Then he straightened, and the opportunity passed. Probably for the best. The approved methods of torture didn’t include licking random body parts. But as he shut the door and turned to her, she vowed not to let another opportunity slip by.
He propped his arm on the roof of the Jeep and smiled down at her. “Did you have fun tonight?”
“I did.” She felt her lips curve, returning his smile. She heard Bridget’s and Izzy’s advice echo in her mind. Brush up against him. Find a reason to put your lips on him. Her heart sprinted, but she stepped forward, placed a hand on his arm, and tipped her face to his. Leaning close enough to rest her breasts against his chest—and experiencing a heady burst of power at his quick inhale—she lowered her eyelids and murmured, “Thank you so much for watching Shayla for me.”
His breath shuddered out in a cool-mint gust, along with a slightly desperate sounding, “It was no probl—”
She’d aimed for his mouth, but either he zigged, or she zagged, and she ended up wide of her target, pressing her lips to the corner of his. He stilled. Like, statue still. Only the warmth of his skin and the pounding of his heart against her breast suggested he was flesh and blood. She didn’t know what sort of response she’d expected, but this stiff, unyielding state of shock definitely wasn’t it. Despite the storm of embarrassment heating her cheeks, and the proper, restrained part of her screaming to abort this stupid plan, she pressed her body closer, skimmed her hand up the back of his neck, and parted her lips to whisper, “Thank you,” against the corner of his mouth.
Before she finished the words, he muttered something—maybe just a groan—spun her until her back made contact with the car, and crushed her lips under his.
And oh…oh…oh. This. Her world shrank to a close cage of hard muscle, big, devastating hands that gripped her hips, squeezed her ass, while his mouth parted her lips and plundered. His tongue stroked and tangled with hers. Their teeth clicked as she strove to keep up before he sank his into her lower lip hard enough to make her gasp. Then his tongue swept over the spot gently enough to make her whimper. A rugged thigh pushed between hers, pressed firmly to the neediest part of her, soothing and stoking the ache there with such addictive friction she squirmed closer and moaned into his mouth.
Her hands searched for a way to take more…give more…sliding down his neck, across his shoulders, over the array of muscles along his back. Eventually, her questing fingers found that gap at the waist of his jeans, followed that trail of warm, bare skin down, down, down until she curved her palm around one perfectly sculpted glute.
His breath exploded in her ear. He shifted his leg from between hers, drove forward, pushing her flush against the car while his glute tightened and flexed under her hand, rocking his hips into hers with quick, forceful thrusts. The moves grinded a breathtakingly thick, hard ridge against her soft, yearning center. She sank her other hand into his jeans and held on, held close, buried her face against this throat, and breathed in the clean scent of bar soap and traces of lavender baby lotion and, underneath it all, vibrant healthy male. A vibrant, healthy male who wanted her as much it seemed as she wanted him. Prepared to revel in that miracle, she parted her legs as much as possible to receive his rapid-fire thrusts and clung tight, urging him on with her hands and the rise and fall of her hips in counter-rhythm with his.
No part of the Torture Ford strategy told her what to do when the torture worked. She had her baby in the car, and he had his teen in the house. Those two factors limited the options to the here and the now. Here, by her car, with her head back and the stars overhead merging to indistinct blurs of light in her glazed vision. Now, with his hot mouth cruising along her throat and his hand pressed against the side of her tender breast with restrained urgency that made her want to beg for mercy and plead for more at the same time.
This wasn’t a slow, sweet, playful seduction. Ford came at her like a force of nature—a wall of granite, a bolt of lightning. A firestorm that couldn’t be slowed, or contained, but would singe everything in its path, including her, until it burned itself out. She wanted to hold that fire. Feel that burn. Easing one hand out of his pants, she traced the waist of his jeans around until she could wedge her hand between their bodies and rub her palm over the part of him that held the most mystery.
He groaned as she explored his dimensions through denim. Groaned like a man in pain. Hoping to ease it, eager to, she tugged his fly open and shoved her hand inside. Resting her cheek on his chest, against the thunder of his heart, looking down the gap between their bodies, she skimmed her fingers over him, along skin as subtle as suede over a core of pure steel.
His body went rigid. “Fuck,” burst from his throat like a last gasp. Next thing she knew, he wrapped his hand around hers, guided her through one rough tug, another, and then…
“Jesus. Jesus. Jesuuuuus.”
A hot drop of wetness splashed the back of her hand, a patch of skin not protected by his bigger, wider one. Enthralled, she watched him come. And come. And come, while his groan of release rumbled through his chest, his throat, fanned the crown of her head. He shuddered, all his awe-inspiring muscles jerking in ways completely beyond his control as the fire burned wild under her touch.
For one long, lovely moment he simply sagged against her for support, making her glad she had the car at her back, while his breath sawed from his lungs. After a few moments, she gently uncurled her fingers, startled, and then amused by her own reaction, when it twitched in response to her departure. She grappled with a crazy impulse to drop to her knees and kiss it. She felt crazy. She felt powerful. She’d busted Ford Langley’s impressive bunker of reserve, and all it had taken was one not particularly well-aimed kiss.
But something lured her more insistently than his very impressive body parts. She wanted to see his face. Pulling away just enough to raise her chin, she looked up and into his eyes. Dark eyes full of…
Oh, no.
“Jesus,” he repeated, in a thin voice. He lifted her hand, scrubbed it clean with the bottom of his T-shirt, and continued to stare at her with a guilty, traumatized look on his face. “I’m sor—”
She went up on her tiptoes, splayed her free hand along the back of his neck, and sealed her lips to his, stared into his eyes as she swept the apology right out of his mouth. His gruff sound of protest pricked her conscience enough to relinquish his lips, but she broke away slowly, keeping her gaze locked on his, wondering if her pupils looked as huge and dark and bottomless as his. Into the inch of space between their parted lips, where their breaths mingled, she whispered, “I’m not.”
While he absorbed that, his handsome face inscrutable, she slipped out from between the car and his body, walked to the driver’s side, and got in. A check in her rearview mirror and the strategically angled baby-seat mirror told her Shayla was deep into her nine-’til-midnight sleep zone. She started the car, released the parking brake, and looked through the windshield on the way to backing out of the driveway.
Ford stood there in the wash of her headlights, all put back together, complete with his stoic, military-drill expression in place. She had no way of knowing whether he stood there poised to call her back or committed to letting her go. She paused in the process of putting the Jeep in gear to give him a chance to make his intentions clear, but he made no move to approach the car or return to the house. A standoff. She couldn’t figure a winner, given their current circumstances, so she put the car in reverse and backed down the incline. At the bottom, before she eased out onto the road, she looked up the drive. He still stood there. Hadn’t moved a muscle.
Little wings fluttered low in her stomach. Tomorrow would be interesting.