Bared Read online

  “What do you want to happen?”

  “Everything,” she said honestly, and blinked when he choked out a laugh.

  “God, Emma.” He squeezed her fingers. “Do you have any idea what your honesty does to me?”

  “No, but I know what all these thoughts are doing to me.” She showed him the goose bumps on her arms, leaning back to do so, but noticed that his gaze landed on her breasts instead. Her nipples had responded to both his presence and her thoughts, pebbling hard against the material of her sweater as if begging for attention.

  Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the look on his face, but the room started to spin. “Oh boy. I hope our food comes soon.”

  “Emma.” His voice was hoarse. “Tell me you aren’t too toasted for this, because I plan to slowly strip you so I can taste every single inch of you, something I can’t do if you’re tipsy.”

  “Why not?” She heard the wispy hopefulness in her voice. Later she could be horrified by that, but right now, with the room spinning feverishly and her body hot and achy, she couldn’t think that far.

  “Because I want you one hundred percent with me.”

  She eyed him as she tried to put words to her thoughts. “I had no idea you were so sweet.”

  “Would a ‘sweet’ guy ask you this…” Leaning in close, he put his mouth to her ear. “Why have you never come with a man before?”

  She pulled back and stared at him. “I…did at the pool. With you.”

  “Before that.”

  “Oh. I…”

  “Here you go,” said their waitress as she came toward them with their order. “Enjoy your meal. Anything else?”

  Rafe didn’t take his eyes off Emma. “No, thank you.”

  With a nod, she walked away.

  Rafe squeezed Emma’s fingers. “So, tell me. Why?”

  13

  EMMA OPENED HER MOUTH, then closed it. She didn’t have a ready answer.

  “Emma?”

  She picked up a french fry. “I’m thinking.”

  Instead of pushing as she’d expected, he leaned back and eyed his plate. “I can’t remember why I wanted food. All I want to eat is you.”

  Her fry fell from her fingers, her entire body quivering.

  He shot her a grim smile. He picked up her fry and brought it to her lips for her. When she sucked it into her mouth, he groaned.

  Because she loved the sound of his torture, because her body was pulsing and having all sorts of interesting reactions, she then sucked on his finger as well.

  He stared at her mouth while she did. “You’re teasing me.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes. Is it so you don’t have to answer my question?”

  “Yes, could you pretend not to notice?”

  “If you don’t stop.”

  Feeling shameless, she slipped her foot out of her sandal beneath the table and rubbed his calf with her toes. The white tablecloth was thankfully long, covering her shenanigans. She lifted her leg and ran her toes up the inside of his thigh, settling them directly on the V of his jeans, smiling at his sharp intake of breath.

  Beneath the ball of her foot she could feel an extremely interesting response. When she pressed lightly, he let out an inarticulate noise and wrapped his hand around her ankle. “Two can play this game.” He let his other hand slip beneath the table, and since she had one leg virtually in his lap, now being held there by his firm grip on her ankle, that left her thighs wide open.

  Thank goodness they were in a cozy, round corner table, close together, because when she felt his fingers slip under the material of her wide, gauzy skirt, easily bunching it up as he skimmed his palm up her inner thigh, she gasped. “Rafe—”

  “That’s my name,” he said lightly, his knuckles barely brushing her panties in a light caress that sent her pulse racing. “So…about why you’ve never come with a man before…”

  “I—” He still had her ankle in his grip, and while she could have asked him to stop, she didn’t. She was wide open to his touch, vulnerable and unbearably aroused by it. “I like my control,” she said.

  “Control issues.” He nodded. “We all have them. But you, Emma—” Another light brush of his knuckles over her panties, which were quickly getting damp “—you’re a tight case. You don’t like people to get too close and I used to think maybe that was because you’d been hurt before, by a man. But now I think it’s because you’ve spent your entire life trying to please someone you’ll never be able to please.” He spread open his hand so that his fingertips rested extremely low on her belly, which left his thumb free. He glided it right over the spot designed to make her come undone.

  She nearly did.

  “What I find fascinating,” he said in that same conversational tone, as if they were discussing whether she wanted ketchup or mustard on her burger, “ is that you’ve never really managed to keep that control with me.”

  Nothing in her life had prepared her for this situation, for this man, for these feelings. But he was right. Always, at least up until now, she’d held people at a certain distance, even while at the same time craving some sort of emotional tie. Her mother, the men she’d dated here and there, even her sister. Maybe that was why she always saved Amber—it means she was in charge. An unsettling thought.

  And yet here she was at Lake Tahoe, alone with the one man who could take her hard-earned control and let it fly in the wind, sitting at a rather crowded restaurant with his hand under her skirt, his fingers stroking her halfway to orgasmic bliss.

  “Emma.” His index finger traced the edging of her panties, which she hoped to God weren’t plain white cotton. She couldn’t remember.

  “Y—yes?”

  “Why me?” Then that finger, the center of her universe, slipped beneath the elastic edging and once, just once, stroked over her bare flesh.

  “Um—” Another stroke, and her hips arched. “Rafe.” Blindly she reached for purchase, gripping the table, nearly upending their drinks. “I can’t think when you’re doing that.”

  “You came with me,” he said, and there was no mistaking the satisfaction in his rich voice.

  “That one time—”

  Another stroke of the knowing, talented finger. Then he slipped a second finger under her panties as well, using his thumb to twist the material away from her, leaving her open and exposed to his exploration. When he felt at how wet she was, he groaned.

  “You think I couldn’t help you come again?” he murmured.

  She stared at him. He hadn’t said he could make her come, which would imply he had all the control, but that he’d help.

  He wanted her to know she had the control, even if it didn’t feel like it at the moment.

  “I could,” he said softly as his fingers traced intimately over her.

  She had to blink rapidly to keep him in focus and, though she’d been biting her lip, every time he slid his finger into her and then back out, a little gasping pant escaped her lips.

  “You’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered, and dipped into her again.

  As unbelievable as it seemed, he was right, he could help her come again, with such little effort that it should horrify her.

  Instead, she was only afraid he wouldn’t, that he’d somehow withhold it, leaving her like this, all trembling and aching and desperate, so she slid both her hands beneath the table, grasped his wrist and held his hand to her.

  “Oh, I’m going to give you what you want,” he promised her with such tenderness that she nearly burst into tears.

  But with one last pass of his thumb over her swollen, wet, hot flesh, he pulled his hand free. Unable to help herself, she let out a little cry. Bold in a way she never could have imagined herself, she reached out beneath the table, gripped his thigh and ran her hand up until she could cup his rigid erection through his jeans.

  He hissed in a breath and, without breaking eye contact with her, lifted his hand for the waitress and said, “Check, please.”