TAKE A CHANCE ON ME

  His eyes locked on hers.

  "Stop staring at me!" The tears slipped down her face. "I hate it when you squint like that—it feels like you're looking at me through the cross hairs!"

  "Stop, Emma."

  "And I'm terribly sorry if you didn't think I looked nice in that dress, because listen up, big guy—that was as good as it's ever going to get with me, so if I didn't do it for you, then we've definitely hit the wall!" She began to wrestle with her jeans.

  Thomas felt the rumble of a laugh begin deep in his chest, but knew he'd screw himself but good if he let it out. Emma needed tenderness right now, not laughter.

  He took a deep breath. Obviously, the dress was the test and he'd failed miserably, just as he knew he would. It was time to beg for a makeup exam.

  Thomas dived to his knees before her, his big hands ripping the jeans from her calves, then forcing her hips to the edge of the bed. Once she was seated, he grabbed her face, cradled it in his palms, and watched her eyes go wide with confusion. She began to shake beneath his touch, his gaze.

  "What are you—"

  His lips captured hers, hot and demanding, and the fire Emma had felt downstairs was back, but burning higher. His kiss was a slam of raw energy, raw need, and okay—so he did want her, but what about five minutes from now? Emma tried to wrestle free of his mouth, but he tightened the grip on her hips.

  His lips traveled down the side of her neck. Using just his teeth, he dragged a bra strap down one arm and then the other until the bra fell on the bed behind her. His big fingers moved from her hips to brush up along the tender inside of her legs, stroking, coaxing.

  Emma heard herself draw in a shuddering breath as she helplessly opened her legs for him. The unmistakable scent of her arousal slammed into her nostrils, and she nearly died from shame.

  Oh, God! Why was she letting this happen? How stupid could one woman be? What was wrong with her? She needed to get him off her somehow—claw him, kick him, bite him if she had to—and run for her life. It was what any woman with a shred of self-respect would do.

  But every cell of her body called out in ecstasy at the way he touched her. She was lost—it was too late—and she decided she'd worry about her utter destruction later.

  After the pleasure.

  When he was finished with her.

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  Let's Get It On

  « ^ »

  When Thomas ended the kiss and pulled back, Emma saw that his eyes were filled with tears. Of all the things she'd never expected to see in this lifetime, Thomas on his knees before her, naked and crying, was right up there.

  What right did he have to cry? She was the offended party here! And she reminded herself that he was a jerk, a conflicted jerk!

  "Emma, I'm sterile. The woman I was with for four years—Nina—she left me when we found out."

  Emma went completely still. He brushed his thumbs over her cheekbones. His hands trembled.

  "I want you so much." Thomas laughed at his own confession and shook his head. "So damn much. But I think you deserve more than what I can give you, the best of everything, the best man there is. You deserve a real relationship with real possibilities—and I should have stopped this right at the start."

  "Oh, Thomas…"

  "I tried, but…" Thomas lowered his head and his voice. "I couldn't. I'm falling…" He raised his eyes to hers again. "I'm crazy about you, Emma."

  "Oh."

  "I'm sorry for the two-step."

  Emma watched a fat tear plop over his bottom eyelid, and her body clutched in on itself. He couldn't have children? He was crazy about her? He wanted a relationship—one serious enough for it to even matter that they couldn't make babies together?

  She was overflowing with a confusing swirl of joy and sadness. She thought her heart would crumble.

  "How—" She stopped, puzzled. "You really can't have children?"

  He gripped her face tight between his hands. "Jesus, Emma—I could come inside you for years nonstop—which sounds pretty good to me right now—and there'd never be any little Thomases or Emmas running around. I got hurt playing rugby seven years ago and thought I was fine. Then I reinjured myself at the end of last season, and it turns out I'm sterile."

  He stopped, his eyes filled with uncertainty. Emma managed a nod. "Go on."

  "There was a rupture—do you want all the medical details now, or can they wait?"

  She brought a hand up to cover one of his, where it cradled her cheek. He was still shaking. "The details can wait."

