Clenching his fists and tightening his jaw, Dylan tore his attention away from her face. He did not need to think about Cat’s lips—her soft lips, which had kissed him back with such erotic tenderness. Nor about her sweet tongue and delicious mouth, which he’d explored so thoroughly a little while ago.

  He didn’t know what might have happened if she hadn’t fallen. If he’d have dived back in for another kiss—coming right over the top of the bar if need be. Because one thing was for damn sure—one kiss had not been enough. Now, having kissed her, he knew the only thing that would satisfy him would be making love to this woman.

  “How do you manage to bring out my formerly well-disguised klutz tendencies?” she asked, sounding more amused than annoyed.

  Crossing his arms, he leaned one hip against the counter on which Cat was sitting. “The stool was old and wobbly.”

  “My legs were wobbly.”

  Dylan couldn’t help his first reaction—pleasure that his kiss had made her weak in the legs. Or his second—to cast an instant glance toward those long, slim legs. That was when he noticed the flecks of red there, stark and blatant against the white fabric of her jeans. “Uh, hate to tell you this, but it looks like your bloody lip did a little more damage.”

  Cat followed his stare and groaned. “Dammit, these are brand-new,” she muttered.

  “You should put something on the stains before they set,” he said, figuring she would dab some stain remover on it while she still wore the jeans.

  Not that she’d…she wouldn’t…

  But she did. Before he could say another word, Cat had dropped her bag of ice and hopped off the counter. Kicking her sneakers off her feet, she unsnapped, unzipped, and wriggled out of her jeans while he stood there, watching, wide-eyed and speculative.

  As if she’d forgotten he was even in the room, she turned to the sink and put her jeans under some running water. That left him staring at a quite delectable view from behind. Her thick blond hair flowed halfway down her back, bright against her red top. His breathing grew shallow as he focused on her long, bare legs—graceful and slim and soft-looking. Then he allowed himself to glance at the barely covered curves of her bottom, clad only in a teeny pair of white nylon panties that barely qualified as underwear.

  Could have been worse, he supposed as he tried to control a shudder of pure, undiluted want. She could have been a thong woman. Though, only in his immediate circumstances would that have been a bad thing.

  Then he noticed a swirl of color peeking up from the hem of her panties. Cat had a tattoo. A sexy-as-hell, breath-stealing tattoo. Blues and greens created delicate patterns on the small, vulnerable part of her back, right above her delectable cheeks, and he realized he was looking at a butterfly’s wings unfurled in a delicate spiral. The cacophony of delicate color and vulnerable skin begged to be explored. With his mouth.

  “Is it cold water for blood, or hot?” Cat asked, looking over her shoulder just in time to catch him staring at her ass. Her face pinkened and she slowly turned around.

  That’s when things went from bad to worse.

  A saint would have looked, and Dylan was no saint. He allowed himself about three seconds of wicked visual indulgence, during which he noticed every detail. The jut of her hip. The wide swath of pale, perfect skin between the bottom hem of her shirt and the top of her nearly-there panties. The thinness of the nylon. The tiny bit of elastic scraping just above a shadow of curls visible through the fabric.

  Dylan’s pulse skipped a few beats. Then, using every bit of strength he had, he forced his eyes to shut, his imagination to shut down, and his libido to shut off.

  When he opened his eyes again, he expected to see an empty room—expected Cat to have darted out for clothes.

  She hadn’t moved an inch. She simply watched him, silently, a hint of challenge evident by the slight quirk of her lips.

  He groaned, low in his throat, and gave her a warning look. “Cat…”

  “I don’t usually whip off my clothes in front of strangers,” she said, taking a step away from the sink toward the middle of the room. Toward him.

  “We’re not strangers,” he pointed out, taking a step of his own. One step toward insanity.

  “But really, I’ve got bikinis that are smaller.” She sounded a little defensive. Not to mention breathless.

  He risked another step. “Uh-huh.” Raking one hot glance from her face down to her toes, he bit out, “Probably not quite as sheer, though.”

