Taylor's Temptation

He knew he should make himself stop, but he couldn’t. He’d wanted to touch her hair for more than four years now.

Besides, she really seemed to like it.

“You must think I’m a loser,” she murmured.

“No.”

She laughed softly. “Yeah, well, I am. Crying over a car. How dumb can I be?” She sighed. “It’s just…When I was seventeen, I’d imagined I’d have that car forever—you know, hand it down to my grandchildren? I say it now, and it sounds stupid, but it didn’t feel stupid back then.”

The deal she’d just made gave her twenty-four hours to change her mind.

“It’s not too late,” he reminded her. He reminded himself, too. He could gently release her, take one step back, then two. He could—without touching her again—lead her back to the lights and crowd in Harvard Square. And then he’d never even have to mention anything to Wes. Because nothing would have happened.

But he didn’t move. He told himself he would be okay, that he could handle this—as long as he didn’t look into her eyes.

“No, I’m selling it,” she told him, pulling back slightly to look up at him, wiping her nose on a tissue she’d taken from her shoulder pack. “I’ve made up my mind. I need this money. I loved that car, but I love going to law school, too. I love the work I do, I love being able to make a difference.”

She was looking at him so earnestly he forgot about not looking into her eyes until it was too late. Until the earnest look morphed into something else, something loaded with longing and spiked with desire.

Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and her lips parted slightly, and when she looked once again into his eyes, he knew. She wanted to kiss him nearly as much as he wanted to kiss her.

Don’t do this. Don’t…

He could feel his heart pounding, hear the roar of his blood surging through his body, drowning out the sounds of the city night, blocking out all reason and harsh reality.

He couldn’t not kiss her. How could he keep from kissing her when he needed to kiss her as much as he needed to fill his lungs with air?

But she didn’t give him a chance to lean down toward her. She stood on her tiptoes and brushed her mouth across his in a kiss that was so achingly sweet that he thought for one paralyzingly weak-kneed moment he just might faint.

But she stepped back just a little to look at him again, to smile hesitantly into his eyes before reaching up, her hand cool against the too-hot back of his neck as she pulled his head down to kiss him again.

Her lips were so soft, so cool, so sweetly uncertain, such a contrast to the way his heart was hammering and to the tight, hot sensation in his rib cage—as if his entire chest were about to burst.

He was afraid to move. He was afraid to kiss her back, for fear he’d scare her to death with his hunger for her. He didn’t even know how to kiss like this—with such delicate tenderness.

But he liked it. Lord, he liked it an awful lot. He’d had his share of women who’d given him deep, wet, soul kisses, sucking his tongue into their mouths in a decidedly unsubtle imitation of what they wanted to do with him later, in private.

But those kisses hadn’t been even a fraction as sexy as what Colleen was doing to him right now.

She kissed his mouth, his chin and then his mouth again, her own lips slightly parted. She barely touched him. In fact, she touched him more with her breath—soft, unsteady puffs of air that caressed him enticingly.

He tried to kiss her the same way, tried to touch her without really touching her, skimming his hands down her back, his palms tingling from the almost-contact. It made him dizzy with anticipation.

Incredible anticipation.

She touched his lips with her tongue—just the very tiniest tip of her tongue—and pleasure crashed through him. It was so intense that for one blindingly unsteady moment he was afraid he might actually have embarrassed himself beyond recovery.

From just a kiss.

But he hadn’t. Not yet, anyway. Still, he couldn’t take it anymore, not another second longer, and he crushed her to him, filling his hands with the softness of her body, sweeping his tongue into her mouth.

She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her pack fell to the ground, and she kissed him back enthusiastically, welcoming the ferocity of his kisses, winding her arms around his neck, pressing herself even more tightly against him.

It was the heaven he’d dreamed of all these years.

Bobby kissed her, again and again—deep, explosively hungry kisses that she fired right back at him. She opened herself to him, wrapping one of her legs around his, moaning her pleasure as he filled his hand with her breast.

He caught himself glancing up, scanning a nearby narrow alleyway between two buildings, estimating whether it was dark enough for them to slip inside, dark enough for him to unzip his shorts and pull up her skirt, dark enough for him to take her, right there, beneath someone’s kitchen window, with her legs around his waist and her back against the roughness of the brick wall.

He’d pulled her halfway into the alley before reality came screaming through.

Wes’s sister. This was Wes’s sister.

He had his tongue in Wes’s sister’s mouth. One hand was filled with the softness of Wes’s sister’s derriere as he pressed her hips hard against his arousal. His other hand was up Wes’s sister’s shirt.

Had he completely lost his mind?

Yes.

Bobby pulled back, breathing hard.

That was almost worse, because now he had to look at her. She was breathing hard, too, her breasts rising and falling rapidly, her nipples taut and clearly outlined beneath her shirt, her face flushed, her lips swollen and moist from his kisses.

But it was her eyes that almost killed him. They were smoky with desire, brimming with fire and unresolved passion.

“Let’s go to my apartment,” she whispered, her voice even huskier than usual.

Oh, God.

“I can’t.” His voice cracked, making him sound even more pathetic.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, I’m—” she shook her head “—I’m sorry, I thought…You said you weren’t seeing anyone.”

“No.” He shook his head, tried to catch his breath. “It’s not that.”

“Then why stop?”

He couldn’t respond. What could he possibly say? But shaking his head again wasn’t a good enough response for Colleen.

“You really don’t want to come back to my place and—”

“I can’t. I just can’t.” He cut her off, unable to bear finding out just which words she would use to describe what they’d do if he did go home with her tonight. Whether she called it making love or something more crudely to the point, however she couched it, it would be a total turn-on.

And he was already way too turned on.

She took a step toward him, and he took a step back.

“You’re serious,” she said. “You really don’t want to?”