  He nodded, and exhaled in relief. "The bottom line is my sperm count's decimated. I thought maybe you could tell by looking at me. That I can't make life." He gave a small shrug. "I just seem to spend my days with death."

  Emma couldn't say anything. She just gazed down into his face, stroked his hand, and felt the sadness roll through her. Good Lord! Here she was worried that she wasn't sexy enough for him and he was thinking he wasn't virile enough for her!

  If this weren't so pathetic it would be funny.

  "I'll understand if you don't want to see me again."

  Emma let loose with a burst of startled laughter and pulled his hands into her lap, where she held them tight. "I don't mean to laugh—of course I want to see you—but it's just … well, I assumed this was about me."

  "What about you?"

  "The way I look. I mean, oh, God, I'm well aware that—"

  "Yeah, what the hell was all that yelling about, Emma?" Thomas frowned at her.

  "Me. My body. Aaron always told me that—"

  A groan roared from Thomas's chest and his fingers clamped down on Emma's thighs. "What did that son of a bitch do to you, Emma? Tell me right now."

  "He didn't do anything to me." She leaned away. "I just assumed I wasn't … you know … glamorous enough for you, because I'm pretty fleshy and I'm kind of basic and—"

  "Stop right there." Thomas began rubbing her arms as if he were trying to warm her up. "Let me get this straight: Aaron, that dick-head of an ex-husband of yours, told you that you weren't beautiful? And you actually believed him?"

  Emma snorted. "Wait a minute. I'm not some meek little housewife, okay? But I have eyes. I know I'm not really beautiful in the conventional sense, and I actually appreciated that Aaron was straight with me and didn't try to flatter me with a bunch of lies."

  Thomas closed his eyes. "Oh, Jesus."

  "It's not such a big deal. I've known it all my life. I mean, compared to Becca, I … oh, who cares now?" She sniffed. "The important thing is I'm smart and capable and…" Now it was her turn to cry. "And I just assumed you didn't find me attractive enough, even in the blue dress, to want a relationship with me."

  Thomas had been shaking his head back and forth, slowly and deliberately, letting her ramble. But after that last statement, he couldn't listen to any more.

  "That's enough." He brushed aside the silky hair stuck to her wet cheek and held her sweet face between his hands again. He wanted to kill that fucking Aaron—eviscerate him for planting such lies in Emma's lovely head.

  "Look at me." Thomas brought his face close to hers. "I have eyes, too, baby, and I'm telling you—you are absolutely gorgeous. I didn't say anything about the stupid blue dress because it left me speechless. I was tortured. Insane. I wanted to lay you down right there on the picnic table! But you're the one who said you wanted to keep it all business between us, right?"

  She nodded, frowning.

  "I didn't know what to do, Emma! Tell me what the hell I was supposed to do! You set me up to fail either way!"

  She gulped and her eyes went big and round. "I did, didn't I?" She rubbed her forehead. "I'm sorry, Thomas—what a mess."

  "Baby." His voice had dropped a notch and it was rough and unsteady. "Believe me when I tell you that I loved looking at you in that blue dress." He peered up under her lowered lashes. "The only thing I didn't like about it was that all the other men in the place got to see you in it, too."
br />   In a high squeak she said, "Really?"

  "I love the way you look. I love your shape."

  "Even my butt? Because Aaron—"

  "What about your butt? Man, I have got to hear this."

  Emma squirmed a little. "Forget it. This is the most ridiculous conversation I've ever had in my life."

  "I'm kind of enjoying it—"

  She glared at him. "I'm a thirty-four-year-old doctor of veterinary medicine and I refuse to waste another second of anyone's time discussing the pros and cons of the bundle of muscle that allows me to walk upright."

  Thomas roared with laughter. "But I want to talk about it. That bundle of yours is the only topic I'm interested in right now. So what did he say?"

  Emma's mouth fell open, then she slammed it shut in defiance.

  "What size do you wear?"

  She nearly jumped out of her skin. "What? I'm not going to tell you that!"

