But when his lips touched hers, she was so sweet, so pliant in his arms, that all of Ryan's plans for the kiss immediately crashed through the window and flew out over the Bay.

He had to tilt her face to get a better angle on her mouth and as she opened her lips on a gasp of pleasure, his tongue stole into her mouth in a desperate search for hers. When he stroked over it, Vicki's tongue immediately licked his back. He slid one hand down from her face to pull her closer against him and her hands tangled in his hair as they deepened the kiss together.

It wasn't until the sound of the catcalls and hooting and hollering from his teammates broke through the blood pounding in his ears that he remembered where they were...and what he was doing to Vicki in front of a roomful of spectators.

She must have realized it at the same time, because she looked shocked, then horrified, as she pulled back from him at the exact moment he forced himself to stop plundering her mouth.

Half afraid she would run after what he'd just done to her, he forced himself to whisper, "That was perfect," as if he'd just been acting, rather than feeling the kiss all the way down to his soul.

He kept her close enough to his side to cover his hard-on, but not close enough that she'd feel it digging into her hip. "Show's over now, folks. Go get your jollies somewhere else," he joked, before turning away with Vicki and heading out onto the balcony for a private moment.

"You okay?"

Her cheeks were deeply flushed as she replied, "Sure."

Well, that made one of them, then, because he wasn't even close to okay after that kiss. He wanted another and another and another. But even that one had been pushing things.

Way over the friendship line.

Which was why he tried to joke, "I think we really convinced them with that kiss."

Her eyes went translucent for a moment and he thought he saw a surge of emotion rush through her before she tamped it down. "Great. I'm glad we're pulling this off." Her mouth moved up into a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "We should probably go back inside, shouldn't we?"

d.a.m.n it, she wasn't afraid to be alone with him now after the way he'd mauled her inside, was she?

He put his hand back under her chin and turned her face up to his. "Are you sure you're okay? You can tell me if you're not, Vicki. You can tell me anything."

"I'm just not used to so much attention. I don't know how you live like this all the time."

"We'll get out of here soon, I promise."

"No," she said with a small shake of her head, "this is your big party before the playoffs. We need to stay."

That, right there, was one of the reasons he loved her. Where everyone else just thought about themselves, Vicki was never selfish. Whereas, even knowing how wrong it was to steal that hot kiss from her, he'd taken it anyway Because he had to take it.

Hating himself for crossing the line he'd sworn not to cross, he said, "I'm sorry I kissed you like that, Vicki. I'm sorry I took advantage of the situation. And of you."

She went completely still, her expression freezing on her face. "There's nothing to forgive. They wanted to see you kiss your new fiancee, so you did." She looked colder, harder than he'd ever seen her before as she said, "And since I kissed you back, I hope you can forgive me, too."

A moment later, she was walking into the room and he was feeling like more of an a.s.s than ever as he followed her inside. He didn't know what he'd said wrong...just that he had definitely screwed things up even worse.

And he didn't have the first clue how to fix it.

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 l.u.s.t 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 s.e.xuality 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 h.o.r.n.y 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 c.o.c.ktail 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 gla.s.s and the rubies and diamonds on her pretend engagement ring glinted in the light from above her head as she lifted the gla.s.s to her lips.

"The same for me."

The sound of Ryan's low voice had the gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 l.u.s.t, 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 gla.s.s 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.

G.o.d, 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.