Make Me Over_ Getting Real - Leslie Kelly [33]
Right between her legs where the fabric was hot and damp.
He shuddered, cupping her, his eyes closing as a groan of male pleasure eased from his mouth. Tori shook a little, arching into his hand, desperate to have him touch her naked skin, but also loving the anticipation and friction caused by her jeans.
“Any more questions?” she asked, not needing an answer. Reaching up, she laced her fingers into his hair and tugged him close for another slow, wet kiss, knowing he couldn’t claim she didn’t really want him when her own body insisted she did.
Then he pulled away. Both his mouth, and, dangitall, his hand. “We can’t.”
“Argh,” she groaned, “how could I be any more ready?”
“Okay, I’m not ready for this.”
This time she reached for the front of his pants. “News flash, Professor. I got a fistful here that calls you a liar,” she managed to say between harsh breaths as she closed her hand over him. All of him. Sakes alive, every hard, throbbing bit of him.
His jaw started clenching as the pulse in his temple pounded. But when she caressed him, leaning up to kiss him at the same time, he turned his head away.
“This can’t happen, Tori. Not now.”
She’d seen that look on his face before. That stern, hard look, so different from his usual friendly self. And she finally realized he meant what he said.
Disappointment flooded through her as she dropped to sit on her bent legs. It was followed by a quick flash of anger. “There’s a name they call women who do what you just did.”
He gaped. “You’re calling me a…tease?”
“Uh-huh.”
He sat back, too, thrusting a hand into his hair, then looking up in the air as if somebody up there had answers she wasn’t privy to. Then he met her eye, his jaw clenched still, making it clear he wasn’t at all calm. “I didn’t mean to tease you. It went too far.” Sighing deeply, he added, “If it’s any help, I’m suffering, too. I want you so much I’m going to have to take a cold shower after we leave here so I can get control of myself.”
His confession didn’t help. “Well, in case you didn’t know it, Mr. Professor, cold showers don’t work so great for women.” Reaching for her shirt, she let her tongue rush ahead of her brain. “I ain’t exactly the type to take care of business on my own. Even if I were, I sure don’t have the privacy of my own bedroom, with no cameras. So I’m gonna be walking around for the next two weeks dying to come and not able to do it.”
Tori paused, her blood rushing to her face as she realized what she’d just said. She’d never once, in her life, talked to a man about something like…that. She’d hardly ever done…that. Touching herself.
Realizing she’d said it out loud—put those thoughts, those images, in both their heads—she dropped her shirt and clenched her hands together. Closing her eyes, she bit her lip and waited, praying she’d hear the opening—and closing—of the greenhouse door. Go, just go.
She didn’t hear anything for a long moment, only the pounding of her heart and the deep breaths she inhaled to try to calm herself.
“Well,” he finally said, his voice thick and hoarse, “we can’t have that, now can we?”
D REW HAD WANTED T ORI from the first moment he saw her. Maybe back then, he would have gone for something more physical if he’d had the chance—without cameras present. But now, he was falling for her. More interested in her than he’d been in anyone for a long time. Which had instantly sent up warning flares in his brain.
He couldn’t help thinking of his long-ago engagement. Of how his former fiancée had changed overnight from the girl next door, who wanted to marry him and have babies, to the pouting wannabe-actress who’d flown to Hollywood and hitched up with the first millionaire she’d met.
He wouldn’t say she’d broken his heart, but she’d put a dent in it. One he was reminded of now, with Tori. Because, he sensed, he really could care for her, in a way he never had about anyone else.
So he couldn’t act on his desire for her. Not until she knew what she wanted, where she was going, and where