Out of Bounds (14 page)

Posy forgot about the crowd. Forgot about Chloe and the other Kirkland women at her table. Forgot about her sensible heels, the ones designed to help her fit in, and she sang.

When they were finished, the applause was louder than it had been for their winning song.

Wes pulled her close and kissed her. His lips touched hers gently and then a bit harder. His hands settled on her waist and when he broke the kiss, he pressed his fingertips into her hips for a brief second before he faced the crowd and bowed again.

He held her hand as they left the stage. They could have avoided Chloe’s table, but he pulled her right past so the other woman had to acknowledge them.

“Congratulations, Posy,” she said. “Just like old times, isn’t it?”

He kept holding her hand as they left the restaurant.

Deacon and Julia went to get the car and Wes said, “Come here.” He pulled her by the hand and the two of them went around the corner of the building into a narrow alley between Finnegan’s and the bank next to it. He leaned against the brick wall of Finnegan’s and bent his head to kiss her. Before she could think, his hands were in her hair and stroking down her back, squeezing her hips and sliding down the front of her thighs. She kissed him back, straining toward him, releasing all the emotion she’d felt during the song. Wanting to feel him, wanting him to feel her.

He moaned and tugged, pulling her closer to him. He was hard and his erection pressed against her with tantalizing urgency. She wanted to touch him. Wanted more of him, all of him that she could get.

“Okay,” he said against her lips. “Okay. One minute.”

He straightened, breaking their kiss, and looked out toward the street. “My brother’s going to be here any second.” She didn’t move. She didn’t want this moment to end. He kissed her again, dipping his head and pressing his lips against hers with the same need she felt.

“Deacon,” she managed to say. “The car.”

They made it out of the alley with a few seconds to spare.

Julia gave them a questioning look when they got in the backseat, but didn’t say anything.

His brother and sister-in-law were staying in a hotel downtown, so he said he’d drive Posy home if they dropped them both off at his place.

She wasn’t paying much attention to the driving arrangements until Deacon and Julia honked their horn and drove away.

“Why didn’t you just let them drive me home? It’s not that much more driving.”

“Because I didn’t know how else I could invite you up to my place.”

Oh.

Because of that. Why didn’t he say so?

“I haven’t had that much fun in a really long time, Posy. I’m not ready for it to end.” He squeezed her hand. “Are you?”

She followed him up the stairs to the apartment over Mrs. Meacham’s garage. The light was on outside the kitchen door and she stood on the step below the landing while he dug the keys out of his pocket. His leather jacket stretched tight across his shoulders. His hands made quick work of the lock and with one firm twist the door was open.

She’d seen those same hands earlier today, gently tying shoes on small feet. She’d seen them juggling Wiffle balls and pouring beer. She’d felt them on her hips and back and thighs.

He had no idea what he was getting into with her. She knew he hadn’t understood what made her so mad about Chloe’s crack about her shoes. But she’d been hurt. She’d spent so much of her life in Kirkland covering up and trying to fit in and trying to compress herself into the space she was allowed to have. It hadn’t always worked. With Chloe and girls like her, she’d been mocked on both ends, when she let herself go and when she tried to be more in the norm.

Like with her shoes tonight.

Wes’s apartment was not what she’d expected. Her Google search before she met him turned up images of him with models and professional athletes. He’d lived in Europe. Grown up with a brother who was an NBA star. She’d expected his place to be luxurious, or at least nicer than her own apartment, but when he said he lived over Mrs. Meacham’s garage, he meant exactly that.

The door opened onto a small galley kitchen. Open shelves held a set of white plates and glass tumblers. The stove had two burners and a small fridge was tucked next to the sink. Only the expensive coffeemaker on the counter hinted that someone other than a grad student lived here. The space was cramped, obviously not designed for two tall people who were intent on sharing the same square inch of floor.

He reached around her, the cool leather of his jacket skimming her arm, and flicked a switch, turning a soft light on over the counter. With one arm around her waist, he tossed his keys toward a tray on the windowsill. The throw tipped him forward and her chest met his as he tightened his arm around her waist.

