All in the Game (10 page)

“How can I think of anything else but you?” His voice was a low, seductive growl. He curved his other hand over her hip in a firm possessive grasp.

Shannen's eyes stayed closed. She didn't want him to go, she achingly admitted to herself. But…

“Everything is so…unfinished between us, Ty,” she whispered.

“I think it's time we altered that, don't you?” Ty nibbled on her earlobe, his voice husky.

He trailed kisses along the curve of her jaw. When his mouth finally, lightly brushed hers, she exhaled with a hushed whimper. Raising her arms slowly, she laid her hands against his chest, feeling his body heat through the well-washed cotton material of his shirt.

It was all the invitation Ty needed to deepen the kiss. He opened his mouth over hers, luring her tongue into an erotic duel with his. Shannen felt desire and urgency erupt inside her with breathtaking speed, as though this morning's interrupted passion had been simmering deep within her, just waiting for the spark to ignite into a full blaze.

Ty sank down onto the edge of the bed, pulling her down on his lap. “I want you so much, Shannen,” he groaned, nuzzling her neck while his busy fingers pulled down the long zipper of her sundress.

His fingertips stroked her bare back and she shivered with response. Her sundress had a built-in bra, baring her breasts as it lay open around her waist. Ty caressed the nape of her neck and the smooth line of her shoulders be
fore slipping in front to take possession of her breasts, which were swollen and sensitive with arousal.

Shannen felt lost in a sensual dream. She tangled her fingers in the dark thickness of his hair, holding his head to hers and kissing him hungrily. How many times had she fantasized being alone with him like this? For the past nine years, he'd been her fantasy lover.

And now, at last…

All rational thought fled, taking her self-control along with it. Shannen was only too willing to cede command to the voluptuous emotions surging through her body.

Ty lay back on the bed, his arms tightly around her, taking her with him. Her dress tangled around her legs, and he pulled it off in one deft sweep, tossing it to the floor. He eased her onto her back, his eyes dark and intense, drinking in the sight of her.

Instead of the self-consciousness she might've expected under such careful scrutiny, Shannen basked in the heat of his admiring stare.

“I need you, Shannen. I've wanted you for so long,” he murmured hoarsely.

She lifted her hand and traced the fine shape of his mouth, her voice throaty with enticement and challenge.

“Show me, Tynan.”

T
he need to feel his skin against hers was overpowering. Shannen slid her hands under his shirt and tugged at it. Responding to her demand, he yanked the T-shirt off, giving her access to the smooth, muscled expanse of his torso. Her hands and lips roamed his chest, feeling every smooth inch of his skin and the contrasting wiry hair.

He was equally thorough with her, learning the shape of her breasts with his hands, tasting the taut buds with his lips. At long last one of his hands traveled lower, pausing to trace her navel, to caress the pale hollow of her stomach. He found her center, his slow sultry strokes into her liquid heat rendering her mindless with pleasure.

The rest of their clothing was shed with mutual haste and sent flying in different directions. They kissed again and again, their kisses deep and passionate and growing more urgent.

Shannen clung to Ty, drunk on the taste and the smell and the feel of him. He touched her intimately again and
she moaned, arching to him. Blindly, she scored her fingernails along his belly, to wrap her hand around the hard pulsing length of his arousal.

Their eyes met.

“I bought condoms at the shop here in the hotel,” Ty said bluntly. “They're in the pocket of my shorts somewhere on the floor.”

“You bought them before you came to my room tonight?” Shannen felt herself blushing, not sure what embarrassed her more—his frankness or his confidence. “You were that sure of me?”

It was his confidence, she decided. And it didn't embarrass her as much as irritate her. Immensely.

She sat up, averting her eyes from the sight of Ty retrieving the foil packets from the pocket of his khaki shorts.

“Let's just say I was hopeful.” His ardor was undiminished by this break in their foreplay and appeared likewise immune from accusation in her voice.

She knew because she kept stealing glances at him, in spite of her resolve not to. “Do you think I'm that easy?” she snapped. “So easy that all you have to do is to show up at my door and I'll go to bed with you?”

It didn't help that she'd proved that statement to be true. The self-incrimination increased her agitation.

“Shannen, one thing you definitely are not is easy,” Ty said, his tone heartfelt.

A bit too heartfelt. Her brows narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”

“It's taken us nine years to get to this point, which is so far beyond easy that—”

“Don't try to tell me you've been pining for me for the past nine years, because I won't believe you, Tynan.” Shannen grabbed the edge of the quilt comforter and pulled it over her, covering herself. “And…and don't give me that oh-so-noble ‘you were too young' speech again.”

