Tangling With Ty

wanted to try new and innovative surgeries, and be successful at them. She wanted to save people’s lives.

And not think about her own.

Yet there was no denying, he did something to her, something to her insides. He made her yearn and burn for human contact. Physical contact.

And that was something she rarely allowed herself because it made her open. Vulnerable.

She didn’t like to be open and vulnerable.

But that’s exactly what he did, without even laying a finger on her. He could have done it with just his eyes, but he had his hands on her now. She wanted to hate him for that, even as she wound her arms around his neck, even as she tilted her head for better access and kissed him back with everything she had.

Her body’s immediate reaction surprised her. Consumed her. She certainly hadn’t planned on feeling this aching desire, and for a man she hadn’t yet decided to trust. Her fingers ran over the sexy tattoo on his arm, then up his slightly rough jaw. He ran his down her back. She slid her fingers into his short hair and gripped hard. He rocked their bodies together.

“This is insane,” she decided.

“Yeah.” With a sexy growl deep in his throat, he slipped his hands beneath the edging of her top so that his fingers played at the base of her spine, stroking over bare skin, while his mouth danced over hers again, making her do just what he’d said he could do. Making her forget today, forget the stress.

Forget her name.

She wanted to pull away, wanted never to have goaded him into this embrace. Hard to do, since she’d practically climbed up his half-nude body in a desperate attempt to get even closer.

End it, she told herself.

Instead, she continued to kiss him back with every thing she had. Her tongue encouraged his, her hands claimed his sleek, muscled chest, while her insides melted at the hard, hot feel of him beneath her fingertips. She clung crazily to him as the only solid object in her frenzied world. And his lips…Lord, his lips! They were warm, firm and deliciously demanding. She could have said the same thing about his hands, which were at her waist now, his thumbs lightly caressing the quivering flesh just beneath her belly button. A knot deep inside her tightened. Her legs wobbled. And her nipples had long ago hardened to needy points, as if he’d already touched her there.

But he hadn’t, and that she wanted him to more than she wanted her next breath no longer shocked her. She wanted this man.

Then, from somewhere behind them came the ping of a computer snapping her back to reality. For those glorious few moments he’d actually made her forget that she stood in his house, mewling all over him, practically begging him for something she was not prepared to give.

“Your computer is calling you,” she said far more unevenly than she would have liked.

Still leaning over her, his mouth wet from hers, he slowly blinked, giving her a heavy-lidded look that made her want once again to melt all over him. “What?”

Pulling all the way free of his hands so she could get her brain functioning again, she stepped away, disturbed by how devastating one simple kiss had been.

Bottom line, when he laid on his easygoing charm, he was dangerous to her mental health, and this power seemed such an innate part of him she just needed to stay the hell away, period. “Your computer,” she repeated, licking her lips and tasting him on her. “It’s calling you.”

It took him a while because first he watched her tongue dart out to lick her lips, but finally he turned his head and looked at his computer screen.

His breathing wasn’t even either, Nicole noticed, just as she’d noticed every little detail about him. Like his bare chest, lightly tanned and hard with lean muscle. Or his faded, soft jeans, and the not-so-soft bulge behind the zipper.

She turned him on. The unexpected knowledge, along with the overwhelming and equally unexpected power of that, blew her away.

She turned him on. She, the original geek, turned on the sexiest, most erotic, most sensuous, passionate man she’d ever met. And that shouldn’t have been so…thrilling. “You have mail.” Her voice sounded breathless again. Not good. If she wasn’t careful, he’d notice and take it as an invitation. “Aren’t you going to look?”

“Yeah.” Blocking the screen with his big body, he read the e-mail, then put the computer on sleep mode. And though his face was carefully creased in one of his trademark easy, slow smiles, tension came off him in waves. “Where were we?” he asked in a light lilt that could have melted Iceland as he reached for her.

“Oh, no,” she said, backing up, right into a wall. “Not so fast.” She slapped a hand to his chest, his bare chest, which radiated heat. Her fingers started to curl into him, wanting more, so she wrenched it back. “I’m out of here.”

“You going to let a little kiss bother you then?”

She lifted a finger and pointed it at him. “You are not going to goad me into another one.”

“Because that would be…mind-blowing?”

“Because that would be…stupid.” She ducked beneath his arms and moved to the center of his office. “I came here to give you the plans and tell you I’m not attracted to you.”

“Which we’ve proved is a lie.”

“Okay, so I don’t want to be attracted to you,” she amended. “And now I’m gone.”

He waited until she got to the door. “Would it be so bad, Nicole, if we gave in to it?”

Not turning to him, not daring to, because at one look from him, she’d cave. Instead she tipped back her head and studied the ceiling. “Yes.”

“Because…?”

“Because. Just because.”

“We’d heat it up good, darlin’, you know that.”

Since her body was still heated up good, she had no doubt of that. Then his computer beeped again, accompanied by a surprisingly low and vicious oath from Ty. Turning back, she caught his unguarded expression as he reached for the keyboard.

Fury, plain and simple.

Wondering what was wrong, she sidled up behind him almost without realizing it, so that when he whipped around hiding the screen, she would have fallen backwards if he hadn’t grabbed her around the waist.

Fingers gripping her tightly, he lifted a brow. “See anything interesting?”

“No.”

His voice had lost all of its warmth. “You were right to run, Nicole. You should run. Now.” He let go of her, and she stumbled back. By the time she regained her balance, he had turned away, hands fisted on the windowsill as he stared outside.

She stared at his stiff back. “I didn’t see anything.”

“You’ll have to be quicker next time, huh?”

His temper stirred hers. Whirling, she stalked through the door, then down the hallway, and was reaching for the front door when he wrapped his long fingers around her elbow and spun her around. He had both his hands on her arms now, holding her still. He towered over her, her dark-haired, blue-eyed mystery man with the low, gruff voice and the sexy mouth that she was attracted to only every breathing moment she looked at him.

She struggled to free herself, but he wasn’t having it. “I can bring you to your knees with one well-placed kick,” she warned him.

“A moment ago I might have been in the mood for an all-out, drag-down, dirty fight, but not now.” His hands gentled, and he used one to cup her face. “I snapped at you and I’m sorry.”

“Fine.”

He sighed at her unbending, rigid stance. “Look, I was feeling nasty, all right? And I tend to take it out on anyone around me.” He sighed again. “Which is why I don’t often have anyone around me.”

She wanted to stay mad. Mad gave her energy to leave. But with him looking at her in that disarming way, with his hands still on her…it all dissolved.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated softly.

“I said fine.”