the floor and poked Dell again. “Wake up.”

Both arms came around her, snuggling her in close as he pressed his face into her hair. “Mmm. You smell good.”

“Dell, wake up!”

His mouth was on her neck now. “I’m awake,” he said, and licked the spot he’d just kissed. “You taste as good as you smell, did you know that?”

Then he cupped the back of her head in one big hand and kissed her again, her mouth this time, and she gave herself up to it, to the heat of him, his taste. Their bodies were plastered together and he was rock solid against her, his arms flexed tight around her. “Are you really awake?”

In answer, he tugged her even closer and deepened their kiss, taking his time about it, too, moving slow and almost unbearably erotic against her, his hands sliding under her shirt, his fingertips resting just beneath her breasts. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and when he discovered that he lifted his head and looked at her, his gaze sleepy and heavylidded, pulling her in, making her want to fall into him and drown.

“Dell.” She sucked in an uneven breath, shockingly turned on. “Are you up?”

“Yeah,” he said, and pulled her over the top of him so that she could feel exactly how “up” he was. His chest was hard, his abs were hard, his thighs were hard.

Everything was hard.

Her eyes must have gone wide because a low chuckle accompanied the slow rock of his hips to hers. A tug of her hair brought her line of vision up to meet his once more. She quivered and he urged her down to him, and then somehow she was kissing him again. God, she could kiss him forever.

Beneath her shirt, his fingers stroked her skin and she thought, Up an inch!, and then in the next beat he’d done exactly that and the desire exploded.

When they she came up for air, Dell had one hand palming her breast, his thumb gliding back and forth over her nipple, making her squirm with pleasure. Or maybe that was his other hand, inside the back of her pajama bottoms, gripping a butt cheek, his fingers gliding over the silk of her bikini panties.

She was no better. She had both hands under his shirt, low on his abs, her fingers playing with the loose waistband of his jeans. She lifted her head and looked at him. “There’s this thing about sleeping with someone. It creates a false sense of intimacy and leads to… things.”

“Things?”

“Sleepy sex. It leads to sleepy sex. You know, the kind of sex you wouldn’t have if you were all the way awake.”

He laughed softly, his eyes black with desire. His hands gripped her hips with a familiar possessiveness that maybe should have turned her off but instead turned her on. From his intense expression she knew that even though he hadn’t come here for this, it was certainly what he was going to do. “I don’t know about you,” he said. “But I don’t do a lot of sleepovers period. So this… sleepy sex is new for me.” His eyes lit. “Be gentle.”

His hands went to her hips as he slowly arched into her, making her realize he was still incredibly aroused. “Dell-”

He put a finger over her lips. “We’re done denying, Jade.” A statement not a question. He let his words hang between them for a long beat, then gently nudged her off of him. He rose and headed to the door.

She stared at him. “Wait-” What? That was it? Dammit! He couldn’t leave now, not when she was all hot and bothered! To cover that, she sat up and pulled on her donkey slippers. She needed the armor. “No good-bye?”

Dell was looking hot and bothered, too. And… yum. He checked the lock on her door and came back, standing over her. “There’s not going to be a good-bye,” he said. He pulled off his shirt and dropped it to the floor. Then he covered her body with his, pressing a muscled thigh between hers to spread them, making room for himself. “Not until dawn. Hell, maybe not even then because my first appointment tomorrow isn’t until nine.”

Oh. Oh. She was surrounded by him, a bicep on either side of her face. She could turn her head and press her lips to his flesh and at just the thought she experienced a wave of desire that swamped her. “I have to be at work at seven thirty,” she said. “My boss is a real hard-ass.”

He smiled. “I could make you forget him.”

She nearly climaxed at just the sound of his voice rumbling in her ear. He could make her forget everything, including how he never kept the women he slept with. “Kiss me.”

He gave her one last long look before lust completely consumed him and his mouth came down on hers. He devoured her. There was no other word for it. He stripped her out of her sweatshirt and pulled off her donkey slippers one at a time, and she would have sworn he was laughing as he tossed them over her shoulder. But then she slid her hands down his chest, over hard abs and then lower, cupping him.

He stopped laughing.

She outlined him with her fingers, impressed and also a little worried. It’d been a long time, a really long time, and he seemed…

Big.

She must have let some of her worry show because he cupped her face and kissed her deep, angling his head to get more of her until she was clutching at him in desperation. Shifting lower, he kissed her jaw, her throat, her shoulder, moving to the swell of her breast.

