Only Tyler (18 page)

“Ah, Katie!” He pulled her into his arms and held her against the length of his hard, tense body. “I definitely objected. The thought of you marrying anyone other than me ripped my gut out. The knowledge that you’re with Steve…” His voice broke, and he finished in a gruff whisper. “It hurts, Katie. It hurts so damn much.”

Tension radiated through his body. He lay stiff and rigid, and his arms tightened and loosened around her.

“We… we wouldn’t be hurting so much if you’d been open from the start.” If he’d just trusted her a little.

“I know that, Katie. I wish I had been. I wish I’d had more faith in you. In us. Knowing I didn’t…” His low groan of pain reverberated through both of them.

Her heart began to ache. It ached because they now found themselves in a tangled web. It ached because Tyler had hurt her, and because she’d hurt Tyler, and because now they were about to cause a man they both loved immeasurable grief.

It ached because no matter what had happened since he’d left, and no matter why he’d left, she still loved him. There was no way this intolerable situation could be resolved without someone getting more hurt.

Tyler’s hand caught in her hair. “Love me, Katie. Please. Love me as much as I love you.” He shifted beneath her, and his cock twitched and grew. “Take our pain away.”

Their lips met in a desperate kiss. His chest mashed against her breasts. His erection wedged below her belly, and his tongue delved into her mouth, possessing her, claiming her.

God, yes, she’d take the pain away. Even if only for a night. She’d make damn sure neither of them felt anything put pure, unadulterated pleasure.

Tonight there would be no more pain.

She pulled away from him to kiss his jaw and his neck and down to his chest.

Tonight was theirs. Whatever tomorrow might bring it would not interfere with now. Not when the flavor of the man she loved filled her mouth, making it water. Not when she inhaled him with every breath, or smelled the dangerously sexy aroma of his aftershave. Not when her hands ran over the magnificent length of his lethal body.

And lethal it was. She pulled away. Lifted her head so she could study him.

He was bigger than before. The muscles in his previously lean arms were better defined. His shoulders a little broader. His chest, which had always made her want to burrow into it, now made her want to take up permanent residence. The grooves of his washboard abs and flat stomach tapered to slim hips. A sprinkle of hair dotted his chest, stopped, then resumed in a thin line from his navel down. She swallowed her hunger and caught his eye. Desire masked the pain in his gaze.

“Don’t stop,” he rasped, and she leaned forward and ran her tongue over his hard nipple. “Don’t ever stop, sweet Katie.”

Stop? She was just getting started but if she continued at their frenzied pace, it’d be over before it even began, and this night had to last they might not have any more.

When she lightly bit his nipple, his words were replaced by the deep, familiar hum in his throat. The sound echoed in her ears, rousing her own need.

She switched her attention to his other side, pulled the tiny bud into her mouth and circled it with her tongue. Meanwhile, she ran her hand over his stomach, lovingly tracing the grooves between the muscles of his abs. Before, she’d known every crease, every line on his body, and now she took her time learning them all again. Banishing their pain.

She moved lower, rediscovering his firm male flesh. When she kissed her way slowly down his chest, her hand found his shaft and wrapped around it.

He jerked into her palm with a low groan.

He was warm and thick and pulsing. Katie simply held him, glorying in the ability to touch him once again. Holding him, loving him, felt as familiar as breathing and as exhilarating as freefalling from a plane.

She lay her head on his stomach. Holding his cock, she ran her thumb over the tip, spreading the pearly beads of moisture over his head. He thickened, and his groan rumbled beneath her ear.

She reached out with her tongue, catching the moisture, and he yanked reflexively on her hair. It stung mildly, erotically. She licked her way down his shaft, circling so as not to miss a single centimeter.

She caressed first one testicle and then the other, and when she wrapped her lips around him and took him in her mouth, he tightened in her hand.

He murmured above her. “Katie. Sweet, sweet Katie.”

She worked him with her lips and her tongue, then opened up and took him in as deep as she could. He called her name again.

