‘I think you’re going to get more than
copulation
from Tuck. Just saying…’
Cassie nodded, ignoring the warning as her brain moved on to
logistics. ‘So, what…? I should just go up and say
How
about it?
’
Gina laughed. ‘Just knock on his door and tell him you want
him. Trust me, he’ll take it from there.’
Tuck glanced at the clock when a knock sounded on his
door. It was almost eleven. He was sprawled on his king-size bed, in his hotel
robe, watching a game with the lights and the sound turned low.
And he knew it was her.
He drained the last of his beer before sauntering towards the
door, a grin on his face. He turned the handle and pulled it partially open, his
hand sliding up the frame to rest somewhere above his head.
Cassie stood there looking up at him. ‘Can I come in?’
Tuck felt her quiet request grab hold of his gut and squeeze.
No sexy posturing. No batting of her eyelids. ‘What do you want,
Cassiopeia?’
Cassie swallowed, not even sure if she could get the word out
around her parched throat. ‘You,’ she croaked.
Tuck’s breath stuttered to a halt for a moment and his grip on
the door tightened. She was grim-faced and serious, and sporting scraped-back
hair and terrible clothes, yet his body surged to attention. He’d promised he
wouldn’t go near her, but he hadn’t made any promises in regards to her coming
to
him.
He pulled the door open further and fell back, gesturing her
inside.
FOUR
Cassie shut her
eyes as she brushed past him, her nostrils flaring
at his scent, her dry mouth suddenly inundated with saliva. She walked to the
centre of the room, her heart rate ratcheting off the charts. She turned to face
him. He was lounging against the door, and in the dim light he looked all broad
and brooding and watchful.
Now what?
She’d kind of hoped he’d take over from here. Gina had assured
her he would. But clearly he wasn’t going to make it easy.
‘Are you going to stand over there?’ she asked.
Her voice sounded weird in the air-conditioned bubble of the
silent hotel room. High and breathy. She swallowed again.
‘For the moment,’ Tuck said, crossing his arms.
Cassie wished he wouldn’t. She wanted him to come closer. To
bring his height and his breadth and his perfectly symmetrical features and his
incredibly male smell right over, close to her. And take the lead.
Computing the wind speed across auroras on giant gas planets,
she could do—asking a man to have sex with her, not so much.
She opened her mouth, took a tentative step towards him, then
stopped. Shut her mouth. This should be easy. A cinch. She had a giant brain and
an excellent vocabulary. But once again she felt as if she was wearing the
dunce’s cap.
Tuck took pity on her. He’d never known a woman to be alone in
a room with him and
not
know what to do. Especially
when he was in nothing but a robe and his underwear. It was strangely
erotic.
‘So, does
“you”
mean what I think
it means?’ he asked.
Cassie’s brain came back online at the verbal prompt. He was
giving her a way in—a conversation-starter. And she snatched at it like the last
molecule of oxygen on earth.
‘Yes,’ she said, then cleared her throat because it sounded
sappy and weak again. ‘I’m not very good at this—’
‘Boy,’ Tuck interrupted with a smile, ‘how’d that one go down?
Couldn’t have been easy to admit. I imagine you’re good at most things.’
Cassie glared at his interruption—didn’t he know how hard this
was? ‘I’m good at
everything
…except this.’
‘And
this
is…?’
Cassie took a deep breath. ‘This is me asking you to have sex.
With me.’
It was blunt and gauche and totally unsexy—and Tuck had never
been more turned on in his life.
‘This is purely scientific, you understand?’ Cassie clarified
as Tuck continued to watch her with his blue eyes. ‘I seem to have developed
a…thing for your pheromones.’
Tuck raised an eyebrow. ‘My pheromones?’
‘Yes. They’re chemicals the body emits—’
Tuck chuckled, interrupting her. ‘I know what pheromones are,
Cassiopeia.’
‘Oh, right…yes, sorry. Well, I don’t know if you know this or
not, but you do smell pretty amazing.’
Tuck smiled. ‘I have been told that a time or two before.’
Cassie absorbed that information, missing the nuance in her bid
to get to the point. ‘Anyway…I find myself unable to concentrate on my work, and
Gina suggested that, because I’m a female in my sexual prime, my libido is
demanding to be…serviced…and that a spot of…copulation…might be the solution to
my problem.’
Tuck felt his erection swell further. He should
not
be turned on by a woman in shapeless clothes
talking about servicing and copulation. Pretty, perky women with enhanced assets
and bold use of four-letter words were his staple turn-ons.
And yet he was very turned on. ‘Copulation?’
She nodded. ‘It’s all very logical, really.’
Tuck made his way towards her, keeping his pace slow and lazy.
