Up All Night-nook (2 page)

But Ian knew she lied.

At least on one occasion.

When he’d brushed up against her a few months back at a birthday party, he’d watched as her nipples beaded underneath the crisp white tailored shirt she wore, and her beautiful brown eyes went dark as chocolate.

Yeah, she wanted him, and this weekend, if he had to, he was going to stay up all night and make her see a little fun in her life wouldn’t turn her into a bad girl. 

* * * * *

Have some fun with me.
Stella heard his voice again, low and rich and smooth as liquid caramel sliding over her sensitive skin.
I’ll do whatever you want me to do.

Good grief, what was she thinking? Ian Hollis was an annoying playboy who probably spent his time drinking Tequila and licking salt out of bleached blond bimbos navels and…

Hell, who was she kidding? She sighed and rested one cheek on her fist, staring into the bonfire they’d made on the beach, wishing it was her belly button he licked alcohol out of. He was sexy and delicious and tempted her as no man ever had.

“Did you miss me?” His voice came from behind her.

She jolted up straight and pushed her eyeglasses back on her nose. “Actually, you took too long.” She made a move to stand up. “I really need to get back to the house.”

Ian grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into his lap, against his lean muscled body. Her stomach began to jitterbug. She twisted, placed her hands against his chest, and almost melted. “Um…I was perfectly fine where I was sitting.”

A slow smile spread over his face. “But I like you much better right here.”

Oh
that beautiful kissable mouth. Dangerous, that’s what he was. Whenever she looked at him all she thought about was sex, sweat and tangled limbs. He was just too…too…
much
for her. She preferred someone not so…so…

When
she dated, the guy was staid and secure with a respectable job, mature attitude, and didn’t zip around in hundred thousand dollar cars at a hundred miles per hour.

Boring
, a little voice murmured in the back of her mind.

Ian Hollis got under her skin and was completely out of her league.

Dear heaven, who was she kidding? If Ian took her right now on this beach, she’d spread her legs like an eagle. But she couldn’t bring herself to be that type of woman, loose and carefree who jumped in the bed with any man who asked. Not like her mother.

No, she couldn’t do that.

Ian looked like a jungle cat ready to pounce. “Are you ready to have some fun?”

His lips were so close to hers. Wicked thoughts raced through her mind. All she had to do was stick out her tongue and taste him.
One taste
. She bit her tongue to keep it in her mouth and her breathing increased. By the rise and fall of his
oh so
masculine chest, so had Ian’s.

Would it really be so bad if she let go this one time, this one weekend? Her mind filled with the thought of engaging in a purely sexual liaison with Ian.

He inched his mouth a little closer, so close she could feel his moist breath on her lips, smell the hint of peppermint from the ice cream he’d eaten earlier.

Instead of answering, she wiggled closer as desire, the intensity of which she’d never felt in her life, made her entire body shiver with need. His green eyes locked on hers, and the magnetic pull that seized her insides squashed any thought of pulling her mouth back before it was too late.

“Hey, are you two going to ride with us into town?”

Startled, Stella jumped and almost fell out of his lap. She leapt to her feet and walked toward the ocean.

* * * * *

Shit
. Shit.

Those lips were almost his. He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “No, we’re going to stay here and enjoy the beach.”

“All right, we’ll see ya’ll later.”

After the others had trudged up toward the house, Ian approached and moved around in front of her, coasting the palms of his hands down the smooth, delectable skin of her forearms. “Would you like to finish where we left off?”

She shook her head adamantly and stepped back. “Stop that.”

“Stop what, sweetheart?”

“We’ve already agreed I’m not your type, Ian, so, don’t play games with me.”

He stepped closer. “I can assure you, I’m not playing any games. And I seem to remember
you
telling
me
that I wasn’t
your
type. I said no such thing. And for the record, I think you’re wrong. At least, that’s what your lips were about to show me a few minutes ago.”

