He froze, his mouth unmoving against hers, as if his mind couldn’t process what was happening. Or maybe he hadn’t done this in a very long time.
Which, she reminded herself, he hadn’t. So she’d go gentle. She probed at the seam of his lips with her tongue, coaxing. Hoping.
He made a thick sound deep in his throat, and all at once, whatever force bound him to hesitation shattered apart. He gathered her and pinned her to the wall.
Then he kissed her, hard and ravenous, like he had no other purpose.
Oh, thank god. Heat crashed over her in dizzying waves. She clung to him, so full of his scent and the curl of his tongue that her mind emptied. His mouth drew blossoms of warmth across her lips, then along one side of her face and down the column of her throat. She tipped her head back and offered a drunken moan to the sky. He sucked at her neck, greedily, lavishing it with delirious, toe-curling suction. She ground against him, and he ground back.
Nick found her mouth again, his hunger making her dizzy. Snow was everywhere—pinpricks of cold that scorched her skin—and so were his hands, tangling in her hair, kneading her waist. Every nip of his teeth and slide of his lips asked the samequestion, over and over again, and her body answered with a low, liquid pulse.
He wrested his mouth away and tilted his forehead against hers. “Where?” No more hesitation. Just desire and need and enough carnal energy to make her combust.
“I don’t care.” She rocked her hips against his. “Right here, if you want.”
“What, up against a wall? In the street?” His breath skimmed across her lips.
“Why not?”
He claimed her mouth in another deep, needful kiss. “Because I don’t want to fuck you, I want to savor you. And I still owe you one, from last time. I intend to pay up. With interest.”
She tightened her hold around his neck. All the hurt had gone out of her, or maybe it had never existed in the first place, because when he kissed her like that, she understood that she belonged to him in a way she could never revoke. “Are you talking about... simple interest? Or compounding?”
He puffed a graveled chuckle against her mouth. “What kind of question is that?”
“Well, don’t talk numbers to a mathematician unless you’re trying to turn her on.”
“I’m definitely trying to turn her on.”
“Better go with compounding, then,” she breathed. “It’s much more complicated and therefore infinitely sexier.”
His mouth dropped to her neck, his tongue darting out to lick melted snowflakes from her skin. “Okay, what does compounding bring my debt to, then? Three? Four?”
She whimpered. A dazzle of sparks followed wherever his lips went. “Better call it four.”
He made a purely male sound against her throat. “All right. And lucky for you, I took a shower after work. Otherwise, I’d never make it that far.”
She meant to ask what a shower had to do with anything, but the words burned to ash in the fire licking through her.
Nick pulled her away from the wall and guided her to the truck, where he slid her in through the driver’s side and climbed up beside her. He slammed the door and jammed the gearshift into Drive, then looked down with half-lidded eyes. “Your house?”
“No. In this weather, that’d take longer than I can wait.”
He nodded and wheeled the truck around, opening the throttle, roaring through the curtains of snow.
Aubrey held on to the seat, her awareness zeroing in on the place where her thigh pressed against his.
Less than a minute later, he pulled off into an empty, secluded lot, then killed the headlights and wipers. Hot air streamed from the vents, yet the snow came down so densely it blotted out the glass in moments.
He hit the locks. “Here? No one else is out tonight. We might as well be on our own planet.”
She nodded, then pulled at him, and his lips crashed into hers again. He guided her down, stretching her out against the long seat, maneuvering both their coats off. He pulled back long enough to whisk his shirt over his head, then dove for her mouth again, stealing her composure with the drug of his kiss.
Her fingers curled against his bare back. She existed in slices of sensation—the tingle of his lips against hers, the glimmer of blue dash light reflected off his sculpted cheek, the ribbed truck seat pressing into her back. The way Nick pinned his hard length against her core when she widened her knees.
He took hold of the hem of her sweater, then got it up and over her head, followed by her shirt. He turned his attention to her boots and leggings, shucking them off and chucking theminto the footwell. He straightened and gazed down, his lashes brushing his cheeks.
“Did you know?” he said, husky. He dragged a roughened palm over the flimsy crimson satin of her bra, then the matching thong. “Is that why you’re wearing this?”
