Hot and Bothered (Hot in the Kitchen) (28 page)

Everything with Jules was the best he’d ever had. Somehow, losing himself in her felt like the surest way of finding his way back.

Biting his lip, he watched as he slid in and out, in and out. Heaven at the Cavern. He continued to thrust until he felt her clutch and compress. Heard her scream his name, again and again. Then his own orgasm exploded, but not in a single burst of relief. This was more like a rolling blackout that hit different parts of his body microseconds apart and ended with a power surge that knocked out the grid that used to be his brain.

* * *

“So here we are,” she said, coming to a stop outside her apartment building.

“Here. We. Are.” Tad squeezed her hand and it gave her just as much of a thrill as what they had done back at Vivi’s. She never imagined he could be so sweet after taking her so hard and raw.

On the five-minute walk home, they had been unusually quiet, both lost in their thoughts. Was he regretting how he’d opened up about his father and what it had led to or was he contemplating how they could figure out what was happening between them?

Reluctantly, she let go of his warm, male grip to fumble in her big-ass purse for her keys. Purse law said they were hiding at the bottom.

“Thanks for seeing me home.”

“Well, I’m not sure your date would have been allowed to stay out this late.”

Her date. She had forgotten all about Bowtie Dan with cheeks as smooth as a baby’s bottom. He had left with one of Tad’s fans about an hour before closing. She wasn’t sorry.

She silently prayed she wouldn’t be sorry for the next words out of her mouth.

“Okay, here’s how it’s going to work. For as long as we have this whatever’s-happening-between-us, we’ll act on it. As soon as one of us wants to move on, we stop. As soon as our bloody families find out, we stop because I am not dealing with the special brand of crazy sauce that rains down on my head when Jack and Shane get involved. To be honest, I’m not sure that handsome face of yours could withstand Jack’s rearrangement of it.”

The longer she spoke, the squeakier her voice got until by the end, she was rocking Alvin & The Chipmunks decibel levels and standing nose to chin with him. A burn of a grin spread slowly over his face but she was so desperate to get the words out in one breathy gush that she didn’t thump him the good one he deserved.

“What’s so funny?”

“I love when you get all up in my face, Juliet Kilroy.”

She splayed a hand across his chest. The erotically charged memory of where his face had been thirty minutes ago sent her hormones into overdrive. “You wish I was all up in your face.”

He growled and pulled her in for a kiss that would have knocked her off her feet if he wasn’t also ravaging her arse with his hands.

“So, should I sneak in like a horny teenager now or after you’ve picked up Evan from Cara?”

She poked him in his rock-hard chest. “No overnight stays and no hanky-panky when Evan’s around. And nobody else while we’re doing this.” She had been about to say “together,” but it sounded wrong in the back of her throat. Too needy. Too permanent.

“Same for you. I’m imposing a moratorium on your dates.”

Thanks be to God. She’d have to come up with some excuse to keep the girls at bay; she’d gladly do it.

Tearing herself away from the warmth of his body was so hard but it had to be done. Tad was the kind of treat that had to be rationed. Unlike the last time she had tried to open her door with this perfect specimen by her side, she was able to manage the lock with a minimum of fuss.

“I’ll call you when I get home,” he said, his voice husky in her ear.

“Think I’m worried about you, Tad DeLuca?”

“No, but I’m going to need to hear your voice while I get off. Only way I’ll be able to sleep.” He sucked on her ear lobe, inducing the most delicious shivers.

Tonight as he’d told her about his last conversation with his dad, a new window onto their relationship had opened. Before, he was the strong one with those broad shoulders made for leaning and those sure hands made to catch her when she fell. Now the subtle shift had revealed new depths to this amazing man and how much he needed this sensual comfort. Neither of them had said it outright, but their bodies knew the score. They could do for each other what no one else could, if only for a short time.

“One more rule,” she said, turning to face him.

“Uh huh.” He nipped at the soft spot where her shoulder met her neck.
Stay strong.

“You can’t fall in love with me, Tad. This is just us fulfilling a temporary need for each other.”

Pride in her businesslike tone summoned the usual internal chatter.

Nicely done,
said Good Girl Jules.

Bad Girl Jules remained eerily silent.

The look he gave her was strangely intense, but then his expression unfurled with a smile.

“I’ll do my best.”

Chapter Fifteen

My home, my woman, bread and garlic, my life.
—Italian proverb Jules grabbed her gym bag and headed for the door. Her phone chirped, and then she chirped because he was calling. Her lover.

She really shouldn’t answer. It had been two weeks since she had actually attended the gym, as in physically instead of pretending to. She wouldn’t put it past Cara to casually walk Jules to a scale the next time she picked up Evan. Jules could hear the tutting and
tsk
ing already.
Do I need to come with you to make sure you’re doing it right?

If Cara knew exactly what Jules was doing, she might be tempted to point out what she was doing wrong there, too. She was having a hot affair with her best friend and she was enjoying every minute of it. Quickies in the office at the bar, glorious nooners at his place, afternoon delight wherever they could find it.

“Lady Penelope’s Love Shack. No request too weird,” she answered.

“Why aren’t you here?”

“Who
is
this?”

Tad’s laugh enveloped her like a warm, sexy blanket and sent her pulse soaring. “You know very well who it is.”

“No, I don’t. In a feminist pique, I switched out all the male non-relatives on my phone for something more generic. You’re showing up as Stud Number 4. It could apply to any anonymous chunk of man flesh.”

He sighed patiently. “You need to get your sweet ass over here. The pizza oven guy is in the kitchen, so I had to go home before I lost my shit on him. Now I’m all tense.”

