Foreplay: The Ivy Chronicles (10 page)

Emerson scanned the crowded room and pointed. “There. We can get that table.”

A quick glance revealed that the table was occupied by two guys who were already ogling Emerson in her miniskirt. Georgia followed her through the throng, leaving me in line. I waited patiently, creeping forward until I stood at the counter.

Reece’s back was to me. I watched the dark fabric of his T-shirt stretch as he bent and then straightened. When he turned around, his gaze landed on me. He stilled for a moment, his light blue eyes sharpening. “What are you doing here?”

I moistened my lips and looked self-consciously at the people squished on each side of me, not happy about publicizing our conversation but not seeing any other choice.

Ignoring everyone else, I spoke over the din. “I wanted to see you.”

He lifted a dark eyebrow—the one with the piercing—as he filled the pitcher. “Yeah? Funny, considering the last time we talked you ran off like someone shouted ‘Fire.’ ”

He handed off the pitcher and collected money from a customer, a girl who looked me up and down like I was something dirty stuck to the sole of her shoe.

I glared at her until she moved on and then looked back at Reece. “That wasn’t exactly a conversation.”

“No?”

“It was more like an inquisition.”

His lips curved in a twisted semblance of a smile. “Call it whatever you like. I’ve got you pegged now,
Nice Girl
.”

I bristled at this, especially the way he said it—like the last thing he considered me to be anymore was nice. “You don’t know me.” No one did.

“Yeah. The spoiled little college girl didn’t like what she was hearing so she ran away.”

Okay, maybe that was partly true. But I wasn’t spoiled.

Ultimately, he was calling me a coward. Weak. A small voice whispered through my mind like a chill wind:
Isn’t that what you do? What you’ve done all your life? Ever since Mom dumped you? Run. Hide. Bury yourself away from the world. Obsess over a boy who doesn’t know you exist. At least not in the way you want to exist for him. Pretend you belong to a family that isn’t yours.

My eyes started to burn from the cruel barrage of thoughts. I sucked a breath into my squeezing-tight lungs and held my ground, refusing to run away again just because the conversation wasn’t going my way. “I came here to apologize.”

He stared at me for a long moment, ignoring the girl who stepped up in front of him, money clutched in her hand. She stared at him expectantly, but he continued to look at me. She finally moved on to another bartender.

I twisted my fingers together until they were numb and bloodless. “I’d heard rumors about your brother. I had a description of him . . . and just assumed it was you that first night. Maybe I wanted it to be you. After you helped me with my car that night, I wanted it to be you,” I admitted with a single nod.

He continued to stare at me, doing nothing to ease my embarrassment.

I kept talking. “It was dumb. I’m sorry. I came here looking for . . .” I couldn’t say it. It was just too mortifying.

He crossed his arms over his chest, waiting. It was an intimidating pose. No one approached him at the bar looking like that. They took one look at him, looking at me, and swerved for another bartender. Maybe I should have turned away, too.

Except I had come here to do this.

“I—” Stopping, I gathered my breath, my courage, and plunged ahead: “There’s this guy I’ve liked forever, and I’m not exactly experienced, but I thought it would help if I could gain some experience from someone who knows what he’s doing. You know. If I could be better at . . . at stuff. The intimate stuff. All the girl-guy action.” I released my fingers and motioned between me and him.

There. I’d said it. And it sounded every bit as bad as I thought it would.

I met his gaze head on, hoping the fact that I was shaking inside didn’t show on the outside.

He revealed nothing. It was as though my words made no impact on him whatsoever. He was like some kind of stoic, hard-faced soldier staring down the enemy. Only that enemy was me.

Finally, he spoke. “So you’re saying you’re looking for a fuck buddy?”

I felt as much as saw a guy beside me swing his attention toward me. “Sweet.” He leaned in, his shoulder brushing mine.

“W-what?” I stammered. “No!”

Reece swung his hard stare on the other guy. “Get. Lost. Now.”

The guy held up both hands defensively and backed away.

I inhaled again, fighting for composure. I’d said enough. I apologized. I did what I came here for. I could leave now. “I just wanted to say I was sorry.”

Turning, I moved back through the bar, making a line for the table where Emerson and Georgia waited. I hoped they didn’t want to stay. I just wanted to go home. The embarrassment was still there, but like a Band-Aid ripped off, the sting was already fading. Hopefully by tomorrow I wouldn’t feel it at all. All of this would be a dim memory. My time hanging out at Mulvaney’s had come to an end. For some reason, that idea gave me another sting.