Tyler’s responses to her ministrations, and the way his fingers tangled in her hair, massaging her scalp, fanned the flames building between her legs.

Moisture slid down her inner thighs. More than anything she wanted him moving inside her. Wanted to reconnect with him. Wanted to take their pain away.

He must have sensed her need for the hands in her hair became more insistent, tugging her head upwards until Katie was forced to release him.

“It’s too good, my sweet,” he said hoarsely. “If you carry on like that it’ll be over too soon.”

She arched an eyebrow. “And that’s a problem?” His balls were still in her hand, and she stroked them.

He laughed a gruff, hoarse laugh. “At another time, no. But now I want to savor you. Savor us.”

She grabbed a condom from the bedside table and sheathed him with it.

“Come here.” He held his arms open to her, and without a moment’s hesitation, she straddled him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

For a moment he stared into her eyes and took her breath away with the depth of emotion she saw reflected in them.

Tyler loved her. If she’d ever had any doubts, he’d silenced them.

With a contented sigh, she rolled over onto her back, and he followed. In seconds, his cock touched her aching folds. She didn’t question it, didn’t think. She merely opened up and invited him in. He drove into her, filling her, completing her. Her naked breasts pressed into his chest, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, taking him deeper. His mouth found her lips. Their kiss was both tender and steamy. It tasted of love and of sex, and as his tongue explored hers, she became more aroused, more incited.

She moaned and twisted, and was rewarded with a deep thrust.

Slow and unhurried, he pulled back and thrust in again. Slow and unhurried, she matched his movements, lifting up, and sliding back down. Tonight was theirs, and they took it, making love in the soft glow of the moon as close as a man and a woman could get.

Katie dropped her head back as pleasure coiled through her. Tyler leaned down and caressed her breasts with his mouth. The sensation that unfurled as his tongue stroked her nipples and his cock drove into her was shockingly delicious. Shocking enough to kick her need up to another level, delicious enough to make her want it to go on and on and on.

“So wet,” he murmured as he glided into her. “So hot.”

She gasped as his tongue found her nipple again. His muscles rippled beneath her hands as his actions intensified, as his thrusts became more ardent. Her control began to crack. Lust turned to urgency. Tyler drove into her, called her name, and her world splintered. Pleasure pure, unadulterated pleasure flowed through her as wave upon wave of ecstasy hit her. Just as she thought the waves might subside, he stiffened above her and his restraint fractured.

Tyler’s orgasm triggered fresh waves of sensation, and they came together, lost in the rapture they’d found in each other’s bodies again.

When it was over, he collapsed in Katie’s arms, and she collapsed back against the bed. The two of them lay there, spent, until they finally drifted off into a deep, satisfied sleep.

The guilt woke her. It tapped mercilessly at her head, making sleep impossible. As she lay in Tyler’s arms, spooned against his chest and his legs, with his warm breath on her neck, all she could think about was the fact that she was an adulterous bitch.

She’d betrayed her fiancé.

She’d slept with another man.

Remorse clawed at her stomach, which clenched in its attempt to absorb the blame. She’d cheated on Steve.

Katie’d had some low moments in the past. She’d done things she’d regretted, but never had she committed a crime of this magnitude before. How could she live with herself? How could she face Steve, knowing what she’d done? She was lower than life. She was a rat. Nope.

That was too good for her. She was a flea on a rat. A filthy flea on a disease-riddled rat.

And she still lay in her lover’s arms.

Quietly, so as not to wake him, Katie removed Tyler’s hand from her waist and slipped from the bed. He muttered incoherently, rolled over and continued sleeping.

She tiptoed into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Even the pulsing jets could not wash away her guilt. Though the soap and hot water removed the last sticky traces of their lovemaking, it could not clean her sullied actions.

She’d cheated on Steve.

For a long time she stood under the streams of water, hardly conscious of the stinging as the hot liquid washed over the scratches on her back. The scratches she’d inflicted on herself as she’d ground her shoulders against the rock while she and Tyler made love again for the first time. On some level she wished the pain was worse. At least that way she’d be punished for her deeds.