Even in the moonlight, he saw her flush and vehemently shake her head again, as if she were trying to wash away the memory, wash away his words, and it endeared her to him even more. Why did she fight so hard against the attraction she felt for him? Why was he fighting so hard for a woman who told him repeatedly she wasn’t interested?

“That’s not true,” she whispered. “Just because you look like sex on a stick doesn’t mean—” She clamped her hand over her mouth.

Ian went hot all over and moved closer.

“I can’t believe I just said that. What I meant to say was…”

A slow smile spread over his face. “You think I look like sex on a stick? Why, Stella, I don’t know what to say.”

She stuck both of her hands up, palms out, and he walked into them. “Pretend like you didn’t hear that.”

But he had. He crowded her personal space, enjoyed the feel of her hands on his body, and wished he’d taken his shirt off so he could experience it on his bare skin. “Oh, I heard you.”

And Ian knew there was no doubt they would have kissed if they hadn’t been interrupted. In a way, it felt good knowing he’d shaken her, that little Miss Prim and Proper felt just as discombobulated as he did about their mutual attraction to each other. When he’d pulled her into his lap, she’d finally become aware of him intimately as a man. He didn’t want to push her, but God help him if she offered those pretty lips of hers to him one more time, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.

* * * * *

Stella couldn’t breathe. There it was again, this uncontrollable need. His massive chest, covered only by a layer of thin material clinging to every ripple of muscle and sinew and she…she…
wanted
. All she could register was the hard muscle, smooth and warm beneath her fingertips. She shook her head and tried to focus on keeping him at a distance, but her fingers involuntary flexed, and she wanted to stroke her hands all the way down his chest until she reached his flat belly. Was that a six-pack?

“Sweetheart, if you move any lower, I won’t be responsible for what happens next.”

Her gaze flew up to his.
Oh crap!
She thought she’d only been
thinking
about touching him and snatched her hands away and clasped them behind her back, mortified.
Yes, it was definitely a six-pack.
“I’m so sorry.” She stared up into his eyes. They were deep green pools, so dark they seemed almost black. But she still saw the flecks. They appeared amber now, like caramel chips in a very rich…

“Don’t be. I just wanted to give you fair warning.”

Stella recoiled and closed her eyes. The very last thing she needed to do was get lost in this, this
playboy’s
eyes, his magnetic charm.

She really needed to get a life outside of work, a boyfriend, a dildo…something. “Can we walk? Just walk for a little bit?” She needed to shake off this desire for him.

Ian reached around and grasped a hand and led her down the beach. He was quiet for a few minutes before he asked, “Would it be so bad? Making love to me?”

Her gaze swung up to his, and she became acutely aware of how close their bodies were, that every inch of her felt his nearness, the heat of him, the desire radiating off his skin. She attempted to release him and launch herself a few feet away, but she tripped over a pile of sand and started falling. Ian caught her, spun her around as if she weighed ten pounds, and fell first so he’d break her landing. They lay tangled on the sand, torso to torso, leg wrapped around leg.

“Are you okay?”

He held her in his arms and rubbed his hands down her back.

“I’m fine. Don’t…” But his hands,
oh
his hands were warm and gentle and caressed her until his thumbs touched the underside of her breasts.

Stella gasped and tried to shift off of him, but he held firm, shaking his head. “If you have an ounce of sympathy for me at all, please don’t squirm like that.”

She froze and watched ardently as his mouth moved, saw him grit his teeth, all the while thinking about what she would
love
to do to his mouth if given the chance. But she’d had her chance, hadn’t she?  Had it now, in fact, but she was too chicken shit to do anything about it. Standing quickly, avoiding as much of his lower body as she could, she continued down the beach again, the gritty sand sliding beneath her feet in her sandals, so she stopped and took them off. By the time she cradled the straps between her fingers, he was beside her again.

The thought of how close they’d come to sharing a kiss, right here on this magnificent beach, the moonlight reflecting off the rippling waves of the ocean, had her pulse racing.

