Free Taking Her Time by Cait London

fine…. You’re trying to holdout…. So do you fake it?”
    â€œFake it? Fake it?” Livingston squawked.
    â€œGet out,” Tucker said quietly and jerked open the door.
    He’d always known just how to push the wrong buttons, and now it was about her life without sex. Not even a low-grade on the sex-barometer kind. Not even the mind-blowing kind. With a frustrated, muffled cry, Carly launched herself at him.
    Tucker grunted as his arm circled her and his other arm reached out for the doorframe, missing it. Both off balance, they seemed to dance across the porch and down the steps, where Tucker tumbled onto the front lawn, taking her with him.
    Carly wasn’t done with him yet. He’d primed her and knew it, and he could take the fruits of his punishment. She’d wrestled him to the ground since they were children and later sweethearts, and she could do it now.
    In a fast flurry of arms and legs, she intended to wrest him out of her system, once and for all. Since she’d left the dignified businesswoman persona behind, she might as well make the most of it. She’d shame Tucker Redford on her own grandmother’s lawn.
    They rolled across the lawn, and Tucker definitely weighed more than he had years ago. She hooked her knee around his leg and shoved, and he went beneath her with a soft whoosh of air. She’d always been really good at besting Tucker, at getting him down and sitting on him. This confidence gave her new strength and she held his wrists. They were bigger than she remembered; her hands looked small and soft and ineffectual against the strength of those wrists. “I detest you, Tucker Redford. You’ve done nothing but ruin my life.”
    He rolled on top of her, all of him, his hands completely circling her wrists. He took her hands up to rest beside her head. “Uh-huh. I always let you beat me because I liked you sitting on top of me. Did you ever think about that?”
    She struggled against his greater strength and weight, but right there on the grass next to the fragrant budding roses and the happy jumble of purple pansies, Tucker had that quiet, intent look.
    His face was too close, and his thumbs were massaging her wrists. She could move—or she couldn’t—because her mind and her body were tangling…and waiting, as if the whole world had stopped moving.
    â€œYou’re a whole lot of trouble, Carly Walker Redford,” he whispered unevenly as his lips brushed hers and set fire to every flammable, womanly essence in her.
    â€œYou’re no Prince Charming,” she managed in a wispy voice as her body began to recognize his and quiver and heat and soften.
    With an uneven groan, Tucker opened his lips and fitted them perfectly on hers. His hands released her wrists and his fingers began that slow massage-erotic-thing on her scalp. Tucker seemed to be dragging breath into him, his hands trembling, his face burning near hers.
    Or was hers burning?
    In the fragrances of home and flowers and lawn and man, Carly found her arms encircling him, smoothing the hard quivering muscles there, just as her tongue met his. He tasted the same and different and she trusted him, and her lips opened to the nudge of his.
    Fire leaped into her blood, a sense of homecoming and new adventure sliding over her, seeping softly into the sweet remembrances of Tucker’s big body locking intimately with hers. The beat of his heart raced, a familiar match to her own; she could almost feel that they shared the same pulse, the same heat.
    Carly slid her fingers into his hair and smoothed the tense ridge of his broad shoulders. She slid her hands down his sides to lock onto muscular, tight buttocks covered by his jeans. Meanwhile, Tucker’s big hand had opened upon her breast, claiming it gently. His other hand framed her face, his thumb slowly stroking her cheek.
    She forced her lids open, saw Tucker’s grim expression above her—and