Nothing like his usual women.
He'd meant it as a compliment, but Layla's ears interpreted it as a challenge.
Of course she wasn't like his usual women. She wasn't rich and famous with a perfect body. She wasn't a sexed-up groupie whose sole mission was to bang a rock star.
But damn it, she was sexy. It had just been a while since she'd felt that way.
And maybe she wanted him to use her body. Nothing wrong with that at all.
She was a woman. She had needs. Ones that didn't involve her own hand. Okay, she'd forgotten about those needs for what...almost two years now since that extremely short and disappointing night with the new English teacher at school...but Derek had made her remember. He'd made her yearn for something other than work.
Like sex.
With a real man.
And she couldn't think of a better man to break her dry spell with than the rock god who'd appeared in her life due to a magical thumbtack.
Plus, Derek shouldn't have kissed her back if he didn't want her to jump his bones. Mixed signals and whatnot. This was all his fault with his soft lips and sexy hair and mad piano skills and fucking red pants.
Nothing like his usual women. She'd show him.
Layla nodded to herself as she came to a decision. With one hand still on his thigh, she pulled the piano book from his grip with the other and tossed it in what she imagined to be a very sultry way on the coffee table. She misjudged the effects the wine would have on her aim and missed by about three feet. The book fell on the floor halfway across the living room.
Derek cocked an eyebrow, bemusement dancing in his blue eyes. "You okay?"
She kissed him in response, her breath escaping as a sigh when his mouth instantly opened to hers. Their lips moved as one, slowly, softly, the languid press of mouth against mouth, tongue against tongue, and breath against breath building the heat inside her until she thought she might combust. His tongue tangled with hers leisurely as if he were enjoying the taste of her and wanted to make it last.
Finally she pulled back and he stared at her, gaze riveted to her lips. He raked a hand through the dark scruff of his hair. "Fuck, Ms. M."
Yes! Exactly! Fuck Ms. M. Finally the man was getting it.
Now or never, Layla. Do what you want to do, or spend the rest of your life wishing you had.
She ran her palm up his leg, loving the way the muscle clenched under her hand. She eyed his sex-colored pants where they stretched across his thighs--and a very obvious erection--realizing from the strangled noise he made that she'd just licked her lips while staring at him like he was an all you can eat buffet and his penis was her favorite desert.
"Layla--"
"I have a confession." She mustered up her courage, which was less difficult than it should have been considering she had about four glasses of it flowing through her veins.
"You do?" The rumble of his voice gave her the push she needed.
Layla lifted her chin, well aware that the look she was giving him was more akin to throwing down a gauntlet than issuing a sexy invitation.
"Yes. It's about your pants."
He raised an eyebrow, one corner of his mouth quirking in a barely suppressed smile. "My pants?"
He was trying to act casual, but his eyes flashed when she met his gaze, the look of pure lust burning away the remnants of her self-doubt.
She pointed accusingly at his crotch. "These red ones, specifically. They make me think very naughty things."
"I might have noticed." He feigned indifference.
She shrugged.
Now or never.
Layla drew an index finger in a circle over his thigh, surprisingly unembarrassed that she'd basically just admitted to having a pants fetish. As she closed the circle, the tip of her finger brushed the outer edge of his cock, and she suppressed a smile of her own when it twitched as if it were trying to convince her to take a detour its way next time around.
Derek Taylor. Rock god, game player...some time asshole, most of the time gentleman. Bringer of tea and pie and music. This man normally would have been too much for her ordinary life, but not tonight. Tonight he was just what she needed. Red pants and all.
"There's something I want to do." The declaration was more for her sake than his.
Layla slid off the couch, dropping to the floor in front of him and wedging herself between his long legs, one hand on each of his knees. His whole body tensed, but she didn't give either of them a chance to stop her.
With a tilt of her head, she leaned forward to rub her cheek on his thigh. Her eyes drifted closed in pleasure as she relished the softness of the material over the hard clench of his muscle.
Derek groaned, the sound turning her insides into a vibrating bundle of desire. He leaned back against the couch, his chest rising and falling with his rapid breaths, his eyes burning right through her. "Fuck, woman. What are you doing to me?"
"What I've imagined doing every day since I met you." She rubbed her other cheek on the other leg, a sigh escaping her lips.
Hmmm. She was surprisingly unembarrassed about that, either.
Derek's hand drifted toward the back of her head, and he gently lifted a strand of her hair. The slight tug proved that her scalp was directly connected to the place between her legs, and she felt herself getting wetter than she already was.
After a few long heartbeats of her sitting there with her face pressed against him, she drew her head back and languidly traced the contour of his thigh with the tip of her tongue. This time she brushed the outer edge of his cock, just barely, but enough to earn her another quiet groan from the man in front of her.
Yup. The pants tasted like sex and candy in the form of the reddest cotton she'd ever...licked.
"Holy hell." Now he wrapped the strand of her hair around his finger, intensifying the pull on her scalp in a way that registered as a jolt of pleasure deep in her belly. "Where did you come from?"
"A thumbtack, remember?" Layla slid her hands up his hips and under his shirt, flattening them on his abs and slipping them around his sides. His muscles contracted under her palms. She raked her nails down his stomach to dip her fingers under the waistband of his pants. "Let's have a little more fun before you pull it out and move on your way."
When Derek spoke, his words were heavy with lust, but there was a hesitancy she didn't understand written in the dark line of his brow. "Maybe I don't want to pull it out. Maybe I want to leave it right where it is and stay right here with you? At least for now."
With a flick of her thumb, she unbuttoned his fly. She rubbed her fingers back and forth on the sensitive spot where his abdomen met his pelvis, relishing the way his eyelids drooped and his hips lifted off the couch in her direction.
"Right. You want to stay here in the middle of nowhere with a woman you barely know when you have the world begging for even a minute of your time. How about we compromise? You can leave it in all you want tonight, and we won't worry about what happens next."
Did she really just say that out loud?
At the innuendo, Derek wrapped even more of her hair around his fingers, forcing her to tilt her head back to accommodate the tension. His eyes were glued to her mouth. Something primal thrummed in the air between them, a note of lust ringing without resolution and filling her body with a need to do anything to see it fulfilled.
"You don't have to do this," he said.
"I know."
"Well, I know what you think I expect. But all I really want is to get to know you better. That's all I expected tonight. That's enough for me."
Derek's hand in her hair and blue eyes burning her face told Layla that he might not have expected it, but he certainly wanted it.
"You don't have to prove anything," he added.
But she did have to prove something. That was her life...constantly proving to everyone that she was strong, that she could do things on her own, always for everyone else. It's just this time was different because it was the first time she was proving she was strong enough to do something for herself.
"It's not enough for me...I want to finish what we started earlier with that kiss." She turned her face to brush her lips against his hand where it had strayed to her cheek.
"This isn't you. This is the wine talking."
"Maybe the wine gave me the courage to speak, but the words are all mine."
Derek closed his eyes and raked his fingers through his intentionally disheveled hair, disheveling it even more. "Fuck."
"Why are you resisting me?" Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she'd misjudged everything. She suddenly felt very small there, on the floor at the feet of man who might not want her as much as she wanted him after all.
Derek must have seen it on her face, because he swore again, and this time it sounded like he was cursing himself. He leaned forward and cupped her face with his hands, crashing his lips against hers in a kiss that stole her breath.
Layla clung to him, her fingers twining in the soft hair at his nape. She let his kiss wash through her and take her to a place where something like this--a man like him--could be real and she could have everything she ever wanted.
"I don't want to resist you, Layla," he murmured against her mouth. "I don't know what it is...but I don't think I could ever resist you."
"Then don't," she whispered.