Teela took a fortifying inhale. I have to stop reacting like this. “How- how did you change your mind anyway? About- about this? One minute you didn’t want to believe me. You didn’t want anything to do with this baby and then- then the next you were knocking at my door at midnight, telling me you’d changed your mind.”
When Ross didn’t immediately answer, Teela dared to glance up. He was studying her, a hint of a smile turning up his lips. His eyes shone and he was so… so- so handsome, so panty-melting, ovary combusting, dangerously charming kind of handsome, that she had to look back down before that look on his face got her pregnant a second time. Was it possible to conceive two babies- twins at different times? Probably. Teela thought she actually remembered reading something like that somewhere, but it was within days of each other, not months. Still, she was sure she wasn’t safe.
“I…” Ross trailed off. He seemed like he was fighting for the right words.
She had to look up, and when she did, she was hit with those gorgeous blue eyes that never failed to send shivers up her spine and turn her inside out. Her heart started a wild thumping- or rather- kicked up a few more notches from the crazy beating it was already doing.
Ross took a step forward and then another and one more. Teela froze. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t get up and run away like she should have. She was trapped and then Ross was sitting right beside her and she had absolutely no walls built up to defend against him and those damn eyes and that look on his face, all tender and soft, like he had no walls either, or that they’d crumbled somehow, in the past few minutes.
He reached out and set a hand on her knee. The heat from his touch went right to the juncture of her thighs. Something wild and unknown spread through her veins.
“Because you only have one chance to do the right thing. If I didn’t, I knew I’d regret it for the rest of my life. I might not have expected this. I might not have wanted this- exactly- but- but it happened, and I had a choice. I knew I had to man up and make the right one. Not everyone in the world is out to get me. That baby in there, in you, it’s innocent. It’s mine. It’s my son or my daughter and I couldn’t turn my back and walk away from my own child. No matter what.”
“Well…” Teela said breathlessly. “I guess- that’s- as- as a good a reason as any…” she trailed off because Ross was looking at her and the look was so intense it stole her breath and made her palms sweat. It felt like her boobs were sweating. Like everything was sweating.
And then his hand shifted up from her knee, up to her jaw and time stood still. The world around her stopped. No guy had every looked at her that way. She’d never seen anything close to whatever was burning in Ross’ eyes. He looked at her like he actually saw her. Not through her. Not for what she could give him. Not as a thing, as an object, as something to be taken and conquered and broken.
Electricity sizzled in the air between them. She forgot all about steaks and BBQ and SUV’s and whatever else, including the reason she was there in the first place. It was just Ross. Ross and her and his carved cheekbones and his chiseled jaw and his beautiful lips. It was just the tension between them, thick and charged with desire and temptation.
It was just the humming in her veins, anticipation.
Before she even fully realized what was happening, Ross tilted her chin up and he brought his face down and then he was kissing her, claiming her, capturing her mouth with his in the first real, true, honest to god kiss she’d ever had in her lifetime.
CHAPTER 12
Ross
He’d kissed a few women in his lifetime. Okay, it was more than a few. He was on the more experienced side of the spectrum, but he’d never felt anything like that kiss before.
Kissing Teela was like being hurtled into another universe. His balls drew up so tight they nearly cut off his air supply and his groin was on fire and his cock was tenting his jeans, so hard it was like a steel rod in his pants.
Teela pulled away. “Uh- that was…” her eyes were wide and shiny and her voice as raspy and sexy and breathless.
“Not very good?”
“Yeah,” she breathed. “Definitely not good at all. You probably shouldn’t ever kiss me again. You shouldn’t kiss anyone again.”
“But practice makes perfect.”
“Not in this case. In this case, you’re hopeless.” Her bow lips arched up into a perfect smile and god, he needed to kiss her again. He needed to do more than that. Her eyes were heavy, her lashes sweeping low and the look on her face said that she wanted to do it again too.