Sweet Surrender (Sugar Rush #3) Read online

  Battles of Pac-Man, Frogger, and Sonic the Hedgehog filled the next hour. Kate was pleased to discover that Tyler was both surprised and impressed with her gaming skills—after being insulted twice in one night, it was nice to be admired, even if it was for winning a video game.

  “Never would have pegged you as a gamer,” he said when they stopped after their third game of Centipede.

  “I’m not, really.” She retrieved her bag out of the storage locker. “It was just one of the things we did a lot in Wabash.”

  Tyler held the front door open for her as they exited to the street.

  “I think there’s more to you than meets the eye, Kate Darling,” he remarked.

  “Isn’t there more to everyone than meets the eye?”

  “Maybe. Then there’s me, where what you see is what you get.”

  Kate didn’t believe that. She suspected he had more depth than anyone had bothered to discover. But oh, how she did like what she saw. She’d been aware of him all evening, not only his potent masculine presence, but the easy, self-assured way he moved in his own body and the world at large.

  “So North Carolina, huh?” he asked. “You grew up there?”

  “Yes, my father is the foreman of a granite quarry. My mother died when I was quite young, and my father didn’t remarry until a couple of years ago. So for most of my life it was just me and him. Plus a dozen quarry guys who hung around on weekends and evenings. Sometimes it was like having a bunch of overprotective uncles. Other times, like during tax season, it was like having a bunch of needy nephews.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I helped them with their tax prep,” Kate explained. “Personal budgets, business stuff. My father is the most loyal and hard-working man you’d ever meet, but he’s terribly disorganized. I had to be the one to plan and keep track of things, and when the other guys discovered I was good at it, they also asked me for help. When I was old enough to get a work permit, I became a part-time secretary at the quarry.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been an assistant in one form or another for a while now.”

  “I guess.” An old sorrow rose inside her. “When I was twelve, my father came close to bankruptcy. We almost lost our house. He couldn’t afford to hire an accountant or advisor, so we had to figure it out together. I learned at a young age that staying organized is critical for both personal and financial security.”

  He frowned, looking as if he were about to say something else. Instead he kept walking.

  “Hey, you want to go somewhere else?” he asked. “Get a drink?”

  “No, thanks,” She gestured to her T-shirt. “I’m not dressed for going anywhere nice. But if your car is nearby, I’ll take a ride home. We can look over the library sciences curriculum, if you’re not doing anything else.”

  He mumbled something under his breath before pausing beside an old blue sports car parked at the curb. Kate stared.

  “This is your car?”

  “Yeah.” He pulled the keys from his pocket.

  “It’s a Trans Am.”

  He smiled. “1979. I’m impressed.”

  “One of my father’s friends was really into Pontiacs.” Kate touched the fender, experiencing a rush of homesickness. “I figured you’d drive something a lot newer.”

  “Yeah, well….” His gaze slanted away from her. “Evan gave this to me as a birthday present a few years ago. I’ve always been into old cars.”

  He opened the passenger side door for her. After climbing in, Kate admired the leather interior, the high-back bucket seats, and the dash insert. Her father would be impressed with Tyler’s appreciation for classic vehicles. Even though he thought Tyler was a data analyst.

  Which reminded her…she checked her phone for messages, responding to a few inquiries from Sugar Rush VPs and other assistants.

  “Are you ever off the clock?” Tyler asked.

  “Not really.” She slipped her phone back into her bag and directed him to her house. “I get a lot done on weekends because there aren’t any other distractions.”

  “When was the last time you took a vacation?”

  “I’m going to visit my father in the fall.”

  From the slight twist of his mouth, she could tell that didn’t exactly qualify as a “vacation.” Well, where else was she supposed to go? A resort in the Bahamas? Hotel room for one?

  Tyler probably took his girlfriends to all sorts of exotic places for vacation. Having fun was his thing.

