What in the actual hell was Tucker doing? Elle chewed the roll viciously and tried not to be predictable and stab him like Shane expected. She wasn’t even hungry, she just needed to do something with her teeth. Ten minutes earlier she’d been starving but her appetite had evaporated when Tucker had oh-so-casually, in front of her entire family, suggested that they get married. Like it was no big deal. It was the least romantic proposal she had ever heard of anyone getting. Ever. In the history of stupid men thinking it was no big deal, Tucker had now surpassed the top contender for idiot proposals.
Worst of all? In some secret sick corner of her yearning, lonely heart, she had wanted it to be real. Not for practicality sake. But an honest to God, I-love-the-daylights-out-of-you-and-can’t-live-without-you marriage proposal from him. She hadn’t been expecting it now, or even later, from Tucker. But if she was ever going to fantasize, it wasn’t going to go down like that.
It had hurt her feelings. Which made her as big of an idiot as he was.
Anger had fueled her initial reaction but then he had kissed her and now she just felt like she wanted to cry. She was blaming the hormones. She refused to admit it was more likely because she was in love with Tucker. Of course she’d always loved Tucker, but now she was wondering if she was actually in love with him. What she was feeling was so goddamn unpleasant she was starting to suspect she was. She had always imagined it would be like a lightbulb going on, glaringly obvious, but it was more like the warm glow of a firefly.
“Can I get you a drink?” he asked. “Some water or juice or something?”
She looked at him, because she refused to spend Christmas Eve feeling awkward. She had done nothing to deserve having her night ruined. “I would like some water. And I would like you to promise me that you will not bring up anything personal about you and me while we are here.” She didn’t care that her family was milling around just a few feet away in the kitchen or that she sounded brittle.
If they were going to discuss whatever was going on in his head, she wanted to do it in private.
“Sure. I promise.” He stood up and kissed the top of her head and retreated to the kitchen.
Buddy Rivers plopped down across from Elle, stretching out his legs and giving a sigh. He had been working on growing a Willie Nelson beard and he scratched it as he eyeballed her. Elle knew whatever came out of his mouth was going to irritate her.
“I’d take the offer if I were you,” Buddy said. “Most men don’t want to take on another man’s brat.”
Yep. Irritating. Buddy had a way of offending literally everyone he spoke to. Except her mother, apparently. “I don’t need to be married to raise a child. Nor do I care if I’m single for the rest of my life.”
For the first time in forever, Elle realized she actually meant that. She’d rather be single forever than practical. She wanted the crazy stupid love or nothing at all.
“Just don’t get fat or that will really ruin your chances,” Buddy added, ignoring completely what she had just said.
If he weren’t related to Chance and Avery, Elle was pretty sure she would have thrown the half-eaten roll at his face. Instead, she decided to take the high road so as not to ruin her sister’s dinner party. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She did not need Tucker to rescue her. She didn’t.
He brought her a glass of water with a smile. Damn him. Why did he have to be so nice?
Because he was right. She didn’t need him to rescue her but she sure as hell wanted him to. How could all of her jumbled feelings fit together? They didn’t. That was the rub.
“Thank you.” She took a sip of her water before cramming the second half of the roll into her mouth. Sometimes the safest course of action was not speaking your mind.
Especially when your mind was a muddled mess.
Tucker liked that Elle’s family was a little off the wall and just said whatever, whenever. It made the disparity in their incomes seem less important. They were regular folks, like they had always been, and he appreciated that. Buddy Rivers was a misogynistic asshole, but aside from him, Tucker liked everyone and was having a pleasant evening. There was great food, lively conversation, and Elle by his side at the table.
He kept putting his hand on her knee or the small of her back and she surprised him by not pulling away. She was also very quiet. It was like she’d made a pact with herself to not be petulant, and even though he knew she was annoyed with him, she was letting it go. Or at least keeping quiet about it.
As far as he was concerned the conversation was far from over.
But he would concede for now.
Dinner wound down and voices wound down and he knew it was time to take Elle home. She was yawning and repeatedly rubbing her abdomen. He wasn’t sure if it was just a subconscious gesture, or if she had a stomachache. “You ready to go home?” he asked her after dessert and coffee had been served and Buddy was snoring on the couch, chin resting against his chest in a cloud of beard fluff. Carlene was dancing with Shane and Avery was strumming a guitar.
“Yes, I’m ready. I didn’t drive over here so you’re stuck giving me a ride.”
“Good.” That made it even better. He wanted to spend time with her.
