And then he had her. He hooked a finger through the belt loop of her jeans, giving himself mad props for refraining from sliding that finger between the denim and the bare skin of her belly the way he wanted to.
Tugging gently, he pulled her down the hall, away from where the intimate concert was being held toward a flight of stairs that led to a second floor.
“What’s up there?” Nichole asked, craning a bit to try and see around the bend as Garrett led the way.
“No idea. But we need to talk.”
A quick shake of her head. “I just came to say goodbye. I’ve—I think—I need to take off early tonight.”
Because the tension between them was growing thicker with every encounter. Every exchange. Every accidental or even not so accidental brush.
And she’d wised up.
Only too late.
“You can’t just—just corral me like this, Garrett,” she laughed nervously, working her way up the steps backward even when she had to know the only escape was from the other direction.
Of course he could. And unless she actually used the magic word no, he would. “That first night, Nichole … why did you let me take you home?”
Nichole stopped, caught in the dark pull of eyes she never should have looked into.
They’d talked about this. To a degree. But neither of them had been able to move past it. Get free of what had happened and the lingering connection that kept pulling them back to it.
“Because when I met you it was the first time in as long as I could remember I wanted more than friendship.” Another backward step and she nearly tripped on the stair. But Garrett was there, his hand at her elbow, steadying her even as he crowded her back.
What was he doing? Being this close, asking her about that night … it was a mistake. They couldn’t go on like this. At first it had been all fun and games. The lingering tension and chemistry between them almost a joke. A dirty secret they shared. Something amusing. A challenge to overcome.
But as the weeks moved past, as the tension and temptations grew, having to say no to something she wanted with more urgency every time they met had ceased being funny.
Nichole wanted this man.
So much more than she should.
“I brought you home with me because I thought it would be safe. There wouldn’t be any risk of getting involved, of things getting too complicated, of me—” She swallowed, closed her eyes and forced herself to say the rest of it. “Of me getting ahead of myself. Because I didn’t even know your name.”
She’d been so wrong. Because now not only did she know just exactly who she’d been with and precisely how to find him … she had to see him all the time.
“So, about that….” His fingers curved around her waist, ending her retreat where she stood, balanced on the third stair from the top of the landing in a space she had no right occupying.
Garrett took the next step, closing the distance between them until his chest brushed against hers and their breath mingled warm and wet together.
Her lashes fluttered as better judgment warred against want. “What are you doing?”
“Reminiscing. It was very hot.”
She shouldn’t have liked the sound of that so much. Not when there was no place to go with it. But the part of her that had never been entirely confident in the sexual arena … the part that even after years remained just the littlest bit bruised over the way her last relationship had ended … needed to know. Needed to hear. “My not wanting to know your name was hot?”
“No, that was just kinky fun.”
It was everything she could do not to purr.
Kinky … her?
Oh, that was a first. One she’d savor.
“What was hot …” his voice dropped lower as he leaned closer toward her ear “… were the soft, throaty little moans you made and the way you gave your whole body over to me when I pulled you close.”
Her mouth went dry and even the nervous butterflies batting about her stomach stilled … waited. “You’re whispering me again.”
Those eyes.
“Maybe I am.”
His mouth.
“I thought we were friends. I thought we agreed.”
The heat.
He nodded. “We did.”
“Then why?”
Her jeans were snug with the tightening of Garrett’s fists at her sides, adding to the sensation of his touch, his hold, extending beyond just his fingers to everywhere the fabric touched her. Around her hips, her bottom, between her legs and down her thighs.
“The strings are already there, Nichole. The lines have already been crossed. And if you really want to know, I cross them more every damn time I look at you. I can’t stop thinking about hearing you make those sounds again. Only this time I want to hear them when you’re saying my name.”
“Garrett—”
“Hell, yes.”
And then the space between them that was all potential and unmet need and why and why not was gone. Replaced by contact. Hot and concentrated. The mind-blowing sensation of Garrett’s chest moving up against her own as he took that final step. Hard-packed muscle and cotton created a teasing friction against her nipples that left her breathless, lips still parted on a broken gasp when his head bowed to hers.
“Just like that.” His words were a kiss against her lips. The soft brush before the bruising crush. The taste that warned it would never be enough.
Garrett.
His mouth moved against hers like an unspoken demand, rubbing slowly, telling her what he wanted, what she wanted to give him. He parted her lips beneath the insistent pressure of his own, working back and forth without giving her the “more” she ached for, stroking her need until it surpassed his own and she was wordlessly begging: with her hands—one clutching and releasing and then clutching again at the fabric of his shirt, the other flexed against all that contained strength, riding the peaks and valleys of a musculature she’d only believed existed in the land of airbrush and fiction. Begging with her body—bowed forward in an arch that was needy and shameless; with the same throaty whimper that had brought them to this point in the first place. The one that apparently did the trick, because in the next second she had what she wanted—Garrett’s tongue thrusting past her parted lips, rolling against her own, delivering a deeper, more potent version of the moan he’d been talking about in the process, ensuring they were in fact together in this desperation.
And that was the most intoxicating part of it all. They were together.
Another thrust and the hands gripping her hips tightened. And then she was sucking lightly over his tongue, gasping at the flick of it against her bottom lip, getting lost in all the places only this man had been able to take her—in the physical sensations unique to being with him, in the slide of his arms around her back so one hand came to rest across her bottom and thigh and the other wound into her hair and tightened there so she felt his hold against a thousand points of contact within her skin.
Oh, and she knew what he was going to do next—whimpered in anticipation of a repeat of the move that had haunted her nights so relentlessly.
Garrett’s lips curled against her