  From the sound of it, being a fuck buddy was also Tyler’s thing. And that gave Kate a heavy, quivery feeling inside. It was perfectly fine to have a visceral reaction to his potent sexuality. She was a normal, healthy woman after all.

  She was also no fool. She understood why the youngest Stone brother was so attractive to women. With his rakish good looks and easygoing, teasing attitude, he exuded the promise of good times and great sex.

  And she wasn’t such a wallflower that she was immune to the appeal of such promises—but she was intelligent and self-aware enough to know she would never fall for them.

  She wanted a quiet, hard-working man who wasn’t afraid of commitment, not a party boy who didn’t take anything seriously. Not a man who had no intention of finding a soul mate or even a partner in one of his fuck buddies. Or “friends with benefits.”

  Scowling a little, she typed “fuck buddy” into her search engine and perused the results for the rest of the drive.

  “Nice place.” Tyler pulled into the driveway of her house, peering through the windshield at the neat little front garden with the “Welcome Spring” plaque and porch swing.

  “Thanks.” She pushed open the door. “I bought it about a year after I moved here. Come on, I’ll make some coffee and we can review the website.”

  Knowing his lack of enthusiasm for library sciences, she half expected him to decline, but he turned off the engine and followed her inside. They went into the kitchen, where Kate started a pot of coffee brewing. She set her laptop on the counter and booted it up.

  “So did you have a chance to look at the curriculum?” she asked. “Do you have any questions about it?”

  “About a hundred million questions, but I’m not getting a degree in library sciences.” Tyler hitched himself up onto the counter. “I just need to finish the damned job. Hell, I need to start it.”

  “I know. That means you need to understand what the job entails.” Kate brought the website up onscreen. “The first steps are the basic cataloguing, maybe to a second-level taxonomy, and the installation of a management system. You should also understand the structure of MARC records and the access points of bibliographic records.”

  “Mmm. Dirty talk.”

  Dirty talk. She tried not to imagine what Tyler’s brand of dirty talk would sound like. Come on, honey, open your legs nice and wide so I can slide into your hot little pussy and fuck you so hard you’ll feel it for days.

  God. So much for trying not to imagine that.

  “Pay attention,” she said, though she wasn’t certain if she was talking to Tyler or herself. “I might quiz you on this later. Access points include things like titles, authors, and subject headings.”

  When Tyler didn’t respond, she glanced at him. His gaze was oddly intent on her face, and a touch of amusement sparkled in his eyes.

  “You need to know this so you’ll understand authority control,” she said.

  “Trust me,” he murmured. “I understand both authority and control.”

  Oh lord. She cleared her throat and turned back to the website. “You also need to establish a controlled vocabulary to maintain consistency.”

  “Is this what you did with your old boyfriends on your first date?” Tyler asked. “Talked about cataloging and vocabulary?”

  “No. But since we were in college, we probably studied.”

  He lifted an eyebrow in mock disbelief. “So you broke up with them because they bored you to death?”

  An old, latent pain curled through Kat
e. “Um, I didn’t break up with them. They broke up with me. I’m still not sure why. That’s why I need to figure out what I’ve been doing wrong.”

  “Well, what did they tell you?” Tyler asked. “What’d they say in the big break-up speech?”

  “Just vague things like it wasn’t working out. They all found other girls pretty fast after the break-up.” She took a breath and confessed the truth. “Honestly, I think they were bored with me.”

  “They were bor-ing if they couldn’t even be bothered to take you out.” Tyler shook his head. “Sounds like you dodged a bullet with those douchebags. What about high school boyfriends? Prom and stuff?”

  “I didn’t go to prom.” She held up a hand. “But before you get all worried about poor, sorry little Kate, I was asked to go. I just didn’t because my father was short-handed at the quarry at the time and I needed to help him out.”

  In case he thought she was a total loser, she added, “And I wasn’t an introverted bookworm with buck teeth and glasses…well, okay, I had to wear glasses, but in high-school I was treasurer of the student council and president of the forensics league. And in college, I was editor of the features section of the university newspaper and coordinator of a scholar’s program. In other words, I have always been an active, engaged member of the community.”

