That Dating Thing (12 page)

She was exquisite. Her lightly bronzed complexion showed only a faint shadow of the delicate veins beneath her flawless skin. Her nipples, small and puckered, reminded him of the wild berries he’d savored as a boy. They tasted just as sweet, as did the mysterious cleft of her navel. He worked down her body, shedding her of the remains of her dress, peeling away the tiny scrap of lace covering the entrance to paradise.

He brushed his fingertips over the triangle of dark curls and her hips lifted as if to follow the path of his touch. Tempted by the sultry scent filling his nostrils, he dipped his head to feast, but her fingers twining through his hair delayed him. As though her need was as urgent as his, she tugged at the strands, directing him back up her body to fuse her lips to his.

“Coop.” Both demand and plea, she whispered his name as her hands skimmed over his chest to his waist. Her fingers fumbled with his belt buckle and he shifted, lifting his hips to discard his slacks with more speed than grace.

“I can’t wait to be inside you,” he growled, his mouth pressed to the taut tendons of her neck.

“Oh, God.” She tossed her head back, giving him better access. “Yes, please,” she breathed. Her hands went to his waist. “Let me—ohhh…” She moaned when he delicately bit the curve of her jaw.

He jolted when she snapped the waistband of his underwear. “Another of your briefs,” she gasped a heaving breath, “is the cause of one more delay.”

A chuckle vibrated in his chest. Rolling to his side, he shoved his shorts down his hips and legs, tossing them aside. He flung an arm over the side of the bed and searched the floor for his slacks and the condoms in the pocket. His muscles quivered with sensual tension, clamoring for that moment when he would slip inside her and find relief. Ripping open the foil disk, he was surprised to find his hands were shaking.

Her eyes were black with passion when he rolled to face her. Like a blowtorch, her heated gaze scorched his naked body, until he was afraid he’d embarrass himself like an untried teenager.

Mounting her, he used his thighs to settle in place, and staring into those dark, “love me, baby” orbs, he reached down to guide himself home, arriving with a single, heavy thrust. She gasped and her eyes went wide, but her legs came around his hips and held him close.

“You okay?” he asked, though his inquiry was a risk. If she called a halt now, he wasn’t sure he’d survive.

Her eyes were shaded by lids drooped with sensuality, but humor danced in them as well. “Are you being a gentleman again, Coop?” The question came out on a strangled burst of breath. “I thought we’d settled that.”

“Smartass.” He swallowed her breathless laugh with his kiss.

He couldn’t recall ever having the urge to laugh while buried deep within a woman. Rylee Pierce managed to make him laugh, despite the urge to plunge and plunder clawing at his gut. His shoulders shook with mirth, and with a mental shrug, he accepted that the woman surrounding him with her searing heat was like none other he’d had the pleasure of touching. The realization should concern him, but he’d worry about it later…much, much later.

Past the point of desperation, finesse fell victim to frenzy. His hips surged against hers with ever-increasing speed. The exquisite pleasure of her tight sheath surrounding him drove him toward the abyss. Sweat beaded his skin. Jaw muscles clamped tight, he gritted his teeth against the tingling at the base of his spine, a forerunner to his looming release. A thrust or two would send him hurtling into oblivion and he wanted her with him when he flew.

She moved beneath him, her body gyrating in a dance choreographed by a master. High color stained her sharp cheekbones, announcing she was close. Bending at the waist, he urged her along, gently closing his teeth around a budded nipple. The love bite launched a startled scream from her throat, and with the rhythmic clenching of her inner muscles dragging him, he rocketed over the edge with her.

****

Rylee stared up at the ceiling, her breathing ragged. Coop lay sprawled on top of her, his labored breath huffing in her ear.

It’s like riding a bike, Brian had said. Hah!
That
was not like any bike ride she had ever been on, unless she counted her one and only experience on the back of Brian’s Harley. She’d staggered away from the hair-raising adventure on legs the consistency of cooked noodles, promising herself never again. With Coop the ride was just as wild, and her body lay spent, like one big noodle, but she was already anxious to climb back on and go for another spin.

Holy cow!

