“Yesss,” he hissed.
She’d never met a man who didn’t like this. The difference was this time she liked it, too. Liked his taste. His scent. His heat. She liked making Toby shake, making him swear—which he did more creatively with each swirl of her tongue. She relished pushing him to the edge more than she ever had before.
“Stop.” He uttered the word so low and deep she barely understood him. His fingers tightened on her scalp, pulled. “Stop,” he repeated louder, clearer, when she ignored him.
“Dammit, stop.” He caught her shoulders and forced her to release him and then tumbled her backward onto the bed and slammed his mouth over hers. The kiss bordered on savage. He took her mouth, took her breath. But he didn’t take her. His erection scorched the inside of her thigh. She was open and wet and protected from pregnancy. He could have plunged deep even without the condom she’d insisted upon. But he didn’t.
Finally he released her mouth and vaulted from the bed. “Witch.”
The approval in his tone and in his hot blue eyes belied the insult and sent a thrill through her. Had any man ever wanted her with such nak*d hunger before Toby? No. And the intensity of his need both excited and worried her. Worried because she felt it, too.
He shucked his clothing in record time, yanked open the bedside table drawer and retrieved a condom. After sheathing himself, he climbed back onto the bed, hooked her knees over his bent arms, yanked her h*ps forward and impaled her.
Her lungs emptied on a rush as he filled her. Barely giving her time to adjust to his size, he withdrew and then drove deep again and again, taking her on a wild, fast ride. The pleasure was too intense. Too unrestrained. She struggled to rein it in.
She caressed the supple skin of his chest, his thighs, his buttocks—any erogenous zone she could reach.
“Stop,” he groaned again.
But she didn’t. Arousal tightened inside her, so she redoubled her efforts, mapping his body, seeking out his pleasure points until he cursed and released her legs only to grab her wrists and pin them on the pillow beside her head.
He leaned down, his gaze drilling hers.
“Don’t. Rush. Me.” He punctuated each word with a hard thrust and then stilled deep inside her. He swiveled his hips, creating a delicious friction against her sensitive flesh. She felt her control slipping and rallied to regain the upper hand by arching her back and taking him even deeper.
He dipped, captured a nipple between his teeth and tugged just hard enough to make her gasp. The love bite reached deep into her womb. Again and again he tormented her br**sts and swiveled his hips, until she lost the battle for control and a tsunami of an orgasm slammed through her. He pounded into her as successive waves of ecstasy robbed her of strength and reason. His groan barely penetrated her overwhelmed state. And then all was still except for their gasping, shallow breaths.
Sanity slowly returned and she realized she’d done it again. She’d lost it. Completely. She’d always focused on bringing her partners pleasure and had never really worried about her own. Making them lose control first meant she didn’t have to worry about losing hers. Toby refused to let her sacrifice her satisfaction for his.
Sacrifice.
An invisible icy finger dragged down her spine and everything within her froze except for the panicked thump-bump of her heart.
Sacrificing and martyring were two sides of the same coin.
A martyr.
When had she started emulating her mother?
“Want to tell me what that was about?” Toby’s husky drawl yanked her out of her shocked stupor.
“What?”
“Trying to get me off before you finished.”
Her barely cooled body filled with uncomfortable prickly heat. She must have drawn the wrong conclusion. And as soon as she could get to her room she could analyze this…encounter and figure out what was really going on.
She focused on his square chin. “That’s crazy. I had orgasms.” She wiggled, but it was like trying to slide out from under a boulder. “Let me up. I have to dress for dinner with my suitemates.”
Toby didn’t budge. His hands and h*ps kept her pinned to the bed. “You had two alone. You needed one with me. Inside you.”
“A technicality. Now move.” Still avoiding his gaze, she bowed her back.
“You were trying to get me to lose it while you lay there cool as a cucumber, pushing my buttons. Same as last time.”
And just like last time, he’d refused to give up until she’d lost it. Her cool. Her control. Her mind. And this time she couldn’t blame her lack of inhibitions on booze or grief.
She needed to get out of here. Needed to think. She struggled again to no avail. He held her down as easily as he would a butterfly. His grip didn’t hurt, but it was inescapable.
“You’re mistaken. Now please get up.”
“Sugar, I’m not getting off you until you level with me. And if you don’t quit squirming, we’ll be here till breakfast. Maybe longer.” He rocked his hips. His thickening erection knocked the breath from her lungs—in surprise and in a shocking burst of arousal.
“I need to use the bathroom,” she lied.
“Then talk fast. As soon as you tell me why you don’t like coming I’ll let you go.”
She wanted to be somewhere else. Anyplace else. “I never said that.”
“The women I know like getting off. With me. Without me. Whenever and wherever they get a chance. Why do you fight it?”
“I don’t.”
