Tempt Me Tonight by Toni Blake Page B

person. Maybe she’d hoped deep down that he was. It would have made this a hell of a lot easier. But then, if she’d really believed he was a jerk, she probably wouldn’t have felt so attracted to him last night, and sleeping with him wouldn’t even have become an issue.
    She reviewed the facts. He wasn’t a bad person. She’d finally had sex with him. And she’d let herself believe, during and right after the act, that she was
still in love with him.
    Temporary insanity. Had to be. Because as she kept reminding herself, she didn’t even know him anymore. You couldn’t love a guy you didn’t know. So what she’d felt during their heated coupling had been only a resurrection of old memories, old feelings, nothing more.
    And as for his offer of pancakes and knowing her…well, he’d clearly been in a sex-induced haze, so she couldn’t buy into that, either. She couldn’t stay anyway. That hadn’t been part of the plan. If she didn’t get up and walk out of here right now, the whole dynamic would flip—she’d lose the sense of control she’d been hanging onto by a mere thread and end up feeling conquered again. Staying could only lead to hurt.
    Part of her couldn’t deny the urge to reach between them and touch him—
there.
She yearned to make him hard again. To feel him inside her again. Any other lover in the same situation and that was what she’d do right now. But she’d come here to seduce him, then leave. It hadn’t gone exactly as planned—she’d stayed too long and felt too much—but it was time to get things back on track.
    Stay one more minute and you could end up more emotionally involved than you already are, which could only lead to another dose of humiliating heartache.
And Trish had stopped doing humiliating heartache a long time ago.
Get out now and maybe you can forget this and move on with your life.
    She very gingerly lifted his arm from her waist and placed it carefully along his side. Then she slowly slid off the couch.
    If last night in the bar with him had felt surreal…yeesh—it wasn’t even in the same ballpark as this: standing naked in Joe Ramsey’s living room in the middle of the night wondering where she’d find her corset dress and dominatrix shoes.
    She took a deep breath and crept to the end of the couch where she located her stockings—she’d take them with her, but certainly saw no need to waste time putting them back on. She tripped over a shoe and nearly plunged to the floor before catching herself on the wide, soft arm of the couch. Damn it, that was close—but at least she’d found her pumps.
    When her bare foot met with a soft pile of fabric, she knew she’d located her dress. She put it on and quickly did up the hooks, then located her panties a few feet away behind the sofa, deciding that putting them on could wait, too. Gathering shoes and lingerie in a heap in her arms, she spotted—thank you, God!—her keys on a table by the door. She padded to quietly snatch them up, then paused to look back at her lover. But only for a second,
because this was only sex, this didn’t matter.
Yeah, right.
That ship has sailed, sister, so you might as well give it up.
    She felt like a criminal scurrying to her car under the glow of the moon—and the same porch light that had helped her make her way to the door an hour or two ago. And something caught in her throat as she started the engine—some kind of guilt, just like Debbie had implied she would feel.
Sneaking
was worse than just leaving, of course. But she’d
had
to—she’d had to get the hell out of there before she let herself start thinking she loved the guy again. She shivered at the very thought—but felt that shiver rush all through her, through the breasts he’d recently kissed and the place between her thighs where he’d recently…been.
    She released a heavy breath, then backed out of the driveway, her heart pumping nearly as hard as when she’d arrived. Debbie’s words from earlier came