  Thomas laughed softly and let a finger brush along the curve of her waist, the fullness of her hip. "Well, sweet-cheeks, you're sitting here in front of me and I can see it all, so what does it matter if you tell me the number?"

  She flashed him a doubtful look.

  "I'm going somewhere with this, Emma. Trust me."

  She hissed in surrender and turned her face away. "Twelve."

  "And?"

  Her head swiveled back. "And what?"

  "And what's wrong with that? I spend half my life studying people, taking mental measurements for descriptions, and I know for a fact that the average American woman is a size fourteen. So you're smaller than average."

  She frowned at him.

  "How much do you weigh?"

  "For God's sake!" Emma tried to get up off the bed but Thomas clamped down on her thighs. She looked at him, incredulous. "Really, Thomas—if this is your idea of foreplay, it's not getting me hot, just bothered."

  Laughing, Thomas dropped his head and planted little kisses on her kneecaps. "I'm just trying to understand," he said, nuzzling her knee. "If you tell me how much you weigh, then you won't feel like you've got anything to hide, right?"

  She groaned.

  He waited. "I'll go first: I'm six-three and two twenty."

  Emma gulped. Yowzah! And it was nothing but muscle, power, and grace. In comparison, her stats sounded downright diminutive.

  "Okay." She took a breath. "I'm five-five and about one forty-five. Aaron always said my butt was too big. Happy now?"

  Thomas leaned back and reached up to run his fingers through her hair, looking into her blue eyes for a long, quiet moment. Aaron had done a number on her, no question about it, and it was now his job to correct the math.

  "People can be exceptionally cruel, Emma," he said softly. "And people can be power-hungry and people can be stupid. Apparently, your ex-husband was cruel, power-hungry, and stupid."

  Without warning, he rose up on his knees, grabbed a handful of her hair, and tipped her head back, then kissed her thoroughly. He slid his lips over her and his tongue into her, and bit down on that carnal lower lip of hers, sucking it into his mouth, all to illustrate the extent of Aaron's idiocy.

  Then he whispered in her ear, "I think you are the sexiest woman I've ever known—especially your butt." His fingers slid down around her bottom, working their way beneath her, cupping her, holding her. He pulled her like that to the very edge of the bed and held her there, tight in his hands. He nibbled on her neck as he continued to murmur in her ear.

  "Your butt is like a neon sign that flashes the word SEX over and over in my brain. Your butt is like all the perfect forms in nature wrapped up into one little pair of lacy underwear. Your butt is my reason for being."

  She snorted again. "Stop it. There's such a thing as overkill."

  "Oh, I disagree." He kissed and suckled at her throat, her collarbone. "I think we're just getting started on our relaxation exercises, Dr. Jenkins." He pulled back enough for her to see his face, and he hitched up his lips mischievously.

  "Roll over," he commanded.

  Her eyes flew wide. "Pardon me?"

  Before she could protest, he'd flipped her over onto her stomach and stretched her legs down and apart, her feet dangling off the bed. She felt completely exposed, the air hitting her bare back and shoulders and the inside of her thighs. She sensed Thomas hovering over her, close, his breath warm on the small of her back. She began to tremble.

  "Stay." His command was deep and serious, but his voice shook with laughter.

  Emma giggled, but a spark of real fear flared inside her. It seemed there was always a touch of fear in her response to Thomas, because it was too intense, too fast, and all unexplored territory.

  What was he going to do to her?

  She craned her neck to look over her shoulder. "Is this where you tell me to bark like a dog for you?"

  Thomas laughed again, then leaned down and kissed the side of her cheek. "Maybe later. Right now, I'm going to redirect your attention—you're going to get so interested in what I'm doing that you won't remember what upset you in the first place."

  Emma started to giggle—realizing she was about to get a taste of her own medicine—but abruptly stopped when Thomas slapped his two big hands down on her rump and ripped off her underwear in one quick swipe. She felt the fabric drag along the back of her legs and fall off the end of her toes.

