His for the Taking (13 page)

She clapped her hands, and Nick blinked. He raised his eyes from her chest to her face and saw her nodding at him.

‘Oh.’ He looked down at the paper he held. ‘Twenty basic, left foot.’

The class switched feet without missing a beat. Nick had to think about it, but within seconds he was stepping with his left foot and doing his best not to let himself stare at Zoe’s chest again. He tried looking past her, but the mirror behind her gave a perfect view of her buttocks flexing and tightening.

Hell. Imagine her walking up the stairs in front of him. On their way to a bedroom. Her backside at eye level. Imagine sliding his hand over her curves, down over the swell of one buttock and around her firm thigh.

Zoe clapped again and he nearly stumbled as he held up the paper. ‘Three knee-lift repeater,’ he read, and, though that made absolutely no sense, the rest of the class immediately stepped up onto their boxes in time and lifted their knees three times in a row.

Yeah. He could do this. He stepped up and lifted his knee and then saw that the rest of the class had moved to the other side of their steps and were doing the same thing with the other leg. By the time he got to the other side of the step, the class was going back to their first position.

He looked at Zoe. She was grinning like a madwoman, and her breasts were still moving in that wonderful way. When she lifted her knee he could see the inside of her thigh.

Nick missed the step completely and landed hard on the floor, jolting his ankle.

He scrambled to get back into the rhythm of the exercise, but as soon as he’d lifted his knee again he heard Zoe clapping, and had to read out the next instruction. And then the next. And the next, all of which seemed to be in a code everyone but him understood.

This wasn’t easy. This was torture.

Nick had to watch his feet because if he didn’t, he’d fall off the step again, but if he didn’t watch Zoe, he’d miss his cue. But if he watched Zoe, he looked at her body moving and he thought more and more about her body moving with his, the athleticism she’d take to sex, and the minute he thought about that he felt his penis hardening and then he stumbled even more. Sweat dripped from him; he had to blink it out of his eyes and that made everything even worse.

‘Around the world,’ he gasped to Zoe’s nod. Everybody skipped over their step, arms circling, and Nick groaned. The music was building to a climax. Nick watched Zoe launching herself into the air and wished he were building to a climax, too.

It seemed to last a muscle-burning, ankle-twisting, arousing eternity before the music finally slowed and the exercise pace calmed, back to easy steps and finally to stretches. Nick saw on the sheet, incredulously, that this section of the class was called the ‘cooldown’.

Zoe stretched forward, her long leg extended behind her along with her arms, a posture that thrust her breasts forward towards him. Her nipples were erect underneath her shirt and sports bra. She seemed to be sweating a whole lot less than he was, but her face and neck gleamed. He imagined the taste of salty moisture on her skin.

This wasn’t even remotely like a cooldown.

The end of the CD and applause from the class told him the session had finished. He mopped sweat off his forehead with the bottom of his T-shirt and silently thanked God.

‘How’d you like that?’ It was a male voice with a heavy New York accent.

Nick pulled his shirt down off his face. ‘It was pure hell,’ he said to the person who’d spoken to him, one of the guys he’d smiled at in solidarity at the beginning of the lesson.

The guy laughed. ‘Zoe’s great, ain’t she? You not used to this kind of workout?’

‘I’m not used to anything in New York.’

‘What kind of workout you usually do?’

‘Chasing animals, lifting rocks, that sort of thing.’ He filled a cup from the water cooler at the front of the room and drained it in one gulp.

‘You interested in going for coffee?’ the guy asked.

Nick, mid-gulp of his second cup of water, noticed for the first time that the guy was looking at him with more appreciation than friendliness.

‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but I’m not around for long.’

The guy shrugged. ‘No harm in asking. See ya.’

As he moved away Nick saw another person, this one female and brunette, approach him. ‘Since you didn’t say yes to Carl,’ she said, smiling, ‘how about coffee with me?’

‘Uh. Thanks. But as I said to Carl—’

‘You’re not around for long.’ The brunette’s eyes darted to Zoe, and she smiled knowingly. ‘Sure. Have a good time.’