‘So this is you
seducing
me?’
Cassie took a step back as his masculine scent drew her into
his wild pheromone cloud. ‘I…guess.’
Tuck stopped when he was an arm’s length from her. He dropped
his gaze and took a slow tour of her body. It didn’t take long—there wasn’t a
lot he could make out. Her breasts, which he remembered very well from her
criss-cross dress last night, were vaguely discernible beneath a voluminous
T-shirt that proclaimed
‘Come to the nerd side. We have
Pi’.
He smiled at the logo as he lifted a hand and fingered the
sleeve. ‘
This
is what you wear to a seduction?’
Cassie looked down. It hadn’t even occurred to her to change
her clothes. She’d got into her pyjamas an hour ago, after her second cold
shower. Gina would have a fit if she knew. ‘Oh. Yes. Guess it’s not very—’ she
swallowed ‘—sexy.’
Tuck shrugged. ‘Funny can be sexy.’
‘It’s a tradition,’ she explained as his gaze roved all over
her shirt. It suddenly felt like it was on fire. ‘Gina, Reese and Marnie send me
geek T-shirts as a…it’s a joke…’ She petered out as she realised she was
babbling. ‘Sorry. Like I say, I’m not very good at this.’
Tuck disagreed. Cassie’s unique approach was being very much
appreciated by one particular part of his body. ‘So,’ he murmured, his fingers
dropping from Cassie’s sleeve to stroke up and down her arm, ‘would you like the
standard copulation package or one of the many variations I offer?’
Cassie pulled her arm away as an army of goose bumps marched
across her skin and a seductive waft of Tuck flared her nostrils. ‘Oh, I think
the standard will be fine.’ Her voice was husky again and she cleared it. ‘I
still have a paper to get back to. No time for variations.’
Tuck smiled. A man with a less robust ego might have been
intimidated by her haste to be done with it. But he was not one to go for
‘copulation’
by the clock. And she’d given him a goal
now—to wipe that research paper from her head for the rest of the night.
Or die trying.
‘Okay,’ he said, stepping in closer to her, until her body was
a hand-touch away, ‘long, sweet, slow loving it is.’
Cassie swayed as her senses were engulfed in a wave of him,
drenching every cell in a primal urge. She felt his hand warm on her waist,
steadying her, and her eyes pinged open, her gaze snared in the brilliant blue
of his.
‘That’
s
your
standard?
’ she asked, her voice squeaky.
Tuck shrugged. ‘I have high standards.’
He brought his free hand up to cradle her jaw. Her pupils were
large and dilated, the sound of her breath was rough in his ears, her nostrils
were flaring, her mouth was parted. Tuck knew all the signs of an aroused woman.
And any other woman would be plastered all over him by now, eager to fulfil his
every whim.
The fact that she wasn’t was sweet and quaint and endearing.
And vaguely thrilling.
Not that he had any issues with sexually aggressive women. He
loved confidence and strength in and out of bed. But this—having a woman waiting
for
his
move for a change—was, strangely, a real
turn-on.
Cassie swore she could hear the sluggish grind of gears as time
seemed to slow right down. Her head spun with the smell of him and she wanted
him to kiss her so badly she didn’t even recognise the woman she’d suddenly
become.
‘Tuck…’ The word spilled from her lips on a desperate whisper
she had no conscious control over.
Tuck sucked in a breath. The volume of want in her voice was
lashing him with an identical desire. His fingers speared into her hair, his
thumb brushing her temple. ‘What do you want, Cassie?’ he asked, his lips slowly
descending towards hers.
Cassie was reeling. She could barely think through the fog of
pheromones addling her senses, intoxicating her. ‘I want you to kiss me,’ she
whispered, the words flowing thick and heavy like syrup from her throat.
Tuck didn’t need it. He swooped the last few centimetres and
crushed his mouth against hers. Her lips opened on a whimper that speared
straight to his groin, and when her tongue tentatively touched, his heat traced
its way there too. He groaned as her mouth opened more and her arms slid around
his neck. He pulled her closer, until not even his platinum credit card could
have been slipped between them. His hand dropped to her shoulder, skimmed her
breast, moulded her hip, and then both his hands moved in unison to the cheeks
of her butt hidden beneath layers of fabric.
He pulled her hips in hard, grinding his erection against her.
She broke away, gasping, but his lips refused to let her retreat, following and
claiming hers again in another hot lashing of lust which she opened to on a tiny
little whimper that lit fires in all his erogenous zones.
His hand slid under her shirt, his palm fitting into the small
of her back, then moving up the contours of her spine. Up, up, up. Her skin was
hot and smooth to touch. The arch of her back, the dip of her ribs, the absence
of bra strap fuelled the fever thrumming in his blood. Lust jabbed him in the
solar plexus and he jerked her harder against him.