They said their goodbyes to a round of very curious and knowing eyes. Tucker couldn’t tell what their actual opinions were, but they were definitely interested in the outcome. “Thank you for everything,” he told Jolene. “I really appreciate you having me over tonight.”
She reached out and gave him a hug. “Take care of my sister,” she murmured into his ear.
“I’m trying to. She doesn’t make it easy.”
“If anyone can, it’s you.”
He nodded. In a way, he did believe that.
Outside he helped Elle into the car. She was still quiet, but when he climbed in and started the engine, she jerked her thumb to the backseat. “What’s that?”
It was a present he had gotten for her, wrapped with a crooked bow on top. “It’s for you.”
Elle rubbed her eyes. “Did I tell you that my mother and sister gave me baby stuff as Christmas presents? Does it make me a jerk that I was hugely disappointed? I wanted stuff for me, not the baby. She won’t even be here for another seven months.”
He rubbed her knee. “I get that.” He did. It must have been weird to go from being one person to the delivery service for another. It wasn’t the same for him.
She laughed softly. “I don’t know, Tucker. I’m so emotional. It makes me feel weak. This is an arena I don’t know how to fight in, you know what I mean?”
Pulling down the drive and parking, he glanced over at her. “What are you fighting?”
“I don’t even know. And I won’t be upset if you got me baby stuff. That was rude of me. I should have told you after I knew for sure what your gift was.”
“It’s not baby stuff. That never even occurred to me.” He shot her a grin. “So we’re both amateurs, so what? We’ll figure it out.”
“I trust you. But for the record, I’m still mad at you. You put me on the spot in front of my family.”
He had. He knew that. But with Elle, sometimes it was better to catch her off guard. Of course, that was the reason they were sitting here with her feeling salty about getting baby gifts. He’d caught her way off guard that morning in bed. “You can be mad at me all you want. Doesn’t change reality.”
She made a face at him and opened her car door. “I’m going to bed. Alone.”
The hell she was.
Tucker got out and followed her, snagging his gym bag and the present from the backseat. She paid no attention to him as he fell in step beside her up the walk and into her apartment building. She was being stubborn, which was no surprise. But all things considered, he thought she would’ve let him have it a little harder. He was getting off easy.
They stepped inside. She shut the door and peeled her coat off, dropping it straight onto the floor. Then she lit in on him. “I can’t believe you suggested we get married like that! What is going on in that thick skull of yours?”
Maybe not so easy after all.
Tucker took his own coat off and hung it up in the closet. He plucked hers off the floor and did the same with it. He tossed the present on a side table. “I was being impulsive.”
“No you weren’t! You were being practical.” Elle bent over and yanked her shoes off. He couldn’t see her face behind the cascade of her long dark hair but it didn’t stop the flow of words. “We haven’t been in a relationship with each other in twelve years. We’ve had sex precisely once. Why would you think we could just leap into something as huge and lasting as marriage?”
When she put it like that it did sound a little insane. “Because you’re my best friend. We get along like gangbusters. We’re having a baby. What better foundation is there?”
She stood up and her hair fell back. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were glassy. “Love. Passion.”
Tucker’s nostrils flared as he looked down at her. She was beautiful. Fiery. He wanted her with a fierce desperation that should have unnerved him. He didn’t want to stand there and argue with her. He wanted to show her what they were. What they could be.
“You want love and passion?” he asked, and his voice was low, tight. He sounded angry.
Her eyes widened and her lips fell apart but she didn’t speak. She just nodded.
“Then here it is, Elle. And for once in your life, stop pushing away a good thing.” Tucker moved in close to her and slid his arm around her waist, hauling her tight against his body.
She gave a gasp when they collided. Her hands came up to brace against his chest, and if she had actually pushed him back, he would have conceded. Quit the field. But she didn’t. Her fingers curled into the soft cotton of his shirt and she gazed up at him, waiting. Waiting for him to make a move. Tucker didn’t hesitate. He bent down and kissed her, taking her mouth with a rough, hard possession. He gripped her waist, and with the other hand, buried his fingers in her silken hair, curling the strands around his fingertips to hold her to him.
He wanted all of her. He wanted to mold her body to his and consume her space. He wanted to knock all the thoughts out of her head and have her just feel.
She wanted love? That was a done deal years ago. He had always loved her.
Passion was what he needed to prove. That he could coax a hot, explosive desire from her. Not because she was half-asleep and he was convenient. But because he could tease her into desperation, where she would beg him to complete her.
