Most Likely to Score

That dryness in my throat? It’s vanished. I’m burning, everywhere. I’m hot and wet and electric. Heat flares low in my belly, settling between my legs.

“I do look at you.” I wind my hands behind my back and lace my fingers together to keep from launching myself at him.

“Do you look at me the way I look at you?”

“How do you look at me?”

He steps closer. He’s a foot away. I’ve never been so aware of space in my life. “Like it drove me crazy you were with that guy. Like it made me act like a jerk, and I’m sorry.”

A wild thrill rushes through me at his admission. I’ve never experienced this sensation, this absolute intoxication from knowing the person you long for is longing for you, too. My friends and family have told me he feels this way, but I hunted for every reason to disavow what they said. Now, I’m floating on this cloud of disbelief, and it feels so good to fly this high. I don’t want the real world. I don’t want consequences. I just want him.

“You’re not a jerk. But I told you—he’s a friend, and that’s all.”

His shoulders rise and fall. “It drove me crazy to see you laughing with him. To see him hugging you.”

Since honesty seems to be the theme tonight, I toss out another kernel of truth. “It drove me crazy that you didn’t have dinner with me.” It’s a relief to finally give voice to my own jealousy, and taking the first step frees me to say more. Emboldened, I add softly, “I wanted to have dinner with you.”

He steps closer. Inches separate us—that’s all. “I was trying like hell to stay away from you.”

I should tell him to go, but his words are everything I’ve longed for. Everything that’s a terrible risk. I swallow harshly as my bones buzz. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want to mess things up for you or for me. I don’t want to ruin anything. But when I saw Liam chatting you up at the winery, and then your friend Andre tonight . . . it was too hard to keep this all inside. It was too hard to act like I don’t totally fucking want you.”

A gasp dares to escape my lips. I’m crackling everywhere as he continues, “I know you’re beautiful, I know you’re smart as a whip, but I want them to look at you and feel like they can’t have you.”

He lifts his hand and lightly, ever so gently, runs his fingers across my shoulder. I spark from that touch. I’m a live wire, and I could power whole cities tonight.

“Because you’re mine.”

I’m flying through the stars. The man I want is laying bare his desire, shedding all his pretenses, and I can hardly believe it’s happening. He’s making his intentions clear. I want to hear every word, imprint them on my memory so I can replay them when I’m on the other side of this, so I can remember why I’m about to do something foolish. Why I’m going to take a risk.

Somehow, I manage to speak. “What would you do if I was yours?”

He erases the distance, the inches, and lines his body up with mine. This is the point of no return, and I’ve passed it.

Willingly.

Gladly.

“Let me show you.” Cupping my cheeks in his big hands, he dips his mouth to mine, and he kisses me.

This feels so unreal.

When you’ve dreamed so often of a person, when you’ve imagined every possible kiss, it’s hard to believe when it happens that it’s not another figment of your imagination.

Or that it could be better than a dream.

Jones has played the lead in so many fantasies of mine. I’ve pictured him moving over me, entwined with me, kissing me fiercely with everything he has.

That’s how he kisses, and it’s like a hot, dirty dream. It’s both magnificent and terrifying, as if I’m on the cusp of waking up at any second and this fantastic dream will vanish. I want to stave off the alarm so I can float here in bliss. Every inch of my skin tingles; every molecule in my body vibrates.

His mouth slides over mine with lips that are soft, yet determined. The press of his hard body is delicious. Even though I’m taller than the average woman, I’m tiny next to him. Jones is so much larger than me, broader, bigger, and I love it.

I love everything about how he kisses me, most of all that he’s not quiet. As his big hands grip my face, he makes the sexiest sounds—moans and groans and murmurs that all add up to sheer masculine desire. For me.

It’s shocking to be wanted like this after all the time I thought the opposite. But it’s a shock I crave. I want him to shock my system with his lust.

All my notions of right and wrong, limits and off-limits, have left the premises. I’ve surrendered to the choice I’m making, and there’s no room inside me for regret. There is only space for lust, for desire, and for this need to go deeper with him.

To go deeper into the night.

My hands shoot up into his hair, threading through his soft dark locks as I curl my fingers around the back of his head. I can’t get enough of him, and I kiss him harder. Soon our tongues are wild and frenzied, searching and tangling as our teeth click and our lips devour.

He is a hungry man. It’s a whole new sensory experience as he kisses me with more passion than I ever imagined was possible. I know now what it means to be wanted in a raw, primal way. I don’t think I’ve ever been wanted like this before, and it’s the highest high. He kisses me as if I’m what he’s fantasized about for days, for weeks, for months. As if he wants to kiss me everywhere, every inch of my body, and that thought sends a shudder through me, a wave of obscene pleasure that crashes between my legs where I’m hot and wet and needy for him.

It should be criminal to feel this good, to be this aroused.

If it is, I’m guilty and loving it.

A restless energy claws at me, a desperate desire to get closer to him, to climb him. I rub my pelvis against the outline of his erection. He’s hard and long, and I’m dying to feel him fill me up.

“Ohh,” I moan as the full awareness of his length dawns on me. The man is big everywhere.

I feel him laugh a little against my lips, then he separates from me, pressing his forehead to mine and whispering, “Are you trying to climb me?”

I laugh, too, answering breathlessly, “Yes.”

“Let me help you out.”

In a split second, he lifts me, wraps my legs around him, and carries me to the king-size bed. Low to the floor with a white lacquered platform, it screams fuck me on this. Or maybe I have a one-track mind tonight. I’m an open book right now, and I can’t pretend any longer that I don’t want him with every fiber of my body.

“Jones,” I whisper as he lays me down under him. “This is just between us tonight.”

He nods. “It’ll always be between us.”

There it is—the admission that we are secret. That we are illicit and lawless. But the risk won’t stop us. I feel bold, brazen, like my mouth has been unlocked by his touch. “I want you tonight. I want all of you.” It’s such an awesome relief to say those words.

“I want you, Jillian. All of you. Don’t you know how much?”

I kind of do, but I want to hear. “How much?”

He groans, hiking my legs tighter around his back. With one swift move he grinds against me, letting me feel the outline of his hard cock through my flimsy clothes. The sound I make is animalistic, like a tiger in heat.