The girls spotted me and waved me over, their eyes bright with questions. They paid very little notice to the guys working so hard for their attention as I explained how the conversation with Reece had gone. Suddenly Emerson’s gaze drifted just beyond my shoulder. Her eyes grew huge in her face.

I swiveled around at the exact moment Reece reached me. I opened my mouth and started to say something over the pulsing din of the bar. I’m not even sure what I meant to say because his hand wrapping around mine shoved every thought out of my head. Speech was impossible.

Chapter 12

H
is strong fingers surrounded mine while his gaze scanned my face, scrutinizing me, searching me in a way that made me squirm.

The room throbbed noisily in my ears. A glass broke near the bar and he didn’t even look that way. Without a word, he turned, pulling me after him. I marveled at how bodies seemed to part for him. He didn’t even use his elbows. He simply cut through the crowd.

“Where are we going?” I shouted at his back, recovering my voice.

He didn’t even glance behind him. And yet I knew he heard me. His fingers tightened ever so slightly around my hand.

A horrible thought seized me. As we passed the long length of bar and stepped onto the ramp that led into the smaller back room where food was served, I gave voice to it. “Are you throwing me out?”

As mortifying as that would be, he could do that. He worked here, after all. Would he? Had it come to that?

We approached the counter where a girl in the classic Mulvaney’s T-shirt scrawled orders onto a notepad and then stuck the slips of paper behind her onto a spinner for the cooks.

The line for food was much shorter than the line for drinks, but a few people waited there already, eager for a burger to go with their beer. We bypassed them. Reece lifted the countertop and pulled me after him. The girl taking food orders looked up.

“Mike’s in charge,” he told her.

Her gaze flicked from him to me and her mouth sagged open in a small O of surprise.

We walked through the kitchen, past the two fry cooks with nets over their heads. Reece stopped in front of a pantry door. He pulled out a set of keys, unlocked it, and pulled the door wide open.

Peering inside, I didn’t see the shelves of supplies I expected. A set of stairs stretched up ahead of us. He pulled me in behind him and locked the door.

My heartbeat quickened. Blood rushed to my ears at the proximity of him. At our sudden aloneness. Instantly the sounds of the bar were muffled, like someone had just lowered the volume on a remote control.

A light glowed from the top of the stairs, saving us from total darkness. Not that we lingered long at the bottom of the stairs. He pulled me after him, his warm fingers still folded over mine.

Our steps thudded on the wood stairs, reverberating in the narrow space. The steps abruptly cleared to a wide open room. Wood floors, brick walls. Some interesting framed photographs were scattered here and there. On the walls. Leaning against a bookcase. The area was large, equipped with a bed, office space, and living area. A kitchen occupied the far right corner. A dark couch sat in front of a big screen. Otherwise not too much decor. Typical guy pad, I assumed. Not that I had been inside many. He released my hand and sank down onto a chair. I watched dumbly as he unlaced his boots.

“You live here?” I managed to get out.

“Yeah.” Just that. A single monosyllable. The first boot hit the floor. He didn’t look up at me as he worked on his second boot.

“Just you?” Duh. Did I think all the bartenders slept up here?

He shot me a quick look. “I own the place.”

“Mulvaney’s? You own it?”

“It’s been in my family for fifty years. I’m Reece Mulvaney. My dad ran it until two years ago. Now I do.”

“Oh.” I don’t know why that changed anything, but suddenly it did.

Suddenly I felt
more
uncomfortable. He’d grown up in this place. He’d seen it all. Everything. All manner of silly, horny college students traipsing through the doors. I thought of my earlier confession to him. That I’d come here looking for experience.
God
. He must think I was the silliest of them all.

I buried my hands in my tight pockets, watching, waiting for him to say something else. To explain what it was he was thinking. What we were doing here.

What
I
was doing here.

He stood back up in one fluid motion. He moved like some kind of jungle cat. Effortless and graceful. His eyes settled on me intently, glowing in that strange way, like lit from within.

He approached—not fast, but with easy strides.

