Heated Rush - Leslie Kelly [19]
“Two older, one younger. All hardheads. No sisters.”
He nodded, then said, “Football, you said? That’s like a tame version of rugby, right?”
She grinned, looking forward to introducing this man to her brothers more by the minute. “Right.”
He snorted in visible disdain, then speculated, “I think I’ve got the picture.”
“What picture?”
“The Annie Davis picture. The desperate-enough-to-buy-a-date-for-the-weekend picture.”
She couldn’t deny that title.
He lifted his hands, ticking off the details on his fingers. “You’re incredibly pretty but single at the moment. You’ve had few boyfriends in the past, come from a small town and have a number of bossy, blustery brothers.”
The incredibly pretty part warmed her, though her first instinct was to deny it. She was pretty…but not incredibly. Just in a girl-next-door way.
Sean, however, wasn’t waiting for her to agree. He simply kept going. “So you blew a lot of money you couldn’t afford in order to have a man on your arm when you go home for a family reunion. That way your brothers won’t tease you, your parents won’t be disappointed in you, and the rest of the folks back home won’t pity you, harass you for leaving, or boss you around the way they did before you moved away. Am I right?”
Annie’s jaw dropped. It was a good thing she hadn’t popped another nut into her mouth because it would have tumbled out onto the sticky wood tabletop. That had been quite a mouthful. Quite an intuitive mouthful. “How on earth…”
“It isn’t that unique a story.” His brow raised in rueful amusement, he added, “You might be surprised how often I’ve heard it.”
He hadn’t nailed it completely but was close enough to make her wonder if she was really so easy to read. Did he look at her and see only the small-town girl with the spit-up stain on her shirt trying to please her family? Would he ever again see her as the stranger in the lovely yellow silk dress she’d bought specifically for the auction?
Again accurately reading her thoughts, Sean leaned across the table, his forearms resting on its surface. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t bring up that nonsense about us not being taken for two people who could be involved.” He swallowed visibly, the cords of muscle in his neck flexing before he said, his voice low, “Because if physical attraction—want—is all it takes to prove we’re a couple, nobody in your hometown is going to have one doubt as to why I’m there.” His gaze zeroed in on her mouth and his jaw suddenly clenched. “They’ll see the way I look at you and they’ll know exactly how much I want you.”
Annie’s lips parted and she breathed over them, needing more oxygen than she’d previously been inhaling. Because her heart was sending the blood roaring through her veins at four times its normal pace.
“And they’ll see how much you want me, too. They’ll figure we’re already lovers and the desperation rolling off both of us is because we’re being forced to act properly around your family. While secretly, they’ll know we’ll be tearing each other’s clothes off the minute we are out of sight.”
She gasped out loud that time. Her clothes needed to come off now, considering how uncomfortably tight they were, how sensitive her puckered nipples were against her bra and shirt.
“No one will question a thing, Annie. I guarantee it.”
She’d begun to lean across the table, too, drawn closer by his words as if they beckoned with genuine magnetism. She couldn’t voice a protest—couldn’t manage a thought—when Sean lifted his hand and slid it into her hair. He cupped her head, tugging her even closer, until their faces met, their lips brushed.
Her eyes drifted closed as their mouths touched and opened. The warmth of his tongue against hers made her shiver and the slow lazy thrusts made her shake. Once again, she was kissing Sean in public, not giving a damn that he had his tongue in her mouth when they were surrounded by strangers.
What woman would give a damn when this man was making oral love to her, filling her senses and driving all thought and inhibition away?
Finally, after a kiss stretching over several