The Seduction Request (6 page)

She pushed up hard with her knee, and he countered the move by increasing the pressure of his leg, driving her deeper into the mattress. He was just too strong for her. Too darned big and heavy.

“We're in the no-touching zone,” she said, pushing up against his hands.

“Listen to me, Emily. My not calling you had nothing to do with my lack of interest or your lack of experience. What we did that night was by far the single most erotic thing that's ever happened to me.”

Emily stopped struggling and her anger leaked away. Her arms went slack against his restraining hands. “If you're just saying that to make me feel less stupid, I'll kill you.”

“I wouldn't lie about something like that.”

They were practically nose to nose, and the amusement she'd seen in Matt's eyes was gone. Now they were dark and intense. In response, she began to feel warm and heavy and boneless. Then that heat turned into an ache. An ache that settled itself between her thighs and tightened the peaks of her breasts into over-sensitized points. Definitely not the way one friend should be feeling about another friend.

“I'm not mad anymore,” she said, thinking it was about time he let go of her, before they both did something stupid.

“Good,” he replied, his eyes not leaving her face.

She glanced up at the hands still holding her firmly to the bed. “Maybe you should, um…move.”

He shifted his leg between her two. His crisp leg hair chafed the sensitive skin of her inner thigh and she gasped at the intimate contact. As he rested his body firmly against her, she discovered she wasn't the only one feeling more than friendly.

“Is that what you had in mind?” he asked.

She wanted to arch against him. She wanted to take everything he was offering, but she knew it would be a mistake. And she knew if she didn't put an end to this soon, he would kiss her, and once he kissed her, she would be toast. “I'm not going to sleep with you, Matt.”

He stared at her for several seconds, then he swore softly and let go of her hands. He rolled over onto the bed beside her and threw an arm over his eyes.

She sat up and poked him in the side. “You all right?”

“I will be in about five minutes. Sooner if you have a bucket of ice I could stick my head into.”

The fact that he needed a bucket of ice after touch
ing her sent a ridiculous little thrill through her. “'Fraid not.”

Matt sighed deeply and sat up next to her. “You've changed, Emily. You're not the tough kid I left behind eleven years ago.”

“I'm not?”

“Nope.” He looked over at her, eyes full of sympathy. “You hit like a girl now.”

The competitor in her rose up and crawled under her skin. Now he was really asking for it. “I may hit like a girl, but twenty bucks says I can still whoop your butt shooting hoops.”

He gave her a wide grin, the thrill of the challenge clear on his face. “You're on.”

M
att leaned forward, resting his hands on his thighs, sucking hot, humid air into his lungs. The muscles in his legs were burning with exhaustion, his knee was on fire and sweat soaked his clothes, but he wasn't ready to give in yet. Not with Emily circling him, dribbling the basketball and looking as if she could go another ten rounds easy.

“Had enough?” she asked with a cocky grin.

He looked up at her, shading his eyes from the sun as it dipped below the trees bordering the park. “You're looking awfully pleased with yourself.”

“For a wimpy girl, you mean? Why don't you just admit I'm better than you and give it up?”

“One more game,” he said, pulling himself up and peeling his shirt over his head. “Double or nothing.”

“You're already down a hundred and fifty dollars. You sure you want to take that kind of risk?”

“Hey, I'm playing with a handicap,” he said, disgusted with himself for using his knee as an excuse for losing.

“So am I,” she shot back. “I'm female.”

Female or not, he'd forgotten how well she played. It probably didn't help that she still played regularly and he hadn't had his hands on a basketball since his injury. But he was determined to win just one more game.

He ducked past her, stealing the ball, and executed a flawless slam dunk. “First to ten points wins.”

Twenty minutes later she made the winning shot, bringing the game to a slaughter of an end at ten to two.

Matt limped off the court, his pride mortally wounded, and collapsed on the blanket they'd spread out in the grass.

“Admit it,” Emily said, dropping to her knees beside him. “I play pretty good for a girl.”

“You play pretty good for a guy,” Matt said, propping himself up on his elbows.

She took a long swallow out of her water then offered it to him. After he took a drink, she capped it and set it on the grass. “So, you didn't
let
me win, right?”

“
Let
you win? Emily, you eviscerated me.”

“I just have a hard time believing you're that lousy. Not that you were ever that good at it, but at least it was marginally challenging.”

He glared up at her. “Are you done gloating?”

She grinned and stretched out next to him on her side, propping her head in her hand, so they were
face-to-face. Damn, she was pretty. If it were up to him, they would be lying this way in his bed back at the hotel. They would be naked and her skin would be flushed and moist not from basketball, but from hours of making love.