He stopped before me, leaving only an inch between us. I couldn’t breathe. The air left me, but I couldn’t draw it back in. I fixed my gaze on his chest, suddenly too overcome with nerves to look up at his face, and that posed a whole new problem for me. Because I could only think how broad, how hard his chest looked. I could only gawk at the golden skin peeking out of his collar.

Then his hands were on my face, his palms cupping my cheeks, his fingers burrowing into my hair. My scalp tightened and tingled. He forced my face up. I saw a flash of his pale blue eyes before his head descended, and everything else was lost except this. Him. His lips on mine. Blistering hot.

There was just his mouth, his hands gripping my face, my head. His tongue stroked my bottom lip. I gasped and he took advantage, sweeping inside, and I was full of the taste of him. I leaned forward, melting into him. His hard length against me made me feel giddy, boneless. Sensation overwhelmed me. There was no mistaking his power, his strength. It radiated from him in waves, and as heady as all of that—all of
him
—was, it also frightened me a little. Like one of those rides at the amusement park that dropped you from the sky and then jerked you back up a second before smacking to earth. I felt far from safe right now.

I broke for air, panicked and gasping. “Wait, please.” My voice trembled as I looked toward the stairs, assessing my escape options. My eyes did a quick scan, confirming what I already knew. I was totally at his mercy up here.

How insane was this scenario? I let him lead me upstairs to this room. I didn’t do that. That wasn’t who I was.

“What?” His voice was steady, his hands still cupping my face, each of his long fingers a searing imprint.

I fought the dark cravings that urged me to throw myself back at him and continue kissing. I gulped a breath, commanding myself to think this through and ignore the little voice in my head (that sounded a lot like Emerson) urging me to jump his bones.

Avoiding his gaze, I inspected his loft like I might find a solution in the large space. My attention strayed to the bed. And stayed there. The activity in the bar was a low, steady drone beneath us. Like the rumbling from the belly of a beast. For all that it reminded me that there were people below us, we might as well have been on a deserted island. We were well and truly alone. It was just me and him. Us.

He must have read some of my anxiety. His hands flexed on my face. I snapped my gaze back up as his head dipped. He kissed me, capturing my bottom lip with his teeth. My belly did another dive. His teeth released my lip and he licked the tender flesh.

I whimpered.

His lips moved against my mouth, talking. “Don’t worry. I don’t do virgins.”

And then he was kissing me again, his tongue sweeping inside my mouth, his hands diving through my hair and holding my head, angling me for the hot pressure of his lips, giving me no chance for speech. As if I could form coherent words.

Only two thoughts pounded through me.
Oh, shit, is it so obvious that I’m a virgin?
And:
Why is he bothering with me at all if there’s no chance of sex in this for him?

All that quickly became irrelevant, however. His mouth consumed me, obliterating everything else. The kiss went on and on. His tongue explored me, tasting until I grew more confident. I touched his tongue with the tip of mine. He made a low growling sound of approval and wrapped an arm around my waist. In one move, he lifted me off my feet just enough so that he could walk me across the loft. The tips of my boots skimmed the floor. I gave a little squeak. My hands clung to him, arms wrapping tightly around shoulders that tensed and corded.

When he stopped, his arms loosened around me. I slid down the length of him, my feet returning to the floor. My head, however, remained lost somewhere in the clouds. Or, more precisely, lost somewhere between the taste of his mouth and the sensation of his body against mine.

Suddenly the warm rasp of his callused hand against my cheek disappeared.

He backed away.

I bit back a moan of disappointment and stopped myself just short of reaching for him and pulling him back by the front of his shirt.

With his eyes trained on me, he sank down on the bed, leaving me standing in front of him. I shifted on my feet, unsure what was happening now and trying for all I was worth to look sophisticated and at ease. Pointless. He had called me out as a virgin, after all. And I had admitted I came here looking for experience. That kind of outted me.

His pale eyes gleamed in the dim, red-gold light from the floor lamp.

Deciding to act, I stepped forward to follow him, but he shook his head at me, those eyes of his glittering like shards of glass. Leaning back on the mattress, he propped his elbows on the bed, looking deceptively casual.

“Take off your clothes.” The request was anything but casual, and yet he uttered it as though he were asking me to pass the salt.

An odd strangled sound rose up in my throat. I fought it, pushed it back down, and tried for speech that sounded halfway normal. “What?”

He angled his head to one side, studying me. “You wanted to learn foreplay. Isn’t that why you came here looking for my brother?”

My face heated at that reminder.

