Grabbing her hand, he hurried around the corner and into the darkened alcove of a boarded-up bank. Tyler ducked behind the curtain of plastic sheeting and grasped Edie’s shoulders.
“We’re seventy blocks from my hotel room. I have no idea where your apartment is. I don’t know New York, but right now, I’m a man on the edge. Please tell me that all of tonight’s temptation was not just to hear me babble incoherently like I am now.”
He seemed so adorable when mussed, so approachable, so human. The tie was loose, the eyes were wild but she knew with absolute certainty that if Edie Higgins wasn’t ready for this, then Tyler would let her go without a word of complaint.
Not that she was that cruel.
Not that she was that pure.
Right now, all she wanted to feel was
him
inside her, not stupid ice.
Ice?
The memory of it still made her thighs scream.
Edie lunged for him, her fingers attacking the buttons on his shirt, pulling it loose from his perfectly pressed trousers. He slid her green T-shirt off one shoulder, pushing up her bra, before his mouth settled hungrily on her breast.
The hard pressure was exquisite, and she braced herself against the shell of an ATM machine, forgetting everything but the insistence of his mouth. Soft hair brushed against her breast, and she could smell the crisp scent of his cologne teasing her nose. Her body fell into the easy rhythm of his mouth, her eyes drifting closed, floating away to someplace warm and exotic.
Edie groaned with delight, her body straining against him, greedy for his attention. The exquisite pressure grew more intense, more demanding, and she knew she would have done anything he wanted, given him anything he asked, if only he would finish this.
Finish her.
A moment later, his mouth left her breast. She regrettably restored her bra to rights, and then he leaned against her, his body imprinting itself on her. She could feel every strained tendon, the iron bands of his arms. Pressing insistently between her thighs was the flagrant manifestation of a man on the edge.
Oh, yes, solid and firm, here within her hands.
He kissed her with mouth and tongue, as if his life were ending soon, and she didn’t understand why they weren’t having sex yet.
“Not yet,” he whispered against her mouth.
“When?”
“Truck.”
His kisses were open-mouthed, hip-rolling instruments of torture, and she’d never liked torture. “Where?” she gasped, straddling his thigh in a shameless move for that very thing that she wanted. So badly. Right now.
Finally she heard the rolling thunder of the truck moving past.
“Now,” she urged, as her hands delved below the belt, unloosening his pants, freeing the very heavy, very filling, very naughty part of him. In the darkness, her senses came alive as she felt the silky smooth flesh, the broad tip of his erection and the slight drop of liquid on the head. When he spoke, she could hear the strain in his voice, and she was pleased.
“I have a lot of concerns about this.”
“You worried about getting caught?” she asked, her fingers stroking his cock, exploring the length, the breadth, the density and oh, la, la, the sensitivity.
“No,” he answered, his voice low, pained.
“Then what?” she asked, teasing him with a lick of her tongue, and hearing the audible gasp.
Sweet.
“You set me up.”
Strain was no longer in his voice. Control was back. The scales of virtue were now tilting firmly in his favor. She slid the tip of her index finger around him once, part seduction, part punishment, and then stared up at him. “No, I didn’t.”
Gently he pushed away. “What happened to your earlier lessons in courtship? What happened to knowing her personality, her heart? Why does
this
feel like another assembly-line product designed to express your deepest emotional connection?”
“Don’t throw my words back at me.”
“Why not? You seemed really fond of them earlier.” He reordered his pants, his shirt, his tie, his white-knight outlook on life.
A chill set in, not a summer breeze, but the aching knowledge that Tyler Hart wasn’t going to play by her rules. At least not yet. “What do you want, Tyler?” she asked, her voice unsteady…
and weak
. “What the hell is wrong with sex?”
“On a street corner? Against an ATM?”
“This was your idea,” she reminded him.
“It was a bad one.”
“It was a great one.”
“Why can’t we do this right?” he said with a sigh, and then pushed her hair back from her face, because even when he was ruining her plans, he still had to be the gentleman.
“There is no right. There is no wrong. Sex is sex.”
This time he shoved a hand through his own hair and began to pace. “I’m not talking about sex, Edie. You said you would teach me all the crappy emotional stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sex. I adore the sex. I want the sex, but my last girlfriend cheated on me, and all you want to do is jump me, and now I’m worried that you were right and I’m a brick. I’m tired of being an emotional brick. Bricks are not good.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. “You’re not a brick.”
“I think you’re saying that only because you don’t want to teach me the crappy emotional stuff.”
“You can’t keep calling it the crappy emotional stuff.”
“See? I’m a brick.”
Edie felt something melt inside her, since he was a brick, but he was a very appealing brick. She understood that frustration—the feeling that something was off inside, but having no idea how to fix it. Edie pretended it didn’t exist, but not so Tyler. No, Tyler had to do the hard time and be the better person. Taking very small steps, Edie went to him and wrapped her arms around him. As a rule, she was a hugger because people responded well to touching. However, this was different. This was hard.
Slowly, his arms crept around her.
“I have nothing against kissing,” she muttered.
“Kissing leads to sex.”
“I’ve heard that’s not always true.”
“Okay,” he murmured, paying appropriate homage to her neck. So Edie stood quietly, straining to hear the wind slapping the plastic sheeting, straining to hear the last of the late-night traffic, but instead hearing nothing apart from the sure beating of his heart. This was kissing. This was courtship. This was the very emotional crap that she feared.
Many minutes passed, forever maybe, and she stayed there until he took her arm and led her east. Silently they walked farther north to where the lights of New Jersey reflected on the water. A long greenway separated the street from the Hudson, a line of hedges and trees and benches all designed to mask the docks, mask the garbage plant and mask the long barges that glided slowly in the night.
