Tori Carrington - Private Parts

KENDALL HAD TROY EXACTLY where she wanted him: in her bedroom.

Well, all right. Maybe not exactly where she wanted him. Because that would put him right between her thighs.

All good things come to those who wait …

She licked her lips, tasting vanilla ice cream there. “Would you like some pie?” she asked.

He still stood just inside the room in his overcoat, his gaze darting toward the closed door.

“Don’t worry. Mrs. Foss sleeps like the dead.”

His grimace was altogether too handsome. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“You’re right. She’s probably listening to everything we say through a glass pressed to the wall.” She’d put her plate down on a small table near the window that was flanked by two wicker chairs. She sat in one and adjusted her robe a beat slower than she should have. So shoot her. She was enjoying his reaction to her wanton actions a little too much. Her panties were already dripping and the silk rasped against her übersensitive nipples, eliciting a wicked shiver.

“Please. I’ll share.”

He looked back at the closed door again, then finally sat down. He seemed to realize he was still wearing his coat and got back up to take it off, carefully folding it over the back of the chair before sitting down again.

The sign of a true bachelor.

She took a slow, sinful bite of the pie, humming as she did so. “As sour as Mrs. Foss is, she makes a sweet apple pie.”

“That’s because she doesn’t make it. Verna at the diner does.”

Kendall raised her brows. “Thanks for the insider info.” She smiled. “Does everyone know everyone else’s business here in Earnest?”

“Pretty much.”

She took another bite and pointed the fork in his direction. “So word will be all over about your visit then?”

“It will probably be on the front page of the Earnest Gazette. Along with a picture.”

“Above or below the fold?”

“The Gazette doesn’t have a fold. It’s more of a newsletter.”

She laughed as she held out a forkful of pie for him to take. He shook his head.

“No, thank you. I’ve eaten.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Good point.” He took the fork and put the bite in his mouth.

Kendall crossed her legs again, well aware that when she moved, the skimpy bottom of her robe bowed open. At least until she closed the flaps again. She watched him have difficulty swallowing.

“So, that means you might as well do what you came here to do then …” she led.

He squinted at her in the dim light cast by the table lamp. “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

Oh, he was going to follow her all right. Right into that bed.

“Well, if you leave now, the headline will read, ‘Town Good Boy Stops in for a Quickie.’”

He began coughing. She handed him her glass of water.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “So we might as well get our front page’s worth, don’t you think?”

TROY HAD NEVER MET A woman as forward … or as hot … as Kendall Banks. Which was just as well, because he was having a hell of a time trying to carry on a casual conversation with her looking like sin incarnate, an all too inviting bed two steps away.

He stood up. She stood up. He raised his hand to the side of her face, marveling at the mercurial green of her eyes. One moment, lime, the next, almost brown. His gaze fastened on her full lips. He rubbed his thumb against the plump pillow that was her bottom one and then touched the pad to his own tongue, tasting vanilla ice cream.

“Now, this is more like—”

He kissed her mid-sentence, and their teeth knocked together. He winced and watched as she did the same. She leaned in, nearly kneeing him in the groin. He tilted his head the same way she did, then moved the other way at the same time. He tried kissing her again … and got her nose when she looked down at where he was slightly standing on one of her bare toes.

Finally, he lifted his hands up in surrender. If he’d needed any more proof that this wasn’t a good idea, he’d just gotten it.

“Oh, don’t even consider it, buster,” she whispered.

She reached for his tie, loosened it and then took it off together. Then she worked on the first few buttons of his shirt before shoving him toward the bed. Luckily he landed on it, sitting on the edge, instead of on the floor.

Kendall slid her fingers under his chin, drawing his gaze to her eyes rather than to her breasts where they swayed against her robe, promising to come out to play.

“I think we can do better than that,” she murmured. “In fact, I know we can …”

She bent down, pressing her mouth against his.

Sweet Jesus, but she tasted good. Like spiced apples and one hundred percent female.

“Relax,” she whispered, pushing his shirt down over his arms without undoing the rest of the buttons, essentially trapping him in his own clothes. “You do know the meaning of the word, don’t you, Mr. Metaxas?”

Oh, he knew the meaning, all right. He was just having a hard time applying it to the immediate circumstances. His erection pressed almost painfully against the front of his pants. A very hard time.

The way his brother and friends talked, he figured he was probably the only man on earth who had never had a one-night stand. The only women he’d been intimate with he had dated. Usually for a couple of months before he even got to second base, much less third.

The thought that he hadn’t even taken Kendall out for coffee struck him as odd. As if what was happening were part of a dream instead of reality.

She pressed her fingers against his hard-on and he groaned.

This was so much better than any dream.

“Mmm. Told you,” she murmured, kissing him again.

“Told me what?”

She forced his shoulders back until he was half lying on the bed, his arms still pinned by his shirt. “Told you we could do this better.”

She stood, her gaze plastered to his as she toyed with the belt fastened around her waist. Then she slowly untied it, allowing the silky material of the robe to fall away, exposing a narrow slip of her nudeness down to the thin scrap of white cotton that was her panties.

Kendall curved her fingers so that they rested inside the lapels and slid them up and down, her knuckles grazing her own skin.

Hot. So very, very hot.

“If I’d have known you were coming I would have worn sexier panties.”

Troy forced a swallow down his impossibly tight throat. “I think what you have on is sexy enough.”

Who was he kidding? He nearly came merely looking at the way the cotton clung to her springy curls.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, causing the fabric to move back and forth. “Do you think so?”

Troy nodded several times, not trusting his voice.

Kendall smiled and popped one of her shoulders out of the robe, then the other, as she held the material over her breasts.

He groaned. He was grossly unprepared for any of this. He’d never even been to a strip joint, for God’s sake.

Okay, maybe he had gone once. But it had been for a business meeting and he’d barely looked at the girls on stage. At least until one of them stuck her perfectly rounded bottom into his face. He’d been so embarrassed he hadn’t known what to do, until his brother Ari handed him a five-dollar bill and indicated he should put it in her G-string.

He had. And the instant the stripper had moved away, Troy had called the meeting to an abrupt end.

Ari had teased him about that night for months afterward.

But Kendall … she was no strange stripper looking for a fiver to be tucked into her underpants. Although with her smoking body, she could easily qualify for the job.