by Kira Ward
Instead, she ran her fingers down the rough edge of his jaw, scraping her nails against the stubborn stubble that insisted on dotting his chin no matter how many times he shaved in a day.
“Okay.”
She slid out from under him and climbed over the far side of the bed. She stood with her back to him, regretting the fact that the memory that slipped through her mind in that moment was the last time she had undressed for a guy. It was college. There had been a frat party. Too much booze, too much stupidity, too much regret.
Her mother had always told her to save herself for the man she would spend the rest of her life with. She always thought that was mom code for don’t get pregnant in high school. But, after that night, she realized her mom was a lot smarter than she’d ever given her credit for.
So what was she doing now? She knew the answer to that too. She was about to get her heart broken. But at least this time she was walking into it with her eyes wide open.
There was a soft wisp sound as the dress slipped from her body and fell to the floor. She reached up, her back still to him, and took the pins out of her hair and shook it out, letting it fall in a long, red and gold cascade down her back.
“Christ,” he hissed behind her. “Could you be any more beautiful?”
She looked over her shoulder, found him sitting up on the other side of the bed, his pink tie in his hand, watching her with an expression that was too much like the way Franco had looked at Sam during the wedding.
“Not fair,” she said, her voice weaker than she had anticipated. She cleared her throat and tried again.
Even before she’d gotten the words completely out of her mouth, he stood and kicked off his shoes while he undid the fasteners on his slacks. She bit her lip as she watched the heavy, dark material fall over hips that were too tan for a business man who spent the majority of his time in boardrooms.
“Do you have a personal trainer or something?” she asked as his muscles moved and rippled as he bent to slip out of his black boxer briefs a moment later.
“I do, actually,” he said, glancing back at her.
She shook her head, a chuckle slipping from between her lips.
He crossed the room and moved up behind her, pressing his body into hers as he slid his hands around her shoulders, his fingers instantly seeking out her breasts, her nipples.
“Does that change your opinion of me?”
“You aren’t the Josh I used to know.”
He bit her shoulder with a gentle pressure before sliding his lips up to her throat and then her ear lobe. He nibbled there, working his way around her earrings as the slight puffs of his breath, the tickle of his tongue, sent waves of pleasure up and down her back.
“I’m the new and improved Josh,” he whispered. “The one who wants to take you to places you’ve never been and give you all the things you didn’t even know you wanted.”
She slowly turned in his arms and looked up into his eyes as her hand moved slowly over his abs. “All I want is this,” she said in a voice that cracked ever so slightly. And then she peppered his chest with kisses as she bent her knees and slowly dropped to the floor.
“Rachel,” he groaned, the sound of her name on his lips as pleasurable as the feel of his lips on her throat.
And then he didn’t speak.
She tasted him, felt the tingle of his pleasure on her tongue, and knew instinctively what to do to make his moans grow louder, to make him press his fingers harder into the back of her skull. She wanted to show him that she wanted to satisfy his desire as much as her own. She wanted to see and touch, to feel and taste everything he had to offer. She wanted to know that she had the ability to make this sexy, powerful charmer collapse into a pile of spent Jello.
After a few moments, he couldn’t stay on his feet. He sank back onto the bed and buried his fingers in her hair. She felt him lean back, felt the arch of his hips. And then came the cracking, broken whispers…
“You’ve got to stop, baby. I can’t…”
She released him and pushed him back against the bed as she worked her way slowly up his abdomen, his chest, running her fingers through a fine line of hair she and Sam had once laughed about, his treasure map that stood out because of his ragged breathing, up until she could nibble at his Adam’s apple, until his arms could reach around and guide her.
But Josh wasn’t the kind of man to submit completely to the woman sharing his bed. There was need and urgency in his movements as he flipped her over and pressed her down against the mattress, her hair tangled around her face, her own breathing beginning to change to something less calm, less controlled.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this moment,” he said as he brushed her hair back against the mattress so that he could see her eyes. “So long…”
His lips found hers, and in a heartbeat, he was tasting himself on her tongue. She offered it all to him, meeting each of his movements with an answering one of her own. And when he reached between their bodies, when the back of his hand brushed against her inner thigh, nothing short of a natural disaster could have stopped her from giving him what he clearly needed.
She relaxed her muscles, welcomed him inside of her as best as she could. He was so much more than she expected, but he was gentle, his movements mindful of the potential pain he could induce. But there was no pain. There was so many things, but pain was not one of them. As his body made its home inside of hers, she ran her feet slowly over the back of his legs, searched for that one position that encouraged the heights of pleasure. And then she pressed her hips up against his, bit his bottom lip as he began to roll his hips slowly at first. Then with a steadier rhythm, with a rhythm that was just theirs.
She had never wanted anyone but Josh. She had never wanted more than his attention, than a stolen glance, a chance touch. To become his, even for one night, was a pleasure that transcended the pleasure of the flesh. She had never understood what people meant when they said it was different when you were in love. But she understood now. She understood that she would never know anything like this with anyone else.
