Out of nowhere, he felt a stinging slap on his ass.
“Pick it up, Dixon,” Taylor said as she whizzed past him and darted down one of the narrow paths that shot off from the main trail.
He bolted after her, skirting around a huge branch that had fallen along the path. He was mindful of his knee, waiting for that twinge he’d felt earlier to return. He slowed, unsure if the pinch he’d felt just now was real or a figment of his anxious as hell imagination.
Fuck.He’d faced this before, back when he first started rehab. Every twinge sent him spiraling. He often thought the fear of reinjuring his knee was as debilitating as if he actually did hurt it.
He heard Taylor approaching and assumed an exhausted pose, resting his hands on his thighs. He’d rather her think he couldn’t keep up than let on that there was possibly something wrong with his knee. He had no doubt she would demand they put an end to the workout if she thought he could reaggravate his injury.
Jamar wasn’t about to stop now. He could work through this.
“Really?” she said as she came upon him. “If you can’t handle this, some of my more challenging training circuits might just kill you.”
He sucked in several shallow breaths, then with a wink said, “Bring it.”
She burst out laughing. “You can’t help yourself, can you? You can barely catch your breath, yet you have the nerve to talk trash?”
“I’ve been trash-talking since high school. I think it’s just a part of me at this point.”
He stood up straight and discreetly tested his knee, relieved when he didn’t feel anything unusual.
“I don’t want to imagine you in high school,” Taylor said. “I’ll bet you thought you were the hottest shit to ever walk the hallways.”
“Iwasthe hottest shit to ever walk the hallways at Katy High. You would have been all over me.”
She pointed her finger at her mouth in a gagging gesture.
Jamar took a step toward her. “How much you wanna bet?”
“So damn cocky. I told you that mouth will get you in trouble.”
His eyes zeroed in on her lips, his own curving up in a devilish grin. “I can think of one way you can shut me up.”
Arousal and anticipation mingled in the air around them, as thick as the smell of the impending rain. The attraction that had been steadily growing between them pulsed like a quickening heartbeat.
Taylor advanced on him, backing him up until he came in contact with a tree. Her brow arched. “Are you sure you can handle this?”
“Bring it,” he said again.
She braced her hands on either side of his face and leaned forward. “There’s no one else here. We don’t have to put on a performance for anyone,” she murmured.
Jamar swallowed. “You’re not going to let that stop us, are you?”
She shook her head. “No.” And pressed her open mouth to his. He capitulated with a matching ardor, thrusting his tongue into her mouth as he gripped her hips.
Her mouth was hot and sweet, an intoxicating combination of cinnamon and honey and everything else that was delicious in this world. Unlike that first kiss, this was the opposite of slow and gentle. It was hard and noisy and hot and addicting as fuck.
Thunder cracked overhead seconds before the sky opened and a deluge rained down on them. Jamar ignored it, refusing to let anything deter him. He hooked his arms underneath her legs and lifted her, her legs bracketing his waist.
He’d wanted her from the very first time he saw her on that video, and nothing he’d tried had been able to abate his unrelenting need to consume her. He ran his hands up and down her back, wishing he could pull the wet shirt off so that he could feel her skin against him.
As the cold rain pelted them, Jamar drove his tongue deep, over and over again, plunging with a fervor that had them both breathless within seconds. He left her mouth long enough to trail his tongue along her neck, lapping at her rain-slicked skin, imagining the other places he wanted to explore. Holding her steady with one hand, he skimmed the other along her side, then up to her breast.
She was sheer perfection in his palm. He massaged her nipple through her damp shirt, caressing it into a point.
In the back of his mind, he knew he needed to pump the brakes. They were already so close to crossing the line between real and pretend. But how was he supposed to say no to this? How was he supposed to pull away from a mouth that occupied his every waking thought?
He would deal with the consequences later. Right now, he wanted—heneeded—to enjoy every second of her kiss. His fingers clutched her ass, pulling her against his hardening body. The compulsion to go further, to demand more, was so strong he ached with it. If they were at his home gym, he would drop to his knees and beg her to let him strip these clothes off her.