Elle seemed startled but she only hesitated briefly before she gave in, kissing him back with soft sounds of approval. Her mouth was sweet, the taste of cherry pie from dessert still on her tongue. He sucked on her bottom lip teasingly, noting the way her fingers curled more tightly into his shirt.
Then he bit her.
Not hard but enough to get her attention.
Elle gasped and her eyes flew open. They were dark pools of desire. She bumped her hips into him, and the heat between her thighs rubbed his hard cock. She liked his teeth nipping at her flesh. She liked him to take charge. Tucker had no problem giving her exactly what she wanted.
He shifted his hand lower to cup her firm ass, helping her grind against him. He wanted her clothes off now but he focused on reading her response as he brushed his lips down her jaw, over her neck. Her thin sweater didn’t hide the fact that her nipples were taut, or that her breasts had swollen since autumn. Tucker ran his lips repeatedly over the firm bud of each through the fabric, drawing a sigh from Elle.
“Take my sweater off,” she breathed, her head falling back, her spine arching to bring her breasts in closer contact with his mouth.
“No.” She wasn’t calling the shots on this.
“What do you mean no?” She opened her eyes to glare at him.
“I mean no. You’re not ready.” He wasn’t going to have this over in three minutes so she could retreat into sleep and ignore what was happening between them. Hell no. He was going to make this everything. So that she couldn’t deny that there was, in fact, passion between them. That he could be her past, present, and her goddamn future.
Elle punched his biceps. “The hell I’m not. Don’t tell me what I am.” She started to pull away from him.
Rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger he pinched it lightly, teasingly. She immediately stilled and gave a reluctant groan. So Elle liked it a little rough. Biting, pinching. This was new information that he fully intended to use to his advantage.
Using the palm of his hand he brushed over the bud again, before cupping and grasping the full weight of her breast in his hand. He kissed her, sweeping his tongue inside her mouth to tangle with her heat, the need for her almost overwhelming.
“Tucker,” she breathed, breaking off the kiss.
“Yeah?” Running his thumb over her bottom lip, he watched her, studied her, planning his next move.
“You’re confusing me.”
Good. He didn’t want to be practical or predictable when it came to giving her pleasure. He wanted to destroy her preconceived notions of him and make her melt under his touch. “But am I turning you on?”
She nodded and almost without thought bumped the apex of her thighs against his cock again. Tucker felt a bone-deep, urgent need to take her hard. To make her his. Fully his.
He pushed her against the wall without warning and gave her a hard, smoldering kiss.
Elle lost her breath at the unexpected movement, her back colliding with the drywall of her entry hallway. She had wobbly knees from Tucker’s kisses and if he hadn’t held her up she might have slid down to the floor in a puddle. She was so hot and damp she wasn’t sure she could stand it. It was like everything she knew about Tucker had turned on its head. Where was the generous, kind, easygoing guy who always, always let her get her way? He was gone for now, and it was sexy as hell. This Tucker was demanding, in control, focused.
For the first time, she saw a glimpse of what he must be like at work. Chasing down a criminal. Cuffing somebody. Getting the job done with steely determination and a razor-sharp focus. Just then, he raised her hands above her head, gripping her wrists tightly to hold her in place, and it added to the sense that he was capturing her. Arresting her. Arousing her.
Oh, damn, she couldn’t take it. The ache deep in her inner thighs grew tenfold and she was wet for him, ready. She wanted him to take her without hesitation like he had the first time. But that was the Tucker she knew. This man was unpredictable, full of surprises. Dangerous.
She was wearing leggings and he traced the line between her thighs and pelvis, first on one leg, then on the other. While he nuzzled her neck, his touch a mere whisper, his thumb skimmed over her clitoris and she felt like she might jump out of her skin. Her body ached, her lips swollen from his kisses, her nipples tingling with anticipation, as she tried not to beg. That wasn’t her style.
Then again, she was usually the one calling the shots in bed. She was the sassy one, who told her pretty-boy boyfriends what to do, what to say, where to touch. She was bossy and demanding, and in the end got what she wanted. But this was different. Instead of feeling like a guitar string yanked tight that needed stroking, she felt liquid, electric. A live wire dropped into a warm pool of water.
Tucker raised his hand, leaving her bereft of his touch, to toy with the waistband of her leggings. He was driving her crazy. Steadily, slowly, he peeled back her pants and slid his hand down inside her panties. The first touch of his rough fingers over her swollen core made her twitch in agonized pleasure. She already felt overstimulated and he had barely touched her.
