by Lisa Cardiff
“That fuzzy rug on floor or maybe one of those chairs in the corner. All of them look appealing. Soft even. Hell, you could slide those chairs together and toss that rug over it.” I squeezed my lips together to suppress a snicker. The sheepskin rug at the foot of the bed couldn’t have been more than four or five feet long and three feet wide, and the black leather-tufted chairs didn’t have arms. He’d roll off in a matter of minutes.
He raised his head, surveying his room. “Not happening. I’m good here. Besides, I hate that rug. It looks like there’s a dead animal on the floor.”
I giggled. “I think that’s the point. Why did you buy it if you hated it?”
He dropped his head back on the pillow. “I let Carmela decorate the place, which was a major miscalculation on my part.”
“You don’t like it?” I leaned forward to brush his dark hair from his eyes but froze halfway and let my hand drop to the bed.
“No. It’s fine. I hated the process,” he grumbled. “The more opinions I offered, the more options she gave me. She dragged shopping bags into my house every night with sticky notes outlining the pros and cons of every piece. Boxes showed up on my doorstep every day. She demanded we meet every morning to discuss her selections. After a week, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I handed her a wad of cash told her to buy whatever she liked.”
I patted his shoulder. Being with him like this felt so natural. Too natural. It was easy to forget we were enemies with a common goal, not friends. I pushed the thought aside.
“How cute. She manipulated you.”
“No.” A hundred megawatt grin spread across his face, and my heart clenched. “My sister tortured me with discussions of texture, color trends, and the advantages of warm or cool tones.”
“Sounds like Carmela. I can see you holding up dainty fabric swatches making nonsensical comments,” I said between fits of laughter that quickly increased in volume when I saw the look on his face. Carmela wanted to be an interior designer. She enrolled in a few online classes last fall—though, nothing came of it. While she claimed she didn’t have time, I didn’t believe her. She’d been stuck in a rut since her fiancé died, and she couldn’t bring herself to move forward.
“Stop laughing at me.”
I buried my face in the pillow, my limbs trembling. It smelled like fresh, clean laundry and Gian. “I can’t help it.” My words were muffled.
“Oh, really?” His hands curved around my ribcage, and he tickled me.
“Oh my God.” I kicked my legs, squirming, wiggling, and twisting until I escaped his hold and flipped onto my back. My hair covered my face, and the t-shirt I found in his dresser had shifted up my waist, revealing a good slice of my stomach.
He pushed my hair away from my face. His body hovered over mine, his topaz-colored eyes glittering with some unknown emotion. “Do you have a brother or a sister?”
I raked my teeth over my lower lip. “A younger brother who I haven’t seen in years.”
“Where is he?” he asked, his fingers still playing with my hair.
“He joined the Army right after he graduated from high school, and he never has much time to talk. The four years before he left, he spent the summers at some camp on the East Coast, and I spent the summers dancing with my mom. Needless to say, we’ve gradually grown apart.”
He nodded. “What about your parents? Are you close?”
“Nah, not really.” I glanced to the side, feeling exposed under his heat of his stare. “My dad didn’t live in Nebraska with us. He visited us on occasion until I turned five, when he disappeared entirely.”
“What happened to him?”
“Who knows? My parents never married. I don’t share his last name. I’m pretty sure I could walk right by him on the street and I wouldn’t have a clue. He’d come around for birthdays and apparently with enough frequency to get my mom pregnant again, then one birthday he didn’t show up, and my mom never offered an explanation.” I rolled my eyes. God, she could be so stubborn. Thinking about her gave me a headache. “Even now, she won’t say anything about him other than he belongs in the past. As you can imagine, we’ve never gotten along very well.”
“Why’s that?”
“Maybe we’re too alike. She moved to New York when she was eighteen to dance professionally. When she didn’t land any role worth a damn, she took jobs dancing in clubs in the tristate area to survive. She got pregnant, and she moved home. Needless to say, she wasn’t very happy about me following in her footsteps.” I cleared my throat, my impending failure clogging my throat like a ten car pileup. “I guess she was right. She failed, and it looks like I’m going to fail too.”
