by Zara Cox
He appeared nonplussed for a moment. ‘Fine. Calm down. Are you quite done?’
‘No.’ I took a large gulp of my wine, and totally denied it was for Dutch courage, even though it was. ‘I want another truth, Bryce.’
His lips tightened but he didn’t forestall me. Just fixed those signature piercing hazel Mortimer eyes that had the uncanny ability to sink hooks into me, and waited me out.
‘Why did you come to my wedding?’
His glass clicked sharply onto the table and his tension grew. ‘You know why I came. Because you sent me a bloody gold-embossed invitation. Because I was your friend.’
‘My best friend. A best friend who never bothered to RSVP. A friend who turned up almost an hour late without so much as a phone call and then left thirty minutes after the ceremony.’
‘Right, so I’m a mannerless bastard. I’m sure you’ll find it within that over-generous heart of yours to forgive me at some point.’
‘Oh, please. You don’t give a rat’s arse whether I forgive you or not. And what’s that supposed to mean, over-generous?’
He shrugged again. ‘You were always giving to a fault. And very early on in our friendship I remember you pointing out to me that we balanced each other out because I was selfish to a fault. It stands to reason that you’ll forgive me for any atrocities, no?’
‘People change, Bryce. I’m not that gullible person you think me to be any more.’
He frowned, then pointed an index finger at me. ‘I never said you were gullible.’
I sighed. ‘You don’t have to spell it out—’
‘No, rosebud, don’t do that. Don’t put words in my mouth. You know I’d have no problem calling you gullible if I thought you were.’
Something inside me clenched tight at the endearment. God, how long had I waited to hear it again? How often had I heard it in my dreams? ‘Well, I don’t forgive you, then. My generosity doesn’t stretch to making allowances for you barely showing up for me on that day.’
‘That day? You mean the most important, most magical day of your life, don’t you? The day when all your dreams came true?’
His sneer cut me sharp and deep.
And yet I couldn’t scream the yes that should’ve come readily to me. Because the day hadn’t been magical. Not by a long shot. And it wasn’t just because of Bryce’s barely-there attendance, although that too had contributed to the curious hollow in my stomach. I’d woken that morning, like all the days before, with doubts. Doubts which I’d let a smooth-talking Dan sweep away with promises of the one thing he knew I yearned for. Acceptance. I’d believed every yarn he’d spun. Every promise broken with a glib, sugar-coated excuse. Right until the scales had been cruelly ripped from my eyes.
The reminder both hurt and angered me now. And justified or not, some part of me held Bryce responsible for it. He’d been my crutch until I’d needed him most. Then he’d simply...walked away.
‘Just tell me, Bryce. Don’t pick now to be a damned gentleman and spare me from whatever it is you’re too afraid to spit out!’ I knew taunting him was dangerous. He’d changed. We both had. He no longer even tried to mask his feelings behind dry, acerbic wit.
When his eyes met mine, I knew whatever was coming would be unvarnished. But still I held his gaze, daring him with mine. ‘Truth,’ I insisted, girding my loins nevertheless.
His face turned hard and bleak but no less breathtaking for its austerity. ‘You really want to know? I came to find out whether you were really going through with it. Whether, after what you knew about Dan, you would still go anywhere near that bastard, never mind letting him put a ring on your finger.’
My gut turned to ice, which was curious because several inches below that the reminder of what had happened three nights before my wedding between Bryce and me was sending white-hot heat shooting into my pussy.
‘And that was the only reason you came? To see whether I would compound the mistake you thought I was making by marrying him?’ The whispered words left my lips with muted hope shrouding them. A hope that maybe he’d prove me wrong this time. Indicate that I’d been foolish to fear that deep down the reason I’d clung to friendship while secretly wishing for more wasn’t because he wouldn’t want more. That friendship wasn’t all we’d ever have.
And that I was desperate enough to cling tight to that rather than have nothing...because there was more.