Her body refused to cooperate with her head. While guilt and self-recrimination ate away at her mind, her breasts still tingled in the aftermath of their pleasure. Her legs felt pleasantly stiff, and her groin still hummed in tune to Tyler’s passion. Just thinking about him made her body tighten. The drumming of the water against her skin felt like the soft caress of a lover’s hand.

Tyler loved her. He’d never stopped. He’d left because he thought he might have an incurable, insufferable disease.

Thank God he didn’t.

Now what was Katie supposed to do? She was torn between two lovers. Torn between the man she fantasized about and the man she intended to marry.

She loved Tyler with her heart and her soul and her body.

She also loved Steve, the man she’d committed herself to for the rest of her life. Not in the same way she loved Tyler, but she loved him nevertheless.

It was up to her to decide where to go from here. She could break off her engagement and be with Tyler at the expense of the man who’d offered her nothing but love and support and friendship for over seven years. Or, she could follow through on her threats yesterday and insist Tyler leave at the expense of losing the only man who made her feel alive.

One thing was for sure. She couldn’t go another day cheating on Steve.

She had to make a choice, and she had to make it soon. What the hell was she supposed to do? No matter what actions she took now, someone was going to get hurt and she was going to be the one doing the hurting.

A noose around her neck couldn’t have been more frightening than that knowledge.

She turned off the water, dried quickly, cleaned her teeth and with a towel wrapped around her breasts, padded out of the bathroom.

Tyler shifted as she walked into the bedroom. “Why didn’t you wake me?” He looked at her, all sleepy, and smiled. “You know what showering with you does to me.”

Just like that her body dissolved. Regardless of the remorse that drilled away at her, she was aroused again. Her heart rate increased, racing in her chest.

“Tyler, we need to talk.” She tried her best to sound severe, but her voice was breathless, and it ruined the stern effect.

He kicked the doona off the bed, exposing her to all his naked glory and what a glory it was. His erection stood proud and thick and she couldn’t stop herself from staring or licking her lips as molten heat pooled between her legs.

“C’mon over here,” he invited, his voice low and sexy. “We can talk in a few minutes.”

“No.” She shook her head, although the effort nearly killed her.

“We have to talk now.” She pulled the chair away from her dressing table and sat, crossing her legs primly in the process. The wicked smile on his face and the lascivious glint in his eyes as his gaze followed her movements told her the towel covered far less than she’d assumed.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said, flustered. Hurriedly, she uncrossed her legs and sat with her knees pressed firmly together. “I mean it. We need to talk.”

He sat up slowly and stretched his lithe body. She stared spellbound as the supple muscles rippled under his skin. Each one was clearly delineated as his arms reached above his head and his chest was pushed outward. Her mouth watered and she bit back a whimper.

“So let’s talk about last night,” he said. “It was good, Katie, wasn’t it?”

He flipped his legs over the edge of the bed and stood, his hard body wickedly tempting.

She fixed her gaze on his face, determined not to look down as he walked towards her. He dropped to his knees in front of her.

“It was more than just good, Katie,” he said. “It was damned near perfect.”

As he spoke he reached for the towel, right where she’d tucked it neatly against her breasts, and began to unravel it.

Katie gasped and clamped her arm against her chest, holding the towel and his hand in place. If he touched her bare skin she’d be history. No way she could hold a reasonable conversation while he held her. “It doesn’t matter how good it was,” she spluttered. “It was wrong.

We shouldn’t have slept together.”

“Sweetheart, the only thing wrong with last night was the two years before it when we weren’t making love.” His voice was so damned sexy in that just-woken-up state she could have curled up in it forever.

As he spoke, his free hand trailed up her calf, edging its way around and up to her inner thigh.

He left a trail of fire in his wake. Try as she might, she couldn’t find the energy to shake him off. She couldn’t even find the energy to hold her legs together. They parted slowly beneath his arousing touch.

“It felt so right making love to you again.” Ty sighed. “So familiar.

Only better, more exciting. Because this time you know the truth. This time we can have a future.”