It wasn’t until they took their seats that he removed his hand. Her back felt instantly cold.
Needing to distract herself from Tyler’s intoxicating touch, she asked about his work. “Do you think you can get involved with this company? Would the resort be a viable investment?” Well, who would have thought it? She could make intelligent conversation.
Tyler twisted his lips. “Truthfully? Yeah, it probably would be viable, and profitable too. But you know what? I hate this place and everything it stands for. I hate the fact that it’s a hideous blemish in a beautiful suburb, and I hate the idea of investing in a company that makes its money from gambling. The idea just doesn’t sit right with me.
“I thought you didn’t mind playing a little,” Katie said. See? She could handle this. She could chat with her old friend.
“I don’t. But last night I sat in the casino for a long time, just observing, and I didn’t like what I saw. I never would have imagined it, but I think I’d have an ethical problem profiting from another person’s loss.”
Katie experienced a little ethical problem of her own. She desperately wanted to touch Tyler. To lean into him and kiss him, but she couldn’t. She belonged with someone else. You going to recommend against investing with them?
“I’m going to do a lot more research first, but my instincts are telling me not to do this deal. Besides, if we did invest, we’d have to sink the entire fund into one business, and that is just a little too risky for my comfort.”
Tyler moved his head close to hers while they chatted. Each time he spoke his voice reverberated through her ear, sending tiny chills racing down her spine.
Katie almost squirmed in her seat, trying to fight the sensations unfurling in her belly. She couldn’t help it. She shivered.
“You cold?” His mouth was by her ear. His breath stirred the hair on her neck.
“A little,” she lied. Again, her voice sounded throatier than she would have liked.
“Want my jacket?” he asked.
“No! Thank you.” The last thing she needed was to be wrapped in his warmth, and in his scent, while he sat mere inches from her.
He trailed his fingers down her arm. “You sure? You have goose bumps.”
His weightless caress tripled them. “It’s from the air con. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
The lights dimmed. “Let me know if you’re not. I’ll warm you up.”
The curtains opened. The show began. It took Katie all of the first half and most of the second to realize she had absolutely no idea what the show was about. She couldn’t focus worth a damn. Her full concentration, her total awareness, centered on the man on her left.
For the seven hundredth time she shifted in her seat.
For the seven hundredth time Tyler leaned in and murmured, “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” she muttered back, yet again. Nothing was fine. Absolutely nothing.
Not with Tyler so close she could touch him, yet so inaccessible he might as well still be in London.
“Katie?” His voice was so soft, if she hadn’t felt the whisper as a feathery stroke on her cheek, she would have doubted she’d heard it at all.
“Yes?”
Again, the feather-light tickle. “There’s something you should know.:
She froze then, incapable of movement.
“I never forgot a single minute.” He turned his head, his mouth a hairsbreadth away from her ear. “Not one single minute.” With his teeth, he nuzzled her earlobe. “How could I? You were the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Right there, in the middle of the packed-to-capacity theater, she dissolved.
Melted into a puddle of molten lava on her chair.
He must have been aware of her resistance flowing away. “Look at me, Katie,” he whispered.
She did.
“You never forgot either, did you?” How could he speak so softly, yet hold her attention so completely?
“Did you?” he asked again.
Forget? Being with Tyler? Not in a million lifetimes. She simply shook her head.
His lips touched hers. For a second. For one sweet, sweet second.
Then they were gone.
Tyler sat back in his seat, leaving her paralyzed. Perplexed. It wasn’t enough. One tiny, diminutive kiss could never be enough. She wanted more.
Wanted the world. When it came to Tyler she wanted nothing less than everything.
A slow burn began in her stomach. She yearned for his touch, for the feel of his mouth on hers, his hands on her skin. The flame intensified. A thousandfold. Voracious hunger swamped her desire like she’d never known.
A minute later his lips were at her ear again. “I can’t concentrate, Katie. The only thing I can think about is how badly I want to touch you.”
She began to shake. Longing and lust blended together, blurring reality.