  Cat’s eyes widened. Even from here, a few feet away, he could hear the rasp of her choppy breaths, could see the color rise in her cheeks and a sparkle of excitement glitter in her eyes. “So,” she whispered, “I suppose I should go get some other clothes.”

  They each took one more step. Now he was less than a foot away from her. Less than twelve inches. Easily within arm’s reach of all the delightful places on her body that he longed to touch. He kept his hands at his sides through sheer force of will. “You don’t have to on my account.”

  One of her fine blond eyebrows lifted. “A gentleman might have turned his back.”

  Tilting his head to the side, he responded, “Whatever made you think I was a gentleman?”

  His hand reached out before his brain sent the message not to, and within an instant he was touching her hip, then tugging her forward. Trailing his fingertips along the edge of the elastic, he caressed that soft, intimate skin between her stomach and heaven, until Cat literally gasped and quivered beneath his hand.

  “Spence…

  “Obviously you don’t have bikini bottoms smaller than these. Because I can definitely see below your tan line.”

  She glanced down and made a funny little hissing sound. Probably because of the intensely seductive way his dark hand looked against the smooth flesh well below her belly.

  Closing her eyes, Cat dropped her head back and arched toward him, just the tiniest bit, inviting more. More heat. More intensity. More danger.

  More of his hand.

  He slipped one fingertip below the panties and slid it into her curls, closing his own eyes and echoing her moan of pleasure. She was incredibly soft, incredibly welcoming, and he tangled another finger in that warm thatch. Unable to resist, he leaned down to taste the vulnerable skin on her jaw, then her chin and her throat, touching her ever so lightly all the while. Dipping close, but not going too far to turn back.

  As much as he wanted to, he didn’t kiss her. He couldn’t…not with her tender-looking lip. And not without torturing himself even more.

  “Please touch me,” she said on a shaky moan.

  “I am touching you,” he whispered against the corner of her mouth. The uninjured corner.

  “Touch me here,” she ordered. She took him by surprise then, arching into his hand, until his fingers connected with hot, wet womanly flesh.

  “Oh, yes,” she cried, blocking out the sound of his own hopeless grunt of pleasure.

  God, she felt amazing. Slick and silky smooth. Warm and wet and welcoming.

  “Yes, yes,” she muttered. Reaching up, she tangled her hands in his hair and tugged his mouth to hers, taking the kiss he hadn’t given her.

  He was careful, licking delicately around her sore, then letting his tongue tangle with hers in a deep, hungry mating.

  She continued to move, to arch, to quiver, inviting him even farther. Dylan couldn’t resist. He slowly slid one finger into her hot, tight channel, savoring her cries of pleasure almost as much as he savored the tightness of her skin against his own.

  He touched her deep inside, then withdrew, only to ease in again, setting a slow, steady rhythm of lovemaking with his hand. The flicks of his thumb on her clit and his tongue in her mouth soon matched the thrusts of his finger, until there was nothing but sensation. For both of them

  The pleasure intensified…for him as well as her, until Dylan was as hungry for her release as Cat. His own would have to wait. Though he was hard enough to burst out of his jeans, there was no way things could get that far. Not yet. So for now, he focused on her, determined to make her come in a powerful explosion of ecstasy. And to watch her do it.

  Cat’s moans grew louder, finally turning into orgasmic cries of release. Dylan couldn’t contain a masculine smile of accomplishment, because seeing Cat go all the way was almost as good as climaxing himself.

  Almost.

  She shook and shuddered, sagging against him while he sampled the soft skin of her jaw and her neck. He continued to make lazy circles with his fingers, enjoying the drenching feel of her, knowing she was still aroused, in spite of her orgasm.

  “I wanna taste your tattoo,” he whispered against her earlobe, forcing the words out of his tight throat. “I want to turn you around and strip off these silly things you call underwear and get down on my knees to kiss and lick every inch of it.”

  She gasped and jerked against him. “Oh, God.”

  And then she came again. Just like that.

