Keep Me (8 page)

Time stood still, sparks seemed to fly as our tongues tangled together in the best kiss I’ve ever had. Maybe it was the pent-up angst, but lips finally playing with Tessa’s… it felt fucking magical. She let me control every flick, every suck, and in turn, every single emotion that rendered us helpless to this inexplicable connection we seemed to share. I explored her mouth with my tongue and her body with my hands and in that moment I felt I’d never get enough. I also felt that my sister was going to wring my neck for messing around with Tessa Bradley.

“Stop. We can’t.” She pulled away, biting her already swollen lip.

I was like a teenage geek all over again, stumbling for the right words to say. “Oh my God, Tessa. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

“
Seriously?”

I grazed her luscious pout with my fingertip. All I could muster up in response was the same word. “Seriously.”

Instead of a cab, we opted for hoofing it to the subway station and taking good old PT back home. She let me hold her hand. Fuck, I’d never held a girl’s hand while strolling around the city before. What the hell was she doing to me? It felt emasculating, like I was softening. And while it scared the bejeezus out of me it also felt really good.

“Marcus, this is all so… fun and unexpected, but we cannot speak a word of this to Riley. She’d be pissed and honestly, I don’t even know what any of this means.”

That made two of us. I hadn’t the foggiest damn idea what any of this meant. “Why does it have to
mean
anything? Why can’t it just
be
?”

Now, that sounded philosophical, if I said so myself. But in all honesty why couldn’t it just be what it was? Nothing more, nothing less. Just two old friends who were attracted to each other and liked being around one another.

“That might be one of the smartest things you’ve ever said, Little Marcus Grayson.”

“
Little?
Did you just call me little, Tessie Spano?”

Her hand fell from my grip as she whaled it at me, smacking my stiffened arm. When she made contact, it looked like it hurt. “See. Not little at all.” I flexed, concentrating all of my energy into the balls created by my fists. “Me big strong man.”

She laughed and the sound that reverberated through the subway terminal was musical. I liked making her laugh. “You’re such a doof, Marcus. An adorable one, though.”

Uh, oh.
This was heading back into that
I’m her friend’s kid brother
territory. Deflect and reroute, Grayson. “Adorable? Is that all? There’ve been a lot of words used to describe me in my latter years, young lady, but adorable isn’t one of them.”

“Oh no? Is
ass
one of them?”

“Come to think of it, yes. I’ve been called that on many occasions.”

I was expecting a noogie at the top of my head at this point. I wanted her to touch me, in any way imaginable, but a playful grind of her knuckles to my skull was so not what I had in mind.

The train pulled into the terminal, distracting us from our good-humored teasing. I stepped aside and ushered her inside with a hand at the top of her perfect ass. I found myself excited that we’d have at least another forty-five minutes to spend together.

The car we entered was virtually empty, except for a mess-of-a-man in a suit, his tie undone, his comb over un-combed-over. With my open palm I gestured for her to take a seat. “The world is your oyster, madam.”

“I wouldn’t consider any of these seats my oyster, dude. Just pick the one that reeks the least of urine.”

“Point well made. Um, I choose… this one.” I chose one of those tiny two-seaters in the very corner of the car. Cozy and intimate and far away from the man who looked like Michael Douglas in “Falling Down.”

I took a seat and pulled Tessa down on top of me, her perfect ass landing in my lap with a squeal from her equally perfect mouth. “There’re a lot of seats, Marcus. I don’t have to sit on top of you.”

“You don’t have to, but the question is, pretty girl, do you
want
to?”

I watched her lips twitch up in amusement, her eyes sparkle with what I’d grown to recognize as desire. Her small, delicate hand reached up and caressed my scruffy face. “You’re too much, Marcus. You know that, right?”

Too much was a good thing when you were trying to convince a beautiful angel that you weren’t Little Marcus Grayson anymore. Without allowing my thoughts to get in the way, I leaned in for another kiss. This time there was nothing slow or sweet about it. It was ravenous…
I
was ravenous. And I was pretty damn sure she wanted to eat me alive too. Michael Douglas was about to get a show and neither of us gave a flying shit.

“Mmm, Marcus. Soooo good, but you make me think too much.”

I didn’t want her thinking right now. I wanted to flood all of her other senses and make her forget all the reasons we shouldn’t be mauling each other on the subway. So I didn’t respond with words. Just touch.

Hands tugged hair, noses collided, tongues and lips danced; the kiss seemed to last the entire way home. I don’t know how we heard the announcement for her stop, but it was a small miracle we were both thankful for. Well, kind of. I would have done another trip in and out of Brooklyn just to experience that fucking kiss again.

With my hands still buried in her curls, she pulled back and announced breathlessly, “Looks like we’re here.”

“Yup, looks like it.” I said as I stared into her stormy blue eyes. She was breathtaking. Did she even know it?

She stood up and I followed, not certain of what should happen next. This was her stop, not mine. I didn’t want to assume, but I also didn’t want to say goodnight.

“This is going to come out wrong, but… it’s late, we’ve both had a lot to drink… I won’t be able to sleep knowing I left you all alone to fend for yourself with disgruntled business dude over there.” Her thumb pointed in the direction of our new friend Michael and I laughed, nervously awaiting the rest of what she had to say. “Why don’t you come to my house and crash on the couch?”

My eyes must have grown to the size of the moon.