And, for a moment, she let herself believe that he felt the same way.
Chapter 6
Rachel woke with a start, the lingering tendrils of a dream trying to hold on as she studied the dark room around her. She didn’t know where she was at first, but when she saw her dress on the floor, the chenille crumpled in a way that would have terrified her the day before, it all came rushing back to her. That was at the same instant that she became aware of the soft snores of the man beside her.
She rolled onto her side and a rush of affection filled her as she studied Josh’s sleeping façade. He had this way of looking fierce when he stood back from a crowd and observed, but now he looked more like the Josh she remembered.
It crossed her mind to wake him with a few, gentle kisses. She didn’t doubt that he would be eager to begin again what they had tried to satiate twice the night before. It was a very tempting thought. But she had a plane to catch, and she’d never been good at goodbyes.
Rachel slipped out of bed and dressed quietly, slipping out of the room without so much as causing him to roll over. She paused in the doorway, wanting to remember the way he looked in sleep. But it only increased her desire to stay and that was something she knew she couldn’t do.
She made her way to her room, taking two wrong turns before arrival. A quick shower and she finished getting packed and ready to go. She called for the footman and asked if he could take her things downstairs to the waiting car “Do you like working here?” she asked as she followed him down the stairs.
“Mr. Carver is a fine employer, ma’am.”
“Mr. Carver?” The first image that came into Rachel’s mind at that name was Josh and Sam’s grizzly bear of a father, a man who had once been as dark, tall, and handsome as his son now was, but who had wasted away under the pressure of grief and alcoholism. And then she realized that he meant Josh, not his father. “You mean Josh owns th
is place?”
“Yes, ma’am. Bought it several years ago and oversaw all the renovations himself.”
Rachel paused and looked back up the stairs, her thoughts chasing each other through a maze of surrealism. She remembered distinctly when he showed her the room that would be hers for the weekend, how he told her that he thought of her the moment he saw the canopy bed. There were the books in the library, too, some of her most favorite that they had debated over and again when they were younger.
It had to be a coincidence, right?
The house, a Tuscan villa on one of the most visited coasts in the world…to completely renovate it, to restore it to its former glory…what a life Josh must lead. It made her chest hurt to think about it.
“Ma’am?”
Rachel turned and found the footman waiting patiently for her at the bottom of the stairs. She quickly rushed after him, only stopping to look at the house one last time as she prepared to climb into the waiting car.
The house seemed lonely. Or maybe that was just her perception of it in light of all that had happened.
She hoped he would chose carefully when he finally picked a woman to share it all with.
It was hard not to dwell on Sam, on the wedding and all that it meant to their friendship, to their future, as Rachel tried to find a comfortable position on the eleven hour flight home. Home to her isolated, boring life. Home to her tiny studio apartment and her fledging writing career. Home to Skype conversations with her best friend instead of actual, human contact.
It seemed so weird to think of Sam as a married woman. Soon she would be pregnant, absorbed with cribs and diapers and things that Rachel didn’t understand and wasn’t in a position to even consider yet.
They were growing apart. And that sucked.
And when she thought about Josh—was he ever, really, that far from her thoughts?—she felt a sort of helplessness that was much bigger, much more oppressive, than the futility she felt when she watched him walk into prom with Kylie Johnson.
Josh had never been a reality for her. She didn’t fit in with the women Sam was always posting photos of him with. And she wasn’t on his intellectual level. Seriously, this was a man who had built a billion dollar company and personal fortune when he was barely twenty-four. There weren’t very many men in the world like him, and she certainly wasn’t on a level that was anywhere near as impressive as his. But even without all that, there was one reality that Rachel couldn’t ignore.
He was Sam’s brother.
Sam would never forgive Rachel is she learned what she and Josh had done the night before. Hell, Sam would never forgive Rachel is she knew she’d had a crush on Josh since they were fourteen. And losing Sam’s friendship—even with all the life changes that were coming and were likely to create a certain separation between them—was not something Rachel was willing to do. Not even for Josh.
So, no matter how often she went back and forth in her head about it, Rachel couldn’t find a way in which she and Josh could be together, assuming he even wanted to.
Rachel’s flight landed, and she dragged her way through the crowded airport, some of her New York hutzpah coming back as she dodged screaming children and nagging wives to snag a taxi. She was exhausted, more so than she had thought she could be. Stepping out into the sunlight didn’t help. Her brain was telling her that it should be dark, still stuck on Tuscany time.
She hailed a cab and directed him to her apartment before settling back against the dirty seat. She closed her eyes, and the first image she saw was Josh’s face as it was when she looked back at him from his open bedroom door. It caused an ache in her chest that had never really gone away, a need to climb back into that bed and forget everything but what it felt like when he was inside of her.