Nick let out a long breath as Zoe came over. Her smile was devilish, and her eyes sparkled. She wasn’t winded at all from the exercise.

‘NewYork is crazy,’ he said in answer to her raised eyebrows. ‘I’ve never turned down two dates in two minutes before.’

She pressed her lips together as if she were stifling a laugh, and handed him another sheet of paper. Then she picked up a pair of dumb-bells from a container on the floor and gave them to him. Three minutes till the next class, she mouthed, and went back to her CDs.

Nick sank down on the plastic step, wiped his face again, and wished he were in the woods.

‘That’s it, folks.’

Zoe heard more than a note of relief in Nick’s voice. Surreptitiously, she watched him as he returned his gym mat and dumb-bells to the boxes at the front of the room.

He was fit. Very fit. His shorts revealed legs roped with muscle, and whenever she’d caught a glimpse of him lifting a weight she’d just about gasped. He wasn’t used to gym exercise, because he didn’t know any of the moves and he had to work out twice as hard as everyone else in the room to get it right and then keep up. Still, he hadn’t stopped. His T-shirt was soaked with sweat in deep Vs on his front and his back, in a way that Zoe found distractingly sexy, but he wasn’t puffed.

Zoe packed away her own CDs and her own mat and smiled to herself. He hadn’t enjoyed it. Whenever she’d glanced at his face, he’d looked as if he were trying out that thumbscrew collection on Xenia’s wall. But he hadn’t complained, and he hadn’t given up. He hadn’t really had to do every exercise, but he had done. And he’d followed her instructions to the letter.

It was just the kind of damn noble guy he was.

‘Bye, Zoe!’ said the last of her class as they left, and Zoe waved at them from her crouching position on the floor. She heard the door shut and then she knew without even looking around that she and Nick were alone, because the room seemed hotter and paradoxically smaller.

‘Well, that was fun,’ Nick said, from over near the door, and she heard him walking closer. She concentrated on zipping up her gym bag. Exercise always warmed her blood, made her feel good. Made her feel sexy. And that was dangerous with Nick around.

You hated it, she mouthed, and he laughed.

‘It was different from the stuff I normally do, but then again, everything’s different in New York.’ He was standing right next to her, and she could see his strong, hair-roughened calves. She thought about his shorts; they covered him, but there wasn’t a whole lot of spare material. She turned away and began fiddling unnecessarily with the CD player, just to give herself a few minutes to calm down before she looked him in the eye.

‘We need to talk,’ Nick said. She did look up at him then, and pointed at her throat.

‘Okay, I need to talk, and you need to listen, because I’m desperate here. We didn’t finish our conversation this morning. About why I kissed you. About how attracted I am to you.’

Her heart had slowed down after the exercise; now it began to race.

She stood and shook her head, waving her hand in a dismissive way. Of course standing up meant that she was closer to him, close enough to touch. Close enough to smell clean sweat and the cotton of his T-shirt. Close enough to see the stubble on his chin and the darkness of his eyes and to feel the heat of his body.

‘Are you shaking your head because you’re not attracted to me, or because you don’t believe that I’m attracted to you?’

How the hell was she supposed to answer that? Especially with no voice? She swallowed.

‘Let me make it simpler. Are you attracted to me?’

Lord, he was so close and she couldn’t possibly think. Zoe retreated a step and felt her back pressing against the mirrored wall behind her. Nick stepped forward. His face was too intense, his eyes too dark and deep.

She should make a smart answer. She should protect herself.

She couldn’t.

She dipped her gaze to escape and found herself staring at the base of his neck where his T-shirt met his skin. There were a few strands of curling hair. She could see his pulse beating strong.

Zoe licked her lips, imagining despite herself the taste of his skin.

‘That’s the answer I wanted,’ Nick said, his voice soft and low, and he leaned forward, each arm braced on the mirror behind her, and kissed her.

This man’s mouth was perfect along with everything else about him and now that he was touching her Zoe officially lost her mind.

She kissed him back.