Her arms went around him. She grabbed a fistful of the jacket at the small of his back and ran her other hand from his shoulder to his waist. The combination of smooth leather over hard muscle was so sensual she instinctively pressed closer to him. He bent his head, his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her. He started at her hairline, his lips skimming across her hair and forehead, sending a shiver through her. She didn’t feel small next to him, but she had so rarely been with a guy who was tall enough to kiss the top of her head, and the shift in her usual perspective was exciting.

He continued kissing down the side of her face and when he nuzzled under her ear, she tipped her head back and he licked and kissed down her sensitive throat. He was turning her on so much. She forced herself to keep her hands still because if she let loose with everything she was feeling, she might scare him off.

“Wes,” she murmured. “You don’t—”

“Don’t what?” She’d been about to tell him he didn’t have to do this but she changed her mind. She wanted this night with him.

“Nothing.”

He moved back and kissed her on the mouth, his lips firm and warm, giving her infinite pleasure as she kissed him back. Kissing was safe. She could respond to his mouth with hers. But she had to keep tight control over the impulse she had to grab him harder, to wrap one of her legs around his.

He walked them backward out of the kitchen, through a dark space she assumed was the living room, and then through an open doorway into his bedroom. He kept kissing and stroking her the entire way. It was killing her to keep her hands still. To remember to touch him gently. To be in control. Not want too much.

He paused and reached behind him to flick a switch. The bedside lamps came on, shedding a warm, soft light across his big platform bed.

In three steps, her knees hit the edge of the mattress and they stopped. He’d pulled her hair back away from her face, smoothing it down across her shoulders, stroking his fingers across the back of her neck. Then he pulled away from her lips and looked into her eyes.

“I wanted to touch your hair the first second we met. You’re gorgeous. Every. Single. Inch.” He punctuated his statement with kisses, on her lips, her neck and finally, behind her ear where he’d lifted the hair away to expose her sensitive spot. “Sorry about the close quarters. I had to get a new bed because the one Mrs. M. had in here was too small.”

He sat and tried to pull her into his lap, but she resisted. He was plenty strong enough to hold her, but she never felt comfortable when someone else could feel her whole weight. She wanted him to focus on her one part at a time.

“Do you want to go back in the living room?” he asked. “We don’t have to—”

“This is fine. This is...lovely.”

He gave her a funny look, turning his head sideways and half grinning as if he wasn’t sure if there was a punch line coming, but then he stood again. His lips met hers and he put his arms around her, gathering her in toward him, his fingers pressing into her skirt. He moaned and started trying to tug the jacket down off his shoulders, but he couldn’t get a good angle and he moaned again, this time in frustration.

“Let me,” she whispered. She put her hands over his to still them and then slid her right hand up inside the jacket, lifting the leather off his shoulder and peeling it down. She went slowly, savoring each glancing touch of her skin on his before letting the jacket fall to the floor.

He worked the buttons of her shirt, opening it down to her belt and then fumbling at the clasp. When he had it open, the belt came off and he pulled her shirt down over her arms, leaving her in just her tank top. She shivered and watched as he unbuttoned his own shirt, opening three buttons before getting impatient and yanking it over his head.

His muscles were well defined and a dusting of dark curls tempted her hands forward to touch him. She ran her hands over his chest and then up over his shoulders. He had a long surgical scar on one shoulder and she touched it gently then slid her hands up his neck and through the soft brush cut of his hair. She’d expected his short hair to be bristly, but it was actually smooth, like a cat’s fur. She rubbed her hands through it forward and back.

“Still feels weird to me,” he said. “But better with you touching it.”

He put his hands on the button at the back of her skirt and then made eye contact. “Is this okay?”

She wished he’d stop asking for permission. She wanted him and he wanted her and she wished that was enough. She didn’t want to keep being reminded that she was taking as much as she was giving here. She nodded and he unbuttoned and unzipped. Her skirt hit the floor and she went still, hating this first moment when a guy saw her whole body without the camouflage of clothing.

