Well, well, well. So the ice queen was human after all.

“Come with me,” Gavin said. “Some friends of mine are here I want you to meet.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and said, “The things I have to do to keep a client happy. Ta-ta.”

Gavin took her hand and tugged her along.

“Oh. My. God,” Tara said, watching Liz disappear into the thick crowd with Gavin.

Mick scratched the side of his nose. “Yeah, I know. Liz can be a real bitch sometimes. Never thinks before she speaks. Hell, you should hear the insulting things she says to me. But she’s really good at her job and—”

“No, Mick. Not about that.” Tara waved her hand, dismissing his worries about Liz’s nasty comments. “That didn’t bother me at all.” She lifted her gaze to Mick. “But did you see the two of them together?”

“The two of—” He followed her gaze. “Gavin and Liz? Oh, yeah, she represents him, too.”

She shook her head. “Not what I meant. It was like as soon as he showed up, a switch went off inside her. Total personality transplant. She went warm. Melty, womanly warm. You know what I mean?”

“What?” Mick shifted his gaze to where Liz sat at the bar next to Gavin and his friends. He looked back at her. “No. No way. Liz doesn’t have feelings.”

“Yes she does, Mick. She has them, and she has them big. For Gavin. I mean, I don’t know her at all, but I can read a woman’s signals with a man, and her signals were pinging loud and clear. She’s in love with him.”

Mick frowned and shook his head. “Liz doesn’t love anyone. Liz loves money. And her career as a sports agent. Believe me, I know. She’s been my agent and Gavin’s since we started out. Besides, she’s older than Gavin by like ... four years. She’s like ... thirty-two or something.”

Tara laughed. “So?”

“So she doesn’t have those kinds of feelings, I’m telling you. Gavin’s a commodity to her. We all are. And if you thought all the stories about me being a man whore were true? Trust me, the ones about my brother are true. He goes through women like he goes through shirts. He doesn’t see Liz as anything but his agent. He’s sweet to her because she helps his career. There’s nothing between the two of them.”

Tara shrugged. “Well, there might not be anything on his end, but I can guarantee there’s something on hers.”

“I think you’re wrong. Liz is a great actress, and you just read her wrong. She plays up to Gavin’s weakness, which is a gorgeous woman with great legs.”

“If you say so.”

But Tara wasn’t buying it for a second. If there was one thing she could spot, it was a woman with warm gooey love yearnings for a man.

And Elizabeth Darnell had it bad for Gavin Riley.

TEN

MICK HAD HAD ENOUGH OF TOSSING AND TURNING IN the bed that was too damn small for his frame. And knowing Tara was at the end of the hall was driving him crazy.

Nathan had ended up going home with one of Mick’s aunts for a sleepover with her and her husband’s two teenage boys, since they’d pretty much hung out nonstop at the bar anyway talking football and some online video game that they were probably going to stay up all night and play. Tara was thrilled he’d found some friends, so she’d been fine with it.

But Mick had spent the entire night at the bar watching Tara, touching her but not really touching her, breathing her in and wishing he could do what he wanted to do with her. Instead, he’d had to be content with holding her hand and the occasional kiss, and that just wasn’t cutting it.

He finally threw on his shorts, grabbed a couple condoms, and as quietly as he could, opened the bedroom door. The house was quiet, no TV noise or movement from downstairs, which meant everyone had gone to bed. He crept down the hall to Tara’s room. He didn’t want to knock because he didn’t want to wake his parents, but he also didn’t want to scare the hell out of Tara by just walking into her bedroom, either.

He decided to risk it, turned the knob, and opened the door.

“Tara?” he whispered.

“I’m awake. Come in.”

Thank God. He slipped in and shut the door, locked it for good measure.

She was sitting up, the pillows propped up behind her. She had the shutters open, moonlight spilling in and shining on her as she sat there and watched him approach.

