Seducing the Old Flame (4 page)

“Meaning I’m not?”
 
She
flung at him.

“Nice?”
 
He snorted.
 
“Not on your best day.
 
Someone forgot to add the sugar and all
things nice when they made you.
 
Just
dumped the whole bottle of spice.”

Her forehead creased and something deep inside yearned to smooth
the furrows away.

“You have no commitment to her, then?
 
Other than a business one?”

“I may in the near future.
 
Not that my life commitments are any of your business.”

“But you don’t now?”
 
She
looked pleased, but not quite ready to let the subject drop.
 
“Not at this moment?”

“No,” he conceded, worried that her smile had come back full
force.

“You’re not in love with her?”

Love?
 
Was she kidding?

“I tried that once only to have the woman I loved tell me to go
to hell and stay there.”

Her smile faded.

“Jason, I—”
 
Her mouth
closed and emotions flickered across her face.
 
Blinking her uncertainty away, she clasped her hands around his neck and
buried her face in the crook.

Was that regret he’d seen for that brief sliver of time?

Tabitha Sterling didn’t do things she regretted, did she?

She prided herself on never looking back.
 
Not for one second was he buying that she’d
changed.
 
After all, she was in his bed
after not so much as a word between them for two years, what more proof did he
need?

She inhaled deeply, as if trying to fill her lungs with him.

Her movements made Jason more aware than ever of her breasts
smashed beneath him.
 
More aware that his
body covered hers.
 
On his bed.
 
How convenient.

Still, he waited.

“Jason?”

“Uhm?”
 
God, she felt good
stretched out underneath him.
 
How could
something so bad feel so good?
 
Like a
poison you had to have another sip of even knowing it would be your death.

“Spend the weekend with me.”

He started to protest, but she hauled him forward until their
mouths touched.
 
Silencing him with
seduction.

Sex always had been the one thing they could agree upon.

When the pressure against his neck eased, Jason didn’t want to
pull away, but he did.
 
She seized the
moment before he could rebuke.

“Just be quiet and listen,” she ordered.
 
“I’m not asking for a commitment, not even a
semblance of a relationship.
 
Give me one
weekend of your life.
 
In exchange you’ll
get all the hot sex you want.
 
I don’t
want wined, dined, or anything but sexed.
 
Over and over by you.”
 
Her lids
lowered in a feline enticement.
 
“Although, for the record, I’m okay with…” she whispered the rest low
into his ear.
 
“More than okay with that
part.”

Any words he might have spoken to deny her tangled in his
throat.
 
Tabby wanted a weekend of
no-commitment sex?
 
With him?

Oh hell.

“On Sunday, I’ll go home and not bother you again.
 
You can woo Annie Schmoo and live in your
boring white house for the rest of your life.”

“My apartment isn’t boring,” his house certainly wasn’t, but she
didn’t know about the house he was building, did she? “and don’t bad mouth
Annie.
 
She’s a nice—”

“I know,” she huffed.
 
“She’s a nice girl.
 
You’ve
already told me.”

She thrust her hips forward, her pubis digging into where the
majority of his blood currently resided.

“So, what do you say Jason?
 
You game for a weekend of non-committal, mind-blowing sex?”

Chapter Three

“You’re kidding.”
 
Jason said the first words that popped into
his head.
 
She couldn’t possibly be
serious about spending the weekend engaged in wild sex with him and then just
walking away on Sunday.

What was she thinking?
 
Even Tabitha expected a relationship with her
sex pawns, didn’t she?

Not that he kept up with her
life.
 
Only heard through the grapevine
that she swapped kissing buddies every few weeks and hadn’t stayed with any one
man for over two months since they’d broken things off.

Not that he cared.
 
He didn’t.

“I don’t kid about sex, Jason.”
 
Her pouty lips puckered.
 
“You
should know that.”

True enough.

“Let me get this straight,” because he was sure he was missing
something, “you want to stay in my apartment having sex all weekend and on
Sunday we’ll say goodbye as if it never happened?”

One of them had flipped their lid.

“Exactly.
 
Except it will
have happened.
 
We’ll have some fantastic
memories to look back upon without the messy entanglements of a relationship.”

She smiled and her beauty amazed him.
 
Not just her physical appearance, but the
verve that exuded from every pore.

No woman excited the way Tabitha did.

She was in his bed, lying beneath him, offering free access to
her lush body all weekend.
 
For nothing
in return.

No way
.

“It’s a perfect plan, isn’t it?” she asked, batting her thick
lashes in a seductive swoop across her high cheekbones.

“How so?”

“Sexually, we’re compatible.”
 
She squirmed against him to prove her point.

Not that he would ever forget just how compatible sex with this
woman had been.
 
He’d tried damned hard
to forget everything about her.
 
To not
unfavorably compare every woman he met to the vitality that exuded from Tabby.

“My plan rocks because we’ll both satisfy our sexual itch, yet
still be free to go on with our lives.”

“Who the hell said I have a sexual itch?”