‘Why else, rosebud?’ he asked softly. A little too softly. As if he knew the chaos running wild and unfettered through me. As if taunting me over it. He’d always been so good at that. Now, though, there was a dangerous edge to it that... God, turned me on.
Jesus.
I shook my head. A moment later, he stilled my movement by leaning forward to capture my chin in his hand.
‘You seem to be on some sort of journey of self-discovery for both of us, so let’s have it. Why else do you think I put a business deal I’d been working on for months on hold to fly five thousand miles to your wedding?’ he asked.
My tongue slid out almost of its own accord. Licked my lower lip. His gaze followed the slow, languorous movement with eyes that grew steadily heated.
After a moment when words still failed to form in my throat, his eyes rose to capture mine. ‘Would it be because the same night I warned you not to go back to Dan the Dickhead because he wanted you just for your money, you nodded that beautiful head and used that indecently sexy voice to reassure me that it was over? Did you not give me your word that you would end it?’
‘Bryce...’
‘There it is,’ he breathed. ‘That was the same tone you used that night. The one that curls around my cock and strokes me until I’m hard as a fucking rock every single time.’
My jaw dropped. ‘Bryce!’ My heart kicked at the fact that we were talking, really talking about the stuff we’d always seemed to skirt around. Even if it was just about the physical. For now.
‘You wanted honesty, rosebud. You assured me it was over, that you no longer belonged to another man, so I spread you out on my living-room floor and I finally got a taste of that incredible pussy, finally had the privilege of feeling your tightness around my fingers, of you gripping my hair as you screamed my name and came on my tongue. Only to have you go back on your promise to call off the wedding and marry the bastard three days later.’
The growled, hot words filled with deep censure robbed me of speech, shamed me and turned me on in equal measures.
His thumb rose from my chin, drifted at leisure over my lower lip as he continued to watch me with dark, hooded eyes. ‘You want to know if that changed things between us?’
I licked my lip again, my heart pounding with apprehension and a whole load of sizzling lust. ‘Did it?’
His hand dropped like a stone and he surged to his feet. ‘What the hell does it matter?’ he asked.
‘How can you ask me that? You know why it matters. You never answered my phone calls after that and I haven’t seen you for years! It’s not like you not to call me out if you think I’ve done something wrong.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘If?’
‘Fine, when. Whatever.’
He spiked his fingers through his hair. Then he threw me another of those indifferent shrugs that seemed to find the centre of my hurt with bullseye accuracy. ‘I was busy. So were you. We were both busy empire-building, if I’m not mistaken.’
I scrambled to my feet too. ‘Don’t give me that. We were never too busy for each other before...before...’
‘Stop clinging to this idealistic version of what you thought we were or would be. You want the truth? I stopped trusting you after you stopped trusting yourself. After you went against your every instinct and married that bastard.’
Hurt lanced deeper through me. ‘How dare you?’
‘Oh, come off it. I know you. Sometimes maybe more than you know yourself. You thi
nk I didn’t see the doubt on your face when I walked into that church as you promised to honour and cherish? Not so deep down, you knew he was wrong for you, that you were making a mistake. And you married him anyway.’
‘So you chose to punish me for it?’
He exhaled harshly. ‘Damn it, I don’t have time for this.’
‘Really, then I ask you again, why did you invite me here? I may be stubborn but I don’t trespass where I’m not wanted. If you don’t have time for me or our friendship, then why did you agree to see me? You could’ve done what you did before and ignored my email, continued your grand empire-building. So why didn’t you?’
He stilled as if my words had turned him to stone. For the longest moment, we stared at each other across the living room. Then, driven by that same instinct that had started this reckless path of discovery, I slowly made my way towards him, aware of every cell in my body, every stretch of heated skin as I’d never been before. Also aware of his intense scrutiny as his gaze raked me from head to toe and back again.
