Ross 01 Unleashed (15 page)

It wasn’t just her hair. It was the way his gaze lingered on her flesh. It was his nearness, the memory of him inside her, taking her to heights never before accessed…she still felt lush and sensitive and wanton. He sat to her left, and she wanted to get her hands on him under this tablecloth. She found herself inching her left knee toward him, trying to find contact with solid muscle. But it was a frustrating effort, so she tried to focus on the scenery.

“This is beautiful,” she said, gazing out at the waves rolling in on the beach, the whitecaps glowing in the moonlight. “I never could have taken a trip like this without you.”

Evan sipped his wine. “Sure you could have.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh yeah? How do you figure?”

“You can do anything you want to. I know times are tight for you right now. But it won’t always be that way.”

“You really are a glass-is-half-full kinda guy, aren’t you? I always knew it, but really, sometimes it’s just too much.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t change that about you,” she said quickly. “I love it. But…I don’t think you know what it’s like to have to struggle.”

“Well, if you’re speaking strictly about finances, I guess you’re right. But if you’re thinking it isn’t sometimes a struggle for me to keep my rose-colored glasses after the things I’ve seen on the job, my dear, you’re mistaken.” He chucked her gently under her chin. “Some days it takes everything I am to walk into that courtroom.”

The breeze blew a strand of his hair across his forehead and she reached up to move it away. It was becoming one of her favorite things to do. “Sorry. I need more optimism in my life, I know it. And I know you’ve seen some terrible things. I would never want your job to turn you into a cynic.”

His eyes were distant for a moment, and she knew she’d just conjured up images of gruesome murders and sexual assaults and child abuse.
Great job, Kels
. “It won’t,” he said. “If it ever starts to, I can always do something else. See? There’s always a way out.”

A little candle flickered in its votive cup in the center of their table. She found herself mesmerized by the little pinprick of light reflected in Evan’s eyes as he looked at her. He must have seen something similar in hers, because he was studying her intently. Then his fingers crept over her bare shoulder, pushing away a curl. She shivered at the touch.

“Do you remember a lot about college?” he asked. “About stuff we used to do?”

The unexpected question made her laugh. “Of course. I think I remember every minute.” Every minute with him, anyway. “It all went by too fast.”

“You must have missed a week of classes to take care of me that week I had the flu. I think about that a lot. I came out of my NyQuil coma to find most of the notes from my classes there waiting for me and an extension on my Constitutional Law paper.”

“I felt so bad for you. You were miserable.”

“Yeah—well, it’s hard to remember a lot, with the angel of death hovering over my bed at the time.” He grinned. “But I had an angel of mercy fighting him off. Shoving chicken soup and orange juice down my throat. Keeping me bundled up and taking my temperature every ten minutes. I swear, Kelsey, I don’t know what I’d have done without you. Imagine how terrible I felt when you caught it the very next week.”

She shrugged, then laughed. “You returned the favor. If you’d left me to rot in my room, then I might’ve been pissed.”

And she couldn’t in a millennium be upset over just
how
she suspected she’d contracted his death flu. It had been enough to give her shivers for years…and even now. Early on in his illness, she’d been particularly worried about him one night when his fever spiked. She hadn’t wanted to leave him. Whichever girl he’d been seeing at the time had been terrified of catching what he had and refused to come around. Evan had fallen into a fitful sleep watching Letterman, and Kelsey had lain in his bed next to him, watching him toss and turn and groan, until she dozed off.

In the middle of the night, she’d awakened with his feverish arm across her waist, pulling her to him, his breath hot against her ear. He’d been sound asleep, but still reaching for her. She’d let him snuggle against her and absorb her warmth, because even though he was burning her through their clothes he’d been shivering like he was freezing. So had she, just from his nearness. She’d wanted so desperately to turn and kiss him, put her hands all over him, germs and all. He probably wouldn’t have even known who she was at that moment. The half-terrified virgin in her had held her still.

