The Chase (Fast Track #4)(37)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Kendall. Oh, damn, slow down. You need to stop.”

As if.

She didn’t break rhythm at all, and Evan tried to pull back, but she just followed him, keeping her mouth solidly on his erection.

“I’m going to . . .”

Then he did, his hands grabbing wildly on to her head as he exploded in her mouth. Kendall closed her eyes and enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing she had done that to him, and that quickly. Swallowing, she slowly stopped stroking as he shuddered. When she pulled all the way back, she glanced up at him and smiled. “Mmm.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“Yeah? I hope you liked it.” Kendall lay back down, lounging across the bed, relaxed and feeling like the proverbial cat who ate the cream.

Evan was still on his knees in front of her, jeans flopping open, chest heaving up and down, looking a little stunned as he ran his fingers through his hair. It was a good look for him, or at least one she enjoyed.

“I don’t even have words to describe how much I liked that. You are crazy sexy.”

Crazy sexy. She liked that.

Kendall tugged her T-shirt down since it was lumping under her back, and looked up at Evan. Her feelings for him were confused, jumbled. Sometimes she looked at him and didn’t know who she was seeing—the boy she had loved, the man she had hated, or the man who was that boy grown up.

Their new relationship had no real parameters, no guidelines. They knew each other, yet didn’t. They had a past, but never talked about a future.

But at the moment, it didn’t matter to Kendall. What mattered was just enjoying herself, relaxing and having fantastic sex with the man who could make her laugh.

“Why, thank you.” She crawled up onto all fours and moved to the end of the bed. “And I think I’m going to actually eat my burger.”

Evan blinked, but he still didn’t move. “Good call.”

Amused, Kendall grabbed a French fry and moved it to his lips. “Hungry?”

He bit it so hard and unexpectedly that she screeched and jumped backwards. Snapped out of his haze, Evan grinned as he chewed. “Very hungry.”

“You’re a punk.”

“Thank you.”

“Where are my panties?” Kendall glanced around. “I can’t eat without underwear.”

“That’s the weirdest statement you’ve ever made, and you’ve said some weird-ass things in the past.”

“What?” She spotted them on the floor and leaned over, trying to snatch them up without falling off the bed. “It’s just strange to me to be eating without underwear. It’s like peeing standing up. Just something I never do.”

He startled her again by smacking her backside, which she realized was probably a stone’s throw from his face.

“Whatever works for you, Jay.”

“Stop calling me that stupid nickname.” Though she had to say, she was already used to it. There was something about an endearment from Evan, crass and sexist though it might be, that made her melt just a teeny-weeny bit.

It was a little bit pathetic.

As was the way she enjoyed curling up on the bed with him, as they chowed down on their dinners and watched Shark Week episodes on the Discovery Channel. As she trailed her fries through a thick pile of ketchup, she watched great white sharks trolling for seal pups.

“You’ve got to admire their speed,” Evan said as he pulled the bacon out of his sandwich and ate it solo. “Its like that poor seal is just hanging out there looking for fish and then bam! He gets shot up five feet in the air when that shark nails him at full blast.”

Unlike her, who had put her clothes back on to eat, Evan had actually stripped his jeans off, and was half-sitting, half-lying in nothing but his boxers, his club sandwich hovering in front of his mouth.

This was so ordinary. So something two people in a relationship would do. Sit around their hotel room watching TV.

“It’s definitely a good strategy on the shark’s part. They come so fast, the seal can’t react.”

“They need spotters on the radio like we have.” Evan smiled and leaned over and stole one of her fries.

“Why are you taking my fries? You have your own.”

“Yours taste better.”

She let an eye roll go. “You’re ridiculous.” And cute.

Damn it, why was he so cute? Why did he have those luscious brown eyes and sexy little dimples? It wasn’t fair. It made her want things she couldn’t have.

Especially when he leaned over and gave her a kiss on her forehead. A sweet, smacking kiss that was not sexual and yet totally made her toes curl from the sincerity of it. They really were blurring the lines here between just sex and something else entirely.

“Do you ever wonder what it would have been like if we hadn’t broken up?” Evan asked her.

Apparently his thoughts had been going in the exact same direction.

“No,” she lied.

“Liar.”

Damn it. “Fine, I’m lying. Of course I wondered about it after we broke up. I missed you, stupid.”

“You should really hold back on complimenting me so much. I might get a big head.” Evan glanced down at his boxers. “Well, a second big head.”

“See, this is what happens when we try to have a serious conversation. I insult you and you turn it sexual. We have a pattern, you know.”

She thought he would answer with a joke, but Evan set his sandwich down on his plate and leaned towards her. His expression was serious, eyes searching.

“I don’t think we have a pattern so much as a fear of showing our real emotions.”

Oh, God, he was serious. And he was right.

“Maybe the problem is, I don’t know what my real emotions are.”

“Fair enough. I guess I don’t really know mine either. But I did then. Ten years ago.” Evan gave her a fleeting smile. “I was going to ask you to marry me, you know.”

The fry she’d been holding up to her mouth fell out of her fingers as she stared at him in shock. “What?”

“Yep. I had a ring bought and everything. I was going to ask you on your nineteenth birthday.”

Kendall sucked air in and out, desperate to fight the tears that were crowding her eyelids and threatening to spring out. Evan had been planning to propose to her? He’d bought a ring? She tried to comprehend what that meant in the grand scheme of things . . . It meant he had really, truly loved her. Had intended to spend his life with her. Or at least he had with the optimism of nineteen. Who knows what really would have happened?