With one finger, she swept a thatch of hair behind his ear, and the light touch curled his toes. She threaded strands through her fingers, letting it waterfall away, and exhaled in a raspy moan that speared his hard-on. That had to be the sexiest sound ever.
Deep in her throat, she moaned again. “I want you to kiss me. Do you know how bad I want it?”
At least as badly as he wanted to. He tried to think about something unsexy. Not happening.
“I have a pretty good idea,” he muttered.
One hot hand wandered over his chest, delving into the dips of his muscles and tracing the line of his collarbone. Pushing him toward insanity. He wished she’d find the hem, slide underneath the T-shirt. Touch his bare skin and say his name again.
“I’m dying for you to kiss me,” she said. “But you can’t. We can’t.”
Can’t?
Says who?
He shook his head, hard. No, it was true. They couldn’t.
Then she leaned in with the smallest incline of her head, offering up lips puckered in a superb
O.
Just before she hit the point of no return, she whispered, “Kristian.”
Her breath brushed his jaw, swirled down his throat and spread through his body, heating it, warming corners he’d have insisted weren’t cold. The space between them slowly disappeared. Too slowly.
His control vanished. He shoved fingers through her hair, cupped the back of her head and kissed her. Hard. Openmouthed. Tongue seeking, sliding along hers in a fiery path. Tasting every crevice of her smart mouth. Unleashing the frustration he couldn’t ease any other way.
At last.
He dragged her half into his lap and worked a hand under her shirt to thumb one of those taut nipples. Perfection. One should be in his mouth. Right now. He growled.
More.
He changed the angle and drew her tongue deeper into his mouth, sucking on it with quick little pulls then broke away to bite his way down her neck, back up to her earlobe. He took it in his mouth and nibbled on the sweet flesh.
He needed more.
Her hot lips locked onto his. Hot, so hot. He guided her hand to his groin and dragged her palm across the rock-hard bulge, nearly exploding right then and there from her blistering touch.
With a lurch, the Ferris wheel started up again and jolted them apart. Bleary-eyed, he fought through the lust-induced haze, taking in VJ’s mussed hair and swollen lips both screaming
take me fast.
He barely resisted yanking her back.
“Good thing you’re so, um, reserved,” she said without a trace of irony, her irises molten and seductive. “That was so tame, I invited the Baptist Knitting Club over to watch.”
A good, honest laugh burst out in spite of it all, and he winced as vibrations traveled through his throbbing erection. He’d never had a chance. Hadn’t wanted one. “Okay. You made your point.”
And how.
It was disturbing how easily she’d snapped his control and how much he’d liked letting go into that dark free fall of passion. Disturbing how accurately she’d gauged the truth. Disturbing and unprecedented.
“Kissing is stage four,” she said. “By the way.”
Of course it was. A sin and a shame he liked her so much because only the worst kind of slime could pretend to be engaged to Kyla while having an extremely satisfying side-thing with VJ. That wasn’t fair or respectful to either woman.
No, VJ was the marrying sort of woman. He knew that. Now that his brain was functioning—the real one, not the one he’d been using five seconds ago—he had to face that he’d crossed so far over the line, it was but a distant slash.
It couldn’t happen again. He probably wouldn’t be able to look in the mirror as it was. No matter how much he burned to dive into the pleasure VJ promised, he had to stay in control from now on. It was totally not cool to lose it like that. He kept himself in check for a reason, usually without any trouble. VJ was exceptionally unique in more ways than one.
And he was still so hard, he couldn’t walk.
* * *
While Kris took a moment in the portable bathroom, VJ slumped on a bench with a great view of the Ferris wheel and fingered her chafed lips.
The vilest word she’d ever said aloud slipped out. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Mama was surely rolling over in her grave. Her daughter was nothing but a cursing harlot. The only thing VJ had proven at the top of the Ferris wheel was that a small-town girl like her couldn’t handle the highly specialized, foreign engine beneath the hood of Kristian Demetrious.