Behaving inappropriately with Ian went against every choice she’d made in her life. Choices like discipline, structure, and always doing the right thing, the
logical
thing.

She would chalk this mishap up as a weak moment when she’d almost,
almost
yielded to temptation. She was a woman, after all, and wasn’t immune to the wiles of a sexy man. It was perfectly natural for her to want to taste a piece of the forbidden.

Evidently, Ian felt the same, although she didn’t understand why. Stella didn’t fit the type of women she usually saw him with; tall, beautiful and sophisticated, with a willingness to fall into his bed with no regrets. Even though she couldn’t ignore the way her heart hammered in her chest and how the palms of her hands felt damp just thinking about it, she refused to become one of those women. She had to regain some control. “Why do you do it? Why do you always tease me?” she whispered, almost afraid of her own voice.

“I’m attracted to you, Stella. I always have been, from the first moment I saw you.”

“You don’t even remember the first time.”

Reaching for her hand again, he swung her around to face him. “It was at Harper’s mother’s house three years ago, at her annual Fourth of July picnic. You were wearing a yellow sundress.”  He twisted a tendril of her hair around his finger, pulled her to him, and slid a digit down her back. “And your hair was all the way down here.”

A tremor went up her spine. “That was right before I c-cut it.”

Ian nodded his head. “You had on white sandals, just like the ones you have in your hand, the necklace you’re wearing now and a gold ankle bracelet just like it.”

Stella fingered the heart at her neck. “The chain of the anklet broke.”

He dropped her hand and kept going.

The necklace and anklet were the last gifts her grandmother had given her before she’d died. Immediately after that, with the little money she’d received from the insurance policy, she’d taken charge of her life and gotten as far away from her mother as possible and began a new life. One with purpose, structure, and free of men. The weekend she attended that party was the first time she’d gone out to socialize since moving to Florida. “I still haven’t gotten it fixed. I can’t believe you remember all that.”

Ian stared straight ahead and quirked a sly smile. “I remember wanting you from that first moment, Stella, wishing I could tempt you into one of the upstairs rooms.”

Heat skittered right to her center. “Stop saying these things to me. It’s not right.”

“What’s not right about a man wanting a beautiful woman, Stella?”

He thought she was beautiful. Desire, raw and dark bloomed inside her, but she refused to give credence to what he said. “You don’t want me. You just want another conquest, a notch on your bedpost.”

Ian twisted her around and before she knew it, she was back in his arms again, his hands wrapped around her waist, and she felt the pulse of him throb against her stomach.

Oh boy.

“I’m not saying it’s true, but what if I did?”

Then he began to touch her, from the tips of her fingers, to the side of her neck. A little tingle started somewhere inside her belly when he replaced his fingers with his mouth.

“What if all I wanted to do was taste every inch of your delectable body? What if I wanted to slide my tongue inside your wet heat and make you come?”

The tingle threatened to become an all out shudder when Ian’s hand palmed her between her legs and applied pressure. She was sure he felt the moisture coating her panties. 

“Then I’d glide my cock so far inside you you’d never want me to remove it.

Every ounce of oxygen inside her froze. She’d never been so turned on in her life. Sizzling liquid heat oozed out her pours. The idea of Ian touching her, tasting her… She wanted him with a fierceness she never before experienced.

“And these breasts.” He cupped both and coasted his thumb over the nipples until they were tight peaks. “What if I wanted to put them in my mouth so I’d know if you really tasted like strawberries and cream?”

The night breeze blew over her skin with teasing fingers as his hands rounded to her butt. “But this ass. I’d love to take you from behind and watch my cock slide in and out of your body all night long? Would that be so bad? Is it wrong for me to want you like this?”

Stella wanted to deny him. She wasn’t this woman, was she? She’d resisted these urges all her life, not wanting to end up like her mother. Could she just give herself over to Ian for one glorious night of hot sex and then forget about all of it the next day?

One time, Stella. Just one time.

It wouldn’t be a permanent black stain on her soul if she did it. Just one itty bitty dot, a speck even.