Chapter Fifteen

It was too much.

Ryan was too much.

They'd left the party ten minutes ago, but after the night she'd just had - and a kiss she didn't think she'd ever be able to forget - Vicki simply couldn't be this close to Ryan anymore.

She reached blindly for the silver handle inside the limo, but the door wouldn't budge when she tried to push it open.

"Vicki?"

Her breath caught in her throat at nothing more than the sound of her name on Ryan's lips, nearly choking her. So many times over the course of the night he'd said her name while reaching for her. And every single time, she'd tried to forcibly remind herself that it was all pretend, that none of it was real, that she wasn't really his...and wouldn't ever be.

Maybe, just maybe, she might have been able to succeed at heeding those constant reminders, if only he hadn't added in the brush of his fingers over her shoulder, the stroke of his knuckles over her cheek, the press of his hand at her lower back as they moved through the room to talk with his teammates.

With every caress, every inch of his hard body against hers, she lost hold of her own body - and her heart - a little bit more. Until, at the end of the party, she'd been a quivering mess of nerves and lust and overwhelming need.

"I need to get out." The desperation in her voice was painfully clear. But she was long past the point of being able to hide anything from anyone. Especially herself.

Which was precisely why she needed to get away.

Away from Ryan.

And away from her own desires.

"Stop the car, please!" Her voice was shrill as she teetered on the edge of shattering, right at the cusp of her breaking point.

A moment later, the limo smoothly pulled over to the side of the road and the lock clicked open. She nearly fell into the gutter in her hurry to escape its confines.

She didn't have a plan, hadn't thought ahead as to where she would go. When she looked up and saw the door to a bar, it seemed like divine providence.

A drink. Or maybe a dozen.

She'd do anything right now to dull the pulsing need, the potent memories on her skin of Ryan's hands and mouth on her, his arms around her.

Vicki pushed in through the black and red door. Her fingertips brushed over paint that had been scratched off and repainted likely a hundred times since the bar had first started serving, and she tried to focus on the stickiness of the wood, the small and large divots in the grain where pieces had been knocked out by fists. Somehow, some way, she needed to fill up her well of tactile sensation with something other than Ryan.

All night long he'd been under her hands. For a sculptor, there was nothing more sensual than touch. All those touches had tipped her over the edge into near madness.

The soft cotton of his dress shirt beneath her fingertips.

His incredibly honed muscles just beneath the fabric.

The lines of his ribs.

The tendons that held everything together.

Her hands had shaken as she tried not to do what the artist in her demanded she do - trace the rises and falls of his body.

At the same time, tonight's party had brought everything into such sharp relief that there was no way she could even try to deny just how wrong they were for each other.

Everything was easy for Ryan. His career, his relationships, his family. She, on the other hand, had struggled her whole life with her art, with making friends while always heading to a new town, with fitting in as an artist in a military family. Where Ryan was so utterly comfortable in his own skin, she'd never known quite how to feel about her abundance of curves on a body that wasn't nearly tall enough to carry them.

And yet, strangely, she never used to worry about those things when she was with Ryan. Because she'd always been so sure that he didn't look at her as a woman. As much as she'd often wished that he had over the years, it had also been tremendously freeing not to have to worry about any of that nonsense.

She'd always been herself with him. Regardless of what she wore, or whether or not she had makeup on, or whether she ate all her food and then grabbed the last bite of his, she'd always known that he would still be her friend.

Vicki absolutely, positively couldn't lose that just because she was letting ridiculous fantasies take her over, minute by minute, day by day.

Once and for all, she needed to kiss all those what if this turned real and my dreams came true? fantasies goodbye.

Ryan needed to be with someone who could carry the pressure of being the partner of a famous athlete. It was laughable to think she could ever be that woman, not when it gave her hives even to think about it, especially now that she knew exactly how hot the spotlight was on his life.

Fact was, she didn't fit into his world as anything but a friend, and one day, when he found the woman who would be his wife, no doubt their friendship would be relegated to way in the background.

And she'd deal with it.

Probably in the same totally unhinged way she was dealing with it now, she thought with more than a little inner sarcasm as she pushed into a group of men and women, young and flirting and already drunk, and put her hands flat on the bar.

"I need a Scotch. Make it a double."