There was no theater. There were no people. It was only herself and Tyler.
Only the two of them, in a world of possibility. A world of unspent passion.
She was on fire. Hunger and need throbbed through her. She had to be filled by him, completed by him.
He hummed low in his throat. “I want to make love to you again, Katie.”
“Tyler,” she whispered urgently, grabbing his hand.
His movements were liquid. He leaned forward to bring his face to hers. “Yes, Katie?”
“Do it.”
She had no clear recollection of leaving the theater. No knowledge of how she got in the elevator leading up to the hotel rooms. All she knew was that when she and Tyler were safely ensconced in the first car free of other people, she was finally, finally, back in his arms.
His kiss almost stopped her heart. And when it finally began to beat again, when she finally realized she’d pass out if she didn’t force air into her lungs and blood into her arteries, it was to an unsteady, uneven rhythm.
He didn’t just kiss with his mouth, he kissed with his whole body, melding her against him, into him, making them one. As his tongue stole between her lips, scorching her mouth, she swore she saw stars.
She was wrapped in his arms, exactly where she wanted to be.
Exactly where she belonged.
For the second time that evening, he placed his hand on her lower back. This time though, there was nothing subtle about his touch. He curved her hips into his, and her world stood still. He was hard. His erection pressed against her lower belly, burning through her dress.
The impact was electric. Her breasts tightened and sparks ignited between her legs. She moaned into his mouth.
He pulled his face away to stare at her. His eyes, though flecked with gold, were so dark they were bottomless pools of desire. He tried to speak, tried to say something, but couldn’t. Instead he took her mouth again in a kiss so carnal, so spicy, her knees threatened to give in.
When the lift opened to empty them on Tyler’s floor, he refused to break contact. He lifted her in his arms, carrying her effortlessly down the corridor.
Though her hands shook, she fiddled with the buttons of his shirt, starting at the top and making her way slowly down. With each button that popped open, she nuzzled into his chest, kissing the exposed flesh.
The flesh she’d loved so well. So thoroughly.
The third button revealed a nipple, small, and masculine, and hard.
She placed her lips around it and sucked gently.
“Katie,” he rasped.
He’d stopped walking and now stood beside a door.
“Is this your room?” Forget throaty. Her voice was almost nonexistent. God, she needed him so bad. Needed to fill the emptiness in her loins.
“Yes…” His voice broke as she ran her tongue over the hard nipple a second time.
“Open the door. Now. I need to feel you moving inside me.” Only Ty could give her what she needed. Only Tyler.
How he managed to rummage around in his pocket, remove his key card and get the door open, was beyond her but then most everything was beyond her at that moment. The only thing she could comprehend was her fierce need to consume Tyler Bonnard, whole.
Her body was made of liquid heat. When Tyler set her on her feet, inched the strap of her dress over her shoulder, exposing her breast, and took her nipple in his mouth, she swore she saw steam smoldering between her flesh and his lips.
The impact of his mouth on her nipple was dizzying. The world spun.
The sun dipped and rose. Her head dropped back, and she moaned. Only Tyler. He was the only man who ever made her feel like this.
And then her mobile phone rang. The sound shrill and invasive.
She froze.
“Ignore it,” Tyler growled as he grazed her breast with his teeth.
She couldn’t.
“It’ll stop in a minute.” He slipped the second strap over her shoulder, revealing her other breast. As his hot lips covered her nipple, she listened to the persistent trill of the phone.
Until it stopped.
She relaxed and brought her attention back to Tyler. Her breasts were cupped in his hands. His mouth was an inch away from hers.
“Sweet, sweet Katie. I never forgot you. Never forgot this.” His lids were hooded and his voice low. “I never for one minute stopped loving you.”
It was impossible to tell who kissed whom, but their mouths joined together again, and Katie’s toes curled from the pleasure his lips gave her.
Tyler still loved her.
“I am so sorry I left you, so sorry I caused you pain. It was the last thing I wanted. Ever.”
She ran her hand over his hip. Slid her fingers along the hard length of his cock. He jerked into her touch, filling her palm and moaned.