“Do you, Jason?” she rasped in a low, lusty tone.
 
“Itch, that is?”

Like he was sitting buck-naked in a poison ivy patch.

“I could use a good scratch,” he grudgingly answered.

“Am I a good scratch?”

As if she had to ask.

“You don’t need me to know the answer to that, Tabby.
 
You’ve made it your personal quest to know
how to satisfy a man’s itch.”

“Did I satisfy your itch?”
 
She raked her nails over his back, part pleasure, part pain, all Tabitha.

Did he want to answer?

“Yes,” he admitted.
 
Tabitha had always scratched his itch.
 
Only with every scratch, she left him with whelps, needing more of her
special scratching.

“You always took care of my itch, too.”
 
Her gaze lowered to his lips and a slight
tremor shook her body.
 
“It’s been a long
time since I’ve had a good scratch.”

“Me, too.”

“I itch, Jason.”
 
Her hips
rotated against him.
 
“Bad.”

“Me, too.”
 
He sounded
like a broken record, but for the life of him he couldn’t bring forth more
words.

“A relationship between us would never work.
 
We both know that.
 
And, although I want you, I can’t handle the
fights.”

No, he couldn’t either.
 
The fights gave him whelps, too.

“With only one weekend, we can exploit each other’s bodies
without arguing about who needs to change what.
 
Without tearing the other down and without grandiose expectations.”

Is that what they’d done two years ago?

He thought back, willingly letting memories of Tabby into his
mind for the first time since the day he’d slammed out of her apartment angrier
than he’d ever been.
 
More betrayed than
he’d ever been.

The worst day of his life.

He’d always thought it had been Tabby trying to change him into
something he wasn’t.
 
Maybe he had tried
making some changes to her as well.

Funny, he’d never realized that before.

Looking into her shimmering green eyes he saw more than he’d
thought possible.
 
He hadn’t been the
only one who suffered after they split.
 
Tabby had hurt, too.

Damn.

She’d been the one to—-never mind, remembering that only made
him want to pound anything and everything with his hammer.
 
Which was better than his fists as that want
had been vented into the construction of some prime Knoxville real estate.

A weekend of Tabby at his sexual beck and call.

No expectations of anything beyond the bedroom.

“Lots of sex, no strings attached, and we’ll part never to
darken one’s doorsteps again?”
 
He
couldn’t believe he was even considering it.

Then again, he was a man and Tabby’s body pressed beneath him.

The light of vulnerability staring back at him seduced parts of
his psyche no other woman reached before or since Tabby.

Not that he believed for one second she wanted more than
sex.
 
He knew better.
 
For that matter, he didn’t want anything
beyond sex.
 
Not from her.

“Well,” she had the audacity to look sheepish, “I was thinking
we might need a few strings.”

The way she said it twisted his gut with a fresh shot of lust.

“If you make me come more than a dozen times, I’ll let you tie
me to the bed and have your wicked way with me.”

He’d always wanted to do that.

“See, I do remember your fantasies, Jason,” she purred.

Apparently.

The image of Tabby tied to his bed sent shivers down his
spine.
 
She’d never let him bind her in
any way.
 
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t asked,
as if she hadn’t tied him up during sexual play.

He’d always wondered if it had been a lack of trust that
prevented her from giving up her freedom.
 
That thought had made him want the fantasy all the more.
 
He’d craved Tabby’s trust.

“Let me fulfill your fantasies.”
 
She ground her hips against him in a rhythmic grind, pulling him from
his thoughts of the past.
 
“All of your
wildest desires.
 
I can grant them to
you.”

What was that old saying about when something seemed too good to
be true?

“What do you get out of this?”

“Sex with you.”

“You want that because…?” his voice trailed off.

The grinding stopped mid-beat.
 
Her fingers tracing along his neck shook.
 
“No man has ever scratched my itch the way
you do.
 
Not ever.”

Hell.

Had she not sounded so exposed, so sincere, he might have found
the strength to tell her no.
 
He really
didn’t need her screwing up his life again.

But one weekend of screwing her, literally, with no emotional
strings?
 
Could be heaven and hell all at
once.
 
Hellaciously hot sex with an
angel-faced siren.

After his weekend of excess, surely he’d be ready to win Annie’s
heart with promises of a white-picket fence existence and kids of their own.

One weekend of living it up before settling down for good.

He could handle that.

Why shouldn’t he enjoy what Tabby so greedily offered?
 
If not him, she’d just spend the weekend with
some other sap.
 
He wanted to be the sap.
 
At least he knew the score.

Touch, but don’t love.

He could handle that.
 
Could handle her.

If at the end of the weekend Tabby wanted more, he’d push her
away just as she’d done to him two years ago.

A win-win situation stared him in the face.

He looked into her eyes, lowered his mouth, and kissed her.
 
Soft and exploring at first.
 
Rediscovering the curves and hollows of her
body.
 
He nuzzled her mouth, her face,
her throat.
 
Tiny kisses meant to torment
as much as pleasure.