Burn (4 page)

“A
boxing match?”

“I bet you’d
love to take a few swings at me.”

Tate succumbed
to a real laugh for the first time since she’d laid eyes on him again, and
answered honestly. “I would.”

“Then let’s go
five rounds. I’ll even let you tie one of my arms behind my back.”

That should not
sound as dirty as it did. “Boxing’s not really my thing,” she said, hoping her
voice didn’t sound husky with arousal over the thought of tying him to the bed
and having her wicked way with him. It had been way too long since she’d gotten
herself properly laid. Maybe even since Ryan left. That thought alone was like being
dunked in an ice water bath.

“No, it’s
baseball.”

“Used to be,”
Tate said.

Another pastime
they’d enjoyed together, lazy Sunday afternoons watching the Braves play.
Overpriced beers, cold hot dogs, and more fun than two people ought to be
allowed to have together outside of a bed. Ryan would practically drag her out
of her apartment, insisting she needed the fresh air and a break from studying.
He’d been right, and they would have a blast. She hadn’t been able to bring
herself to attend another after he left, even when she’d had the time and the
offers.

“Tate?
You still there?”

“I’m here.”

“You don’t like
baseball anymore?”

Tate decided to continue
being forthright. Maybe if she told him the truth, he’d feel compelled to reciprocate.
“It’s not the same now, Ryan. It lost its appeal once you left.”

“Jesus, Tate.”
Even through the phone, she heard the regret in his voice, and it was starting
to weaken her armor more than she cared to admit. “You can’t possibly know how
sorry I am. If you’ll give me the chance, I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

 
“I need to get back to work,” she said. “I
just called to say thank you for the flowers and the food. They were both … really
sweet gestures, and incredibly generous.”

He sighed
heavily into the receiver. “I’m not giving up.”

She stood in the
middle of the sidewalk, watching as late afternoon faded into evening, her
heart a big sticky lump in her throat. “I know that, too.”

“Then will you
see me?”
A pause, then, “Please.”

Tears stung the
back of her eyes. “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay, fair
enough. Have a good night then.”

“You,
too.”

Tate hung up and
dropped her phone into her pocket, feeling almost as lost as the day Ryan
disappeared. She shivered from a gust of chilly air and hugged her arms closer
around her waist. Could she do this, let him back in? Did she want to risk it
after how badly it had devastated her before when it all ended so abruptly? Was
she being too hard on him and herself? After all, it could be great again,
amazing even. But trust was a hard thing to rebuild once it had been shattered
like a house of glass.

When Tate
reached the sliding doors to reenter the hospital, she realized she’d made
another mistake where Ryan and her resistance were concerned—he now had her
phone number.

****

Ryan had Wednesdays
off. It had been two days since Tate had called, and he was growing antsy. The
more time he let pass between
contact
, the more
momentum he lost in his fight to get her back.

He’d held off on
sending her anything last night because he didn’t want to press his luck too
much. And besides that, he’d heard something in her voice on the phone that had
sounded an awful lot like sadness near the end of their conversation. The last
thing he ever wanted to do was hurt her more.

So he’d
formulated a plan, a last ditch effort to try to see her face to face. He had a
hunch he wanted to explore. Tate might put up a solid self-protective front,
even more so when there was distance between them, but she was still attracted
to him physically. The kiss they’d shared in the parking garage had proven they
still had that connection, and he wasn’t above exploiting it.

His idea was sneaky
and could backfire, or it could be the catalyst to a resolution between them. If
she still resisted, he would back off. Not give up, but give her the space and
time to decide what she wanted. It would kill him, now that he’d seen her,
touched her, tasted her again, but he would. And if she decided she didn’t want
him back in her life, he’d have to live with that, too.

Grabbing his
phone before he could change his mind, he typed out a text.

“
You working
today?”

It felt like an
hour before his phone beeped with her response.
“No.
Doing laundry.
Why?”

“I
think my arm might be getting infected.”

“Describe
it.”

“Red.
Hot.
Swollen.”
Thank you, WebMD.
“Should I go back to the ER and have it
checked out?”

Another full
minute before she responded. And he realized too late she could say all sorts
of things. Things like “take a picture of it and send it to me”, or “yes, go to
the emergency room now!” or “I hope your arm rots off for what you did to me,
you asshole”.

But she didn’t.

“Give
me your address.”

Either she’d
seen through his ruse and was coming over to give him what for in person, or
she was genuinely concerned and willing to make a house call. Whatever it was,
he had his opportunity so he typed out his address and hit Send.

“Be
there in 20.”

Ryan raced
around the apartment, cleaning, hiding dirty clothes in his closet, and
pretentiously sticking a nice bottle of wine in the fridge to chill before
taking a quick shower. He had just finished redressing the burn on his arm and
pulling on a pair of clean jeans when his doorbell rang.

Sending up a
quick prayer, he opened the door.

Tate’s mouth
dropped open before she snapped it shut. “Do you always answer the door without
a shirt on?”

“I had just stepped
out of the shower when the doorbell rang.” He reached out and gently grasped
her wrist, urging her inside. He shut the door behind her then leaned his back
against it, blocking her from making a hasty exit. His conscience quickly got
the better of him. “I lied to you about my arm.”

Her green eyes narrowed
suspiciously.
“How so?”

“It’s fine. In
fact, it looks great. Hardly even hurts anymore. I wanted an excuse to see you
again.”

And see her he
did—the gorgeous face that haunted his dreams and those ruby lips that tasted
better than the most decadent dessert he’d ever sampled. Her fiery hair tumbled
down around her shoulders in soft, thick waves. She’d always cursed her
coloring. Ryan loved it. He wanted to spread her out and worship that alabaster
skin for days, kiss every tiny freckle he found.