A slow, warm heat began to fill her, building as he sucked her nipple into his mouth, rolling it between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Gasping, she arched her back, lifting herself to him.

He smiled as if he’d won a prize and then went back to his diabolical torture, leaving trails of fire on her skin everywhere he touched or kissed.

Which was everywhere.

Her breath was catching with each new caress as she lay writhing beneath him. She needed… God, she wasn’t even sure, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t form words, she certainly couldn’t stop herself from making sounds she’d never heard herself make before.

But Dell didn’t appear to need words or direction. After all, the man made his living reading the body language of animals, and he was reading hers with shocking ease. His hands were on the move southward, caressing her stomach, her thighs, until her pj bottoms got in his way and he tugged them off. Now she was beneath him in just her panties, which he seemed to like because with a hand on each inner thigh, he took a good long look and growled deep in his throat. His fingers played with her through the silk and came away wet, making him groan. The sexiest sound she’d ever heard. The desire she was feeling was bordering on untenable, stronger than anything she’d ever experienced. “Dell-”

“I know.” His hands slid down her hips, catching the tiger silk along the way and pulling them down her legs. “Christ, Jade. You’re beautiful.” He stroked a finger over her, then inside her, and it was all she could do not to levitate off the couch. At that moment she was so far gone he could have done anything, asked anything of her.

But he didn’t.

He wasn’t taking, he was giving, shifting down her body to do so, pressing his mouth to her hot center, teasing, reducing her to nothing more than a quivering, panting, begging boneless mass. Yes, begging. He had her begging, adrift in the sensations of the rough demands of his tongue, teeth, and hands, which were sending shock waves down her body until she felt her toes curl, until she burst.

Shattered, actually. Breathing like a lunatic, hot, sweaty, desperate, she surged up and undid his jeans and shoved them down to his thighs and found him as impressive as she’d imagined.

They put on the condom together. Or rather, he worked at rolling on the condom while she attempted to help but really was just using the opportunity to stroke and caress him.

He didn’t seem to mind, but she wasn’t nearly done teasing him the way he’d teased her so mercilessly when he apparently decided the hell with playing and slid into her in one smooth, hard thrust.

The air left her body as she rose to meet him, pulling him closer, digging her fingers into his flesh as he began to move. Mindless, she rocked up into him, the pleasure was so intense, she cried out with it.

How had she not missed this?

But she knew. It was him making her feel like this. No one else but Dell could do it, the way he moved inside her, his muscles hot and tense beneath her fingers, his eyes dark and fiercely intense on hers.

Just looking at him, something in her chest cracked and opened.

Her heart.

It shattered right along with her body as she pulsed and throbbed, tightening around him. He was filling more than just her body and she knew it. God, she knew.

He sped up his pace and she met every thrust with her own startling level of passion. She could hear his ragged breathing in her ear, feel his heart pounding against her chest.

Or was that her breathing, her heart… she didn’t know. “Dell.”

His hands tangled in her hair, pulling her head to meet his mouth. This kiss was rough, demanding everything of her and she willing gave it. Her hands traveled everywhere on his body that she could reach and it still wasn’t enough. She planted her feet on the couch and lifted her hips, pushing into him, doing some demanding of her own.

His control snapped and he thrust into her one last time, taking her right off the edge with him.

When she came back to herself, her heart felt as full and achy as her body. She didn’t know what she expected to happen next. She never knew with him. But he stayed deep inside her, holding her tight, his breath warm against her temple. Snuggling in, she let her eyes drift shut as her heart pounded against his.

After a few minutes, he stirred. “You okay?”

“Mmm.” It was all she had.

But it was apparently all he needed, because he grabbed the throw blanket from the back of the couch and covered them, then settled them more comfortably and kissed her. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Long.”

All the yearning and wanting in the world wasn’t going to change anything between them but in that moment, with him holding her close, obviously content to stay here, right here, it was enough.

It had to be enough.

She woke up the next morning from a really great dream and stared into Bean’s green eyes.

“Mew,” she said. The cat was sharing Jade’s pillow.

It was the same story every morning. But unlike every other morning, Jade was wrapped up in another body. A big, warm, mocha-colored hunk of tough muscle that was still deeply asleep.

He’d expelled a lot of energy last night. All night…

There was stubble on his square jaw, and his lashes were jet black and sinfully thick.

Definitely not a dream, she thought, and though she had to get up, she took a long moment to just look at him, knowing if she didn’t move fast, get out of his arms instead of remaining snuggled in all perfect like she was made for him, it was going to be hard to ignore what had happened here last night.

Real hard.