  He’d barely had time to wrap his mind around it—around her incredibly passionate responses, when he heard someone yelling from outside her apartment.

  “Cat,” a voice called, “you okay? It’s getting kinda crazy down there.” The words were accompanied by a sharp rap on the front door.

  Cat’s eyes flew open, and Dylan immediately looked across her tiny living room to the door. “Is it locked?” he asked, regretfully pulling away from her and rearranging her panties.

  Nodding her head, she cleared her throat. “I’m fine, Dinah. Give me five more minutes, okay? Then I’ll be back down.”

  He watched her hold her breath as they both listened for—and finally heard—the waitress’s footsteps walking away toward the stairs.

  “Close one,” he said with a tiny smile.

  “Close? It was a little more than close for me,” she replied, sounding a bit stunned.

  “You complaining?”

  “Do I look crazy?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.

  He grinned. “Good. Because I have to admit, I got a hell of a charge out of it, too.”

  Cat straightened, smoothing her shirt, then running a hand through her hair. Drawing in a few deep breaths, as if trying to clear her head or calm herself down, she finally said, “It was incredible. But…unexpected.”

  “Definitely. So when can we expect to do it again?”

  His words surprised a laugh out of her, but it quickly faded. “Spence…I…wow, what do I say to someone who just did that to me, but hasn’t even seen me naked?”

  “We can fix that.” He reached for her shirt.

  She leaned back and wrapped her arms around her waist. “No, we can’t. Look, this was unbelievable, but it shouldn’t have happened.”

  Didn’t she think he knew that? Hell, all he’d come around looking for was a kiss. Not a sexual encounter just this side of sinful. Or maybe that side of it. “I know.”

  “And it can’t happen again.”

  For a second, he thought he’d misheard. Because after what they’d shared a moment ago, he couldn’t imagine she was any less anxious than he to find out what they could make each other feel without any clothes at all. In a bed. All night long.

  “You wanna run that by me again?”

  “I’m not in the market for a lover, Spence,” she said. “My life is changing and I’m trying to change with it.” The resolute stiffness of her jaw told him she meant business.

  “You going into a convent after you close Temptation?”

  A sound that was half laugh, half groan escaped her lips. “If I did, I’d have to buy stock in a vibrator company.”

  A sexy vision shot right through his brain.

  “But no,” she continued before he could interrupt, “I’m not giving up sex completely. I’m trying to…change my focus. My direction. My choices.”

  He wasn’t sure what she was getting at, but he could tell by the stiff way she held her body that she meant what she said. Cat wasn’t in the market for a relationship, even a purely sexual one. She was putting up barriers and, judging by the mournful look in her eyes, they were as difficult for her as they were for him. But she obviously trusted him to respect her wishes because she hadn’t walked out in search of more clothes.

  “All right, Cat,” he murmured, “I understand. I’ll give you your space.” He stepped back, creating more distance—physically and mentally—between them. “We both need to get downstairs and get to work, anyway.”

  He’d said what she wanted to hear, but a tiny frown appeared on Cat’s brow. Dylan hid a grin, more sure than ever that she didn’t really want him to back off.

  Of course, he’d never really intended to.

  He’d been sincere…he’d leave now, not push the issue, not force her to act on the attraction so hot between them it could melt glass. Yeah, he’d definitely back off.

  But only until he could get her to admit she didn’t mean it.

  5

  BY SUNDAY NIGHT, Cat was sure her plans to be responsible, respectable and, well, good, were gonna go up in a ball of flames. Flames sparked by a hundred-and-seventy pounds of walking sin named Spence, who’d literally had her in the palm of his hand less than twenty-four hours ago.

  And who was, right now, at this moment, making verbal love to about fifty other women.

  “Oh, my, would I love to have one hour alone with that man.”

  Cat didn’t have to look up to know the redhead who’d made the comment was staring wide-eyed at the guy playing bass guitar on the small stage in Temptation. Every woman here was thinking the same thing. Of one hour. Or one night. With him.

