I Love You (3 page)

Tate managed a smile, even though it was through gritted teeth. “Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. C’mere.”

He grabbed her hands and dragged her around to the far side of Fred’s wrecker, then pulled her back in his arms. Here they were concealed from the curious eyes of the two men watching over the cycles. Behind them stretched a mostly empty parking lot, and the windowless concrete walls of nearby buildings.

“Fred. How about dinner on me?” Tate’s voice sounded composed, but Dace was close enough she saw the strain reflected on his face.

Fred poked his head out of her Honda’s front window. “Right now?”

“Yeah. Right now. Tell Jack whatever you want him to make and tell him to put it on my tab.” Tate dropped his head and nuzzled Dace’s neck, running his hands down over her hips. Dace swore she could feel her eyes roll back in her head.
What the hell was she doing?

Tate traced the delicate rim of Dace’s ear with his nose, and murmured in her ear. “Let go. Be in the moment, babe. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

Grasping at her last fully functioning brain cell, she moved her head back and looked up at him, seeing the blazing heat and arousal in his eyes. “Let go? I just met you and I don’t even know you.” With regret in every step, she slid her feet back, moving slowly away from his embrace. “We need to stop this right now, before we do something stupid. Thanks for the phone, and, uh…everything else.”

Before she had gotten half a step away, he grasped her arms and pulled her back against him. “Who says it would be stupid? Relax. You know who I am, and you know what I do. I run a bar that I happen to own. My business card is in your pocket.”

He smiled at her and she swore her panties got even wetter. “I can make you feel really good if you let me.” His nose drifted around her earlobe and down her neck again. “You smell like lemons and soap and warm, sexy skin. And Dace, if we had time, I’d like to know how every inch of your skin smells, and how it tastes. I want to see what is under these scrubs.”

“You’re a guy. You have to say us getting intimate wouldn’t be stupid, or you lose your membership card in the man club.” Pushing up against him was like being pressed against a wall; a really sexy wall with a seriously buff body and a mouth made for slow, sensuous kissing. He was implacable, immovable, and irritating—not to mention protective.

And hot. Completely and utterly hot.

“My membership card in the man club?” Gently he traced her lips with his index finger. “Hate to disappoint you, but I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member.”

“Quoting Groucho Marx isn’t furthering your cause.”

“And here I thought humor was an aphrodisiac.” He chuckled. “Dace, you kiss like an angel, and I’ve already told you I want to see you again. You’ve got my number, so the ball’s in your court.” He nudged his hardness against her hip, as he nodded at her erect nipples straining through her scrubs. “There’s attraction on both sides here, unless I need my eyes checked.”

He traced a finger across her collarbone, and down the neck of her scrubs into her cleavage, making her shudder. “Let go, babe. Just for a few minutes.”

She gaped at him, her mouth open. Thoughts whirled through her head, arousal and sheer lust fogging her brain.

To let go…just for a few minutes…

No patients, no nurses, no ringing cell phones, no decisions to make, no paperwork, no intercom pages…

She couldn’t help it; she nodded.

Chapter Four

Tate felt as if his brain was boiling inside his head. His heart was trying to pound its way out of his chest, and he realized it had been a very long time since he’d had someone in his life; someone who intrigued him and attracted him, who actually made him want to get to know her better. One-night-stands were easy for him to find, given that he owned a bar and single women were plentiful. She was different, though; he was attracted to Dace from the first moment she came into the bar, and his attraction had grown, along with the possessiveness he felt for her.

He was surprised to see the Dark Riders pull into his parking lot earlier. After Tate’s tours in the sandbox, courtesy of Uncle Sam, word got around the biker community that he wasn’t a pushover. Early on, he convinced Whip and his boys to mind their manners when they were in his bar. After a few unpleasant encounters, the lesson had stuck. Whip liked raising hell, and he didn’t like someone telling him what not to do; consequently, he avoided Shooters on most of his runs. Whip hitting on Dace earlier raised the hackles on Tate’s neck, and he responded instinctively by claiming Dace in front of Whip.

He was sure Dace didn’t understand what that meant, that he had claimed her. But Tate knew that Whip did, and that Whip understood the consequences of ignoring that statement.