When she’d awakened later, she’d found him on the couch, and the pain of that had been brutal. Still, those few minutes in his arms had been worth the misery of the illness that followed. Over the years, her mind had taken that moment and expanded it into some pretty delicious fantasies.

“After I caught it, you practically wrote a paper for me, didn’t you?” she asked, forcing herself to snap out of it. She had reality now, and it was ten times more delicious. “I’m like you, I barely remember anything about that week.” Except for him only leaving her side to attend the most crucial classes…and only then because she begged him to go since he’d already missed so much.

“Your prof wouldn’t budge on the due date because you’d had over a month to do it already, but some of that you’d spent taking care of me. So I outlined your Juvenile Justice paper for you. You did the rest. Though I did proofread it, and honestly, it looked like a monkey had written it. In the dark. So I fixed it for you.”

“Jeopardizing our future careers,” she said, shaking her head.

He waved a hand dismissively. “They never would have figured it out. I looked back through some of your old papers to see if you had any quirks I needed to know about. I can be pretty crafty when I need to be.”

“So I’ve seen,” she said, leaning forward for a kiss. He moved to meet her, only he paused inches away.

“You’ve always been there for me. It’s never gone unappreciated, Kelsey, even if I neglect to tell you often enough.”

“I know,” she whispered. “You didn’t have to say anything. You were always there for me, too.”

“I always wondered why you gave a damn about me.”

She sat back. “Why would you wonder that?”

“Because I was a shit back then, and you know it.” He laughed. “When it came to most of my relationships and even my friendships, I was the proverbial bull in a china shop.”

“I never saw that in you. I’ll admit, that day in class when Dr. Roberts assigned us to work together, and I didn’t know you, I thought, ‘Great, I know who’ll be doing all the work on this project. Me.’ Because every day you walked in class like you owned it and you sat with a horde of giggling females around you, always flirting with them and pulling out their hairclips…”

He was shaking his head self-deprecatingly now, covering his eyes. If the lighting weren’t so dim out here, she would swear he was blushing. She couldn’t tell him that aside from the dread she’d felt toward doing one hundred percent of the work that lay ahead, her heart had flipped over on itself at the thought of even
possibly
spending time with him. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. “But then I got to know you,” she went on. “You weren’t stuck on yourself at all. I thought…you were amazing, and I felt bad for stereotyping you like I did at first. I was so glad that you still seemed to want to be friends with me after we were finished working together.”

“You really kept my feet on the ground back then. You came into my life at a time when I could’ve thrown it all away.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I was slipping. I was twenty. There was always a party to go to or people to see. It was becoming more important than what I was there for. Then you came along. Cracking your whip, keeping me in line.”

She smoothed her napkin in her lap, a little smile curling her lips. “Are you saying I helped you become the man you are today?”

Evan threw back his head and laughed. “I guess so, honey. God only knows where I’d be without you.” He took another sip of wine, his gaze meeting hers over the rim.

She wanted to ask him, if she was so important, why he hadn’t wanted her back then. Why, no matter what she did, he seemed to look at her as nothing more than a little sister. It wasn’t that she was an ugly-duckling-turned-swan case. She was barely any different now than she’d been at twenty. Maybe a few more wrinkles, and just after her divorce she’d discovered her first gray hair, which had sent her into another tailspin. But the same twenty-year-old Evan had ignored sexually, he’d ravished at thirty. It shouldn’t matter anymore, except that she still had a few old wounds from it that had been left to fester all these years. They’d been reopened after the debacle her life had become.

Kelsey couldn’t ask him about any of that. She might not like what he had to say.

Their food arrived, and she tried to focus on just how heavenly her coconut shrimp tasted.
Exist in the moment
, she told herself. Awesome food, awesome scenery and the company she most craved on this earth. Forget old hurts, don’t anticipate new ones. It was hard for her, who’d grown so accustomed to looking at the dark side of things. To waiting for the axe to fall. She wished she could be like Evan, who did see that glass as half full and would argue his case to death. Just for that alone, she admired him more than she could ever tell him.