The sea of youth and blatant sexuality parted for her, likely because they didn't want her obviously impending mental and emotional breakdown to kill their buzz.

And yet, it wasn't until the bartender slid the drink over that she realized what she'd ordered.

Scotch was the first drink she'd ever had when Ryan had smuggled a bottle of Johnnie Walker into her garage late one Saturday night. Perfect Ryan Sullivan had actually stolen booze from one of his friends' houses, then left the fun to come hang out with her instead.

They'd gotten drunk together that night. Well, at least she had, and it had been so fun. She'd felt so loose, and warm, and even when she'd started to slur her words and had knocked over one of her brother's bikes, she'd felt so safe.

There wasn't another soul in the world with whom she could have let her guard down like that. And the fact that Ryan had chosen her that night over his other friends, at least for those few hours, warmed her as much as the alcohol had.

It was also the night he'd almost kissed her and she'd freaked out and pushed him away.

Vicki sighed at the memory. Even at fifteen, she'd known that if he couldn't bring himself to kiss her unless he was drunk and horny because his usual cheerleaders hadn't been available earlier, she wasn't going to have a prayer of respecting herself in the morning. So she'd pretended it was all a joke and pushed him away.

He'd never tried to kiss her again. Not until the night she'd called him in on his white steed and he'd arrived at the cocktail lounge ready to protect her at any cost. Even if it meant pretending that he loved her as much as she had always loved him.

Vicki took a shaky breath as past and present overlapped in her head, her heart. She wrapped her fingers around the cool glass and the rubies and diamonds on her pretend engagement ring glinted in the light from above her head as she lifted the glass to her lips.

"The same for me."

The sound of Ryan's low voice had the glass nearly slipping from her fingers as he slid onto the bar stool beside her. But she couldn't drop the drink, not when she needed it so badly. The Scotch burned like fire as she gulped it down.

She put her empty glass on the bar with a clack and kept her eyes trained on the bartender. "Another, please."

Ryan put his hand on her arm, but she was so sensitive from a full night of touches that she flinched. It was either that or throw herself into his arms, right then and there.

She couldn't.

She wouldn't.

But, oh, how she wanted to.

She hated feeling him stiffen beside her as her flinch registered, hated the way he so carefully removed his hand when he'd been so free with his affection earlier, hated it even more when he said, "I'm sorry, Vicki. I should have realized how tired you were. I should have gotten us out of there earlier."

She was long practiced in control, had made an art form out of it the past few days by channeling all that lust, all that need, into her art.

All night long she'd held onto her self-control for dear life, had kept it tightly grasped in her strong hands. But as she reached for it one more time, she felt it fluttering just out of reach.

Her hand shook as she lifted the glass to her lips.

"You don't have anything to be sorry for." She could see bits and pieces of her reflection in the rusting mirrors behind the bar, enough to know she looked just as tired, just as weary, just as beaten as she felt.

"I'm the one who told the reporter we were engaged," he reminded her. "I've seen the way the team celebrates news like that. I knew what was coming. You didn't."

She still wished he'd run the plan by her first, but his intentions had been for the best. Just like they always were where she was concerned.

Even that made her angry now, the knowledge that even with a man known to be the baddest of bad boys, he remained utterly and completely full of good intentions around her. And, in the end, it was so much easier to give weight to that frustration than it was to accept her forbidden feelings for the shockingly gorgeous man sitting beside her.

"You only did it to help me," she said in a voice that dared him to contradict her, "so how could any of this be your fault?"

Especially the part where she'd always loved him.

God, if he weren't here, she'd have a couple more drinks and then lay her head down on the bar top and pretend it was all just a bad dream.

But there wasn't time for her next breath before Ryan's hand was on her neck and he was moving over her, his strong thighs trapping hers between his, his dark eyes flashing with heat as he stared down at her.

His mouth was a breath from hers before she could react, before she could get a single synapse to fire, or send out another silent reminder to herself about control and self-restraint and impossible futures.

"Here's how."

His words were a breath on her lips and then he was covering her mouth with his and kissing her like she'd never been kissed before in her life, not even by him the past two times.

This kiss was a full-on slick of his tongue against hers, as if he was trying to learn all the shades of her taste. As his kiss spiraled deeper, darker, hotter while he pulled her closer and savagely took everything she could give, how could she do anything but give in - at least for a split second of heaven - to the need to taste him for herself?

