Muffin Top (Page 28)

“Isn’t that a stereotype?” he asked. “The good old days called, and they want their catchphrase back. You know the one: men use love to get sex, and women use sex to get love.”

She shook her head. “Don’t try to deflect because you know that’s not what I’m saying at all. Love and intimacy are not the same things, and lust is definitely something different altogether. How you have sex, or define it, is not important. The emotional connection you have, however you’re having sex, is what makes it go from good to amazing—and that includes everything from holding hands to kissing to orgasms galore.”

He’d had a lot of sex in his life, with a lot of different women, and in a lot of different ways, but that emotional connection BS? He wasn’t getting it. Sex was fun. It was easy. It felt good. All of the rest of it was just shit that marketers used to sell greeting cards and expensive jewelry—even if it did sound good coming from her.

“When was the last time you had sex?” Yeah, it was a rude question to ask in most contexts, but in this conversation? It seemed prudent to find out. Okay, he needed to know because… He had no frickin’ clue why, but he did.

“Going by your definition?” she asked, her tone teasing as if she knew he’d just been talking shit before. “Six months.”

“Holy shit.” The words came out in a rush. “That’s a long time.”

She screwed up her mouth and narrowed her eyes at him. “Thanks for reminding me, you jerk.”

Shit. He was usually smoother with women than this. Lucy threw him so far off his game, like he was suddenly the guy who showed up for an Ice Knights hockey game in a baseball jersey. “That’s not what I meant.”

She chuckled. “Yes it is, and it’s longer than I like.”

“So, what do you do?” Really, this woman should be getting laid regularly. She was smart, funny, and hot. There had to be something he could do to help her put herself out there more.

“I masturbate,” she said with a shrug.

Okay, that was not what he meant, but now he had another unforgettable image implanted in his brain.

“But it’s not the same,” she said, pulling her hand away from his thigh with a little sigh. “Sex, orgasms, hooking up, whatever you want to call it can be better when you’re with someone else, and are fucking amazing when you actually give a shit about that person.”

He hated the loss of her touch. He hated the sad acceptance lurking in her eyes as if she had at least partially resigned herself to those orgasms with others being few and far between.

“I care about the women I’ve been with.” It was true. He liked them. It wasn’t love, but he never told them it would be.

“Yeah.” She looked him dead in the eyes. “But did you ever give any of them the chance to care about the real you?”

How in the hell was he supposed to answer that? Even the idea of unpacking everything that went along with that question made his gut clench. This was why he liked his job. He was a man of action, not someone who was going to sit on his ass and think about things until the end of time.

So, he got up and walked away from Lucy and did what he’d do at a fire scene. He took a big-picture look and assessed the situation—then he got ready to make his move.

Chapter Eleven

Frankie thought he was so clever, but Lucy saw right through him. He might like to make people think that he was all surface and old-fashioned ideas, but he’d given himself away. She didn’t believe he actually agreed with what he’d said earlier about the definition of sex for a second. How? Because she spent every working moment surrounded by real-life egomaniacs, sharks, and assholes. She could spot such a foul specimen at one hundred paces. He wasn’t that. He just liked pressing her buttons.

The truth was, Frankie Hartigan was a softie—all six feet, six inches of him. Well, maybe not all of him. Even by the glow of the TV screen there was no missing the hard lines of him as he stood just inside the doorway.

She was about to tell him just that—not the part about noticing his impressive endowments, but the fact that he was full of shit—when he started toward her like a man on a mission. With those long legs of his, he was next to her before she unwound what was happening. Then, he took her by surprise, leaning down and cupping her face with his hands before putting those talented lips of his to work. After that? There wasn’t a whole lot of anything going on above her eyebrows, because every other part of her had taken command of the ship.

She opened her mouth on a sigh—okay, a moan—and his tongue swept inside, sending electric jolts throughout her body that tightened her nipples into hard peaks that pressed against the unlined lace of her bra. He teased and tempted with every stroke of his tongue against hers, every press of his lips. The old song was wrong. A kiss wasn’t just a kiss—at least not when Frankie Hartigan did it. It was so intense that it was like being at the center of a hurricane with the world swirling around them.

She didn’t recline on the love seat so much as she melted back into the cushions. Frankie followed her down, his weight solid against her. His position anchored her to him and this moment, if not reality, because there was no way this type of thing should be happening, not between them, not in the real world. Except that didn’t make it right, because she wasn’t about to let him break his word to himself, nor did she want to be with him because she was conveniently the only one handy.

She broke the kiss with a desperate groan against the column of his throat. “Frankie, we can’t.”

“You don’t want to?” he asked, drawing back.

“It’s not that, it’s…” She couldn’t find the words, not when he was looking down at her as if she was the only woman in the world, the only one he really wanted. She almost believed him.

“You’re trying to save me from myself?” He pressed against her, his hard length fitting against her so perfectly. “Lucy, I’m already lost, but I feel found any time I’m with you.”

They were just words, pretty words, but she wanted to believe. That should scare her, but just as the reality started to scrape against the edges of her consciousness, one hand glided down to her hip and he ground his hard length against her.

“But don’t worry, this is just a kiss between friends, right?”

If she’d had words in her head at that moment, she would have answered the desperate need in his tone. Instead, she gave into it and swiveled her hips against him in a desperate search for relief from the throbbing need between her legs. This wasn’t right. He was on the sexual bench, and she was trying to escalate a scorching kiss to something that would leave them both naked and happy. However, it wasn’t to be, because she wasn’t going to take advantage of him like that.

Laying her head back against the love seat’s arm rest, she kept her eyes shut tight as she tried to regain her breath.

“That was…” She tried to come up with something, but her brain needed a total reboot at this point.

“Yeah,” he answered.

Breathing hard, mental facilities on emergency power, and so turned on she worried about spontaneous combustion, she cracked her eyelids open and halfheartedly prayed for the strength to slide out from underneath him. Seeing his face from this position, close enough that she could drown in the want she saw in his blue eyes, sent a shiver of anticipation through her. Averting her gaze in an effort not to raise her head the few inches needed to start the kiss up again, she looked down the length of their bodies.