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I drop my spoon and it clatters to the floor. “What?” I say, cutting him a sharp look. He’s got his head stuck in the refrigerator. All I can see is a set of tight abs and a pair of navy track pants slung low on well-defined hips. A baseball scholarship in college and working construction with his cousin Declan has paid off. The result is a body that would make any woman weak in the knees.
Myself included.
“Tess,” he says, straightening away from the fridge with a bottle of water. “She texted you to get the down and dirty about Trevor, right?” He leans against the counter behind me, cracking the lid on the water to take a drink.
“Yeah,” I say, turning my back on him to focus on my breakfast. The faster I eat, the faster I can go back to my room and hide. Yanking the foil lid off my yogurt, I fold it neatly and throw it in the trash before bending over to retrieve my spoon off the floor. “She wants to have…”
Patrick isn’t leaning against the counter anymore. He’s standing right behind me, so close I can feel his rapidly growing erection against the curve of my ass.
I stand up slowly, agonizingly aware that this is almost exactly what’d happened between us last night. What I’d done to start all this...
Only now he’s doing it to me.
His hand skims across my hips, fingertips brushing the hem of my shirt. “Are you gonna tell her?” I can feel his breath against the nape of my neck, slow and even.
Oh. My. God...
I take a deep breath, fighting to stay calm. “Tell her what?” I say, my hand clenched around the handle of the spoon so tight I can feel the imprint of it on my skin.
“Are you gonna tell her what happened?” His large, callused hand slips under my shirt, his fingers doing a relaxed slide up my ribcage while his hips do a slow grind against my backside.
“Nothing happened with Trevor. I told you—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Laughter brushes against my ear a moment before he presses his mouth against the underside of my jaw. “And you know it.”
Any hope that he’d been too drunk to remember what happened between us—and why—is gone, leaving me with the overwhelming and unexplainable urge to explain myself. To apologize.
“Patrick…” I don’t know what I’m going to say but it doesn’t matter. The second his hand closes over my bare breast, my mind shuts off completely.
Totally blank.
“Yes, Cari?” he says, the words brushing his mouth against my nape. He fondles me under my shirt, cupping my breast, rolling my swollen nipple between his fingers—tugging and pinching—exerting just enough pressure so that when his other hand slips into the waistband of my boxers, I widened my stance without even thinking, giving him room to do whatever he wants to me.
“Patrick,” I try again, squeezing my eyes shut, forcing myself to focus even though the last thing I want to do right now is think. “I think we need to—”
His long fingers skim the damp seam of my pussy, teasing me. “Why aren’t you wearing panties?” he whispers in my ear and I have to swallow hard against the moan that his hands are building up inside me.
“I don’t…” I swallow again, my head kicking back against his shoulder when the fingers plucking at my nipple squeezes even harder, the sensation shooting through my belly, straight to my clit. “We should talk.” I pushed the words out even though I’m afraid that once I do, he’ll stop touching me. I think I might die if Patrick stopped now.
“We are talking,” he says in that same calm, measured tone he’d used on me last night. “Where are your panties?” His fingers roll and tug at my nipple while his tongue traces the line of my neck. “Tell me, Cari…” he says when I don’t answer right way.
“You…” I manage to say despite the fact I can’t breathe. “you took them off last night.”
“Oh yeah…” Patrick’s fingers slide into me and my back arches, urging him to stroke me even deeper. “I remember now.” He skims his teeth against my jaw and that moan I’ve been fighting shutters out of me when he pulls his fingers out to work the drenched length of them against my swollen clit. “You’re wet,” he groans against my throat, his hand tightening on my breast. “Have you been thinking about me? The way I made you come on my tongue?”
“Yes…” My brain is completely scrambled. I push myself against him, working my hips against the maddeningly slow ride his juice-slicked fingers are giving me. I can feel the ridged length of him, pushing against my ass and suddenly, his fingers aren’t enough.
I want him inside me. Now.
I try to push his hands away so I can turn around and rip what’s left of his clothes off but he tightens his hold on me, keeping my back pressed firmly against his chest. “Is this it?” he says, his voice horse and tight, like he’s fighting for control. “You want to come on my cock again?” he grinds himself into the cleft of my ass, pushing against me through our clothes.
“Yes...” I don’t even know what I’m saying, what I’m agreeing to but it hardly matters. Not if it means he’ll stop playing with me and get serious.
His tongue skates along the long line of my throat, coasting toward my ear. “You want me to jerk these shorts down around your ankles?” He slides his fingers inside me again, slow and deep. “Bend you over the counter and pound my cock into this sweet pussy of yours?”
Something about his calm and reasonable tone, coupled with the filthy things he’s saying in my ear send another lightning bolt of arousal shooting through me, flooding my pussy. “Yes...” My breath stutters out of me as his fingers find my center again. They move in slow, feather-light circles that increase in pressure until my knees are loose and unreliable and my breath is hitching in and out of me in ragged pants.
“Patrick…” I can feel it build. My legs start to tremble. The quivering sensation that begins in my belly—a vibration that spreads slowly but doesn’t overtake me. And then I know. He’s punishing me for what I did to him. All those months of teasing I subjected him to. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry for everything.”