Kissing him had been like licking a nine-volt battery. A stun to the tongue and ill-advised.
A man who could kiss like that, and likely had many other talents, chewed up women and spit them out on a regular basis. She’d set him free, all right. Naively, she’d assumed her vast understanding of men in books would transition to men in real life and the truth put a huge chink in her delusions.
She was so out of her league.
Kris came into view, his gait easy and loose and sexy. Ebony, glossy hair brushed his shoulders. Good night, the man was hot. There’d been a possibility the chemistry between them would disappear after her stage-four experiment. The exact opposite was what had happened. And now she knew what his golden hands felt like when they touched her. Just watching him move made her squirm.
She was in so much trouble. People in Hollywood played at relationships, played at things she held dear, like long-term commitment. Kris had flat-out admitted as much, then she practically handed the man an engraved invitation for a one-night stand.
Was that really what she wanted?
“Ready?” she said and gave him an everything’s-cool smile. Ferris wheel music crashed through the midway, loud and raucous.
He paused in front of her, crossed his arms and peered over the rim of his sunglasses. “Were you the slightest bit affected by that kiss or was it strictly designed to prove me wrong?”
Her mouth fell open. “I’m not quite that blasé about having the inside of my skin set on fire. But I’ll take it as a compliment that you have to ask.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah.” He frowned. “Well, no. Not really. You and I both know the score here. Right?”
Nodding, she stifled the urge to scream at him to shut up and let her have her fantasy for a while longer. “Of course. I proved you suppress your passions, just like Lord Ravenwood, so I win.”
He grinned, and her heart grew a little heavier. All the inconvenience of her misinterpreting that kiss as something meaningful was alleviated.
She couldn’t be too upset. This was her fault, after all, for leaping into deep water without a floaty.
But provoking Kris into boiling over had been too easy to resist. A man more in denial didn’t exist.
“So,” he said. “Does that mean I get to move on to stage five?”
“If you want to,” she said nonchalantly, though this whole game of romance instruction had become a lot less fun now that she’d unlocked him. Every sinfully delicious bit of that stormy passion called to her, and she wanted badly to answer.
But not badly enough to let him love her and leave her. “I figured we were done since I proved my point.”
Something sizzled through his expression, but with the dark shield of his sunglasses in place, she couldn’t interpret it. She’d rather he hadn’t put them back on.
“Not by half,” he said.
Pain stabbed at the backs of her eyes. So he wanted to play, as long as she didn’t read too much into it. Was she completely crazy to consider it?
Yes. She
was
crazy. Except she
knew
he’d been trying to tell her something without telling her when he hinted the engagement wasn’t exactly typical. He’d deflected the question about whether he’d ever been in love far too fast. His heart was buried underneath layers of cynicism and Hollywood.
What if she could uncover it?
Oh, how she wanted to, wanted all of him. The taste of that untamed kiss still blasted the roof of her mouth. If she had any hope of moving past flirtation, any hope of guiding him away from the weird engagement, any hope of claiming all that passion for her very own, stage five was the key.
“Then we better get started.” She grasped his proffered hand. “Stage five is very tricky.”
Six
T
he interior of the Ferrari was the perfect temperature to bake a cobbler in less than ten minutes, and the heat smacked VJ the moment she slid into the passenger seat. “Hurry with the air conditioner.”
Kris dropped into his seat and hit the ignition. The sun wasn’t the only thing heating up the interior. But it was the one she could reasonably handle at the moment. Cool air washed over her as he drove out of Lively and onto the freeway toward Dallas.
“Music?” he asked.
“Not the sexy stuff. Something else.” She couldn’t take the thrum of Spanish guitars right now. Here in this exotic, European car, surrounded by unimaginable luxury and privilege intrinsic to people in Kris’s stratosphere, her resolve didn’t feel so...resolved.
An upbeat tune sailed out of the speakers, and he immediately turned it down so it was atmospheric background noise.