But then he sank the tip of his middle finger inside her while he massaged her clit with his thumb and she moaned, arching her back so she could take the full length of his finger. She needed more. She needed him.
Tucker tightened his grip on her wrists and pressed closer, pinning her to the wall. “Don’t move, sweetheart. Just let me do this to you.”
She didn’t know how. He was ultimately asking her to give up complete control. To let him tell her what she needed and give it to her. Elle trusted Tucker. That was never the issue. But the constant push-pull she had felt within herself her whole life to be independent, to not be either her mother or her father, mired her in conflict. She wanted to let go. She did.
Tucker must have sensed her hesitation because he released her hands. She kept them there, raised high above her head, without thought. He shifted down her chest, caressing her as he descended, then he roughly yanked her leggings and panties to her ankles, exposing her to him. She swallowed hard, the jagged sound of her own heated breathing ringing in her ears. She closed her eyes, unable to look and see Tucker’s dark head between her thighs. He was already stroking her with his tongue, tripping off a riot of sensations.
Elle felt exposed, vulnerable. Absolutely out of control. She couldn’t have pushed him away though if her life depended on it. There was no rational thought left, just the desperate need to cling to him. She lowered her hands, dug her fingers into his short hair. “Tucker…” She didn’t even know what she was asking for. Maybe for him to hold her up, because she felt like she might collapse under the weight of his attention.
Tucker lifted his mouth from her moist heat. “Let go, sweetheart,” he commanded. “Just let go and feel it. You don’t need to fight it.”
She forced herself to gaze at him, to meet his eyes. Her bare legs were pale in the dim hall light and his shoulders looked broad, strong, encapsulating her body with his. All the emotions she had were overwhelming, threatening to drag her down and under. She could drown in those dark eyes. But she realized that if she was going to let go, let the tide take her under, the one man on the entire planet she could trust to keep her from drowning was Tucker.
“I won’t fight it,” she whispered, giving him the permission he had been seeking to take her totally under.
Tucker smiled at her. It was a sexy, dirty, boastful smirk that took her breath away. She had never seen a look that intense, a smile so devastating. This was a side of Tucker he had shielded from her. She wasn’t the only one letting go. He buried his tongue and dragged it across her labia and over her clitoris, back and forth, back and forth, until she was curling her toes and crying out in pleasure.
When he slipped a finger inside her to stroke in a steady rhythm, he sucked the swollen bud and Elle gave in completely. She let go, let the orgasm sweep through her, as she yelled out and abandoned any pretense of dignity. She was a hot, wet, clinging mess, but in the most delicious way. Elle held on as long as she could, then frantically pushed Tucker away.
“I can’t take it, I can’t take any more, Tucker,” she breathed.
He released her, pulling away.
Waves of ecstasy still rolled through her like aftershocks, and she stared down at him, panting hard. She wanted to say something. Anything. But Tucker stood up and stepped on the crotch of her leggings between her feet.
“Step out of your pants,” he ordered.
Her skin prickled at the command, thick saliva filling her mouth in anticipation. She did as he told her and watched Tucker, so aroused she couldn’t even think, especially when he peeled his shirt off and tossed it to the floor. Damn, the man was ripped. He was all hard body and strong, chiseled muscle. She reached out to touch him but he halted her touch by lifting her sweater up and over her head and adding it to the pile of discarded clothes on the floor. She expected him to take her to the bedroom, to pick her up. That seemed a Tucker move.
Elle reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, taking a step forward toward the bedroom as he shucked his jeans off.
“Where are you going?” he asked, grabbing her wrist and stopping her movement.
“To the bedroom.” She shook her hair off her face, enjoying the sensual slide of the strands on her bare skin. She snuck a squeeze of his biceps, just because. Yep. Firm. Very firm.
“No. Here. Right now. I’m not waiting.” Tucker looked fierce as he tore down his boxer briefs.
Elle’s mouth went dry as he walked her back up against the wall. She was going to say something but she forgot what in the hell it was when he hauled her leg up onto his hip, took her mouth in a demanding kiss, and pushed inside her with one firm thrust.
She let out a cry into his kiss, a cry he swallowed.
Without a condom between them, with her back against the wall smacking hard with each urgent push, their bodies hot and moist, Tucker’s tongue taking hers, Elle knew that Tucker hadn’t lied.
Love. Passion. He was giving her both in a seriously sexy package.