She wore his team T-shirt. It swallowed her up, but damn if she didn’t look sexy as hell in it. It was worn and threadbare, one he’d gotten when he first joined the team. She’d snatched it from him and said it was soft and comfortable and she intended to sleep in it. It made him hard just thinking about her br**sts brushing against it, her skin against something he owned.

It made him feel possessive of her, and a rush of heat tightened his groin.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I was hoping you’d find a way to come in here.”

He dragged her into his arms. “I couldn’t stand not touching you for one more night.”

“Good, because I was only going to give you about another half hour, then I was coming to you.”

His mouth came down on hers with a hunger that he’d held in for too long. He was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to hold back, that he would hurt her, but she seemed as needy as he was. She climbed onto his lap and slid her fingers into his hair.

“It’s been a long, dry weekend,” she said, brushing her lips against his.

He kissed her, and it only made the heat explode inside him.

He lifted her T-shirt and saw she wasn’t wearing panties. His c**k rocketed against his shorts, his need to f**k her driving him insane.

He lifted his gaze to hers, saw the heat flare in her eyes.

“I need you, Mick. No preliminaries. All I’ve been able to think about is you inside me. I’m wet and I’m hot and I need you. Fuck me now.”

He swept his hand over her back, over the front of his T-shirt, pressing his team logo over her breasts. He slid his thumbs over her nipples. They were hard pebbles, and he needed to fill his hands with her. He slid his hands under the shirt to massage her breasts, to feel her nipples, then grabbed her waist and flung her onto the bed, dropped his shorts, and grabbed a condom from the pocket. He put it on in record time and lifted her hips, bent over, and shoved his c**k inside her.

She gasped, grabbed his arms, and held on while he f**ked her, pouring everything he’d been holding back for all these days.

“I’ve needed you,” he whispered. “I’ve been thinking about f**king you, about kissing you. I’ve missed your mouth.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers, needing her tongue alongside his while her pu**y tightened around him.

She licked at his lips, her gaze so clear, so filled with emotion, it was almost hard to look at her. “I missed you, too, Mick. It’s hard to sleep without your body next to me at night, without your hands on me, without you inside me. It’s all I can think about.”

To know she felt the same desperate need he did calmed him down somehow, and he slowed the pace, wanting to make sure she came, that it was good for her. He’d been ready to go off the second he slid inside her. She was hot and tight, and this was all he’d been thinking about for days. It seemed like he couldn’t get enough of her.

And when he lifted and she reached down to rub her clit, it rocked him.

“Yeah. Make yourself come. Let me see it.”

He leaned back, pulled his c**k partway out, and eased in slowly, letting her set the pace.

“You tell me what you want, how you want me to do this. And I’ll make it good for you. Because I’m ready to come in you when you’re ready.”

She held on to his wrist with one hand, lifted her butt, and strummed her cl*tfaster. Her golden hair spilled over the sheets, her body na**d and open to him as he pressed in and out of her while she took herself to the edge with her fingers, na**d desire tightening her features.

“Come on,” he said, shoving his c**k deep inside her. “Come on, honey.”

“I’m close, Mick. Oh, God, I’m coming right now.”

He felt it as she said it, felt her pu**y constrict around his dick. He shoved inside her and took her mouth and tongue in a long, searing kiss as he emptied inside her, wishing he could shout, because it was so goddamn good he felt the orgasm shoot through him until his knees went weak.

When she stopped shaking, he rolled them over on their sides and pulled Tara against him, kissing her and stroking her body.

He waited, figuring she’d fall asleep, but she rolled over to look at him, the moonlight bathing her face. She looked worried about something, had tugged her bottom lip with her teeth.

He smoothed her hair back. “What’s wrong?”

“I want to tell you who I am, where I came from.”

He shoved to a sitting position and took her with him, pushing the pillow up so they were comfortable. “Okay. Want me to turn the light on?”

“No, this is fine. Probably easier for me this way.”