What surprised Tate the most was how natural it felt; as if she belonged in his life and in his arms, warm and soft and responsive to his caresses. Her head nestled perfectly under his chin, and by bending his head slightly, he could catch the lemon scent of her hair. Beneath the lemon, he caught the occasional whiff of a sharper, more acrid scent, and he recognized it as disinfectant.

“Tate, we’re in a parking lot…” Her words came out on an exhale, drifting through the air in a whispered plea. “We can’t do this.” Despite her earlier nod of assent, Tate felt the uncertainty in her body; she rubbed against him, her touch sleek and hot as if she couldn’t bear to move away from him. Her hands slid up and down his arms, pulling him closer and sliding under his T-shirt against his belly.

She groaned hungrily again, desperation bleeding through her voice. “Oh, God…” He felt her nuzzle his neck, flicking it with the tip of her tongue, and it pushed him over the edge.

He nudged her backward as he felt for the door handle on the cab of Fred’s wrecker. Lady Luck smiled; it was unlocked. Pulling Dace against him, he eased her backward and boosted her into the truck cab, yanking the door shut behind him.

“Thank God for bench seats,” he murmured. “Put your arms around my neck and hold on.”

She did as he asked, and he scooted her across the wide blanket-covered seat, pushing her head past the floor shift and almost under the big steering wheel. He left one knee on the floor and moved his other leg between her thighs. Light from the parking lot security lights streamed through the window, casting her face half in shadow.

“He’s going to come back any minute. You know that, right?” Tate could hear the anxiety in her voice, but if he wasn’t mistaken, there were equal parts of arousal and excitement mixed in as well.

“Dace, Fred is a sucker for bacon cheeseburgers and cheddar curly fries. Right now, he is plowing through a double order of both. Like I told you, I know my neighbors. We have enough time.”

The one eyebrow on her face he could see lifted skeptically. “Enough time for what?”

“Not enough time for what I really want to do—but enough time for me to give you what you need.”

She made a small sound in her throat, like a cross between a whimper and a moan. Her hands fisted in his T-shirt, and she lifted her head to meet his lips in a scalding kiss of assent.

All the high school memories of hot make-out sessions in the front seat of his car came flooding back to him. He pushed up against her with his leg, using the knee on the floor as leverage, and shifted his left arm under her torso. The bottom of her scrubs was twisted around her hips, and he grabbed the waistband and yanked up the seat so the garment was pulled tightly across her crotch. The unexpected pressure against her sex made her gasp in surprise, and she arched against him.

Undulating his lower body against her core with long gliding strokes, he began to move. In between his upward thrusts, he alternated fiery kisses with nuzzling her breasts through her scrub top. At one point, he clamped his lips over her erect nipple and exhaled, pushing his warm breath through her clothing and against her flesh. She jerked, startled at the sensation, and he smiled.

“Like that?”

“I thought …Tate…what are you…” The rest of her words were lost in a moan.

His smile grew wider. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s all about the journey?”

Chapter Five

“Tate. Ta-ate…”

Her head was spinning from his kisses, and she was gasping for breath, more aroused than she could remember herself ever being. Her body was arching up against him, hard enough to sway the heavy truck on its frame.

The vexation of wanting to be naked, in a bed, his hard maleness inside her, added to her emotional frustration. Capable, calm, controlled Dr. Dace was left standing in the parking lot; inside the wrecker cab, she became X-rated Dace, wild woman intent on climaxing in a semi-public display of wantonness.

She would never have believed the pressure from her twisted clothing and Tate’s hard leg rubbing repeatedly across her tender center would get her this hot and this wild so fast.

She couldn’t get close enough to Tate, despite having her arms and legs wrapped around him. Her hands clenched on his world-class ass, fingers dug in so hard she was probably leaving bruises. The tension was ratcheting higher and higher in her body, and she felt she would fly apart, shattering into pieces if the mother of all orgasms didn’t arrive in the next few seconds.

Finally, it hit her with the force of a lightning bolt, beginning at her core and shooting sensation after sensation through her body until her body clenched, her clitoris throbbed, and her womb literally tingled. So caught up in what was happening to her physically, she saw stars twinkling at the edges of her vision, and realized she was actually on the verge of passing out.