“Go for a run. When I get tense, that’s what I do.” So that was an out and out lie.

She heard a disgruntled noise. “Jules, I know you have a couple of hours set aside for gym time.”

“Exactly. Gym time. I’m turning into a giant
gnocchi
with each passing day.”

“The singular is
gnoccho
.”

“The end result is the same. A pillowy blob with feet.”

He chuckled. “Come over here and burn some calories with me, baby.”

“Lines. Terrible.”
Baby.
How did he get away with it?

“You know I’ll take care of you.”

That’s how.
Her body melted like hot butter in a pan and Bad Girl Jules came out to play.

* * *

Tad pulled her inside and smothered her with a kiss, sending her shopping bags to the floor in a thud. She loved his way of saying hello. She was sure going to miss his special greetings when all this was done.

A warm ache bloomed in her chest.

With strong, clever hands, he tore at her clothes. The zipper of her workout top got stuck but that didn’t stop him. He just peeled it off roughly, almost taking her head with it.

She should have swapped out her cotton-practical and plain bra for something sexy, but it felt as if they’d moved on from that. They knew each other too well. The foibles and quirks. The lickable parts and the imperfections
(hers, not his. The man had zero)
. They didn’t need to gussy it up with sexy lingerie or high heels. Not that she didn’t love the idea of turning him on like that, but knowing Tad as well as she did was a whole other level of intimacy.

That ache in her chest expanded. The closeness she felt with this beautiful man was unlike anything she had ever felt with another person. It was bound to happen with their friendship such as it was. She tried to suppress those wormy niggles of doubt about what the hell she was doing here.

It’s just a release. Just friends with a platinum benefits package. Just—

Her sweatpants were pushed a few inches south.
Rip,
there went another pair of panties and—ah, yes. All that hot, hard perfection slid deep and smooth inside her, the assault all the sweeter because she was knee-cuffed by the sweats and her thighs kept the passage narrow.

She thrust her fingers in his dark, mussed hair and mussed it some more. Held his face close to hers so she could look into those fathomless blue pools. She wanted to remember this moment when he had wanted her so much he skipped the pleasantries. When she was the unstinting focus of his world.

Inside her, he moved in long, fluid strokes, each one more far-reaching and punishing than the last. His hands framed her bum and held her in place for his pleasure. In his eyes, she saw a haze of feral desire, all aimed at her. Being the object of this man’s passion was intoxicating.

The moment when that look changed shot through her like a lance. Still a blaze of heat, but tempered with something else.

He stopped.

The tosser stopped and stared with… tenderness.

“Tad.” It carried a tone of warning. She didn’t want him to look at her this way, not now, not when she felt so dangerously unmoored.

He angled his head to feed kisses down her neck to the pulse at the base of her throat. He teased her with swipes of his tongue and nibbling, soft sucks. His lips nuzzled a sweet trail along her collarbone, punctuating with a nip of her shoulder.

Branding her. Tenderly.

Slowly, he started to move inside her again with an incremental tempo that heated her center to sizzle point. A perfect blend of strength and mastery that built her up again until, with a final thrust, they went over the edge together.

Moments passed as they stood in the hall of his house, still connected in a gnarly embrace. He slid out of her and pulled her sweats up, then his own. She loved how he always took care of her like that. His grin blazed wide, all the tenderness of minutes ago replaced by sexy mischievousness.

“Hi, there,” he said, dropping a soft kiss on her nose.

She giggled, feeling foolish for having read so much into those intense looks. “Hi, yourself.”

“Thanks for stopping by to let me sex you up.”

She looked at the imaginary watch on her wrist. “Hmm, less than five minutes. If I didn’t already have a previous Tad DeLuca experience, I would be severely disappointed in that performance.”

“I know you like it fast and raunchy sometimes,
mia bella
. Lie to me and say it wasn’t good.”

She was good at telling porkies, but not that good. “I’ll let Sylvia know you’re doing much better.”

Grinning, his gaze fell to the floor, where several of the packages she had brought lay strewn on the hallway rug.

“You brought gifts?”

She paused, thinking about what she wanted to say next. “I thought that maybe we could make lunch. Actually, I thought we could cook together.”

A curious look came over him, and she worried that she had made another one of her famous miscalculations.
Cook together.
Two small words that weighed a ton. Her heart expanded to fill her chest, pushing against her lungs so she could barely breathe.

“I’d love to cook with you,” he whispered.

* * *

“Make sure you don’t overfill it,” he said as she heaped a spoonful of cooked ground beef, ricotta and herbs in blobs about an inch apart on the rectangle of pasta dough. “Then fold it over and seal it up with the egg wash.”

“Like that?”

He moved in behind her and banded his thick, muscle-corded forearms beneath her breasts. The butterfly kisses he trailed down her neck made her shiver.

“Tight as a nun’s knickers. Perfect.”

Just like the whole afternoon. Hot sex with a guy she was crazy about, though even that had felt different. More powerful, more consuming. There had always been an underlying streak of want and determination in Tad’s lovemaking, and today when he held her while taking her to paradise, she had opened her eyes and seen it for the first time.

This guy was going to destroy her.

The blabbermouths on her shoulder had nothing.

“The other morning at your place,” he said softly against her ear. “I noticed you have Vivi’s cookbook.”

Her mind fumbled for a defense. “Frankie lent it to me. If you want it back—”

“Don’t need a book to remember those recipes. Know them all by heart.” His smile against the curve of her neck made her all tingly. “I love that you have it. Feels right. And I love that you’re here. That feels right as well.”

Forget the tingle; she was two seconds from liquefying in a puddle of want.