He leaned down, aligning his nose with hers and forcing her to look into his eyes. His h*ps pistoned again, and her breath hiccuped as a bolt of unwanted hunger shot straight to her core. “It’ll take me less than two minutes to prove you’re lying.”
The man was cocky, confident…and very likely correct.
She could continue fighting and suffer the consequences or get this over with.
“I don’t like losing control,” she admitted reluctantly.
“Isn’t that the whole point of sex?”
She’d known he wouldn’t understand. Nobody would. That’s why she’d never tried to explain her conflicting emotions about her dysfunctional family.
She bit her lip and struggled to formulate an acceptable—if not quite accurate—explanation. Toby threaded his fingers through hers still pinned to the pillow, withdrew from her body almost completely and then slid back in. He set a slow pumping pace that kept her brain from forming coherent sentences.
“I can’t think when you do…that.”
“Don’t think. Just talk.”
“I thought men didn’t like to talk after sex.”
“In case…you didn’t notice…we’re not finished. And I’m not most men. Talking fine-tunes…performance. I talk to my crew…when I drive…and my partner in bed. That way…everybody’s…on the same page…and we all get…what we want.” His shortened breaths made the words come out in choppy bursts.
Her extremities tingled and her toes dug into the luxurious sheets. Another release hovered disgracefully close, and she trembled with the effort to shut it down. How does he do that? She had to get rid of him before she became addicted to the way he made her feel, and the only way to do that was to give him what he wanted—the ugly truth.
“My parents hate each other. My mother has a temper. When she lets go, the whole neighborhood hears.”
“She hit you?”
Given his upbringing, she wasn’t surprised he’d ask that. “No. Never.”
“Stating the obvious—you’re not your mother.” The tendons of his neck corded. His arms trembled.
“But I’m m-more like her than I want to be. Especially in bed with you.”
He swiveled his pelvis and her insides wound tighter. A muffled moan slipped between her lips. She couldn’t believe they were hav**g s*x and talking about her parents simultaneously. The ick factor should be grossing her out, but the powerful surges of Toby deep inside her kept her too distracted with wave upon wave of arousal to maintain rational thought processes.
And that was exactly the problem.
“Genes are there. But you have control. Over decisions. Over choices. Don’t have to repeat…her mistakes. You choose…to race clean…or dirty.”
A drop of sweat rolled from his forehead down his lean cheek. It dripped from his jaw and landed on her breast. He dipped and lapped it up—only he didn’t stop with that single sip. His tongue circled her nipple, teasing but not hitting the sensitive center. The opposite breast received the same neglectful attention. Her nails dug into the backs of his hands. She wanted to scream in frustration. But she wouldn’t.
“I don’t like her when she loses control,” she confessed in a rush and immediately wanted the shameful words back. What kind of person didn’t like her mother?
Toby’s body stilled, but instead of looking repulsed by her admission, his expression softened. The understanding in his eyes tugged at something deep inside her.
“You don’t have to like somebody to love ’em, Amelia.”
He knew. He knew what it was like to have a parent you both loved and hated. In that instant she felt a connection with Toby that she’d never experienced with anyone else. Not even Neal. The realization sent a frisson of alarm skittering through her.
How could someone who embodied her worst nightmares understand the emotions tormenting her? It wasn’t fair. Her eyes stung at the injustice of being so in tune with a man she didn’t love and could never trust her heart to because of his daredevil personality.
“And bed is the one place it’s okay to let go. Let go for me, sugar.” Then Toby’s mouth slanted over hers, and the ride turned as fast and furious as the past five minutes had been slow and steady. Her reeling senses welcomed the desire distracting her from her tumultuous thoughts, and when he released her hands to cup his under her buttocks and drive deeper, she wound her arms around him instead of pushing him away.
Another orgasm burst upon her like a flash fire. Slowly the embers cooled and the haze cleared from her brain, and then she discovered a heartbeat too late that she’d miscalculated.
Her plan for a careful, controlled burnout of the passion between them was in danger of going up in smoke.
She was falling for Toby Haynes.
And she had to stop it. Right now.
Eight
She’d hung him out to dry. Again.Toby had never met a woman he couldn’t figure out. But Amelia Lambert stumped him. As crazy as she apparently was about celebrities, she wasn’t impressed with him. That irked him, for some damn fool reason. Did she have any idea how rare it was for a guy to accomplish what he had and at his age? How hard he’d worked to make HRI a force to be reckoned with in racing?
She wasn’t interested in having her picture taken with a NASCAR driver, in bragging rights of having screwed one or in boosting her career via his. And he’d had dozens of women try to squeeze a wedding ring out of him. Amelia wasn’t one of them.
So what did she want from him? And why did she act as though being with him was a chore? Sure, he knew she’d been assigned to babysit him. But, c’mon, she wanted him—a fact made clear by every heart-revving glance she sent his way and that round of set-the-sheets-on-fire sex.