She wanted him so bad, years of need culminating in this moment in a bar when he was kissing her like he needed oxygen from her lungs to breathe.

The two drinks she'd just gulped down, plus the champagne that had been refilled constantly for her at the Hawks' team party, were making her reactions slower, fuzzier, looser.

She could use being drunk as an excuse.

Only, even when she was a teenager, hadn't she known better? Hadn't she been smart enough to realize that being the drunk lay was so much worse than not being laid at all?

And if Ryan didn't want her when he was sober, it meant he didn't actually want her.

She forced herself to pull back from his mouth. From the heat that poured from him, that drew her hands to his strong arms, to his broad chest, to his tight, muscular hips.

"No one's watching us now," she made herself say, the words escaping her mouth between her panting breaths. Even back when she'd thought herself to be madly in love with her ex, his kisses had never left her this out of breath. Or anywhere close to the edge of giving over every last part of herself. "No one in this bar cares about baseball or whether we're engaged or not."

With those reminders in place between them, meant to douse the fire jumping and flickering so wildly, she would have scooted away from him.

But he didn't let her move.

And, oh, if she didn't end up even more lost to desire, to pleasure, at the way he used his muscles, his strength, to keep her right where she was. Still, she had to try, at least one final time, to try to save herself before she went all the way under.

"The show's over now. You don't have to do this, Ryan."

"Yes," he growled, "I do."

And then his mouth was back on hers and he was pulling her from her bar stool to fit tighter between his legs, his hands hard on her hips, his tongue forcing hers to dance with his again in a kiss that was as close to making love as she'd ever come with all her clothes on.

The groan she'd been trying so hard not to let go of sounded wanton and breathless into his mouth as Vicki gave in to what she'd wanted for so long...to be in Ryan Sullivan's arms.

At least for one beautiful night.

* * *

It had been a hell of a night.

As one second had ticked through to the next, Ryan had wanted Vicki more. He'd been hyperaware of every sensual shift of her body, her mouth, her hands, her eyes. Her laughter had repeatedly lit up the party, and her innate sensuality had inflamed every living, breathing guy - and many of the women, he suspected - at the party.

He'd worked to hold onto his self-control, but being so close to her tonight while pretending to be more than they actually were had kicked him right over the edge.

It didn't help any that he was jealous as hell of anyone else who made her laugh, who looked at her with appreciation, who couldn't take their eyes off her luscious curves. If one more guy at the team party had asked to see her sculptures, he would have pounded his skull into the nearest marble tabletop.

Only, when they'd gotten in the limo to head back to his place, the madness had gotten worse. She smelled so good and as the party had worn on, he'd gotten used to the pleasure of reaching for her, stroking her soft skin.

He hadn't wanted to stop, didn't see any reason why he couldn't pull her into him so that she could lay her head on his shoulder. Two friends who had made it through a rough evening together.

But when he'd reached for her, she'd slid just out of reach and then started shaking the door handle like she couldn't wait to get away from him.

Finally, he'd seen how shattered she was. How tired.

He had been putting on the pro-ballplayer show for more than a decade. But she didn't have his years of practice. Ryan felt terrible about the situation he'd put her in. And that was why he'd followed her out of the limo into the seedy bar.

To apologize.

At least, that was the reason he gave himself, the only reason he could allow.

He'd silently sworn up and down that he wasn't going to touch her again, that he wasn't going to give in to the urge to take her mouth...or to his desperate need to know if she would respond to him the way he'd always dreamed she would.

Only, now that he had her lips under his and her body wrapped tightly against him, despite all those years of wanting, regardless of the few kisses and caresses they'd already shared while playing girlfriend and boyfriend this past week, it was a goddamned revelation how good she smelled, how soft her lips were, how sweet her curves felt...and how much he wanted to be able to give in to the need to drag her against him like this whenever he wanted.

She was tired. Maybe even a little drunk.

Ryan knew he was taking advantage of both those things.

But, suddenly, he didn't care anymore.

Not when everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd ever dreamed of, was finally on the verge of being his.

The chance to make love to Vicki was fifteen years in coming.

And Ryan Sullivan wasn't going to waste another second of it.