  She’d also been a quiet member of the community, but that was the way she’d both liked and wanted it. She didn’t have to draw attention to herself in order to excel at what she did.

  “And in all that time, you never found a guy who could rock your world?” Tyler asked.

  Kate’s flush deepened. “I wasn’t looking for a guy who could rock my world. Just a man who shares my interests and is a good partner.”

  He scoffed. “You lie like a rug.”

  “I am not lying.”

  “Then why’re you doing all this for Norwood?” Tyler narrowed his gaze. “You’re not physically attracted to him?”

  “Of course I’m attracted to him. But not just because of the way he looks. He’s incredibly smart, methodical, and dedicated to his work. Luke brought him in to provide an outside perspective about how Sugar Rush is implementing marketing strategies for all the different product lines, not to mention measuring effectiveness and analytical—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Tyler shoved off the counter, a sudden edge to his voice. “He’s a genius. I get it. I’m sure he’ll turn you on wildly with his knowledge about algorithms, but how do you know he’s not a cold fish in the sack?”

  “If his mind and our conversations turn me on, I’m sure we’d get along with the other things just fine,” Kate retorted, stung by his insinuations about both her and Miles’s lack of chemistry. “It’s the law of attraction. Like attracts like.”

  “What about that other saying—opposites attract?”

  Kate’s heart jumped—because no two people were more opposite than she and Tyler, and her body was certainly attracted to his. But that didn’t mean a man like him could ever be her soul mate.

  “You might have a different set of criteria,” she said. “But I want to be with a man who challenges me intellectually. A great conversation is as satisfying as great sex.”

  Tyler made another scoffing noise. Kate responded with narrowed eyes.

  “I guess you wouldn’t know that since you probably don’t say more than two words to all your fuck buddies,” she remarked. “Oh, excuse me. I mean friends with benefits.”

  She rolled her eyes to let him know what she thought of that particular euphemism, but he only grinned at her—one of his devastatingly sexy grins that made his eyes crinkle at the corners and had no doubt caused many a woman to want to slither right out of their panties.

  Sudden warmth bloomed in Kate’s chest, and she focused on the library website. She was too smart, too self-aware, to be affected by Tyler Stone’s charm. Certainly he didn’t make her want to slither right out of her panties.

  Except that he sort of did.

  “Trust me,” he said. “I like a great conversation. Being with a woman who really gets me, and vice versa. There’s nothing like it in the world. But you can have great sex with someone and not say a word…except for some good dirty talk.”

  Kate tried not to squirm. If Tyler’s dirty talk was anything like what she’d imagined, he’d set her off with the power of his voice alone.

  “But how do you know if you have chemistry with a woman if you don’t have an intelligent conversation with her beforehand?” she asked.

  “A kiss tells me everything I need to know.”

  She turned to face him. He was leaning back against the counter, his arms loosely crossed over his muscular chest, his body relaxed and casual—as if they were discussing their lunch plans rather than sexual attraction.

  “A kiss,” she repeated dubiously.

  He nodded, his gaze slipping to her mouth. Her lips tingled, as if his look were a touch.

  “A kiss tells you everything you need to know?” she asked. “Sexually?”

  “Sure. The kiss is the prelude, the appetizer, the introduction. First base. If a girl is a lousy kisser, chances are she’s not going to be any good in the sack.”

  “Wait a second.” Her heart was starting to speed up, and she swore it was a few degrees warmer in here. “You’re telling me you first kiss a girl and then decide if you want to sleep with her?”

  “No. I’m nondiscriminatory. If I’m attracted to a woman and she’s attracted to me, I’ll kiss her and sleep with her regardless of what I think of her kissing technique.”

  “Even if, as you claim, you know she’ll be lousy in bed?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “I’m a pretty good teacher when it comes to showing a girl how to get her groove on. Being a lousy lay isn’t an unfixable condition.”