“You told me this afternoon that you understood, Shan
nen.” Ty groaned. “But if you're determined to hold a grudge because I couldn't take advantage of—”

“I turned twenty-one five years ago, Ty,” Shannen said crossly. “Legal age. But you didn't bother to look me up then. No, you forgot all about me until you saw me on this island.”

And realized I had a chance to win a million dollars, she added to herself. No use bringing that up now, when she was out of the running.

“I know when you turned twenty-one, Shannen. It was two years after the Howes had spent months on the front pages of every paper in the country and became joke fodder for comedians, morality sermons for the clergy and all the rest that goes with being a notorious media staple. I truly didn't think you would welcome a national pariah on your doorstep.”

“All of that was about the other Howes.
You
didn't do anything wrong. At least do me the favor of being honest with me, Tynan. Admit that you never once considered coming back to West Falls to see me.”

“I did, Shannen.”

“Of course you'd say that
now!
You're wearing a condom—and…and keeping it on while I'm yelling at you!”

His lips quirked. “Not as difficult as it seems since you're naked in bed and I want you more than I've ever wanted a woman in my life, Shannen.”

“Which proves my point. You'd say anything to—”

“I want to make love with you, Shannen. I've been honest about it, I haven't tried to trick you into anything.” He sat down on the bed and carefully lifted the quilt from her. “You want me, too. We aren't playing a game of easy or hard to get. And thanks to tonight's vote, we're free from the
Victorious
game, too.”

He leaned over her, and as his head descended, Shannen was fully aware of what was coming next. And welcomed it, she allowed herself to admit. She was weary of putting
up roadblocks between them. This wasn't a game. This was Tynan, whom she'd longed for since she was seventeen.

Never mind that in her girlish daydreams they had been in love when they made love. She was all grown up now; she knew lovemaking didn't have to include true love.

A small wistful sigh escaped from her throat as his mouth touched hers. Being with Ty tonight would be enough. It would have to be enough.

She held him tight as he gently yet inexorably pressed into her.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered hoarsely, dropping his head to her breast. He had stopped moving, allowing her body time to adjust before fully sheathing himself in her liquid heat.

Shannen caressed him, her hands gliding over the full length of his back from his shoulders to his hips, savoring the feel of him in her arms, in her body. Her fingers tightened around him, pressing him down as she arched her hips upward, inching him even deeper inside her.

“More, Ty.” She pressed again.

He resisted. “Shannen, you're so small, so tight. Let's take it slowly. I don't want to hurt you.”

She shook her head. “You won't, you can't. I want all of you inside me now, Ty. I'm tired of waiting. We've already waited too long.”

“Way too long,” he agreed fervently. He filled her with one long thrust, then began to move, teasing her by withdrawing almost completely, waiting for her to moan his name before moving forward again.

He kept up the slow steady rhythm until she squirmed beneath him, locking her limbs around him in a silent plea. Ty wasn't one to settle for silence.

“Tell me what you want.” He chuckled softly. “Faster, like this?” He moved faster, just as she wanted him to and then stopped, as if awaiting further instructions.

“Deeper?” he suggested, proceeding while she gasped
with pleasure. He stopped to propose, “Harder?” and to demonstrate exactly how that felt, too.

Shannen's breath caught. His teasing was sexy and arousing and maddening, all at the same time. “Yes,” she panted. “Faster, deeper, harder. Please, oh, please!”

Every sensual nerve ending had caught fire and burned as their movements created a blaze that threatened to consume her. No, not
threaten,
she dizzily corrected. There was nothing threatening about this union with Ty.

Promise
was the correct description. Their sexual conflagration promised to consume her and she wanted that—she wanted all barriers between them melted away forever.

And they were. The wild, intense pleasure finally overwhelmed them at the same moment. Shannen cried his name as she shattered into a thousand pieces. Through the firestorm she heard Ty call out for her as he pulsed inside her, their essences joined as they became truly one.

She was only vaguely aware of his weight collapsing upon her. It was the heat of his body covering her that penetrated her sensuous daze. It complemented the inner warmth that filled her with a sense of utter completeness.

Slowly she resurfaced, opening her eyes to find him smiling down at her. Their bodies were still joined, and she had no intention of moving. He stirred above her, but she tightened her legs and arms around him.

“Don't move.” She purred the command into his ear.

“I'm too heavy for you,” he protested, but he didn't move away from her. He trailed a string of gossamer-light kisses along her neck, licking and nipping her skin. “I can't get enough of you, Shannen.”

His hands found hers, his fingers intertwining with hers. He felt satiated; he felt a kind of peace he'd never known. This sweet, languid time—with Shannen in his arms, defenseless and utterly trusting, no walls or barriers between them—was like nothing he'd ever known.