I was treading dangerous, familiar waters. The same undertow that’d sucked me in that night, three days before my wedding, when I’d thrown caution to the wind and ended up almost drowning. This thing could blow wide open, be irreparably damaged.
But then...wasn’t Bryce already claiming we were beyond repair? That in not heeding his warning and marrying Dan I’d broken our friendship? For all I knew if I walked out of this apartment I wouldn’t see him again for another three years. Or ever.
So what the hell did I have to lose? A friendship I’d treasured while wanting more, only for it to fall apart anyway?
I stopped a mere foot from him. The intensity of the emotions vibrating from him wrapped around me but I didn’t let it deter me. I’d come through a very bitter divorce with a stronger spine and steely resolve never to doubt myself again. And now he was in front of me, six feet three inches of raw masculinity and long-denied secret craving.
A craving I’d received a quick, highly addictive but maddeningly brief taste of.
‘Why did you change the venue for this meeting? Didn’t you originally ask me to come to your office?’ I modulated my voice to that tenor he’d confessed minutes ago turned him on.
As if on cue, his eyes darkened, his jaw clenching as he struggled to remain unaffected. When he swayed just that tiniest fraction towards me, I knew I had him.
For how long remained a mystery, but right now, in this moment, he was mine. And I wasn’t about to lose my chance.
‘Is it because you wanted something else besides telling me everything you think I’ve done wrong?’ I didn’t give him a chance to reply.
A simple step and I closed the gap between us. A slow tilt onto the balls of my feet and I was sliding my palms over his rock-hard abs and up his chest. I registered the fierce pounding of his heart echoing mine. Felt and revelled in it.
‘Was it because you wanted another taste of me, perhaps?’ I whispered on a soft breath right before I let my lips brush the skin beneath his earlobe.
A deep shudder powered through him. ‘What the hell are you doing, rosebud?’ he rasped.
‘Dare,’ I breathed.
‘You’re still playing the game wrong.’ His voice was a night-dark rumble, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as if he was stopping himself from reaching for me. That glimpse of power over him spurred me on.
‘Am I? Then I guess you don’t want to hear my dare?’
I dropped my head a fraction to lick at the frantic pulse beating at his throat. His next breath hissed out. ‘Just fucking say it already.’
‘I dare you to do it again. I dare you to drag me to that sofa and use your tongue and your mouth and your hands on me. Just like you did last time. See if you can work some of this...angst out of your system.’
A pure, animalistic groan rumbled from his chest. ‘And what makes you think I’ll stop at just tasting you? That I won’t demand a hell of a lot more?’
My answer emerged with more than a vein of anguish. ‘You say you don’t trust me. Well, I don’t trust you not to abandon me after this lunch either. But I know you enough to know you’ll stop when I say. And I’m telling you I’ll let you...process your charged state if that’s what you want too.’
His hands found my hips then, roughly tugging me back from my whisper-light exploration of his throat, to stare deep into my eyes. ‘You think you still know me that well?’ he asked darkly.
Maybe not, but some things never changed and Bryce had more integrity in his little finger than most men did in their whole life. ‘Guess we’ll find out. Unless you’re too scared to take the dare?’
The words were barely out of my mouth before he was plucking me off my feet, the rugby-honed body he’d achieved in his time at Cambridge making light of my considerable weight. Bryce was the first and last man who’d been able to carry me without making me self-conscious about the extra pounds I carried. And while I’d shed a good few pounds during and after my divorce, I’d never quite achieved that golden figure of perfection in my head. And lately, I’d tried to be okay with that. It was, after all, what had earned me a dream career and sustained my growing empire.
But I still had moments of anxiety, moments when the mocking taunts and cruelty broke through my often solid barriers.
They tried to do so now.
But the moment Bryce tossed me onto the sofa and speared me with his dark hazel eyes, I let thoughts of the perfect BMI and cellulite melt from my brain. Instead I gave over to the tingling filling me from the inside out, registering in my peaked nipples, the dry anticipation in my mouth and the wet desperation between my legs.