He needed her naked. He needed her laid out on his bed. He
needed her calling his name and scratching her nails down his back. He dragged
his mouth from hers.
Cassie swayed at the sudden loss of her anchor. The mewing
noise coming from somewhere in her throat was totally foreign to her ears. His
scent filled her head and drummed against her body like fat drops of sweet,
sticky rain.
She couldn’t think. All she could do was feel as her senses
took over. Taste, touch, hearing, sight, smell.
Dear God, the addictive scent of
him.
She blinked up at him. ‘Wha…?’
Tuck’s groin surged at her bewildered look, at the arousal
dilating her pupils with undiluted desire. ‘Bed,’ he said, his hands sliding
down her arms, his fingers linking through hers as he tugged on them gently,
pulling her forward as he walked backwards.
The backs of his calves hit the mattress and he stopped. The
soft downlights over the bed glowed across her flushed cheeks and glittered in
her lust-drunk eyes. Some of her hair had loosened from its ponytail and she
looked a little wild. Her ravaged lips and the way they were parted in silent
invitation pushed her into wanton territory.
She looked one hundred percent into him and he couldn’t
remember the last time a woman had looked at him like that—for what he could
give her in that moment as opposed to the rest of her life. Not even his ex-wife
April had done that. There was no agenda, no artifice. Just a woman who wanted
him—Samuel Tucker the man. Not the star quarterback.
Not his money. Not his ring. Not his babies.
Just him.
Frankly, he’d never been more attracted to a woman in his life.
He smiled at her as he drew her close, his hands cupping her face again. ‘You’re
very beautiful,’ he said.
The words flowed right over Cassie. She didn’t care about that.
Beauty was superfluous when the attraction was chemical. She didn’t need it. She
just needed the smell of his skin, the thud of his pulse, the primal act of
joining.
He dipped his head and pressed a kiss to her eye, to her cheek,
to her temple, his hands dropping by his sides. Cassie turned her face, her
cheek brushing the roughness of his. A gust of his earthy male essence fanned
over her like a hot dry wind. He kissed down her neck and her nose brushed the
angle of his jaw. His aroma intensified. She pushed it against his skin and
breathed in long and deep.
Her belly clenched and she groaned out loud. ‘You smell so
good,’ she muttered.
Tuck lifted his head. Her pupils looked even more dilated than
before. She was really getting off on those pheromones. He grinned. ‘You smell
pretty good yourself.’ And he dropped his head again to claim her mouth.
But Cassie was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to smell him.
All over. To push her nose into the fat pounding pulse in his throat, to sniff
at his temple, to smell his hair. To explore lower—to know the scent of his
chest and his belly and his thighs.
To suck in great, big, dizzying lungfuls of him.
She evaded his mouth as it descended, her nose finding the
steady beat pulsing along the hard ridge of his throat. It was warm, and his
whiskers prickled her skin, smelling sweet yet somehow utterly male. She sucked
in big deep breaths, each one washing over her in hot, satisfying waves. But it
wasn’t enough. She moved up, following the dips of his trachea to the pulse that
beat where throat met jaw.
She inhaled deeply there too, dragging in his essence, feeling
it lighten her head and tighten her belly. She
meandered left along the
line of his jaw, breathing him deep into her lungs as she went, and when she
reached where the angle of his jaw met his ear she moaned involuntarily as heat
bloomed through her pelvis.
Tuck’s hands tightened on Cassie’s waist as her moan filled his
head. His eyes had shut as she’d explored his neck. Her nose and lips buzzing up
his throat had sent heat to far-flung areas of his body. He pulled away from
her, his heart pounding in his chest, the need to kiss her, to taste her mouth
again, too powerful to resist.
For a second they just looked at each other, only the sound of
their uneven breath between them. Then her nostrils flared, and her tongue
darted out to swipe across her bottom lip, and lust kicked Tuck hard in his
gut.
‘Cassie,’ he muttered, his head swooping down to claim her
mouth again.
But Cassie evaded its trajectory, her head filled with one
blinding imperative.
His scent.
‘Cassie?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her chest rising and falling with
difficulty, as if every oxygen molecule inside her was drenched in the sticky
seduction of his pheromones. ‘Can I just…sniff you for a while?’
Tuck laughed, but it died a quick death when he realised she
was serious. The woman was definitely getting off on the smell of him. It was
such a completely innocent thing to want amidst the carnal lure of lust
surrounding them. And God knew it was a lot more satisfying than the women who
got off on his fame, or the idea they were going to be the next Mrs Samuel
Tucker.