“Not even happening, Marcus. Couch. That’s it.”

I’d take what I could get. “A challenge? I love a challenge, pretty girl.”

I had to be losing my mind. Yup, that’s it. I was losing it because I was completely sober, yet I had just asked Marcus to stay the night.

What would the babysitter think? What would Marcus think when he had to get up in the morning way before noon because Luca was screaming his head off for a bottle? I really should have thought this through before I opened my big stupid trap.

“You okay?”

Was it
that
obvious? It shouldn’t be a big deal. I’d slept over at Riley’s hundreds of times to wake up to Marcus in the kitchen with a bowl of Cheerios. But this would be different. So very different.

Trying to mask the sudden swarm of butterflies flitting around my stomach, I thought of something to divert my attention from the vision of a sex god spending the night. “Yes. I’m fine, just worried you won’t be too keen on the morning wake-up call. Luca gets up with the sun.” I looked at my watch. “And that’s not too far off.”

He held my palm against his bulging chest as we continued our stroll from the train stop to my house. “Tess, you insult me. I’m not the slacker you think I am. I’ve gone days with no sleep. If you can keep your hands to yourself and go right to bed, I’ll get enough beauty rest to be my irresistible self in the morning.”

Wiseass. He was the world’s biggest wiseass. “I’m keeping my hands to myself and so are you. Couch, remember?”

“Yes, how could I forget?” he said it like a kid who was just warned about brushing his teeth. “This will be a real first for me.”

“What? Sleeping on a couch?”

The devil himself couldn’t have smirked as deviously as he did. “No. Sleeping on the couch
alone
while the woman who invited me to spend the night is all comfy and cozy upstairs in her bed.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

“Yeah, how is this a first for you?”

The question was simple, but with a flirtatious undertone—I wasn’t sure how he made it sound so… sensual. I liked this playful side to him and I wanted to see if I, too, had it in me to play.

“First time I’ll be having a Grayson sleepover without Riley.”

“Come on. You need my sister to protect you?” he joked. “Okay, my turn. First time I’ll be inches from a woman—in nothing but my underwear—who won’t let me touch her.”

He was unnerving. How the hell was I going to get
my
beauty rest with him half naked right under my nose? “Nothing but your underwear? You can’t keep your shirt on?”

“I usually sleep in the nude, so there you go—another first. But maybe I
will
sleep with this shirt on,” he tugged at the V-neck of his fitted black t-shirt and sniffed, closing his eyes and licking his lips. “Smells like you. So sweet and sexy.”

My panties were about to combust. “I don’t like this game anymore. You don’t play fair.”

He inched closer to me, dropping his heavy arm around my shoulders and then massaging the back of my neck between his strong fingers. “I never said I played fair. I
hate
following the rules.”

Shivers, tingles, butterflies. He was killing me, but we were turning my corner and nearing my house. I had to amp myself up for the expression on Trish’s face when I walked through the door arm-in-arm with Mr. Panty Dropper in all his rugged glory. “Well, then there’s another first. Rule number one: no more schmoozing. You’re clouding my judgment.”

“Good! That means you haven’t
totally
broken me yet.”

His grip around my shoulder tensed and then he let his arm fall back to his side. It was the first time we’d broke contact since I’d sat on his lap in the subway. The sudden disconnection made me think he regretted his admission. But, honestly, how could
I
be
breaking Marcus Grayson?

Arriving home couldn’t have come at a better time. “We’re here. Welcome to my humble abode.”

He opened his arms, gesturing for me to take the lead. Following me up the few steps to the door, I felt his gaze, weighty and intense, as I fumbled with my keys.

“Tessa?”

“Yeah?” I pulled the keys from my purse and turned to face him again.

“Once we’re inside I can’t touch, right?”

Stand your ground, girl, even if it’s falling out from under you.
“Nope.”

“So…” His fingers were instantly tangled in my hair again, his body pressing against mine. He rested his forehead to mine and we both closed our eyes, taking in the moment. “I had such a great time tonight, Tessa. Can I kiss you goodnight?”

He was
asking
? Wow, maybe I really was breaking him. But broken or not, he was still a force to be reckoned with. The kind of force that takes over your limbs and makes them feel frail and clumsy. “I’d like that very much.”

The last word hardly had the chance to touch the dark, cool air before his lips were against mine again. He kissed my top lip, then my bottom, sucking it into his mouth and using his tongue to open me up to more of his magic. Slowly exploring at first and then plunging deeper, I let the moment just
be
, like he said earlier. Being with Marcus this way, entwined together, holding each other, was everything I was missing and didn’t know it. It scared the crap out of me. I didn’t care.

I brought my own hands up to his hair and pulled him to me as if there were a way to be any closer. I got lost in tasting him and breathing him in, forgetting who he was, or why this was wrong, allowing myself this euphoria. I’d worry about being able to live without it tomorrow.

His hands cupped my face, his body rigid against mine and I could feel what I was doing to him.
Loved
what I was doing to him. Losing all sense of control, I reached down to caress the growing bulge inside his designer denim. His breath caught at my contact, my keys dropped with a loud jangle, and the abrupt sound awoke us both from the provocative trance we were under.

I jumped back, startled by noise and weak from our kiss.
I was afraid to look at him, scared he’d use my momentary lapse of judgment against me. But instead he made light of it, which embarrassed me more. “Now who can’t keep whose hands to themselves?”