  His hands came back to her bottom, raising her until she was a few inches off the bed and her knees slightly bent. He held her there, his touch firm and unmoving. And hot—so wonderfully hot where he grasped her.

  Then he moved his palms in delicious, rhythmic circles, caressing, then pulling apart, pushing together, and Emma could hear his breath coming as fast as her own. She could hear him make little noises in the back of his throat that were part grunt and part murmur, and she tried not to imagine what she must look like in this position. She tried not to worry. She simply tried to feel.

  "I'm an ass man, Emma." His hands continued to caress her, cup her, grip her.

  "That's good to know," she mumbled, half into the sheets. Half out of her mind.

  "Well, actually, I'm a breast man, too. And a leg man. But mostly an ass man."

  "Okay," she squeaked. "I got all those things."

  "Hell yes, you do, Miss Marple." His hands slid up into the dip in her back, thumbs touching, then let his fingers slide down into her waist, around the swell of her hips to her bottom, where he grabbed on and started over.

  "And my God, you've got one fine ass." His fingers began to stray down the furrow of her bottom and she felt the bed move as he came up behind her.

  His tongue landed hot and wet on her flesh and she nearly screamed at the intensity of the sensation. He licked her, dragged his lips and tongue across her, and flirted with the crease of her. She felt his tongue flick and his teeth nip and then one of his hands was sliding hot and slow up the length of her spine until it grabbed a handful of her hair. At the same time, his other hand moved down, down, until he cupped her sex.

  Emma knew instinctively that she'd just been claimed.

  "Every inch of you is beautiful," he whispered, his breath hot on her skin and his lips vibrating against her flesh. He was such a big man that he could be every place on her body at once—her hair, her sex, her back—and Emma heard herself make little whimpers of pleasure, soft moans, then a startled cry when his long fingers tickled the opening to her body.

  His fingertips separated her, slicked around the swollen tissue, but didn't enter her.

  Emma lost it, just like the night on the front porch, and her body seemed to move of its own volition. Her hips began to circle slow and rhythmically, pushing against his touch, pulling away, until she was lost in it, suffocating in the pleasure, rubbing her face into the bed as she moved her hips.

  For what seemed like an eternity, Thomas just let his fingertips play along the wet rim of her, spellbound by her greedy wiggle and the sight of his big fingers up against her beautiful little pussy—so puffy and sweet and so rea
dy for him.

  Emma was into sex. He'd figured that out by now and said a little prayer of thanks.

  And being naked with her, so close to her heat, hearing those little noises she made, getting drunk on her scent—he couldn't remember experiencing this kind of buildup before, this kind of exquisite torture, pressure, agony.

  Never in his life had he wanted a woman this much.

  "Please," he heard her whimper. Her hips began to circle a bit faster and he smiled, keeping his fingers just on the outside of where she needed them, aware that he was teasing her.

  It was time to end at least some of her discomfort.

  He adjusted his touch, slowly pushing down into the liquid heat, and let his middle finger make contact with her stiff little clitoris.

  Emma groaned low and deep. Thomas brought his lips to her ear as he let his finger flick over her slippery heart-beat. "I've been dying to get close to you, put my hands all over your body, make you come. I think you're going to come a lot for me, aren't you, baby?"

  She moaned.

  He wanted her to wait. He wanted her to go higher. He wanted it to be exceptional for her. He wanted only truth between them, right now and always.

  He pulled his hand away, and with gentleness he picked her up and turned her around so that she sat on the edge of the bed again. He kneeled before her, pleased to see that she looked dazed by desire—sleepy and drugged and trembling with anticipation.

  "Now you know how I feel about your little blue dress and what goes in it," he said, trailing a finger down her kneecap. "And you know exactly what I am and what I'm not. So what happens now?"

  Emma exhaled, shuddering from his hot touch and his words and the intensity of her desire and sorrow. "I'm so sorry you can't have children."

  Thomas looked up into her wet blue eyes, her face and breasts framed by the fall of all that glorious, dark hair. She put her hand on the top of his head, like a benediction, and he let his chin drop to his chest in heavy relief.