  “I’m soooo glad I heard about this,” the woman continued. “To think that otherwise, I’d have been at Bible study tonight!”

  “I’m sure God’ll understand,” Cat muttered, not even trying to hide her sarcasm.

  Sarcasm obviously wasn’t enough to pierce the lust in the redhead’s brain. She nodded in pious agreement.

  Cat stared around the room at the dozens of other drones looking just as slack-jawed as this one. Word had spread after Friday’s and Saturday’s performances, and there had actually been a line at the door by 7:00 p.m. tonight. They were packed, wall to wall, for the first time in months. There were enough women in this place to stock a Mary Kay convention. And she’d lay even money there were a number of females here who’d arrived alone…but didn’t want to leave alone.

  Something deep inside her clenched. If he left with another woman, she was going to get violent. Man, that was hard to admit, even to herself, because it obviously proved she was already hopelessly out of her depth with a guy she’d sworn she couldn’t have. Well, couldn’t have any more than she’d already had him.

  “Here’s your drink,” she said as she swirled a stir stick in the redhead’s gin and tonic—heavy on the tonic, because if the woman had too much more alcohol, she’d be diving onto the stage.

  To Cat’s surprise, as she slid the glass across the sticky surface of the pitted bar, some of the drink sloshed out. That was when she realized her fingers were shaky, as was her whole body. Shaky. Tense. Aware. She’d been all of those things since he’d walked through the door forty-eight hours ago.

  Man, she needed to get laid. By him.

  No. That’s the old Cat, she reminded herself. The new one wasn’t ruled by her sex drive, her empty pocketbook or her love of adventure. Even if it was nice to occasionally wonder…what if? Which she’d been doing a lot after the incredible way he’d made her feel, using only his hand and his mouth. Not to mention his seductive voice whispering erotic things in her ear.

  She closed her eyes and sighed at the memory.

  What if Dinah hadn’t knocked? What if she’d fallen earlier and they’d had more time alone? What if he’d forgotten his keys again last night and come back inside, like he had on Friday? Would she have had the strength to keep her barriers in place?

  Probably not.

  The fantasies of what could have happened after her barriers crumbled had filled her thoughts all night and all day.

  “I need two Sour Apple Martinis and two bottles of Bud,” said Vicki, an old friend of Cat’s who’d come in to help out tonight. “And maybe a side of band member to go with it.”

  Cat gave her a look through half-lowered lashes. “Oh?”

  Sighing, Vicki said, “I’d love to have a musician sandwich.”

  “As long as it’s a blond musician sandwich,” she snapped back, before thinking better of the words.

  Vicki’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Whoa, girl, you got a claim on one of the dark-haired ones?”

  Wishing she’d kept her big, fat mouth shut, Cat stepped away from Vicki’s curious gaze and busied herself making the drinks. “Never mind,” she said as she put them on the waitress’s tray.

  Vicki merely smirked, having known her long enough to know when Cat was infatuated with a man. “Is it the piano player or the long-haired hunk with the bass guitar?”

  “Whadda you think?”

  “Bass player,” Vicki replied without hesitation. “He’s incredibly hot. And he seems familiar for some reason.” Staring across the room, she sighed. “Must be the movie-star looks.”

  After Vicki walked away, Cat quickly got caught up with the other orders, barely hearing the music. When things did slow down for a second, she paused to listen, recognizing an old song. The low note of Spence’s bass guitar thrummed in her chest, and the way he growled the words to “Bad To The Bone” made her—and every other woman here—want to find out just how bad he could be.

  Very bad. But oh, so incredibly good.

  She still couldn’t get their crazy-wild encounter in her kitchen out of her mind. Whenever she licked her lips she still tasted him there. The way he practically made love to the microphone while singing hot, pulsing, headboard-slamming music sure wasn’t helping her forget.

  And when the song changed again and Spence invited every woman in the place to light his fire, she was ready to go all teenage-girl-at-her-first-concert on him and start throwing underwear at his feet. Teeny-tiny underwear. Like the ones that had inspired such a powerful reaction in him last night.