NAUGHTY BUT NICE Read online

  "No." Unable to stand the empathy and compassion in his eyes, she covered hers. "Damn it, you really caught me at a bad time, Tag. Just go away, okay?"

  "I can't. I can't seem to stop thinking about you." Shocked, she dropped her hands and stared at him, then let out a laugh. "That's funny."

  "Really? Why?" He snagged her hand, brought it to his mouth. "Because you think about me, too?"

  She would have yanked her hand away but he'd opened his mouth on it and was doing something to her finger with his tongue that made her unable to speak. Then he sucked her finger into his mouth.

  Her breath caught. "I … I think about a lot of people."

  "Me?"

  Still watching her, he bit the pad of her finger, just lightly, but she felt it all the way to her toes. "Maybe occasionally."

  His tongue swirled over the pad of her finger before working its way to the inside of her wrist. Her tummy danced. Her nipples beaded.

  "Do you want me, Cassie? Right this minute, do you want me?"

  She forced out a laugh even as she felt her body weeping for him. "Of course not. You barge in here, you—"

  "You're such a bad liar."

  Her mouth had been getting her into trouble since the day she'd figured out how to use it, and today was no exception. "Okay, you're right," she said sarcastically. "Oh, Tag, I want you. I want you to make love to me. All night long—"

  His mouth covered hers in a kiss that stole her breath. "I'm going to pretend you meant that," he said when they came up for air.

  "You can pretend all you want," she said, daring him, then remembered … daring Tag was not a good idea.

  With a triumphant glare of his eyes, he cupped the back of her head with one hand. The other traced a finger over her throat to right between her breasts. "Not aroused at all?"

  "Absolutely not."

  "And yet your nipples are begging for attention. My attention."

  "Maybe I'm cold."

  "Ah." Nodding agreeably, he swept his big, warm hands down her back, then beneath the material of her too-large T-shirt, spreading them wide on her bare skin. "Let me warm you then, since you're not aroused at all."

  His warm, warm fingers lightly ran up and down, causing a shiver when they just skimmed the very sides of her breasts. "Better?"

  "Um … yes." She cleared her throat. "Much better, thank you."

  "You're not turned on at all, right?"

  "Just still slightly chilled, that's all." But a delicious languid feeling had begun to overcome her, and damn if her hips didn't want to arch to his. Just barely, she managed to contain herself, and bit her lip to keep any moans she might feel the urge to utter to herself.

  "What was that?" His mouth lightly brushed her ear, causing another shiver. "Was that a … moan?"

  She locked her knees together. "Don't be ridiculous."

  He cupped her bottom, then gripped her hips to his so that she could feel how hard he was, and he was gloriously hard. His mouth was still doing something mind-boggling to that sensitive spot just beneath her ear and she let her head fail back to give him better access.

  "Cassie?"

  "Hmm?"

  Now his hands slid beneath her sweats, and finding her without anything beneath, he groaned. "Warm yet?"

  "Getting there," she murmured, loving the way his fingers cupped and held her butt so that the hardest, neediest part of him was gliding over the softest, neediest part of her.

  "But not turned on, right?"

  She'd planted her face in his throat so she could smell him better. Realizing she was nuzzling up to him, her eyes flew open. She stared at his tanned, sexy throat. "Uh … no."

  He let go of her. Then suddenly her sweats were down around her calves. Before she could grab for them, Tag sank to his knees in front of her. Hands on her hips, he stroked his thumbs over the quivering skin of her belly, then lower. "I'm turned on by you," he said hoarsely, putting his lips to the very top of one thigh. "So turned on I can think of nothing else." Now his thumbs met and together they slid over her mound and slowly, slowly, spread her open to his gaze.

  She was drenched.

  He looked up into her eyes, his glittering with triumph. "Don't worry, I'm not the kind of man to say I told you so."

  "Bastard—" But the word backed up in her throat when he leaned forward and licked her like a lollipop.

  "Oh, my…" that was all she managed to get out, sinking her fingers into his hair and holding on tight. It was that or fall.

  Then he opened his mouth and took her in with a sucking motion that rocked her world. She couldn't think, she couldn't breathe. She sure as hell couldn't stand, so she crumpled to a boneless heap.

  He caught her. They rolled on the carpet like a couple of wrestlers, fighting for space, struggling to remove clothes, biting, kissing, swearing, laughing.

  And then he had her flat on her back, arms held over her head. His body, hard and satisfactorily naked, pressed into her. "Still want to fight?"

  Slowly she shook her head.

  "Want to give me a hit on what you do want to do?"

  He had it on before she could say anything else. She had barely spread her thighs for him when an impossibly powerful thrust sank him inside her to the hilt.

  And then she was lost. She was always lost when she was with him, just as, when he stroked them to a simultaneous orgasm in less than five hard strokes, she was found.

  How devastating was that?

  * * *

  They spent the next few nights in the same manner, with Tag attempting to talk to her, Cassie resisting, distracting him with other things—namely her body—and both of them ending up wearing each other out every way but yesterday.

  Unfortunately, they couldn't seem to stop. Cassie couldn't seem to stop. The devastating tugs on the strings to her heart just kept getting stronger every single day.

  At least she was sure she hadn't seen Pete again, but what she had seen was worse. In the grocery store, no less than four people she recognized but didn't personally know smiled at her. Smiled. At the gas station, the mechanic came out and offered to pump her gas—and he didn't want anything for it.

  Then she caved and, at Stacie's insistence, went over there for dinner and found her child a messy, sticky delight. She actually got talked into bowling afterwards—bowling!—because Stacie had just joined a league. And then, because apparently a weekly bowling night complete with greasy fries and cherry sodas appealed to her in a way she hadn't imagined, she joined the league, too.

  Insanity.

  Then, when she thought she couldn't get more conflicted, Kate dropped a bomb, saying that already Bare Essentials was such a success that it deserved a chance to become more than a revenge vehicle. She asked Cassie to stay to run it. Permanently. She said Cassie couldn't be a model forever, and she was right. She said Cassie was made for such a thing, and she was right. She said Cassie seemed happier and more content here than she'd ever seen her and… Cassie was deeply afraid to admit that Kate was right yet again.

  So why did she feel such an inexplicable weight on her chest? She could hardly breathe because of it. Home alone late one night, she moved through the living room to the den, off of which was a sliding-glass door that led to the surprisingly large, lush, five-acre-long backyard.

  There was a lovely wooden deck opening up to that land, on which sat the hot tub that had become her best friend. She needed that friend now as her every muscle was screaming with a tension tighter than she'd felt when she'd been stalked right out of New York.

  The water was already hot, and if she'd had any energy left she might have whimpered in gratitude but her head was working on a more important issue.

  Her biggest worry of all wasn't the town or the people in it. It wasn't Kate or the store. It wasn't even Pete.

  It was Tag.

  He wouldn't come tonight—she'd asked him not to. He would want to talk, want to share, want to … well.

  She wanted to be with him, but for her, it was all