His hands are big and calloused and warm. Slowly he raises both of my hands above my head and presses them back against the door. Not too hard, not too soft. Just the right amount of pressure. Speaking of pressure, my body is now dying for him to close the gap between us. To press me to him and…I don’t know, just do something!
My lips part and Will’s eyes lower—watching the moment as it happens. The smallest of curves touches the corners of his mouth before he drops his lips to the side of my face. His breath brushes against the shell of my ear and tickles every nerve ending in my body—fertilizing them and somehow growing more. New sensations I’ve never known surface in the pit of my stomach and…lower. He smells so good. Feels so good.
“First things first…” Sweet molasses, his quiet, rumbly bedroom voice is hot. “It’s never about the room. The room doesn’t play a part in sex.” His voice is deep and amused and confident. This is exactly how I imagined he’d be in this situation. No—better.
As promised, he touches nothing but my hands. I am slowly perishing.
He continues—his breath hot and heavy against the side of my face. “In a bind, a closet, a bathroom, even a car will do just fine.” His mouth lowers even farther to breathe against my neck now. Never touching me, just breathing. “Decor doesn’t matter.” He moves up my throat as he speaks, and on to the other side. I angle my head like I want to make sure he reaches every spot and crevice. “Because if I’ve effectively captured her attention through the date, from the moment we’re alone, her pulse will be racing, and her mind will be absorbed with touch and breath and so much desire that the color of my damn bedspread won’t even cross her mind once.”
His mouth is at my ear again, and his hands continue to hold mine pinned above my head with a delicious gentle pressure that makes me squirm. One I didn’t know I liked. Didn’t know I needed. Now I’m afraid I’ll feel deprived of it for the rest of my life.
Will moves from my ear, fanning his breath across my jaw to hover just in front of my lips now. “Annie, open your eyes and look at me,” he commands, and until that point, I didn’t even realize my eyes were shut.
When my eyelids spring open, I feel drunk. His gray gaze is dark now and heavy on mine. I feel desperate for him to tip forward and kiss me. His thumb tracks back and forth over the inside of my wrist. I barely remember what I was here for today or what my name is, for that matter. All I know is my pulse is drumming loudly in my ear, and it seems to be saying the same thing over and over again. Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me.
With his mouth only a centimeter apart from mine, he smiles. “Believe me?”
I nod silently.
“Great,” he whispers and then releases my hands. My arms fall limply at my sides because I am a sack of Jell-O at this point. Will, however, is completely unaffected and goes back to the couch. “Come sit down so we can talk about the lesson plan.”
For a moment I can’t do anything but stand here and lean against the door. My insides are blazing. My stomach is all twisted and bunched, and I feel absurdly let down that he’s over there and I’m over here.
“H-how did you do that?” I say, finally finding my voice as my feet carry me in a daze back to the couch. My brain isn’t working right yet, so instead of sitting, I stand here like a robot waiting for its next command.
Will grins and hooks a finger in the baggy back pocket of my shorts and tugs me down to the couch. I sit, wide-eyed.
“Confidence,” he says, picking up his laptop and opening it.
I lean over and shut it again.
He chuckles.
“But how?! What if you don’t feel confident?” I’m not sure I’ve ever felt confident a day in my life.
“You fake it, Annie.”
“No way.” I shake my head in disbelief. “You don’t fake that kind of confidence. All of that…” I circle my finger toward the door where the ghost of Annie who had never been seductively entranced by Will Griffin still lives, “…was natural for you.”
He grins. “Not true. I was nervous.”
I take in his pirate eyes with the dangerous black rim around his irises, the tattoos wrapping down his arm with the masculine veins that universally turn everyone on, and last but not least, the rebellious wave of hair that flops down above his brow every time he rakes his hand through it. “I don’t believe you for a second.”
Will’s eyes narrow on my face, jaws clenching as he debates something. And then Will raises his hand level between us. That’s when I see it. His hand, that beautiful, strong, inked hand, is trembling. Will Griffin is shaking from touching me.