CHAPTER NINE

S
HE WAS GREEDY
,
greedy, and she opened her mouth to him and kissed him as if she were devouring him. Nick made a sound of surprise and pleasure in his throat and that made her hungrier. Her tongue swept against his, feeling the strength in his kiss, the smooth hardness of his teeth.

She pressed her hands against the mirror behind her, curling her fingers on the glass. She wanted to touch him, not just with her mouth but with her hands and her whole body, but the wanting was too powerful, just with touching his lips with her own. It would take her over.

But his kiss, dear God, it was perfect. He began gentle and then responded to her own ferocity. She took all she could, bit his lip and smoothed it with the tip of her tongue, let her sense of taste and smell be overwhelmed by him, the rasp of his stubble on her chin, the saltiness of sweat on his upper lip.

Nick,
she thought,
I can even taste how kind you are.

When he broke from her they were both panting raggedly. He only moved his face a fraction from hers and she could feel his breath hot on her wet lips.

‘Do you believe I’m attracted to you now?’ he asked.

She hesitated.

‘And before you make some crack about me having just come out of the woods and being desperate for any woman, let me remind you that I’m in the biggest city in America and I’ve just said no to a woman and a man. It’s you I want.’

She’d dreamed about these words. She looked into his dark eyes, trying to judge if he was telling the truth.

It hadn’t been the truth before, not on their first night together. But maybe something had changed. She’d wanted Nick instantly, but maybe his attraction for her had come later. Grown. Did that make it less genuine, or more?

‘I kept on falling off the box during your class because I was concentrating so hard on not watching your body because I knew it would turn me on. And these shorts don’t conceal much.’

She looked down, and all the air rushed out of her lungs.

His shorts didn’t conceal anything. His erection tented the front, straining the material in a long, thick line. She could easily imagine its length, its girth, how it would feel in her hands, stone in velvet skin, hot and alive.

Screw her doubts about why he wanted her. He did. And she wanted him, more than she could remember wanting anything in a very long time.

Zoe uncurled her hands and lifted them to his chest. She touched the damp material of his T-shirt and felt the firmness of his muscles underneath. It seemed as if she’d looked at him a million times, wanting to touch him, although some of those times must have been in dreams. He felt better than she could have possibly imagined. The solid curve of his collar-bone, his pecs, his nipples just tangible through the T-shirt. The beating of his heart. The sound of his breathing, how it caught in his throat as her hands trailed down his front, over his hard abs, and then underneath his shirt to touch his skin.

She wanted to savour touching his stomach, the bare, warm skin, the soft hair around his navel, but Nick grasped her in his arms and pulled her closer, his mouth meeting hers again. This kiss didn’t start gentle. This kiss started carnal, and Nick’s hands were everywhere—her hips, her waist, her back, in her hair, one suddenly and wonderfully on her breast. Zoe dug her fingertips into Nick’s skin and arched closer to him. His erection pressed hard against her belly and she heard him groan.

‘Zoe, you are so sexy,’ he muttered roughly into her mouth and she let out a voiceless sigh of pleasure in return as he cupped his hand around her breast and stroked her nipple with his thumb. His big, strong body leaned forward, pinning her against the mirrored wall, the two of them touching from head to toe.

His mouth left hers and Zoe leaned her head back against the wall as he dropped hot kisses over her face and throat. She felt his tongue tasting her skin, and shuddered.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmured, and he was so ardent and turned on and he filled her world so much that she believed him. She was carried away into his emotions, into his view of things.

She felt beautiful. It was a glow, a lift, a rush of desire that was stronger and more immediate than any feeling she’d ever had before.

Zoe’s hands stopped moving on Nick’s skin as she realised it was also the most dangerous. She loved this feeling. She’d been craving it for far too long.

If she made love with this man, she would be his. She would belong to him, body and soul.

Zoe pulled her hands from underneath Nick’s T-shirt and put them on his shoulders. Then she pushed him away.

‘Stop,’ she panted, and wasn’t at all surprised that this was the moment her voice chose to come back.

The moment she’d decided to mess everything up.

Nick didn’t step away; she was strong, but he was solid and a lot stronger. His body still pressed against hers, every breath going through her, too. But he raised his head and looked into her face.