Dragging air back into her lungs, she looked up at Tate’s face, half hidden in the darkness above her. He lowered his head, and rubbed his cheek against hers while murmuring softly in her ear, simultaneously soothing her and bringing her back down to earth.

“See what I mean? Good things happen when you let go.” His voice sounded deep and husky, and she wordlessly purred her agreement.

“That was…uh, amazing doesn’t quite cover it. I’ve never…oh, I mean, I
have
, but not like that. I almost passed out.”

Pressed against his chest, she felt his abdomen move as he chuckled. “The French term for orgasm is
la petit mort
. It translates to ‘little death’.”

“You speak French?”

“College. Language elective.”

“Hmmmmm. Very apt. I think I died a little. But you didn’t…did you?” She answered her own question by arching her body slightly and encountering his still-tumescent flesh wedged between her legs. It felt to her as if he had an iron bar jammed in his jeans.

“Babe, I told you—there wasn’t enough time for what I wanted to do, but enough time to give you what you needed.” He bent his head and nuzzled her hospital identification card, still hanging around her neck on a lanyard. “You work at the hospital, so I’m sure you can appreciate safe sex. And this was really,
really
safe.”

She looked up at him for a moment, feeling the flush of mortification spread across her cheeks. “Tate, I am not, nor have I ever been, a tease. Hallmark does not make a card to cover this situation, so you will have to accept my verbal apology. I’m very appreciative of your actions, and I am sorry they were not reciprocal and that you, uh, didn’t achieve satisfaction as well.” Apparently, in the space of a few moments, the ever-poised and always-in-control Dr. Dace had reappeared in the cab—complete with the stick she carried in her OCD-organized ass—and kicked out wild wanton X-rated Dace.

Tate looked at her for a moment, and Dace had the sense he was surprised by her words. Then his eyes crinkled at the corners and he began chuckling, which morphed into whooping gales of laughter, complete with tears of hilarity streaming down his face. His voice sounded rusty and unused, as if the laughing fit wasn’t a usual thing for him, and that alone kept her from being completely embarrassed. To her eyes, in that moment Tate looked like a man who needed a lot more laughter in his life.

Eventually the spate of laughter wore down, and he got himself under control, with only the occasional hitching guffaw.

“Was it something I said?” she asked.

That remark set him off again, and he had to pull himself into a seated position in the truck cab. He doubled over, gasping for breath and roaring with amusement, his arms wrapped across his stomach.

Dace, too, sat up and rearranged her scrubs into some semblance of order. Then she watched him pull himself together for a second time.

“Are you all right?”

He nodded as he sprawled back against the front door of the wrecker, mopping tears from his cheeks with the sleeves of his T-shirt, looking more relaxed than he had since she’d met him. “Oh, yeah. Top of the world.”

She snuck a peek at his jeans as he shifted, and was relieved to notice his erection had subsided. That made her feel less guilty, although she would be damned if she’d mention Hallmark or apologies again.

“I think I see Fred coming out of the bar. Looks like he ordered the burger to go. “

Tate glanced across the street. Fred was indeed coming toward the wrecker, and carrying a medium-sized foam container. Suddenly Tate sat up straight, his relaxed posture disappearing in an instant.

“Fred isn’t the only one leaving.” He turned to her, his expression back to the guarded blank look she had seen when he was speaking with Whip. “Looks like the Dark Riders only wanted a free drink. You’re coming back in the bar with me. Grab what you need from your car; I’ll wait for you.”

Dace tilted her head. “Tate, I’m in the wrecker cab, I’ll just lock the doors. Fred will be here in a second. Go on in. I’ll be fine.”

Tate reached behind him and opened the door, sliding out in one smooth motion. He reached back into the cab, grabbing her chin between his thumb and index finger. The warm glow she had seen in his eyes earlier had vanished; now he looked like he was facing down a predator.

“Babe, I’m not asking. Get your stuff. Now.”

Dace felt her eyebrows climb toward her hairline. “Just a minute. You don’t tell me what to do.” She poked him in the chest with her forefinger. “You are not the boss of me.”