She must have dozed off for a moment because the next thing she knew, the cab driver was yelling at her for payment. She shoved a couple of twenties in his hand and dragged her bags out of the cab behind her, taking a second to straighten the badly wrinkled dress bag before heading up the steps of her tiny Brooklyn apartment building. She didn’t even see him at first, just as she didn’t see the limo that stood out like a sore thumb half a block down.
“I don’t like waking up alone.”
She jerked a little, surprised by the sound of his voice. He was leaning against the dirty brick beside the lobby doors, dressed in a light suit, studying the screen of his smartphone like he waited around Brooklyn apartment buildings every day.
“What are you doing here, Josh? How did you get here before me?”
“Private planes tend to move passengers from point A to point B faster than commercial flights. That’s kind of why I like them.” He looked up at her, his green eyes dark with something she couldn’t quite read. “But the nice thing about commercial flights is that they can be rescheduled.”
“And we would have had to say goodbye at some other time.”
“Is that it? You didn’t want to say goodbye?”
Rachel shrugged, gathering her things again and making her way slowly, clumsily, up the steps of the building. She nearly tripped over the bottom edge of the dress bag, catching herself just before she went down on one knee.
“What makes you think it would have been goodbye?”
She paused, but she didn’t look at him. Something in the back of her mind warned her that if she did she might never get her head above water again.
When she didn’t answer him, he sighed heavily, a sound that was familiar to her as her own mutterings of frustration. He always made that sound when Sam did something to annoy him—usually when she snuck into his room and touched his collection of comic books.
“Let me take those,” he grumbled, grabbing the strap of her bag before she could agree. Then he turned and headed back up the steps, leaving her with no choice but to follow.
The last thing she wanted was to let Josh see her apartment. It was about the size of a sardine can, and she hadn’t exactly done a thorough cleaning job before she rushed off to meet her plane Friday morning. She shuddered when she shoved open the door, and the first thing she saw was a bra draped over the edge of her loveseat.
She rushed inside and began picking up dirty clothes and abandoned dishes, shoving them all into a low cabinet in the kitchen just because it was the most convenient place to put them at the moment. When she turned, Josh—having set her bag down beside the now closed and locked door—was studying the quotes of inspiration she had taped to the wall behind her computer.
“It helps, sometimes, when I’m blocked on one of my stories.”
“Someone will be hanging your quotes on their wall someday.”
Rachel snorted. “I doubt that.”
“You’ve always underestimated your talents.” He turned, looking so handsome and so familiar all at the same time, that old grin on his lips. “You should realize by now that the publishing industry has become such a profit driven machine that it takes more than talent to get published. Yet, you’ve done it twice now.”
She inclined her head slightly. “From your lips to my publisher’s ear.”
“Give me his name. I’ll call him.”
“It’s a woman.” She laughed, again that sense of overwhelming affection washing over her. “What are you doing here, Josh?”
He crossed to her in two steps, his hands taking her face between them like a parent trying to get a rebellious child to pay attention. “Do you really have to ask after last night?”
“Last night just makes it even more confusing. What was that?”
“That was me finally admitting to the way I feel about you.”
Rachel twisted her head, pulling away from his touch. “Don’t play with me.”
“I’m not.”
She gestured toward her computer. “And what about all those girls you’re always with? All those models and singers and…all those women?”
“I’m something of a public figure, Rachel. I can’t attend those events without some woman on my arm. People
would start thinking there’s something wrong with me.”
“Then you’re saying they’re all a set up?”
“I’m saying some of them were. And some of them weren’t. But they don’t matter.”
Rachel studied his face for a long minute. “We haven’t seen each other in seven years.”
“It takes time to build a company like mine.”
“It takes time.” She turned away from him, her heart pounding as her mind wrestled with what it was she thought he was saying, but was afraid to believe. She couldn’t forget about his comments on the canopy bed in his Tuscan house, or the books she saw on his library shelves. And she couldn’t forget the way he’d looked at her as she undressed for him.
“I’m in love with you, Rachel,” he said, his voice a husky moan. “I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen.”
A soft chuckle slipped from her lips. “I have two years on you then.”
He grabbed her shoulders and turned her around, captured her lips with a desperation that matched the need the quickly—surprisingly quickly—rose in her. She wrapped her hand around his tie and pulled him close to her, unwilling to allow him to move even an inch from her. He didn’t seem to mind. He wrapped his hands around her waist and tugged her closer, a sigh slipping from his mouth as he ran his lips over her chin and around her jaw.
“I am so tired.”
“Oh, thank God!” Rachel groaned. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to tell you that eleven hours on a plane, stuffed in the center seat between two pretty good sized guys, does not lend itself kindly to a romantic roll in a hideaway bed.”
Josh pulled her against his chest, laughing as he cradled her head close. She laughed also, all the worry and the uncertainty washing away as she breathed in his scent, as she soaked in the feeling of being in his arms.