CHAPTER13
TANNER
What the fuck is happening right now?
As soon as her soft lips touched mine, I froze. I’d seen the intention forming in her eyes, but I hadn’t thought she’d actually go through with it. We’d had a good day together, but I’d resolved not to read into it again. When she’d first started inching closer to me, I’d thought it was accidental since she was so engrossed in the movie.
And now, just as I’d been sitting here cursing myself for making such a stupid move last night since it meant I couldn’t repeat the same mistake tonight, she went and kissed me.
It was yet another in a series of surprises today, but this was the best one by far.
Although my mind short-circuited for a minute, my body knew exactly what was happening. Without hesitating, I wrapped my arms around her, drawing her closer as I licked the seam of her lips. She opened for me, the tip of her tongue coming out tentatively to meet mine.
I didn’t wait for any more of an invitation. My hand snaked up her back and into her hair as I held her to me, devouring her mouth like I’d been wanting to do since the first time I’d met her. Despite what had happened last night, there was no resistance from her tonight.
She’d made the move and now she was following through on it. My free hand ran up the length of her side, finally exploring the softness of her curves as she moaned into my mouth.
Spurred on by the lyrical, incredibly fucking sexy sound, I pulled her even closer, helping her get situated on my lap. The kiss took on a life of its own. With her heat on me and the taste of her in my mouth, I got so hard that I was thankful I’d already changed into sweats.
If I’d still been in my jeans, the zipper would’ve left a permanent indentation on my cock.
My thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts, and she tugged at my hair, tilting my head back even farther to give her better access.
We went from zero to a hundred fast, groping at each other as our teeth clashed and her hips rolled into mine. As much as I wanted this, had wanted it since I’d first laid eyes on her, there was a voice in the back of my head telling me it was time to pull away.
You’ve both been drinking. It wouldn’t be right to keep going, especially not after her reaction in the hot tub just yesterday. Time to hit the brakes, Harris. This is getting too hot, too fast.
Fuck. I didn’t want to stop, but the voice was right. I had to. If I didn’t, I was going to start ripping off her clothes any second now and the last thing I wanted was for her to regret this in the morning.
Reluctantly slowing the kiss, I groaned and pulled back to look into her eyes once it came to an end. She pulled back, too, those brown eyes of her burning with embers of need as she looked back at me. We held each other’s gazes for a long moment, but then she gave me a wry smile and lifted herself off my lap.
“I should get to bed,” she said breathlessly, her lips a little swollen from the intensity of the kiss. “Good night, Tanner.”
“Good night.”
She turned to give me one last smile before she left the room. I let out another low groan once she was gone.
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I reached down to adjust myself but didn’t get up to go to bed just yet. First, because I was so turned on that I’d be risking going off like a fucking firework if I moved, and secondly, because the only place to go was upstairs and I didn’t trust myself to do that right then.
Not because I was some animal with no self-control who’d go after her even though she’d left, but because, if she wasn’t in her bedroom for some reason and made another move, I didn’t think I’d have it in me to pull away from her again. And the reasons to pull away were all still there and all still valid.
There was something about her that made me want to ravish and protect her all at the same time. Sure, there had been some awkward moments between us this weekend, but it had almost been like we were just a couple on vacation together. A new couple, but a couple nonetheless, and it felt good.
I just wished our weekend wasn’t ending tomorrow. It had been a while since I’d been in a real relationship. Keeping up something serious had been too hard in the past when I’d been traveling for baseball all the time, and now, it had proven difficult to find someone who wanted to be with me for me and not for my bank account.
While I’d been playing, things had been different. Or maybe I’d just been used to it because that was just the way things had always been for me. Recognizing who was actually interested and who just wanted to say they had been with a pro had become second nature.
Learning how to navigate interpersonal relationships with this new level of wealth was definitely not second nature. It was a whole new ballgame—pun intended—and it wasn’t one I was familiar with. The ulterior motives and the distrust that went along with them was making it difficult for me to know who wanted what from me.
Bart kept telling me that it was the same thing whether a woman might want to be with me for my status as a player or for my money—ulterior motives were ulterior motives—but it just didn’t feel that way. The stakes felt higher. If I was going to find someone to potentially have a relationship with, I didn’t want to lose my heart to someone who actually only wanted a credit card.
The learning curve that had come with the money was steep, and since it didn’t come with an advisor who could tell me exactly what to do with it, I was taking things slowly. Letting new people into my life in any real way had always been a process for me, and it was even more of one now.
Put me in any social situation—aside from an auction, apparently—and I would flourish. I could handle that. Hell, I’d been trained to handle networking and charming everyone I came into contact with. Give me a person and tell me to really let them in, though, and I struggled.
There was a reason why my closest friends were still Bart, Shawn, and Jeremiah, who I’d met as a kid back in that stage when it was as easy as Want to play? Sure. We’re friends now. Jer and I had met Bart and Shawn back in high school, and he’d been the one who had really pulled us all together.
Building relationships just didn’t come as naturally for me.