He raised his head and smiled into her eyes. “I'm trying
to come up with something profound to say that doesn't sound like a cheesy line,” he admitted quietly. “Because being with you…”

His voice trailed off. There really were no words to describe how he was feeling right now.

I love you
sprang to mind, and he dismissed it just as quickly. No, that was beyond cheesy, it was more like fraud. According to the Book of Howe, love had nothing to do with what he felt for Shannen right now. It was the pleasurable afterglow of sex.

But to say
that
would be tactless—and then some.

“I'd love to know what you're really thinking.” Shannen was staring deeply into his eyes. “Your expression keeps changing, like there's a civil war going on in your head.”

“An astute observation.” Ty slowly disengaged his body from hers and sat up. She was scarily close to the mark. He drew her into the circle of his arms and leaned back against the pillows.

“I'd like to know what
you're
really thinking, Shannen.” He brushed his lips lightly over her hair, the clean, fresh scent of coconut shampoo filling his nostrils.

He wasn't simply trying to divert her from gaining access to his own conflicted thoughts, he assured himself; he was genuinely interested in her take on this development in their ever-evolving relationship.

“I already told you.” She cast him a glance beneath her lashes. “That I'd love to know what you're really thinking.”

“A winning combination of flirtatious and evasive.” He was glad she was playing it this way, Ty decided. Keeping it light instead of getting all carried away with deep talk of love and promises.

Shannen studied him and had no trouble reading the relief that crossed his face. It was fortunate that she'd snuffed her afterglow impulse to rhapsodize about their lovemaking.

She wanted to tell him that being with him not only lived up to her long-held fantasies but exceeded them, that she not only loved having sex with him, she loved
him,
Ty Hale, the ex-Howe who worked for a living.

She supposed she could've at least told him that she'd never known making love could be this way, that with him she'd had her very first climax, but then he might feel encouraged to share his sexual history with her. Which she didn't want to hear.

Nor did she care to go into detail about her own lack of experience, which consisted only of Ben Salton, her college boyfriend and first lover. She'd been Ben's first lover, too, and their fumbling clumsy sex had been so awkward and miserable for them both that a year after they'd broken up and Ben had found someone new, he'd actually called Shannen to tell her that sex could be good, not awful, and she shouldn't let their unskilled forays keep her from trying it again—with someone else, of course.

Shannen had thanked good old Ben and wished him luck with his new love but declined to venture back into the sexual arena. From what she could tell, there were too many negatives and not a single positive, especially since she'd firmly suppressed any hopes of ever being with Tynan Howe. He was a closed chapter in her life.

Which had been now reopened.

Or had it?

That she had satisfied him, Shannen had no doubt, but he'd made a point of holding back the words that would elevate tonight from hot one-night stand to something more.

Something involving love and trust and commitment.

So she would follow his lead. No opening her heart to him, the way she had as a naive schoolgirl in love. He'd
crushed
her back then, and it wasn't going to happen again. She was a gameworthy opponent now.

A loud and unexpected knock sounded at the door, jolt
ing them both from the thoughtful silence enshrouding them.

“Probably a maid,” said Ty. “Tell her to—”

“Lauren, baby, are you still awake?” an urgent male voice called from the hall. “Lauren, open up. It's Jed.”

Shannen sprang from the bed, her actions sheer reflex.
Jed?
she mouthed to Ty, who looked as startled as she did.

“He thinks I'm Lauren,” she said in a whisper. “He called her ‘baby'!”

“Lauren, come on! Let me in!” Jed's voice rose, the words slurring.

“Do you think he's been drinking?” whispered Shannen, still trying to process Jed's appearance at what he thought was Lauren's hotel room door—and demanding to be let in!

“I'd count on it,” Ty muttered back. “Tell him to get lost, Shannen.”

“Why would he think I'm Lauren?” She still looked confused.

“I'm going to hazard a guess. The resort has no TV access, and even if it did, nobody would know you'd been voted off the island yet. Someone would've had to tell the
Victorious
jury pool down in the Parrot Room which contestant arrived at the hotel tonight.”

“And somebody said it was a twin and Jed assumed it was Lauren?” Shannen surmised with a scowl. “Why would he assume that my sister would get voted off before me?”

“Just making a guess here.” Ty made a sound halfway between a groan and a chuckle. “But I think Kevin and Adam, the PAs who came to the hotel with me tonight, told Jed that Lauren was here.”

“Lauren!” Jed was pounding on the door now. “Baby!”

“Kevin and Adam know that Cortnee told Lauren—and everybody else on the island the other day—that Jed had
slept with Keri and Lucy,” Ty continued. “And since the crew thinks Lauren has a, um, thing for Jed—”