“So, stage five,” she said. “It’s emotion.”
“I was hoping it was sex.”
Of course he was. No surprise after she threw herself at him on the Ferris wheel.
Sex
echoed in her mind and triggered visions of what might have happened if the Ferris wheel hadn’t rotated at the very worst time.
Best time.
Best time.
“That’s because you’re thinking like a guy.”
“Yeah. I’m sort of bound by the equipment God gave me.”
“That’s why I’m here. To help you think with something other than your equipment.”
His laugh crossed her eyes. There was something really powerful about making a man like Kris laugh. Especially because it was all she had to keep her warm at night, when it came down to it.
She could pretend all day long that stage five was the key, but in reality, unsophisticated VJ Lewis might need a million stages to crack Kristian Demetrious. She had about the same ability to decipher his instruction manual as she did the one for his car. Zero.
“I’ll keep that in mind. So, emotion?”
The mere word hadn’t scared him off the subject. But he wasn’t most men, despite her intimate knowledge of his similar equipment. Her cheeks heated and she looked out the window so Kris didn’t notice.
“Yep,” she said to the glass, and her fingers curled into thin air of their own accord. She’d touched him.
There.
Her tummy flipped. He’d been harder than Texas soil in a drought. For her. No instruction manual needed to understand that. “Stage five. Figuring out her emotional needs and granting them.”
“Just hers? Guys don’t have emotional needs?”
“You’re the one with the equipment. You tell me.”
“Sure. We have a really emotional need to have as much sex as possible before we die. Survival of the species, you know.”
“Yeah. Survival.” She rolled her eyes because it seemed like an appropriate reaction when two people shared a dangerous, seductive attraction and one of them felt totally out of her depth. “So that’s why this is about her needs, because guys are easy.”
“It might be easy to get us willing, but that’s not what we’re talking about, is it? This is all about romance. I’d love to know a woman’s secret for romancing a guy.”
So would she. Especially the one in the next seat. Then maybe stage five wouldn’t feel so insurmountable.
She shook her head. “No way, Jose. Women everywhere would throw rotten tomatoes at me as I passed by on the street if I told you.”
He snapped his fingers in mock disappointment. “Fine, then. Tell me what I’m supposed to be doing to figure out her emotional needs.”
“That was the paying attention stage. You should already know. Now you have to do it.”
For a minute, he was quiet, as if processing, and the steady hum of tires on concrete filled the car. “So I’ve figured out what her greatest emotional need is and I’ve done it. What do I get out of the deal?”
His sidelong glance caught her in the abdomen. A lock of hair fell against his cheekbone. His hair was unbelievably glossy and soft and now that she knew what it felt like, it was so much harder not to touch.
She sat on her hands. “You’re hopeless. I thought we’d made more progress. You get the realization you’re in love and it’s going to last forever. Stage five means you’re thinking about someone else instead of your own selfish needs. That’s the definition of love. Sacrificing what you want to make someone else happy.”
“And in your mind, romance and love are the same.”
“They’re not in yours?”
Instantly, his expression iced over, and the chill infused her skin. “Not at all,” he said. “Love is elusive. Fleeting. It doesn’t last, and therefore it’s too difficult to pin down with a simple definition. Romance is all about action. A back and forth. Doing something to get somewhere.”
“Nice.” She tsked to clear the tremor in her throat. He was speaking from the rock bottom of his shriveled heart, and nothing she’d said was getting through. “So, it’s all a necessary evil to get a girl naked.”
“That’s not what I meant.” His frustrated growl coaxed a smile from her. “Romance is a verb. There’s a physical aspect you can point to and say there’s the romance in this scenario. Like flowers. The right lighting, the setting.”
“Flower is a noun, Kris. And love is more of a verb than romance. You can’t say ‘I romance you.’ Well, I guess you can, but you’ll sound like English is your second language.”
“English
is
my second language.”