He fascinated her. Every move he made, her eyes followed it. For the thousandth time, she wondered what it was about him that kept her so riveted. Why she shivered at the simple way he held his wineglass, or his fork, or his pen when he signed the credit card slip with a flourish. Why those little things never struck her from other people. Never had she salivated just watching the way Todd’s lips touched the rim of his glass.

Kelsey was taking a sip of her own water when Evan’s hand slid over her naked knee, and she nearly spit it out at the shock of his touch. Maybe
that
was why. She was imagining that touch on her flesh, not some inanimate object that couldn’t appreciate it. His fingertips slid beneath the hem of her flimsy black-and-white print skirt and over the flesh of her inner thigh, leaving little trails of fire. She set her glass down, trying to retain her composure when she wanted to erupt out of her chair and straddle him where he sat.

“You have the softest skin I’ve ever touched,” he murmured, and it was only then she dared to look him in the eyes. In the dimness, they were dark, unreadable. As if there was hardly a sliver of green around his pupils. Aroused.

“Evan…” She trailed away when his fingers crept as far up her leg as they could without him leaning over and looking too obvious. It wasn’t far enough. She inched down in her seat, just barely, surely imperceptibly, and spread her legs, thanking God this tablecloth was so long. His touch slid higher. Still not enough. “Oh, God.”

“I think we’ve tortured ourselves enough today,” he said, watching her. “Are you ready to head back?”

Her breath was a shudder. Last night, every minute of it, was a blazing beacon in her thoughts. She wanted that again. All of it. Unable to speak, she nodded.

He remembered everything about that night he’d been so sick. He remembered waking up with her in his arms, so hard it hurt. When it became impossible to lie still next to her without the urge to grind his aching cock into her backside, he’d had to get up, gulp more Tylenol and crash on the couch. She’d looked so tired he hadn’t wanted to wake her.

All that day one single scary thought had been at the forefront of his mind:
This girl is wife material
. It had been thoughts like that one that sent him running for the hills, desperate to replace it with rationalizations.
This is your very good, very sweet, very
virginal
friend. Yes, she’s pretty. Yes, she’s perfect. She’s everything you should want to find in someone. Which is why you’re going to keep your dick far, far away from her. You have a girlfriend. Don’t do it, don’t be that guy.

The years had only removed all those inhibitions. “Wife material” wasn’t such a terrifying concept anymore. Someone who was perfect for him was to be treasured, not run from. No girlfriends anywhere in sight. And he couldn’t wait to get inside Kelsey again.

Evan had always found it quite hard, though not at all unpleasant, to drive with a scorching hot woman trying to crawl into his lap. Planting nibbling, sucking little kisses along his throat. Her hands doing unspeakable things in unspeakable places, driving him out of his mind. God, but Kelsey was going to get it when he could stop this vehicle. He only hoped he could wait to get into the suite to give it to her. She didn’t know how close she was to inducing him to pull over into some dark lot, drag her onto his lap and impale her on his cock right here where he sat. He didn’t think she would complain. And God knew at this point he probably wouldn’t last long enough to get them busted. She had him ready to blow.

“Honey,” he groaned as she nibbled his earlobe and gave his stiff shaft a long, hard stroke through his pants. “I’m concerned for the safety of the public right now.”

“I trust you,” she murmured, moving her lips around to the corner of his mouth. “I think the public is in good hands.”

“Mmm, and I think you’re about to be.”

“God, Evan, I’m so wet.”

He nearly drove off the road. The need to take his hand off the wheel and investigate her claim was almost more than he could resist. It would be easy; she was so close, half kneeling in her seat, and if they hadn’t almost reached the hotel he’d probably exhort her to sit and put her seatbelt on. In the interest of safety, and all. But what she was doing felt so good, and they’d be there in a minute…

He managed to squeeze into a darkened space without grazing any other vehicle. It was a miracle. Kelsey’s hands were under his shirt, her lips wet and hot on the side of his neck. He was hard enough to break rocks, barely managing to shove the gearshift into Park before he grabbed her face between his palms and kissed her deeply, thoroughly. She moaned and crawled over him, her hands twisting in his hair.