For a guy who left her dangling two weeks, when he finally got down to business, he didn’t waste any time. Pouncing on her, he drove her toward climax like a man possessed. He gave her no time to catch her breath, and yet she didn’t feel cheated in the least. From the moment he touched her, wave after wave of the most intense pleasure she had ever experienced swamped her, like rising floodwaters pushing her toward ecstasy. Primed and clinging to sanity by sheer force of will, she was surprised she didn’t go under the moment he entered her.

Longevity, at least on her part, had
never
been a problem with Marcus. She’d assumed it normal for a woman to fall short of orgasm more often than not, unlike a man. She’d also assumed that when a woman
did
manage to ride the wave to completion, the payoff was a gentle lapping of the tide, fading quickly to pleasant lassitude. How wrong she’d been…on both counts.

With the right incentive, her orgasm was a foregone conclusion, and minutes later her head still spun and her body still throbbed from the powerful whirlpool she experienced in Coop’s arms.

The idea of all those
candidate
interviews
Coop must have performed to gain his sexual talent made her frown. Still, she couldn’t fault the results. And considering the continued, deep bellowing of his lungs, she figured she had some skills of her own.

“Coop,” she whispered.

He groaned. “Rylee. Give me a minute, okay?”

She snickered at his gravelly response. “I was just checking to see if you needed oxygen or anything.”

His low laugh vibrated through his chest to hers, and with a grunt, he pushed up on his elbows to smile down at her. “Feeling pleased with yourself, are you?”

“You bet your ass.” She grinned. “I rocked your world.”

“Ah.” He cocked his head. “That must have been the rumbling sound I heard…right before you screamed.”

When he had a point, he had a point
.

“Bet you can’t do it again.” She laughed when he narrowed his eyes.

Still joined as they were, she couldn’t miss his reaction to her sensual challenge. He swelled inside her and her laugh turned into a pleasured gasp.

“I’ll take that bet.” He lowered his mouth to hers.

“Mmm…” She tightened her arms around him. “I can’t lose.”

Chapter Twelve

“On three.”

Rylee gripped the handle of the sledgehammer with both hands. Above his breathing mask, Brian’s eyes twinkled in excitement as he counted down. Beside her Brian’s foreman, Tony Camponelli, sent her a wink from eyes full of gleeful anticipation.

Thwack
!

The wall shuddered.

“Again.”

Thwack
.

“One more ought to do it.” Brian growled with exertion.

Thwack
.

The wall toppled with a satisfying crash and billow of dust.

Rylee lowered the head of the hammer to the floor, fanning the cloud enveloping them. “Oh, yeah. I love smashing things!”

Tony chuckled.

Brian surveyed the results of their destruction. “That’s because you have a latent anarchist gene buried beneath your philanthropist’s soul.”

“That’s me. Rylee Pierce, closet rebel.”

Brian laughed, propping the sledgehammer against the silent generator several yards away. “Come on, Jamie Dean. Let’s get this crap out of here.”

The work was dirty and exhausting, and Rylee loved every moment. The foundation and its projects were her babies. If she could, she would’ve had her hand in every detail, but was smart enough to leave the actual building to the experts. Mindless labor she could do. She fulfilled her need to be involved by never missing the first day of construction. Brian claimed he allowed her to participate in the tear-outs because she was free labor. They both knew he couldn’t keep her away, not on day one.

The real construction would begin Monday morning. With the full crew on hand, the place would resemble a beehive. Today, however, she, Brian, and Tony worked in relative peace but for the rock and roll blaring from an old boom box propped on a makeshift table in a far corner.

Rylee gripped the handles of the wheelbarrow, maneuvering the unwieldy load of debris toward the bay doors at the back of the building. A sudden shaft of early morning sunlight snagged her attention, streaming through the opening front door. She dropped the rails of the wheelbarrow to the cement floor with a thump when Coop strolled inside, a tray of coffees in one hand, a baker’s box in the other.

“Is this where I check in for duty?” he asked of no one in particular.

The breeze off the river left his black hair mussed and weekend stubble darkened his square chin. Dressed in threadbare jeans and a faded, Harvard T-shirt, molded to the powerful chest she’d explored with her mouth just a few hours earlier, the up-and-coming lawyer looked right at home in the midst of power tools and construction debris.