He could still see her, but if this was how she wanted it, he’d give her anything she needed. “Fine. Go ahead.”

“As you’ve probably figured out, I don’t have brothers or sisters. I was an only child and my parents both worked, so I had a lot of alone time as a kid. I walked to and from school, let myself in the house, and it was my responsibility to make sure I ate something. My mom was a waitress, and she often worked at night. My dad worked construction so I tried to make sure to fix something for him to eat, otherwise he wouldn’t eat anything.”

“How old were you?”

“Eight or nine, I think. I don’t really remember all that well.”

Jesus. She was a kid. They were supposed to be taking care of her, not the other way around.

“Anyway, I would do my homework, and the dinner dishes, and go to my room. Dad would sit in the living room and watch TV. The thing is, Mick—he drank. And when my mom got off work, she’d join him. And late at night, things between them would get loud. They’d argue a lot when they were drunk.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. A rock plummeted into his stomach and sat there.

Her fingers were twisted so tightly together her knuckles were turning white. He slipped his hand in between and took her hand in his. “You don’t have to talk about this. I can tell it hurts you.”

She lifted her gaze to his. “No, it’s okay. I want to. It’s important to me that you know this.”

“Okay.” He laid her hand in the palm of his, then rubbed his thumb over the top of hers, trying to calm her as she talked. She was trembling now, and he hated that bringing all this back freaked her out so badly. He wanted to take the hurt away, to make it never have happened, but it was part of her, had made her who she was today, and she was right—he needed to hear it.

“The fights between them escalated over the years, as their drinking escalated. It got to the point where I just didn’t want to be around it.”

“Did they hurt you?”

She shrugged. “They’d yell at me about stupid stuff, but mostly they just got ticked at each other. I learned to stay out of the way, holed up in my room listening to music. The louder the music and the TV, the less of them I had to hear. When I got old enough, I’d go out with my friends at night just so I wouldn’t have to be around them.”

He nodded. There was nothing worse than being around a surly drunk. He understood that better than anyone.

“When I was fourteen and started high school, I met some new friends. Not great friends, either. A pretty rough crowd. Big drinkers, drug users, and partiers, but they stayed out late, and anything that kept me away from drunk central was okay by me. They let me crash at their place as much as I wanted, and that suited me. All my old friends drifted by the wayside because they were the good kids, the kids that did their homework and went to bed early. But I couldn’t stay at their house, couldn’t face them knowing how f**ked up my home life had become. The other kids—my new friends—they understood and didn’t judge me.

“There was this guy—he’d dropped out of high school a couple years earlier and had his own apartment. He was nineteen and I was fifteen. We’d all hang out at his place to party. By then I was drinking, doing a few drugs, too, anything to numb the pain, you know?”

He nodded, swallowing past the lump in his throat. He knew. God, how he knew.

“Anyway, he liked me. Really liked me. And I liked anyone who would give me attention. I realize now it was because I had gotten so little love and attention at home. We started ha**g s*x pretty regularly. He used a condom, but they’re not 100 percent effective. And you know, when you’re drunk or on drugs, who knows if he remembered to even use one. I got pregnant. That was the end of him wanting anything to do with me. He freaked out, said the baby wasn’t his. I hadn’t been with anyone else, so I knew it was his baby.”

“What a bastard.”

She smiled. “Yeah, he pretty much was, but you know, I had to own it. I made the dumb choice to have sex with him.”

He tipped her chin with his thumb. “You were fifteen, Tara. A child. He wasn’t a kid. He should have known better.”

She shrugged. “Anyway, that was the end of partying for me. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I straightened up. No more drugs or alcohol. I quit hanging with that crowd, and I went home and told my parents.”

“What happened?”

She laughed, tears brimming in her eyes. “They called me a whore and kicked me out of the house. Said I was irresponsible and should know better. Said they, quote, unquote, raised me better than that.” She swiped at the tears. “Isn’t that the funniest thing?”