Page 517 of Summer Heat
He broke away from her lips and buried his face in her neck. Such soft, soft skin. Softer than clouds, softer than air or silk or anything else he’d ever touched. He opened his palms and drew them around her ribs, down her side, feeling, feeling, then slid lower to cup her ass, firm and full. He sucked lightly at her neck, loving the sound of surprised, sharp pleasure she made, and the way she shivered against him. He kissed her throat.
“Oh, lord,” he breathed. “I can’t remember when I wanted a woman this bad.” He heard the need rasping his voice, and didn’t care. “Let me take you home.”
* * *
Let me take you home.
The words penetrated the haze over Tamara with a cruel, piercing shock. She froze against him, fighting the glorious sensation of his lips moving over her throat, over her chin. “No,” she whispered. “Lance, no, I—”
His mouth claimed hers once more. Rich lips, full and firm and exquisitely mobile, and so very, very hungry. It was that yearning tenderness that undid her. Expertise or passion would not have surprised her, or unnerved her.
This sweetness did. The way he pulled her close against him suggestively, but cradled her body as if it were fragile and precious. The way he trembled faintly. The way he kissed her.
And he felt so good. His broad hands. His mouth. The solid mass of his shoulders and his taut back and hard thighs. That solidness felt shielding and safe and she wanted never to let him go. Under her hands, his neck was hot and his hair was cool, and he made a deep, throaty noise of longing that went straight to the core of her abdomen.
It had been so long. So long. Kissing Lance after a long day, she wanted only to be naked with him, to take the pleasure he offered so freely, and to give him rest and peace in return. Maybe if he were safely buried between her thighs, he could forget what haunted him, what made him seem so lost, what made him—
She pushed against him. “Lance, no! This is crazy,” she whispered. She shifted away, pushing a little at his shoulders. He moved his hands back to her waist and lifted his head.
His eyes, sober and dark and hazed with desire, made her hips soften all over again. “It’s supposed to be crazy,” he said and touched her lower lip with just the tip of his tongue.
Tamara shuddered. She ducked her head suddenly. “I can’t do this. I can’t. I’m not like you.”
Somewhere behind him, a door slammed, and he shifted quickly, smoothing her clothes. He captured one of her hands and planted a kiss to her palm. “No, you aren’t. Like me.”
For some reason, that tenderness made her want to weep. Made her want to give him anything he wanted, anything he asked, just so she could make his way easier for an hour or a day, or whatever he’d let her offer.
“Look at me, Tamara,” he said.
Struggling with the unexpectedly fierce longing, Tamara didn’t move.
“It’s only a good-night kiss,” he said, putting his hand under her chin to raise her face. She allowed it, but did not raise her eyes.
He put his mouth on hers. Gently. So gently. “Good night,” he said, and let her go. Without looking back, he loped off into the darkness.
Tamara watched him go with a sinking heart. He moved like a stag, wild and free, his hair shining faintly in the lights of buildings along the way. A wild creature.
And she was not wild or free. She was captured. Trapped. And the one time she’d dared to ask anything for herself, for something bigger than what life had seen fit to provide, she’d been tied and gagged so tightly, she still had trouble breathing.
Not because of Cody—she could never regret that he was part of her life. But she would so love to travel with him, to give him a better life, to give him chances it would be very difficult to provide for him now.
Lance could provide them.
The thought stole in traitorously. Lance could give Cody things—education and opportunities and experiences Tamara never could. He was low-key about it, but she knew he was very wealthy, and not only by virtue of inheriting controlling interest in Forrest Construction, which had made a fortune on the upscale houses in the area, but on his own. Word was he’d sold his half of the business in Houston for a very pretty penny.
Wearily, she got in her car and started it up. It rumbled to life instantly, and she pulled out, her thoughts troubled.
Thinking of Lance as a money cow was wrong. If she wanted to let him know he had a son, and let him do what he thought was right, she had to do it for the right reasons.
There was only one right reason, o
nly one good reason: because he had a right to know he had a child in the world. Because Cody had a right to know his father.
But would Lance be any kind of father? Could a creature that wild and free give anything to a woman or a child except momentary pleasure, fleeting joy?
Half an hour later, after picking Cody up from his baby-sitter’s house, Tamara still didn’t have the answer to that question. As she carried the sleeping boy to his bed, the only thing she understood clearly was that Lance Forrest, kissing her with such hungry vulnerability, was not the same man she had believed he was all these years.
And she had to find out who he was before anything else could be solved. Before she could trust him with the knowledge of his child.