“Coop.” Rylee shot a quick glance at Brian, rolling her eyes at the knowing smile accompanying his raised eyebrows. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have a brief you need to finish?”

“I’ll get to it later.” He looked around the signs of destruction. “I thought you could use an extra pair of hands.”

Brian stepped over to the boom box, twisting the dial to lower the volume, while Rylee did her best to hide her dismay.

This morning’s session of backbreaking manual labor was meant to serve a dual purpose. First, her need to have a hand in the foundation’s latest project, and second, to allow her some time to regroup, analyze her actions and the corresponding emotions of the last few weeks with a clear head.

Because intelligent thought proved impossible with Coop anywhere in the vicinity, she’d left him before the sun came up, asleep in her bed, a circumstance occurring with alarming frequency since the night of her awkward seduction. Not that she minded. On the contrary. This morning she’d had to force herself to walk away from the big, naked, bruiser tangled in her sheets. And therein lay the problem. Being with Cooper Reed was becoming far too necessary for her peace of mind.

Worse, her need to be with him wasn’t just for the sex, although, holy cow! She’d never known her body was capable of such sensual greed. Forget slut, she was turning into a nymphomaniac. All Coop had to do was look at her a certain way and the next thing she knew, her panties were down around her ankles. But the quiet conversation, the shared humor and comfortable silences were what worried her. Coop wasn’t just another handsome face. He was a nice guy. The type of guy she would happily cast in the role of forever-man—if not for dear old dad.

Just the thought of Pete Morris
should
have been enough to keep her heart in line, but with each passing day, that foolish organ came closer to succumbing to the inevitable. The smart thing to do would be to make up some excuse to walk away, cutting her losses before it was too late.

Unfortunately, with Coop she couldn’t seem to manage smart. She was stuck on stupid.

“Coffee is always appreciated.” Brian plucked one of the cups from the tray. “So is slave labor. Coop, this is Tony Camponelli, project foreman. Tony, Cooper Reed. He’s a lawyer with the district attorney’s office.” Brian pinned Rylee with a mischievous arch of his brows. “Rylee thinks he’s hot.”

She gasped and heat flooded her cheeks. The intentional dig earned him a scowl. His answering smile shoved the scowl toward a glare. She had seen that particular smile a thousand times over the years and had come out on the short end of the stick with most of its appearances.

Coop grinned, setting aside the coffee and donuts to shake Tony’s hand.

“An extra set of hands will definitely come in handy.” Brian ignored the warning daggers she shot at him through narrowed eyes, and indicated her with a nod of his head. “She may look good, but she’s too puny to be of any real help.”

“Hey!”

“We offered to get her a toy wheelbarrow,” Tony added congenially. “One she can actually handle, but she’s stubborn.”

Double teamed by a couple of grinning baboons
.

Coop eyed her tormentors. “She doesn’t look puny to me.”

“That’s because you’ve seen her naked.”

“Brian!”

“Have you seen her swing a hammer?” he continued, ignoring her horrified outburst. “It’s embarrassing.”

“You are so dead,” she gritted from between clenched teeth.

“Who needs skills with a hammer,” Coop’s laughing blue gaze scanned her hips, “when you can fill out a tool belt like that?”

Her jaw dropped.

“There is that.” Brian grinned, clearly delighted by Coop’s contribution to the juvenile razzing.

“Have you seen her walk?” Tony added and whistled through his teeth. “She’s a safety hazard in heels. I’ve banned her from showing up when the crew is around. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she’s an OSHA plant.”

“Hel-l-o-o-o.” She waved a hand in front of Tony’s face. “Standing right here. Cataloguing evidence for my sexual harassment lawsuit.”

“I can give you the name of a good lawyer,” Coop said, deadpan.

The baboons found his comment hilarious.

Three-on-one were insurmountable odds. Especially when the three suffered from a clear case of testosterone overload—left over from junior high, no doubt.

“Morons,” she growled, hefting the handles of the wheelbarrow. It wobbled, almost toppling over before she regained control. Male laughter echoed through the building, following her outside.