He glared at her, and she started giggling uncontrollably. “I’m sorry. I’m picturing you swooning at my feet as you declare, ‘I romance you.’”
She laughed so hard, she couldn’t stop, and had to wipe tears from her eyes, ignoring the couple extra that squeezed out. That was stupid, to cry over the fact that such a passionate, expressive man had been hurt badly enough to believe love didn’t last. Yet she presumed to heal all that in a couple of hours. How big
was
her ego?
Kris’s lips were twitching. “Glad you could find some amusement at my expense.”
More giggles slipped out, and the tears threatened to spill over. “Sleepless night catching up to me. Sorry.”
He captured her hand and kissed the back of it. Casually, like they were an old married couple—except the way his lips grazed her skin should come with a hazard warning. “Sleep, then,” he said. “I’ll let you argue with me about this later, since you’re not going to win anyway.”
She folded her still-sparking hand into her lap, all traces of humor dried up. “Okay. I am exhausted.”
She faked a yawn, pillowed her arm against the door, then lay on it. When she closed her eyes, she swore she’d only think about football and what kind of job she’d get in Dallas. But the Ferris-wheel kiss drove all that out of her mind. Instead, she replayed it over and over and over, extending it in a torturous parade of images where Kris swept her away in a sensual haze and made love to her until dawn.
With a start, she woke and only then realized she’d fallen asleep. “What time is it?”
Kris glanced at the dash clock. “Almost two. Are you ready for lunch?”
“Yeah. I’d like to get out of the car for a while.”
And prolong the inevitable. Dallas loomed at the edge of the horizon and she’d slept away a good bit of her precious few hours with Kris. In no time, they’d go their separate ways. Nothing had changed that, and nothing likely would—unless she came up with a heck of a Hail Mary.
They ate more fast food and talked. Kris told fascinating stories of growing up in Greece and spending his youth on his father’s boats. She entertained him with anecdotes of redneck politics, of which she had an endless supply.
How in the world had Kris ended up so down-to-earth instead of obnoxious and stuck-up like all the rich people on TV? He’d grown up Trump wealthy, and after a painful fallout with his father, turned his back on the money and left Greece forever to follow his dreams of being a filmmaker, on his terms. She couldn’t even find a way out of her pathetic life on her own.
No wonder she’d been thus far unable to pile-drive through the brick wall in his chest. She’d invented a crazy notion about saving him from a bloodless engagement to Kyla Monroe, one of the most successful and accomplished actresses in Hollywood.
But they were made for each other. Even if they weren’t in love or getting married, at some point, they’d found a mutual appreciation and likely enjoyed common interests. A woman like Kyla didn’t have to resort to flirting and stupid games like romance instruction to get Kris’s attention. She already had it.
Somehow, VJ had convinced herself Kyla would be thrilled to get out of an engagement with someone who was only doing it for the sake of a film and it never occurred to her that the star of Kris’s movie might be in it for the same reason.
Until now.
It was way past time to stop fantasizing about what could be and get some traction on the rest of her actual life.
“I need to borrow your phone again,” she told him. “I’m sorry I have to be such a freeloader.”
“VJ, I have an unlimited usage plan. You’re not going to bankrupt me with two five-minute phone calls.” He motioned to the Ferrari parked outside. “Help yourself.”
“You’re the only person on the planet who doesn’t keep their phone on them.” Even in Little Crooked Creek, ranchers dropped cell phones into the pockets of their jeans and teenagers texted each other as they walked to school.
He shrugged. “No one is so important they can’t leave a message. Find me when you’re done.”
She slid into the Ferrari and dialed Beverly Porter on the first try. No one could say she didn’t learn from her missteps.
Her only hope of shelter answered. “Beverly, it’s VJ Lewis.”
“Oh, hi. Just a minute.” Beverly said something but it was muffled as if she’d put her hand over the speaker. “You’re not calling to cancel on me are you? The condo’s almost done.”