How she could think he hadn't enjoyed himself that night on the beach was beyond him. She'd been so aggressive, so sure of what she wanted, and so responsive to his every touch, every taste, he had wondered if it wasn't her first time after all. He'd been hurt that she hadn't told him when it happened. He'd thought she told him everything. And he'd wanted to find the guy who had stolen what should have been his and tear him limb from limb.

The thought of someone else's hands on her had burned him with jealousy. They'd been friends for years, and in all that time he'd barely given a physical relationship with her a second thought. That night he could think of nothing else.
He
wanted to be her first.

He still remembered how hot she'd felt as he'd entered her, how impossibly tight. Then he'd felt the barrier of her innocence give against his thrust, heard her sharp intake of breath, and he'd known she was his. It was as if the piece of him that had been missing had somehow slipped into place.

But it could never be more than one night. He had plans, dreams, and she didn't fit into them. In the morning they would go back to the way things had been. Back to being friends. It wasn't fair, and he knew he would probably hurt Emily, but it was just the way things had to be.

Then morning came, and all those feeling he'd experienced the night before, the need to be with Em
ily, hadn't burned away with the sunrise. In fact, it was worse. Everything he felt for her was still there, taunting him.

She would never know how difficult it had been to leave, or how close he'd been to giving it all up for her. Without the scholarship, he never would have been able to afford college. He
had
to go to UCLA. And without college ball, he never would have made it into the NFL. Had he not finished school and earned his degree, after his injury he would've had nothing to fall back on. He simply never had time for the kind of commitment Emily would have wanted. The one she deserved.

He still didn't.

“You're not what I expected,” Emily said, her inquisitive blue eyes tugging Matt out of the past.

“What were you expecting?”

She shrugged. “I thought you would be more serious.”

“I guess I am when I'm in California. More focused. I would never take time off to play one on one.”

“How come?”

“Too busy. Weekdays I spend in the office, a couple evenings a week I stop in at the restaurant in L.A. to make an appearance. Every Sunday I fly to one of the other Touchdowns and spend a few hours.”

“Every Sunday? Why?”

“It's good exposure and it draws the customers in.”

“So when do you take a day off? When do you relax?”

He could barely recall the concept. “I don't. I have a condo in Cancun I've never been to. I own a
villa in Italy I never have time to visit. If you want the honest truth, outside of work, I have no life.”

Her brow creased, as if the thought was a disturbing one. “Then what's the point? Why work so hard if you can't enjoy what you've got?”

“When I figure that out I'll let you know.”

“So what about this Sunday? Which one are you going to?”

“This Sunday, I was supposed to fly to New York, but my plane is in for repairs.”

Her eyes widened. “
Your
plane, as in the one you
own?
”

“It's a little plane,” he said. “A Lear.”

“Unless it's a model plane it's completely out of the realm of my comprehension. You can afford to buy a plane and you want even
more
money? When is it enough?”

He shrugged. He wished he knew. Although he had to admit, he'd felt different since he'd been back. He couldn't even put a finger on the exact emotion. Being with Emily again just felt…good. And not necessarily in a sexual way. He was just enjoying her companionship. Sitting here with Emily, he felt relaxed. Comfortable.

Content.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt that way. If only there were a way to capture it, to take it back to California with him.

“I always thought there would be this feeling I would get,” he said. “Then I would know that I'd made it, I'd succeeded. Then I could slow down and enjoy what I had. Maybe settle down and have a family. But lately, it seems like the harder I work, the further away the feeling gets.”

“What does building a restaurant here have to do with it? Isn't it even more of a risk? Chapel isn't exactly a hoppin' place.”

“I've proven myself in the business community, and had a decent, although short-lived career playing ball. I've resolved things with my parents to the point where I can forgive them and move on. The only thing I haven't done is prove I've made it to the people in Chapel.”

“You know what I think?”

“Huh?”

“You spend way too much time worrying about what other people think.”

She was probably right. In fact, he was sure she
was
right, but he'd run out of other options.

“You mentioned your parents. Do you see them very often?”

“As little as I have to.”

“I heard you set them up in a pretty nice place in Florida.”

Yeah, nice and far away, where he didn't have to watch them slowly committing suicide. “I used to think money would be the answer to their problems. I tried for a couple years to get them into detox programs, the best money could offer, but they never lasted for more than a week or two. There came a point where I had to back away. You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved.”

“At least you tried.”

“I just make sure they're taken care of. If they're going to drink themselves to death, they'll do it in a nice condo on the beach. My mom has money to play bingo five nights a week and my father has his satellite dish and plasma TV to pass out in front of.”