The loose jeans
and pale blue oxford she wore only accentuated her slight build. She didn’t eat
well, never had. She needed someone to help take care of her, make sure she ate
a decent meal at least once a day. He could do that, if she didn’t kill him
first.

From the look on
her face, she was about to.

Chapter
Four

A small part of
Tate wanted to kill Ryan for tricking her, just reach out and wrap her hands
around his throat and squeeze the life right out of him.

But the larger
part of her, which unfortunately included the lady parts, wanted to touch him
for other reasons, reasons that she suspected dictated her actions when she’d
asked for his address rather than telling him to go back to the ER to be checked
out. Besides, if he had truly been concerned about his arm possibly being
infected, he wouldn’t have asked if she was working, he would’ve just gone to
the hospital. Ryan valued his limbs too much to risk losing them to something
like cellulitis or sepsis.

So that made her
almost as culpable as he was.

She couldn’t
concentrate while staring at him without a shirt on. His chest was too appealing
and distracting. All bulgy solid muscle over thick bone, smooth tan skin, his
areolas small and dark in …
Holy crap,
one of his nipples is pierced!

Before Tate
could stop herself, she’d reached for it as if it was some sort of intriguing
abnormality. She had seen piercings on patients naturally, but never one she
wanted to touch as badly as she did his.

She didn’t even
look up at his face for permission. When her fingers made contact with the
small silver hoop, he flinched but didn’t move to stop her. She shifted closer
then, running the tip of her finger around his nipple to watch it tighten,
before she gave the ring a little indulgent tug.

Ryan hissed
through his teeth, and his hands shot out to capture her hips, pulling her
flush to his body. The more she toyed with the jewelry, the stiffer his cock
grew against her stomach and the harder his fingertips dug into her
jean-covered skin. And she had to admit, she liked that she could cause that
reaction in him with such a simple touch. Feeling it made her wonder about
something else, though.

“You didn’t
pierce
your
…” Tate licked her lips, inexplicably shy
with her words all of a sudden. Her eyes jumped up to his.

“My
cock?”
He grinned. “No. I’m not that brave.”

“Or crazy.
I’ve
seen horror stories, trust me on that.”

 
“I can imagine. This was a drunken impulse
four years ago.”

She continued to
finger the jewelry. “If you take it out, the hole will grow up.”

“I started to,
but then … I kind of got used to it.”

Tate gave it
another tug, causing him to make a soft grunting noise in his throat. “And
there’s a direct correlation between the nerves in the nipple and the nerves in
the genitals.”

Ryan laughed,
pressing his erection against her stomach. “No kidding, Doc. I’m rock hard.
‘Course a lot of that has to do with the company.”

Tate had opened
this door by touching him so intimately, and she was about to step through it.
There was no denying she wanted him. Giving in to that desire might not be the
smartest thing she’d ever done, but this was Ryan. They had a history, even
though the last chapter was depressing. There was no question sex with him
would be amazing. She’d worry about the ramifications later. For once, she wanted
to act rash and bold and selfish.

She replaced her
finger with her mouth on his nipple. Ryan groaned, his hand coming up to gently
cup the back of her head and hold her close. She circled the small bud with the
tip of her tongue before catching the metal between her teeth. Pulling it into
her mouth, she sucked hard.

The hand in her
hair tightened, his hips bucking instinctively. “Fuck, Tate. You’re killing
me.”

She slid her palm
across the front of his jeans, framing the impressive bulge with her fingers,
feeling him harden even more beneath her touch. He let her explore, re-familiarize
herself for a moment while she continued to torment that tasty pierced nipple.
Before she knew what hit her, he had her back pressed against the door and her
arms pinned above her head, both of her wrists in one of his big hands.

His mouth
covered hers. Tate whimpered at the thorough domination of Ryan’s kiss. No one
had ever kissed her the way he did.
Like he couldn’t get
enough of her taste.
Like her mouth belonged to him. Her tongue met his
in a sweet, slick dance of heat before he eased away to explore the column of
her throat. Meanwhile his free hand worked the buttons from their holes down
the front of her shirt. Cool air met her bared skin as Ryan impatiently shoved
the material out of his way to skim his lips across the crest of each
lace-covered breast. His hot breath seeped through the thin fabric, tightening
her nipples.

He turned her
wrists loose and hit his knees, fingers going to the fastener on her jeans. His
motions were urgent and a bit clumsy, but that only seemed to add to the frenzy
building inside her body. Her skin felt hot and too tight as he worked her
jeans and panties down her legs. She started to step out of them before she
realized she still had her shoes on.

“Shoes,” she
said impatiently.

Wasn’t she the
bossy, wanton hussy tonight, coming to his apartment, knowing inevitably that this
was how things were going to go between them? Because no matter how many times
she tried to lie to herself and say sex wasn’t the reason she’d dropped
everything and rushed over here, it was the possibility of this that had done
it. Her body had known the truth, even if her brain wanted to deny it.

Ryan pushed each
shoe off and finished removing her jeans and panties. Tate shucked her shirt, tossing
it on the growing pile on his foyer floor.

His hands
coasted up her thighs, making her shiver. They made their way around to her ass
where he gave a little jerk, dislodging her from her post against the door. His
ready mouth waited when she tipped towards him. Ryan buried his face between
her thighs, unabashedly nuzzling her pussy. He murmured words Tate couldn’t
make out over the buzzing in her bloodstream.