Page 87 of Kiss Me Tonight

“Yeah.”

My heart clenches. Idiot.Idiot. Why wouldn’t he take the opportunity to list his misconceptions of me? God knows that I’ve been judging him for years. I’ve used his bad behavior as a lesson to my players multiple times over. More shamefully, I believed everything Rick ever said about Dominic, never digging deeper than whatever rumors hit the gossip circuits.

“I won’t break,” I edge out, blinking quickly behind the blindfold. Whatever he thought of me when we first met, I can take it. Sticks and stones and all that. “Go ahead.”

The trucks slows to a crawl. My seat belt tightens across my chest as Dominic cuts the ignition. I wait, breath drawn, for the jangle of keys—only to feel the pressure of his big frame leaning over me, one hand gripping my thigh.

Oh, boy.

Ears straining for a hint of what’s to come, I catch the click of the passenger’s side door opening and then there’s no mistaking the way my hair is carefully tucked behind my ear and his lips brush my ear to order, “Get out.”

I tilt my head, surprised. “But you didn’t—you didn’t tell me what other judgments you made about me.”

“Because I don’t have one.”

Despite my lack of sight, my eyes shift back and forth. “I’m confused.”

“This is for you.”

His hand glides up, up, up my thigh, the pressure of his thumb deepening the higher he moves. It’s sensual and heavenly andoh, God.My hand flies out to grip the door handle. My heels dig into the floor as my hips lift. Just enough to see if his hand will shift from the crease of my hip and cup the apex of my thighs. It doesn’t.Hedoesn’t. I nearly whimper. Clearly, he wants me out of this car but I can’t, for the life of me, find the strength to get out. Not when it means he’ll stop touching me.

In that commanding, deep voice of his, he continues, “Took a risk and married a man you loved. Got knocked up and gave birth to a pretty awesome kid. Defeated the odds and took a job that historically belongs in a man’s world. Bravely divorced a shit-bag of a human being.” I feel the slope of his nose against my profile, then the softest, most tantalizing, brush of his mouth over mine. “Wants to take risks but fears that the time for all that is over because you’ve hit the ripe old age of thirty-seven . . . Did I miss one?”

My mouth gapes open. My lungs cease pumping.

“Dominic, I—”

He cuts me off with a kiss. Unlike the first, this one is rough. Demanding. That hand resting at the crease of my hip bone squeezes tightly and his thumb sweeps over the center seam of my jeans. I gasp into his mouth, and it’s all the permission he needs to take the kiss from a ten to a twenty.

Dangerous.

In this moment with his T-shirt caging my sight and his hands on my body, I feel dangerous. Weightless. An adrenaline junkie who’s finally found her perfect fix.

I cup his stubbled cheeks, finding them effortlessly, though I still exist in the dark. Moaning into his mouth, I beg shamelessly for more.Take me, I whisper to no one, my fingers scraping down the length of his throat.Want me, I think wildly, as I clutch his T-shirt and flick my tongue against his.Make me yours, my soul sings, when his hand leaves my thigh to coast north, under the fabric of my shirt and farther up more, until his fingers skate over the underwire of my bra and I’m all but shimmying in place to get it off.

I arch my back, giving him plenty of space to fiddle with the clasp.

He traces the line of my bra over my rib cage. Dances his fingers down the pearls of my spine. Presses me forward, until finally, yes, yes,yes.

The bra comes free, my breasts lowering without their satin-bound cage to keep them perky. Momentary panic supersedes all desire. I don’t know what kind of women Dominic sleeps with, but I can’t imagine they’re like me. Nearing forty. Breasts that lost their pep sometime in the last few years. A belly that’s not nearly as tight and flat as it once was when I led the country in made-field goals.

It was one thing to sleep with Rick. Strained as our relationship was, especially in the last few years, he witnessed the changes to my body as I experienced them myself. Dominic . . . Dominic wasn’t privy to any of that. Will he be turned off by the cellulite? Will he call this off the moment he notices the puckered scar from my long-ago C-section? I don’t think I could bear to see disgust flit over his rugged features.

I grasp his hand, the one that’s not all up under my shirt. “I don’t think I can do this.”

My shirt goes tight around my chest as he pulls my bra off completely. Strapless.Dammit.Just another reason to hate them.

This is too much.

All of it is too much.

“Get out of the car, Aspen.”

My head jerks toward the sound of his voice. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“You took my bra!” I exclaim indignantly.

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