“Here,” announced Tyler, sitting down on a bench and looking at her expectantly.
“What?”
“I think you’re supposed to sit next to me and then we’re supposed to watch the changing landscape.”
Edie threw out a dramatic hand, encompassing most of the tristate area. “This is not landscape. This is industrial camouflage, nothing more. You’re just fooled because you’re a starry-eyed tourist.”
Tyler started to laugh. Stubbornly she still refused to sit, tapping her foot against the industrial pavement. “Well, you are,” she insisted. Tyler stared up at her with that knowing look, that frankly wasn’t starry-eyed at all. Eventually nervously, she sat…a good two feet away from him.
“All right. Go ahead. What did you want to discuss?”
“Why don’t you sleep?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him, glancing at her watch, wishing the dawn could come up a little faster.
“You do these all-nighters often?”
“No,” she lied.
“It’s almost five a.m., you haven’t had any caffeine, your pupils aren’t dilated and I haven’t seen you yawn once. Ergo, your body’s clock isn’t running anywhere close to normal.”
“You’re in the city that never sleeps. They don’t call it that for nothing.”
“Don’t you ever get tired?” he asked, and she realized that yes, she was exhausted.
She inched closer to him, and some of her industrial camouflage fell away. “I get tired sometimes,” she said, and he pulled her close to him, wrapping an arm around her, and pushing her head into his shoulder. It was a comfortable shoulder, strong, too possibly available for crying if one were into crying—which Edie was not. But it was nice to know he had good shoulders.
“I suppose as a curator, you’re not used to long hours or a hectic lifestyle,” she whispered.
“You should take pity on me.”
Pity? No, never that. “You’re lucky I don’t think you’re boring,” she teased.
“I am boring.”
“You? Are you kidding?” She adjusted just so that she could goggle at him. “Not even close.”
He smiled at her, and she noticed the crinkly lines around his eyes. He had good eyes, too—if a woman was into that, which Edie wasn’t.
“I like this industrial camouflage. It’s so quiet here.”
She blew an inelegant raspberry. “Well, yeah, if you ignore the early morning delivery trucks, the fire engines and the bicyclists.”
He shot her a sideways look. “Bicyclists don’t make noise.”
“They do when they have bells,” she said, and as if to prove her point, a sleekly clad cyclist zoomed by, brrr-ring the tinny chime, as if Edie or Tyler were going to suddenly throw themselves into oncoming bicycle traffic. Puh-lease. Bikers could be so full of themselves.
“You’re not big on bikes, are you?”
“No.” There, she’d lied again because it was only a twisted person who didn’t like bicycles. They were great exercise, energy efficient, a multi-age mode of transportation that was both cheap and easy, and they came in all sorts of pretty colors. Not liking bikes was right up there with not liking Monopoly, not liking chocolate ice cream, or not liking Santa Claus.
“Didn’t you ever want one?” he asked.
Hell, yeah. Edie had desperately wanted a bicycle when she was seven because to her childish, naive eyes, a bicycle seemed like the answer to all her prayers. Considering how she had begged and hinted for days at a time, it was no surprise that her father had been suckered in and bought one. Bright and early on Christmas morning, Edie had raced down the stairs, there it was under the Christmas tree.
A bike. Her bike. Flashy chrome trim, twelve speeds, disc brakes, all mounted on a diamond-bright, sparkling blue frame that dazzled the eyes. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
However, there was a downside to the bike-plan. Edie couldn’t ride a bike. She didn’t have a clue. The only reason she’d wanted the stupid thing in the first place was to force her father to teach her how to ride me. To force him to spend some quality time with her. And did Dr. Jordan Higgins, M.D., Ph.D., IQ off the charts clue in? Oh, no.
Her mother had trudged in that afternoon and dutifully volunteered to teach Edie to ride. But Edie had burst into tears, her mother had stroked her hair and the bicycle disappeared the next day.
Bikes were crap.
“Why do I need a bike? A bicycle is a huge pain in the city. Why ride when you have the subway, or cabs, or your feet?” She dangled her flamingo sandals under the bench, and Tyler laughed.
“I figured that you’d want something a little faster. Something that wouldn’t make you dependent on someone else.”
“Well, you’d figure wrong.”
“We should bike in Central Park,” he announced, and she shot him a hell-no look.
“Why not?” he asked, a perfectly reasonable question.
“It’s very pedestrian,” she explained.
“Ha. What’s the real problem? Bad fall?” he asked, sensing that she was fudging the truth. She liked that about him, that he understood her bullshit ways and didn’t give up on her, but kept patiently pressing her until she came clean.
“There is no problem.”
“Chicken?” he taunted.
“Not even close.”
“So you’ll go?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you’re chicken?”
“No. I’m not.”
“Edie. What’s the hang-up here?”
The night had almost completely faded, she could feel the warmth of the early morning sun on her back. Everything seemed so much easier in the daytime. Everything seemed so possible. Or maybe that was due to Tyler.
She drew a deep breath, having decided to share. “For your information, there are certain talents that are not necessary to an average New Yorker. Most do not have a driver’s license. Most do not cook. Most do not do their own laundry even. And most are never taught to ride a bicycle.”
His mouth fell open in shock…mock shock. “You’re joking? You can’t ride a bike!”
She jabbed him in the ribs, mock hard. “Don’t be mean. It doesn’t become you.”
“It’s not mean. I’m just…surprised. I figured somebody like you would want to learn these things.”