Gian braced himself above me with one hand while the other brushed down my cheek to my collarbone. “I see.”
“What do you see?”
His eyelids heavy, he halved the space between us. His mouth idled close enough that I felt his balmy exhalations as they ghosted across my lips. If I focused hard enough, I could make out every sooty blade of his lashes and every honeyed starburst in his irises.
I splayed my unsteady hands on his bare chest, and they prickled with the contradictory urge to push him away or slip my arm around his neck and pull him closer. I closed my eyes and counted the powerful thumps of his heart against my palm because the look on his face was too hard to process. It stripped me bare. It made me crave bad things.
Push him away.
Push him away.
Maybe I would have heeded my unvoiced pleas if only he weren’t so close that his spicy, intoxicating scent filled my lungs. His hand skated down my side with a feather-soft touch, and goose bumps peppered my skin. Without warning, his mouth dragged down my neck to my shoulder, pausing for a beat, then skimming across my collarbone. I angled my head to the side inviting his touch, undeterred by the fact that somewhere in the back of my mind, buried beneath the fog of desire, I wondered how much I’d regret this tomorrow when the shroud of darkness lifted.
“A beautiful woman who has lost confidence in herself. A beautiful woman who will succeed if she pushes aside her fears and tries again. A woman too fucking perfect to be real.” His voice was deep and smoky next to my ear, and it ruffled the strands of my hair.
My breasts tightened in response. Heat inched up my face, and my eyes opened, powerless to shut him out any longer. Powerless to resist him. Powerless to deny myself despite knowing this was the king of all bad ideas. Though my surrender would surely result in heartbreak, I was starting to think he might be worth the risk.
“You think so?” My voice was husky. Too husky for my own good. Passion burned in his eyes, flickering like a flame in the wind. “I know so. It’s so clear, I can’t believe you don’t see it.”
I slid my hand up his chest and around his neck like I promised myself I wouldn’t. I felt the chaotic drum of his pulse under the pads of my fingers and the warmth of his skin. We stared at each other, both of us caught in a miasma of lust and desire. If I tilted my head up a little bit, I’d eliminate any suggestion of space between us, and my lips would collide with his.
“Ti penso sempre,” he muttered along with a few other soft words I didn’t understand. Maybe I didn’t want to understand. It’d make the moment real rather than dreamlike, and I liked the castles-in-the-air feel of being with him. Being in his bed. Being in his line of sight.
I arched my pelvis into him, reveling in the solid yet satiny feel of him. Cupping the side of my face, he rubbed his thumb over my lips, hesitating for a second. I nipped him lightly. Playfully. Daringly.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he mumbled, and his lips crashed against mine. Taking. Seeking. Tempting.
Lost in the wickedness of his kiss, desire swirled inside of me. I clawed at his boxers, finally shoving them down his legs with the tips of my toes. He ripped my t-shirt over my head, his hands tangling in my hair in the frenzy to be skin-on-skin.
He slid my lace boyshorts down my legs, and a warning light flashed in my brain, begging
me to stop and consider repercussions. Casual sex wasn’t my thing. Some people enjoyed the meaningless release and didn’t have problems erasing it from their memory and conscience. I wasn’t built that way. I had a hard time not getting caught up in the significance of being raw and vulnerable with someone.
As quickly as the reflection took root, my mind backtracked. A small part of me delighted in the idea of grabbing hold of the moment and seeing where this led if only to wipe away the stain of Kevin and our failed engagement and replace it with something new. Something for me. Something to reclaim my life.
I can do this. It won’t mean anything if I don’t let it.
With that little pep talk, the tug of war inside my mind faded. I wanted him. I needed him, if only for a few blinding moments of pleasure.
Sensing my capitulation, his finger slid through my folds, testing and teasing. His free hand cupped one breast then the other. I couldn’t look away from his face. His pupils were dilated with a golden rim that gleamed in the dim light. He flicked his tongue along his top lip like he wanted nothing more than to devour me whole.