Relief sang through VJ’s veins. “The opposite, in fact. I’m on my way to Dallas and was hoping you wouldn’t mind a roommate a little early.”
She was pathetic, mooching off Beverly and barging into the one-person home of a girl she’d last seen over Fourth of July weekend last month. Friendship had its limits, and she was pushing them.
“Oh.” Beverly’s pause did not put VJ at ease. “You’re on your way now? As in today?”
“I should be there by nine at the latest,” VJ chirped, and winced at the fake brightness. “That’s not too late, is it?”
“I’m really sorry, VJ. I’m in St. Louis at my grandparents’ house. I had to let my old apartment go. They wanted me to sign another six-month lease or get out, and the condo won’t be move-in ready for at least three weeks. My grandparents had an extra room and my boss is letting me work remotely. I had no idea you’d be moving so soon.”
“No problem. I totally understand.” There were bound to be loads of fifty-cent-a-night hotel rooms in Dallas.
“Do you have another place to stay?” Beverly’s clear concern was almost her breaking point. “I know a few people who wouldn’t mind.”
Depending on the kindness of strangers. Even more pathetic. “That’s okay. Thanks anyway. I’ll find something else. I’ll call you soon to give you my new phone number.”
And that was that. Now she was homeless for the next three weeks.
* * *
VJ was eerily still for so long, Kris considered taking her temperature.
Each time the car passed another exit, he anticipated instructions to turn off so they could visit the world’s largest ball of twine or the Petrified Wagon Wheel Museum, which VJ would artfully turn into a way to make him crazy. Or make him think. Or thaw him out a little more.
Each time she didn’t speak, he grew more frustrated. He recognized the wisdom of taking big, giant steps back from that line. He did. He just didn’t like it.
During the stage-five discussion, he’d had a hard time keeping his attention on the road and off her mouth. It wasn’t only the things she said, but the way her lips formed the words, and how she never hesitated to spit out what was on her mind.
Twice, he’d had to physically restrain himself from pulling onto the shoulder in order to put that smart mouth to better use.
“You know what?” VJ said after several miles and several provocative images later of what those perfectly formed lips could do.
“What?”
“I turn twenty-five in two days, and I’ve never been outside of the state of Texas.”
They’d have parted ways by then. He frowned at the sudden compulsion to stick around until her birthday and shower her with presents and champagne. “Do you want to go somewhere in particular or just over the state line?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had the luxury of thinking about much more than the next dime in the bank. Mama was sick for so long and everything I planned to do...” She trailed off, and he had to swallow at the despondent note in her voice.
“Where would you go, right now, if money was no object?”
“Greece,” she said instantly. “To see boats bobbing in crystal-blue water and watch the fishermen pull up nets. Like you talked about at lunch.”
“Greece is nothing special. I couldn’t leave fast enough.” He’d walked out the door at sixteen and never looked back. Every once in a while, he missed odd things, like the strong tang of homemade
tsipouro,
which he used to drink with the help in the kitchen while
Cook pretended not to notice. Strange—he’d lived in America now for the same length of time he’d lived in Greece. Sixteen years. Each place claimed half of his life, shaping him in different ways.
“Kris. I watched you talk about it. You can’t pretend you don’t miss it.”
He downshifted, then couldn’t figure out why he’d automatically gone for the gear shift when there was nobody in front of him.
No, that was a lie.
VJ unsettled him, and his response was to do something with his hands. Something other than touch her.
“I don’t know what you think you see when I’m having a regular, old conversation. My eyes are not the window to my soul,” he said lightly.
“What is?”
“My films,” he blurted out and then regretted it.
He opened his mouth to change the subject and suddenly didn’t want to. Soon, he and VJ would arrive in Dallas and he’d never see her again. A margin of safety existed inside the car where real life didn’t—couldn’t—intrude. Her presence sharpened and clarified his thought process. His emotions. Why fight it? “No one else knows that.”