  “So what makes a girl a good kisser? Good enough that you know the earth will shake if you have sex with her?”

  “First, she has to know how to give and take,” Tyler said. “She has to be responsive, relaxed, and to understand that kissing is like a language in and of itself. You don’t have to talk when you’re kissing—you should follow the man’s lead and let him take control. Unless you want to take control, in which case you need to get aggressive, grip his hair, and use your teeth. Show him how much you want it.”

  Kate’s breath grew shallow. Why had he just gone from she to you?

  “And…and that gives you insight into a woman’s sexual performance?”

  “Totally. If we’re getting hot while kissing on the sofa, if her body is tensing with lust and her nipples are hard, if she opens her mouth and I can taste her heat and desire, if she’s greedy, passionate, and wants more…then I know she’ll be wild and electric in bed.”

  Wild and electric.

  Though the rational part of Kate’s brain told her not to take this conversation any further, the reckless part blurted out, “And what makes a woman good in bed? From your perspective, of course. I assume she has to do more than just show up.”

  He was silent for a minute, but he didn’t take his gaze from her face. A taut kind of energy passed between them.

  “Why do you want to know, Darling?”

  Kate’s throat went dry, her heart now hammering with more than just nervousness. “Um…curiosity.”

  He leaned closer to her, so close that she could smell the warm, pepperminty scent of him and see the darker ring of brown surrounding his irises. She was caught between him and the counter. The air around them charged with sparks and tension.

  “You’re good in bed if you’re uninhibited.” His voice lowered a notch. “If you like being naked and don’t get all self-conscious about me kissing you anywhere I want. If you touch me as much as I touch you, if you’re not afraid to get messy and raw. If you show me what you like and don’t like and you pay attention to what turns me on as much as I’m paying attention to you. If you’re vocal—I want to hear you moaning, gasping, begging for more. Fuck, I want to hear you scream.

  �
��I want your pussy clenching around my cock. I want to go deep, over and over, and I want you to spread your legs and open yourself up for me. I want us to sweat and groan, to fuck in multiple positions for hours on end. And I want you to come like a goddamned rocket, hard enough that I feel it right to my bones. I want you to take everything I give you and give it all right back. Endlessly.”

  Kate could only stare at him, her blood hot with arousal, her mind dizzy with images of her and Tyler entwined naked on the sheets, doing all those things and more. Loving every second of their hot, sweaty rawness.

  “Well.” She darted her tongue out to lick her dry lips. “That was very educational.”

  And then some.

  “What about you?” Tyler watched the movement of her tongue. “What does a guy have to do to satisfy Kate Darling in bed?”

  She wished she knew.

  “I…I think this conversation has come to an end.” She tore her gaze from his and turned to take two mugs out of the cupboard. Her hands trembled as she poured two cups of coffee and pushed one toward him.

  She felt Tyler watching her, his gaze tangible, tension still threading through his body and lining the corded muscles of his forearms. Then he wrapped his fingers, warm and possessive, around her wrist.

  Her knees weakened. She was certain he could feel her pulse racing. He tugged her gently but insistently toward him.

  “If you want me to help you get another guy…” he brought one hand up to touch her cheek, “…I’m going to need a kissing baseline.”

  She burned beneath his scrutiny. “I…I don’t need help with kissing.” And wasn’t that the lie of the century?

  “How do you know?” He rubbed his thumb gently beneath her cheekbone, the light touch igniting sparks in her blood. “Maybe those dickwads broke up with you because you’re a lousy kisser.”

  An ache nudged at her heart. Could he tell that she’d actually wondered that herself? Further, she hadn’t discounted the possibility that a lackluster performance in bed might have been the reason her boyfriends had hit the road. She’d never had the courage to ask them about her sexual abilities, and they’d either been too polite or too dull themselves to mention it, so Kate had never had any real, honest feedback.