A short, needy moan erupted from my lips, and any tiny lingering reservations cartwheeling through my mind came to an abrupt cease-fire. My hands moved up and down the muscles of his arms, and they rippled, bulged, and flexed like a sculpture that had come to life. I yanked on the roots of his coarse, wavy hair, not too hard, but not with much caution either. His lips smashed against mine for another kiss that seemed to last forever, yet not long enough to satisfy my simmering lust.
I tasted the mint of his toothpaste. I tasted desire. Best of all, I tasted him.
His talented fingers forged ahead, driving me crazy with every stroke and slide and flick. Tension magnified inside of me at a disquieting velocity. My limbs tingled. My chest heaved. My lips parted.
“I’m really close,” I muttered with disbelief, mostly to myself.
He pulled his hand away. “I know.”
“No. Don’t stop,” I whined in a way that would have made me cringe under normal circumstances. Not now. Not when I was five seconds from getting what I wanted.
“Jesus, sweetheart,” he groaned. “Nothing could make me stop. I’ve been thinking about this round-the-clock since the minute you walked into my club.”
He roughly nudged my knees apart and wedged his pelvis between my trembling legs. His hands clamped around my hips, pressing his thick erection against my sex in an unspoken petition for entry. A current of electricity circulated though me, raising the fine hairs on my forearms, and I shuddered.
Gripping his shaft in one hand, he moved inside me an inch. I blinked in shock.
Oh my God. No words.
One more inch and our synchronized groans meshed into one. One more inch, and I stopped cold.
“Wait.” My hands scraped down the sculpted planes of his chest. “Condom.”
His gaze raked up my body until it collided with mine. His mouth ticked up at the corners. Without a word, he leaned over, grabbed a foil square from the top drawer of his nightstand, ripped it open with his teeth, and rolled it down his erection.
His body blanketed mine again, and he brushed a kiss across my lips. “Better?”
“Yeah. Now fuck me before I change my mind.” My voice came out throaty and unrecognizable, not only in tone, but in every way possible. Those words didn’t belong to me. I had never uttered anything remotely similar in my entire life.
He threw his head back and laughed, and his corded neck muscles stood out in sharp relief. “You’re a bossy thing.”
He guided himself inside of me in one breath-robbing thrust. He paused for a second. Then, moved in and out in experimental jousts that ignited little spasms of mind-numbing bliss deep inside my core.
I rolled my hips.
“Shit,” he said, his voice thick and shaky with desire. “If you keep doing that, this won’t last long.”
“I don’t care.” I rolled my hips again, and this time, I dug my nails into his back, hunting for the release that already shimmered exasperatingly close.
Like a mind reader, he anchored his hands around my hips, positioning me so that each flex of his pelvis rubbed me in a way that had me mumbling senseless words and winding me tighter and tighter. Every molecule inside of me reached for him. Craved him. Within mere minutes, an orgasm split through me, my inner muscles clamping down in frenzied pleasure.
A scream tumbled from my swollen lips. My heart pounded like I had danced for hours, and the spasms kept going and going like I had all the time in the world.
Gian thrust hard and fast. With the bed frame creaking and the headboard tapping against the wall, he lost control. His lips were pulled back over his teeth, and damp strands of his hair clung to his forehead. His eyelids dropped to half-mast, and he swelled inside of me. A whisper of a groan split his lips, and he exploded.
When the haze of lust faded, he rolled off me. I pried open my eyelids and looked at him. He was stretched out on the bed with one arm propped behind his head, his chest heaving and his brow dotted with perspiration. He caught my gaze and slotted his fingers through mine without saying anything.
Lying there next to him, sated and content for the first time since I hurt my ankle was unreal. I felt like I had stepped into an alternative universe where black was white and white was black. While none of our problems were resolved and the animosity between us would unquestionably return, for right now, in this silver of time, my heart was free, and my head was clear. Amusement still toying with the corners of my lips, my eyes drifted closed, and my heart rate evened out.
