Hard and Fast by Erin McCarthy Page B

couldn’t seem to shift her weight to the left leg and was standing there, one leg up, one down, hands clinging to the car.
    “I can help you.”
    “No, I’m fine.” There had to be a more logical way to do this. She wasn’t strong enough to haul herself up, and in the meantime she was potentially doing internal damage to her reproductive organs perched on the doorframe the way she was.
    Retreating back out of the car and down onto the concrete floor, Imogen peeled off her black pin-striped blazer and set it on the hood of the car. Pushing up the sleeves of her white button-up shirt, Imogen grabbed on to the window and jumped, her belly landing on the frame. Her head was in, but nothing else, so she wiggled and tried to pull herself up and forward.
    Suddenly Ty’s hands were on her waist and she stopped moving.
    His voice rippled over her. “And you say I’m stubborn? You go in like this, you’re going to land on your head and splatter those brilliant brains all over my seat.”
    “I have it under control,” she said, breathless both from the activity and from his touch.
    “Oh, really?” he asked, laughter in his voice. “But just so you understand, this position you’re in is not helping me stick to your no-flirting rule.”
    Imogen felt her cheeks grow hot. She could only imagine what her bum looked like from his perspective. Not as good as Nikki’s, she could guarantee that, given she didn’t have a taste for plain lettuce and couldn’t handle more than fifteen minutes on the treadmill. Even if her butt could be toned to the point of Nikki’s, Imogen wouldn’t know what to do with it because she had been born without the sex kitten gene.
    “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to—”
    “I know you weren’t. That’s part of what makes it so damn hot. You’re not being calculating, just naturally sexy.”
    Imogen wished she could see his face instead of staring at the black interior of the car. He couldn’t possibly be serious. “There is nothing sexy about me, Ty. It’s not in my DNA to intentionally entice men.”
    “Intentional or not, it’s there, honey. You are smoking-hot sexy.”
    Flopped over the doorframe like a human teeter-totter, Imogen wondered if Ty had forgotten to wear his helmet a time or two. She was not sexy. If she could have rested her hand under her chin in that position, she would have. Instead she just hung there and felt suspended both literally and figuratively.
    She squawked when Ty lifted her up and back out of the car, her shirt riding up and exposing her belly. He turned her around and she stared up at him, yanking her shirt back into place.
    He had that look in his eye she was starting to recognize. It was lust and it was flaming red-hot at the moment. Which was sincerely puzzling to her. Since when did dangling in a car window entirely clueless as to what she was doing constitute sexy?
    “Let me help you,” he said, leaning closer and closer to her.
    There was a split second before he kissed her that Imogen could have used to move away, protest, stop him. She didn’t.
    As a matter of fact, when his lips touched hers, Imogen forgot everything—her thesis, their differences, where they were—and put her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
    He had such a nice mouth, and he used it so well, warming her from head to toe with a few presses of his lips. Each kiss had her gripping him harder, which had him kissing her harder, until they were melded together, breathing heavily and taking and sharing passion. When his tongue invaded her mouth, Imogen felt an eager tug between her thighs, and she rocked forward in her flats, losing her balance.
    Ty buried his hands in her hair and worshipped her with his mouth over and over again. Her glasses were in the way, but she didn’t give a damn, and clearly neither did Ty, since he showed no signs of slowing down for the next hour or two.
    They might have stayed that way indefinitely if they hadn’t heard a man’s voice