The first guy she’d ever been with, a drunk boy she’d met at a college house party, had whistled and said, “That’s a whole lot of woman” when she took her clothes off for him. He hadn’t noticed that she cried all the way through her first sexual experience.

Sex was irrevocably tied to feeling too big in her body. As much as she’d worked to get over it in subsequent relationships, the feeling was always there, an imprint on her psyche that she couldn’t erase. She tried to press the memory back down, to get herself back into this moment with Wes. He was different. She didn’t feel that way about herself.

Wes was too busy with his own belt and jeans to notice that she was ashamed. But when he was stripped down to just his boxers, he looked up at her and said, “What’s wrong?”

Damn.
She was messing this up and she wanted it. She wanted Wes. She was here with Wes and needed to keep her mind here with him, too. It was just so hard to keep her thoughts under control when Wes insisted on trying to drive her into a frenzy. She couldn’t be rational and be with Wes at the same time.

“Nothing.”

“What happened tonight? Right before we went onstage, Chloe said something to you and you changed. What did she say?”

Posy sighed. “You want me to explain an insult to you?”

“If you don’t, I might think you’re just psycho, because I could have sworn she said, ‘Cute shoes.’ Most people would take that as a compliment.”

Her pride. Her godforsaken pride begged her not to tell him. But she wasn’t hiding anymore.

She leaned down and picked up one of her shoes. He touched her back, trailing his fingers on her skin and she almost dropped the shoe.

“Low heels. Sensible shoes. Not cute. They were meant to help me fit in with the other women who are constructed on a completely different scale, and Chloe and I and every other woman in the room knew the shoes were futile because I don’t fit in and I never have. I’m too much.”

He took the shoe from her and held it. “Wow. All that from a pair of shoes. Chloe’s complicated. But you’re right. Awful.”

She waited for him to say something comforting, something to make her feel better, but he just dropped the shoe on the floor and looked at her.

His eyes ran from her hair to her neck, down over her breasts, and all the way down past her thighs to her bare toes. She felt her face go red.

He touched her shoulder, stroking from her neck across her collarbone and across the breadth of her shoulder.

“The next time we wipe the stage with Chloe at karaoke, I expect you to wear real heels. Why try to fit in with a bunch of ordinary people when you are extraordinary?”

She didn’t know what to say. Every time she thought she knew what to expect, he swerved and then it turned out he was doing the exact right thing. The perfect thing for her.

He toyed with the strap of her tank top, sliding his finger underneath and running it down to dip into the scoop neckline where he could skim the tops of her breasts.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes. Please, Wes.”

“It’s just, before...when we were onstage and then outside the bar, you were so into it. Into us. And now I feel like you’re forcing yourself. We don’t have to do this, Posy. I can drive you home if you’ve changed your mind.”

“No. It’s not that. I want to be with you.”

“Show me?” He did that head-tilt thing—drawing her in and making her feel special at the same time. He put his lips against hers and breathed, “Come on, Posy. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it.”

He cupped her bottom and squeezed, pulling her toward him. She tried to kiss him, but he pulled his head back.

“Touch me. Touch me like you can. Like you want to.”

She shuddered. The need in his voice, the tight pull of his hands, it was all too much.

“Posy. That day on the basketball court...” He closed his teeth on the skin at her shoulder. He bit her, not hard, but not gently. “I never did anything like that with a woman. I haven’t stopped thinking about it. We went somewhere together. Come on, Posy. Forget everything else. Go with me now.” He bit her again and she remembered how she’d felt on the basketball court. She hadn’t hurt him. Hadn’t overwhelmed him. He’d been ready for her—all of her and they’d pushed each other.

She lifted her hands to his shoulders and dragged him toward her. He grinned at her. A full-on, wicked and purposeful grin, which was lost as she covered his lips with hers.

She cupped the front of his boxers and squeezed. This time he shuddered and she lifted her leg to wrap around his hip, the way she’d been wanting to do since she first stepped foot in his tiny kitchen.