“By the way, don’t think I didn’t notice the way you mangled my toothpaste.”
“Huh?” My eyes popped open, and I looked at him. “Mangled your toothpaste. What the hell are you talking about?”
He poked the side of my ribs with our interlaced hands. “You squeezed the middle instead of rolling up the end.”
I blinked. “So?”
“Who does that?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Apparently, me.”
“Yeah, well, that needs to stop.” He clucked at me. “That’s the kind of stuff that will ruin our fake engagement.”
“Thanks for the tip. I’ll lodge a complaint about your dictatorial ways with Carmela to lay the groundwork for our impending breakup.”
He snorted. “Carmela has to take my side. She’s my twin. Twins trump friends.”
I grinned. “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Evangeline
My eyes blinked open, and I felt nearly as tired as I did when I finally fell asleep last night. With a heavy sigh, I rolled onto my side. Big red numbers on the alarm clock screamed at me.
9:18.
Crap.
Double crap.
I had booked time in the dance studio at ten. I’d be late even if I managed to get ready and out the door in the next fifteen minutes. I jumped out of bed, and cold air hit my naked form like a brick wall. A rush of uncomfortable memories taunted me. Jeered at me.
My stomach bottomed out. Flames licked at my cheeks. My knees wobbled, and even supposing I wanted to pretend like last night didn’t happen, my first step shattered the illusion. I was deliciously sore in all the wrong…or right places. I couldn’t decide which. My sleepy brain scrambled for a way to rationalize what had happened between us.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about him. It doesn’t matter.
The clock ticking, I yanked a t-shirt over my head and ran out of the room. Ten minutes later, I was dressed with my dance bag slung over my shoulder and rushing toward the front door. I skidded to a halt when I noticed Gian sitting at the long walnut kitchen table, scrolling through his phone.
My heart stopped for a second then lurched into gear, beating double time, fueled by my already frazzled nerves. I’d counted on not seeing him for a day or two, or at worst until tonight. He was normally long gone by this time of day. Now that I thought about it, though, I’d
seen him more in the last three days than the entire previous week.
“Where’s Tony?” I kept my voice monotone all while silently begging my face not to blush.
It wasn’t like I’d never hooked up with a guy and had to face him the next day, but it happened infrequently enough that I felt decidedly awkward. I didn’t know where to put my hands. I didn’t know where to look, so my gaze bounced everywhere other than on him. I licked my lips. I fidgeted from one leg to the other. More than a little annoyed with myself, I froze like a deer caught in headlights. Was there anything more pathetic than the way I was acting? Because right then, I felt like an enormous loser who couldn’t handle a simple hookup with sophisticated indifference.
Gian looked at me over the rim of his blue coffee mug, one brow cocked, his ever-smirking lips mocking my discomfort. “He had some personal business today, so I gave him the day off.”
“Well, then…” I tugged on the cornflower blue infinity scarf that felt more like a noose around my neck the longer he looked at me. “I guess I’ll catch a cab. See you later.”
He stood, the metal legs of his chair scraping across the ebony-stained hardwood floors. “Where are you going?”
“Dancing.” At his blank look, I continued. “I booked some private time in a dance studio to practice and get in shape. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“Ah, right. I don’t know how I forgot.” He snagged his phone from the table and stuffed it in the back pocket of his dark jeans. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m fine taking a cab.” I flipped my hand toward him. “I’m sure you have better stuff to do. Don’t you have to work or something like that?”
“Nope. It’s Monday. The club isn’t open.” He edged closer to me, his heavy footfalls ringing in my ears. “Besides, I don’t want you wandering around by yourself. It’s not a good idea after what happened last night.”
My brows scrunched together, and my heart did this weird fluttery thing inside my chest. For a fleeting second, I thought he meant what happened between us. Then I remembered the drive home, and my shoulders uncoiled with relief. I didn’t want to jump right into a conversation about the meaning of last night. It’d muddle my thoughts and tear my attention away from dancing, and I needed to remain focused on my career regardless of what happened in my personal life.