He was still super pissed from our heated conversation and my final taunt, but already the anger was receding from his eyes, replaced by something earthier, something carnal that made my pulse stutter wildly before thundering even faster.
‘You’ve always been bold. But you seem to have developed a penchant for the downright reckless.’
I toyed with the long ties of my favourite wraparound top and slowly inched the hem up until a sliver of my belly was revealed. ‘I don’t see you throwing me out the door, so I’m guessing you still love a good challenge.’
A blaze flared in his eyes as he followed the path of my fingers over my taut stomach. In honour of this visit and simply because great lingerie always boosted my confidence, I’d donned one of my latest creations: fire-engine-red French knickers with delicate lace and cheeky ribbon ties and a matching balconette bra. With my reclined position, the bodice of my top had gaped to reveal my deep cleavage.
Another breath hissed from him as his eyes darted between my face, my full breasts, and the thighs I was slowly spreading. He stumbled forward and gripped the back of the sofa the moment I loosened the top to reveal the full effect of the bra and bullet-hard nipples.
‘Fuck.’ The word shot from his throat.
My gaze went its own journey, over the ripped chest I knew was hidden beneath his dark burgundy shirt to the bold outline of his cock beneath the fly of his tailored trousers. My mouth watered at the heat he was packing. Heat I’d secretly craved for as long as I could remember. But as much as I wanted to touch and explore, the need to experience what he’d given me that night in our distant past burned even hotter.
And Bryce felt the same if the rough hands that hooked behind my knees and spread me wide were an indication. My already rough breathing turned choppier.
‘Stop playing with that tie and open your top for me,’ he said gruffly as his hands trailed over soft leather to wrap around my ankles.
With a shrug and tug, I opened it, then arched my back to give him a full and unfettered view of my ample breasts.
He swallowed, then began to tackle my trousers with a wild little light in his eyes that triggered my own arousal. I should’ve been pleased that at least in this, we seemed to be i
n accord, but a tight little ball of anxiety wouldn’t shift from my belly. What if we never found common ground again? What if the friendship that had been my whole world was never salvaged?
The questions evaporated when Bryce discarded my trousers and leaned forward to brace himself over me. For several seconds, he didn’t move, simply stared into my eyes. Was he thinking the same? I never found out because his eyes swept over me, singeing every inch of me until his gaze was once again riveted between my thighs.
‘Did you wear this underwear for me, rosebud?’
‘Nope. They were for me.’
He dragged his gaze from my silk-covered sex to meet mine. ‘You needed to shred my control that much?’ he muttered.
‘Maybe.’ It was a little unnerving how well he knew me. To throw him off, I trailed a manicured fingernail over one heavy breast to my lace-covered nipple and slowly circled it. He caught and mangled one corner of his lower lip between his teeth as his gaze latched onto the tightened peak. After watching for a tense few seconds, he brushed my hand away and replaced it with his. Sensation screamed through me as he fondled me, his gaze darting between my face and my boobs, avidly absorbing my reactions, before he dropped his head to suck lace and flesh into his mouth.
My hot little gasp eroded my intention to tell him that, technically, my boobs weren’t part of the deal. That his task was situated much farther south. But the havoc he was wreaking was too thrilling to deny, his fingers plucking at the nipple he wasn’t sucking, a sweet torture that dragged a keening moan from my throat, and I lost the battle to curl my hands over his broad shoulders, to take a bite out of his gorgeousness.
God, he was far too good at this. My panties were already damp and he wasn’t anywhere near my pussy.
My fingers tunnelled into his hair, holding him prisoner as his teeth grazed over one aching bud. Like a willing magnet, my back arched into his ministrations, desperate for more.
He raised his head a fraction. ‘Tell me this thing has a front fastening. I don’t want to ruin it.’
Breath in my throat, I shook my head.