“Well, you got me.” He announced this like he was somehow second best. Which was ridiculous. Logan was hot, but he looked like he belonged as a lead in a boy band. Reece. Reece was something else entirely. “Now. Take off your clothes.”

My hands trembled. If not for his reassurance that he didn’t
do
virgins, I’d be running for the door. Probably.

I moistened my lips and my stomach tightened at the way his eyes followed the tiny movement. He missed nothing. Swallowing, I asked, “Isn’t that kind of skipping foreplay and getting right to it?”

“I’m the one with the experience. Are you going to trust me?”

It was my turn to look him over, splayed so deliciously upon the bed, so effortlessly hot. Like picking up virgins from the bar and bringing them up here was something he did all the time. I didn’t think that was the case, but the green monster of jealousy still crept up on me. I didn’t want to consider whether he had done this before. That he had reclined there on his bed and invited other girls to take off their clothes for him. Even though the presumption of his experience was what brought me to this moment, I wanted to think I was the first to see the inside of this room.

“Should I trust you?” I lifted my chin in an attempt to look braver than I felt. “It’s not as though I know you.” But I did. At least a little. I knew he was the kind of guy who helped a female stranded alongside the road. I knew he was good with kids. He was also the kind of guy to get offended when he was mistaken for his man-whore of a brother. He had scruples.

“We’re not going to do anything you don’t want to do,” he explained. “Taking off your clothes . . . looking sexy doing it.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “Well, that’s a hell of a turn-on. And isn’t that what you want to learn? How to turn a guy on? A particular guy, right?”

Hunter. Yes. My mind leaped upon the memory of him. My purpose. The reason I was here. That was it exactly. I nodded.

“Good. Then what are you waiting for?”

What was I waiting for?
I bit my lip, trying to decide. Logic and the hot pulse of desire in my veins urged me on.
Yes. Just do it. Pretend the fear is gone, and live for once
.

“Here.” He sat up on the bed. “I’ll match you move for move,” he offered. Because guys like him were shy about getting naked. Right. As though that would somehow make me feel better about stripping off my clothes in front of him.

He reached behind his head and gathered a fistful of shirt. In one tug he pulled the dark gray fabric over his head.

An invisible band tightened around my chest. Holy sexiness. My gaze devoured him. Bronzed skin. Washboard abs. My mouth watered and dried simultaneously. I could see now that the tattoo that covered his arm snuck down onto his chest, the fauna design covering his left pectoral. There was also some kind of script stretching down along his rib cage. Words I couldn’t make out from where I stood.

“That’s just ridiculous,” I breathed, awe and lust swirling through me like some heady elixir. I didn’t even realize I said the words aloud until they filled the space between us, making that band around my chest squeeze tighter.

One corner of his mouth lifted, curling up ever so slightly. “Tip number one: Don’t call a guy ridiculous when he undresses in front of you. It might give him a complex.”

I could never imagine Reece having a complex. Not the way he looked.

I scanned the lean chest and flat belly cut with sharply defined muscles. I couldn’t stop ogling him. The waistband of his jeans hung low, revealing a thin strip of black waistband that belonged to his briefs.

“Your turn . . . I mean, if you’re done staring.”

I doubted I would ever be done staring at him.

I dragged my gaze from that delicious chest back to his face. His voice sounded different, rougher and deeper, a low rumble that caused a physical reaction in my skin. His eyes looked different, too. The pale blue was smoky, like a fog drifting in off the sea. He stared with a deep intensity that had my hands shaking as I reached for the hem of Georgia’s sweater.

I can do this.

I pulled it over my head quickly, before I lost my nerve. A quick glance down confirmed I wasn’t wearing my usual white cotton bra.
Thank God
. The pale pink satin cupped my breasts high. His gaze crawled over me, assessing, and I felt naked even though I was still wearing the bra. Come May there would be girls sunbathing on the quad in skimpier bikini tops than this.

“Nice,” he said softly.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t need to stand there like you’re facing a firing squad.” The rumble of his voice did nothing to ease my nerves. In fact, I might have jumped a little at the sound.

He scooted to the edge of the bed and stretched out an arm, reaching for me. His fingers curled around my wrist and pulled me forward, that half smile still there, hugging his lips. I moved into him with halting steps, both relieved and oddly disappointed that he was cutting short my striptease (but mostly relieved).