She reached over and rested her hand on his forearm. “They don't deserve you, Matt.”

Something in the way she said his name and her gesture of comfort made the next words hard to say without emotion messing with his voice. “They weren't great parents, but they did the best they could.”

The sympathy in her eyes nearly did him in. This was why he didn't like to talk to people about personal stuff. It did weird things to him, like turn him into a big wuss.

“So,” he said, desperately needing a change of subject, “you haven't said much about your boyfriend. I take it it's not very serious.”

“What makes you assume that? For all you know, we could be engaged.”

“No ring.”

She glanced down at the hand resting on his arm and something in her eyes darkened. He thought for sure she'd pull away, but she let it rest there. “I've never been real big into jewelry.”

He reached up, rubbing her earlobe between his fingers. The look in her eyes went from dark to simmering. Don't fight it, he thought. You know you can't resist me. “No piercings.”

“That's not exactly true,” she said. “I do have one.”

He examined her face, at all the obvious places, but didn't see any holes. “Let me guess, you had your navel done?”

She shook her head.

“Tongue?”

She made a face. “Yuck. No way.”

“Where else is there?”

Her gaze wandered down to the front of her shirt. When he realized what she meant, all the air backed up in his lungs. “Your nipple?”

“It was purely an act of rebellion. In college, a friend of mine got hers pierced. My mom said if I ever did, she would disown me.”

“So you did it anyway?”

A defiant grin spread across her face. “The next day.”

“I guess she didn't disown you.”

“I never told her. I ended up really liking it. Even though I was the only one who knew it was there, it made me feel…sexy. I'm pretty small up top, so it gives me that extra ‘umph.'”

I'll bet, he thought, although from what he could see, she wasn't lacking in any particular area. He found his eyes riveted to her chest, curious whether he could see the outline through her clothing. “Doesn't it get caught on things?”

Her eyes lit with mischief, and something more. Something hot and teasing. “Actually, when you tug on it just a little or give it a twist, it's extremely erotic.”

Matt swallowed hard to keep the excessive saliva from dribbling down his chin. He knew he wouldn't be satisfied until he was holding that ring in his teeth. “I've seen them in photos, but never in person.”

Her eyebrow arched. “Are you asking if you can see mine?”

Hell, yes, he wanted to see it, but it wasn't so dark that the kids on the playground wouldn't notice if she lifted her shirt, or the group of teenagers playing volleyball several yards away wouldn't possibly see.
And he'd be damned if anyone was going to get a look at Emily's breasts. Anyone besides him, that is.

“This probably isn't the place,” he said.

“Then maybe you'd like to see my tattoo instead?”

Nipple piercings
and
tattoos? “I'm afraid to ask where that is.”

She shifted onto her back and unfastened her shorts and Matt's eyes just about fell out of his head.

“Uh, Emily?”

She rolled onto her stomach and lifted her shirt so that her lower back was exposed. “You'll have to pull my shorts down.”

He sat up beside her and Emily watched, gratified by the hungry look in his eyes as he stared at her bare skin—the same look he'd had since she told him about her nipple. It made her feel desirable and powerful—something she hadn't felt in a very long time. Not since she'd given herself to him on the beach.

She was enjoying it far too much.

“Pull your shorts down?” he asked.

“Not all the way down. It's just below my waist-line.” She was playing with fire, but she couldn't seem to make herself stop.

He darted a glance around, as if he were afraid someone would see. Then he reached down and slipped two fingers under the waist of her shorts. The backs of his fingers caressed her skin as he eased the denim down, and gooseflesh broke out across her arms.

A breath escaped him in the form of a sigh. “What is it?”

She looked back over her shoulder at him. “An orchid. My favorite flower.”

“The detail is amazing.” He pulled her shorts lower, to see the entire yellow flower blooming across the lowest part of her back and the very top of her buttocks. As if he were touching the living specimen, he brushed a thumb across the delicate petals. That frustrating ache burned to life low and deep inside her.

“No tan line,” he said, but it came out sounding more like a growl.

“It shows up best against tanned skin.”

“I'm not even going to ask how you managed that.” Matt flattened his palm against her, his large hand encompassing her entire lower back. “I think I want to see the nipple ring now.”

“I think that would be a bad idea.”

He slipped his hand down her side, his fingers just inside the waist of her shorts, which were already several inches lower than they should have been. His hand traveled slowly up her side, lightly tracing each of her ribs, all the way up to the edge of her bra. She closed her eyes and curled her fingers into the blanket. The ache was now a throb as need overwhelmed her and blood raced through her veins.