“I like a few individuals. I can count the ones I like with my fingers alone. I don’t like people in general.”
“If you say so.”
“If you keep up this irritating inquisition, then I’ll be able to say without question that I don’t like you.”
He didn’t appear to be remotely affected by her sharp tone. In fact, he didn’t appear to believe her. His characteristically sober lips quirked up in the briefest of smiles.
The expression shouldn’t have been sexy. It really shouldn’t have been.
But Taylor’s whole body tightened with interest anyway, and her heartbeat accelerated.
“Why don’t you date more than you do?” she asked out of the blue.
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I asked. You’ve dated some that I remember. I can think of three different girlfriends you’ve had, and those relationships seemed to last a pretty long time. But the last one was a couple of years ago, and I haven’t seen you date a lot since. You don’t have casual sex. Why not?”
He gave a faint shrug and glanced away. “I’ve been busy. And I haven’t found anyone I’m really interested in dating lately.”
“How do you know if you don’t go out on dates?”
“I go out occasionally. I’ve gone out a few times with women in Azalea, but the only one I liked was already into someone else.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” She hadn’t expected that confession, and she experienced the most irrational flare of jealousy over it. “Did you get your heart broken?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Why of course not?”
“Because I just told you that she was into someone else.”
“What does that have to do with anything? You can still get your heart broken.”
He gave her another one of those faintly impatient looks, as if he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Only if you let yourself fall for someone completely inappropriate.”
With a bark of laughter, she got up from where she’d been sitting and leaned over to stretch her back. “People fall for inappropriate people all the time!”
“Not me.” His eyes were following her motion, and she saw a smolder there that caused a hot clench between her legs.
“Not you?”
“Not me.” He stood up too. “I never fall for inappropriate women. It seems like a recipe for suffering, and I try to avoid that as much as possible.”
“That’s very rational and boring.”
“That’s me. Rational and boring.” He stepped toward her as she straightened up. His blue eyes held hers. “Are you still interested in having sex with me?”
She wanted to laugh—and to melt into a puddle of excitement—at the same time. “Uh, yeah. That’s what we’re here for.”
“So shall we get to it?”
“You’re the one who wanted to play chess for two hours before hitting the bedroom.”
“And you’re the one standing here chatting when we could be making our way to the bedroom now.”
She hadn’t expected him to be such a challenge. And she didn’t know why it was so stimulating. Normally, she found people who challenged her to be unbearably exasperating. “So let’s do it,” she said, holding his gaze without wavering.
“Good.” He paused and turned his head with a couple of blinks. “How should we begin? Do you want to just go at it here, or should we get undressed and get in bed, or should we—?”
She was half laughing as she advanced on him and pulled his head down into a kiss.
Taylor had never been very big on kissing. In fact, it always felt like a frustrating precursor to the main event. For some reason it had seemed more intimate than sex, and so she’d never wanted to spend a lot of time on it in her sexual experiences. Most people expected to begin with it, however, so she was in the habit of kissing first—for no more than a minute—and then moving on to other things and not go back.
No man of her acquaintance had ever complained about this practice.
So she normally approached kissing with a get-it-over-with attitude, and she didn’t expect it to be different with Charles. She kissed him hard and deep, not wasting time on easing into things slowly. Charles responded immediately—no hesitation. He held her head with both hands and slid his tongue into her mouth. But instead of matching her urgency, he slowed her down.
After a little while, he released her mouth and pressed a few little kisses on her lips before he licked the line of her lips unhurriedly with his tongue.
The delicate touch triggered so many nerve endings, creating pleasure all through her body, that she moaned against his mouth.
She tried to suck his tongue back into her mouth to speed the kiss up the way she normally did, but he resisted, kissing a gentle line along her jawbone and then back to her mouth to take her lower lip between both of his and give it a delicious tug.
She moaned again, arching against him and pulsing achingly between her legs. She had to wrap her arms around his neck to keep her knees from buckling.
She was relieved when he kissed her full on again. She opened to the advance of his tongue. But he didn’t move into the hot, familiar rush of simple lust. He stroked the inside of her mouth. He played with her tongue. He broke away to make little detours to her cheeks and throat and even her ears.
She was groaning helplessly with the exquisite pleasure of it, and she wasn’t used to being so uncontrolled. It was almost embarrassing—her shameless responses to him—but she simply couldn’t help it.
The kiss went on and on. She had no idea how long it actually lasted, but it felt like a sensual eternity. She was so turned on that she could feel moisture leaking between her thighs, and he hadn’t gotten any lower than her neck.
Clutching his hair with one hand and his shirt with the other, she gasped as he lowered his mouth to suck at the pulse in her throat again. “Charles!”
“Mm-hmm.” His mouth was busy trailing a line of delicate kisses back up her mouth.
“We can move on now if you want.”
“Move on?”
“To the main event. There’s not normally this much kissing in casual sex.”
“Has that been your experience?” It sounded like he was smiling, but she couldn’t see his expression. He gave her earlobe a little pull, causing her to make a squeaking sound.
He seemed to like that. He tugged her ear again, chuckling when she squeaked again.
She really needed to get it together. This wasn’t like her at all. “The benefit of casual sex is you don’t need to spend all this time on the kissing part. You can jump right to the goal.”
“I thought the goal was to enjoy it.” He was definitely smiling as he kissed her mouth. “And I’m definitely enjoying this. I’m pretty sure you are too.”
“I’m—” She gasped loudly as he gently nibbled her lower lip. How the hell was he even doing this to her?
“You’re really liking this.” One of his hands finally moved lower and gave a little tweak to one of her taut nipples. “Aren’t you?”
She whimpered at the slice of intense sensation and then whimpered again when he used the pad of his thumb to twirl the same nipple with uncanny skill through the thin fabric of her dress. Her cheeks were flaming, and she was sweating beneath her clothes. She made a sobbing sound when he kissed her again—long and slow and deep.