God, she held him again. Felt his excitement and his arousal. It matched the wet heat between her legs perfectly.
His pants were a restrictive barrier, a concrete wall between them, and she lowered her other hand to grasp the buckle of his belt. She needed to feel his naked flesh. Needed to feel the pulsing heat of his cock. Slowly, she slid the belt through the buckle and pushed it out of the way. She twisted his button through the hole and then eased the zip over his solid bulge.
So close. She shoved the flaps aside and touched the waistband of his undies.
Tyler hummed low in his throat.
She pushed at the elastic, felt the swollen tip of his penis under her fingertips and groaned into his mouth.
And then his phone rang.
And rang.
And rang.
She broke the kiss, pulling away as reality crashed in on their rapture.
“It’s Steve,” Tyler said unnecessarily. One minute before desire had darkened his eyes. Now guilt shadowed them.
Self-loathing filled her. She looked down at her naked chest.
“It’s Steve,” he said again and took a step away from her.
Her breasts heaved, wet and glistening from Tyler’s mouth. Her dress hung around the belt she’d cinched in at the waist. She swallowed hard as she realized what she’d done. “He’s trying to find us. He… he said if he finished at a reasonable hour he’d join us for a post-show drink.”
What kind of filthy worm was she, seducing her fiancé’s best friend?
Demanding he sleep with her. In that instant she despised herself, and she despised Tyler, for what they’d just done to the one man who under threat of death would never harm them. He was her rock, her support, her mate. Steve was the man she was soon to marry.
A wave of nausea nearly bowled her over. How could she? How could they?
She stared at Tyler. He breathed heavily and ran a tense hand over his clenched jaw. His eyes were clouded with desire, doubt and regret.
His shirt hung open around his waist, and pearly drops of moisture glistened on the head of his cock. Even amid her rush of self-hatred, the pull to go to him was intense, almost magnetic. The impulse to touch him again, to deny their wrongdoing, was potent.
“I have to go.” She pulled her dress up, awkwardly pushing her arms through the straps. “I… I’m sorry. This shouldn’t have happened.” She searched blindly for her purse and found it by the door. Then she turned and looked at Tyler’s tortured face.
He was as disturbed by Steve’s call as she was. As shaken.
Briefly she considered dropping to her knees and licking the sinful pre-come off his dick. “Steve is your friend,” she said thickly. “He’s my fiancé.”
He didn’t argue. He simply fastened his pants and buckled his belt.
Yanking the door open, she walked as fast as her legs would carry her, down the corridor and to the lifts, hating herself more with every step she took.
She’d gotten maybe ten meters down the passageway when she heard the footsteps.
She walked faster.
It didn’t help. He was behind her. His hands on her hips, compelling her to slow down.
She stopped and whispered, “Tyler, don’t.”
He didn’t say a word. He just pulled her back against him, and let his erection nestle into her butt. His chest cushioned her shoulders.
God, she wanted to melt into him. Wanted to stay in his arms forever.
Wanted to feel him buried in her waiting heat.
“Please. Let me go.” Her voice, though soft as a sigh, was astoundingly steady.
He dropped his hands. She took two very fast steps away from him.
Then another and another. His gaze burned through her back.
Walking away from him was hard. Impossible. She took another step.
Every impulse told her to go back. To throw caution to the wind.
This was Ty.
This was the man she loved.
She took another step.
This was her chance. The opportunity she’d waited for, for two long, long years. If she just turned around now, she could be his. She could make love to him again. And again. And again. Settle the longing between her legs, the throbbing ache that would not quit.
She took another step.
He loved her. he’d told her not five minutes ago. How could she leave?
She stopped, turned around slowly and looked at him. His shirt still hung open, framing his heaving chest. She tore her gaze away from it and forced it higher until their eyes met.
God, she loved him too. There was no way she could deny it. The attraction pulled at her. She took a step closer. Her hunger grew and spread. Her nipples tightened.
Another step, and her panties became damper as her anticipation intensified.