Kiss Don't Tell

by Avril Tremayne

  She licked her bottom lip nervously. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do. So it’s all right? To say that?’

  ‘Very all right,’ Adam said, and tugged her helter-skelter into his lap.

  He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her mouth, as his hands worked to free her hair from the tight ponytail, and then she was kissing him back—and what she lacked in experience she made up for in enthusiasm. Her mouth was hot and hungry, pushing too hard against his—hard enough to hurt as his top lip was smashed back against his teeth, but he liked it. Liked that she was taking whatever the hell she wanted. No soft tears, just hard passion. What it was all about.

  She gripped his shirt between her hands and when her tongue pushed inside his mouth and licked almost frantically, he groaned, and pulled her so she was straddling his thighs.

  ‘Ah, Lane,’ he breathed against her mouth, ‘I love it when you kiss me back.’

  Those simple words were like a match to a dry leaf. Lane kissed him harder, and harder, and when she finally slid her mouth off his, down to his chin, to his throat, he was trembling. Her tongue darted out shyly when she kissed her way around and up to his ear. A dab more than a lick, but he liked that, too.

  He smoothed his hands under the hem of her sweater, inched it up, up, off. He tried to slow down, but her hot breaths against his ear were playing havoc with all his good intentions until he thought he’d go mad if he didn’t have her right that second, plan be damned.

  He began working at the clasp of her bra. By the time it gave and her naked breasts were filling his hands, his heart was racing so madly he wondered if it was about to leap out of his chest. There’d be a headline in that: Man found dead in Sydney home, heart on couch beside him.

  The jagged breath Lane sucked in made him want to crush her in his arms. But when she tried to thrust herself against him, he knew something was missing; he needed something else, something more. Her face, he needed to see her face, to touch her face, the way she’d touched his. So he forestalled her, pulled back.

  ‘Adam,’ she said, and tried again.

  He cupped her face with his hands. ‘Shh, let me look at you, Lane.’

  Her eyes were enormous dark pools, the pupils so dilated now only a thin ring of pale blue showed at the edges of her irises, lips rosy from red wine and kisses, red hair wild around her milk-white shoulders. His eyes dropped to the rest of her. Who would have thought she could look so delectable. Blue denim from the hips down, and from the hips up, all white skin and pink-tipped perfect breasts and tangled strands of glorious fire hair. He leaned forward and dipped his head, taking one nipple into his mouth.

  ‘Oh,’ she gasped, and her hands came up to hold his head there. ‘Adam, Adam, please.’

  Then he was pushing her deep into the couch, his mouth fastened to her breast. He felt the naked flesh of her hip, and only realized after the fact that he’d unfastened her jeans. And his. He’d undone his own jeans in the scramble, as though in a sexual trance. This wasn’t supposed to happen yet. She hadn’t suffered enough. She wasn’t desperate enough. But, God help him, he had to have her. He had to—

  ‘Laney?’

  The call came from the entrance hall as the front door closed.

  ‘Laney, I’ve got vodka!’ Husky female voice. ‘I’m just dumping my stuff and I’ll be in.’

  Holding his breath, Adam looked down at Lane.

  ‘Erica!’ she said. ‘Oh God, oh God, what am I going to do?’

  One frozen moment as they looked at each other, and then Lane was galvanized, pushing him off her, struggling into her sweater, zipping up her jeans, burying her bra under a sofa cushion.

  Ten seconds later, she looked her usual calm self—except for a faint blush, the dilated pupils, and the messed-up hair. But she was bundling her hair back into its regular ponytail and Adam had no doubt it would look perfect within seconds.

  Yep, he marvelled five seconds later: perfect. Even the blush had faded, so when Erica, brandishing the vodka bottle, came to a complete stop just inside the room, Lane was sitting like a prim librarian beside Adam, perfectly in control of herself.

  ‘Oh, no! I’ve interrupted, I’m so sorry,’ Erica said, and if Adam had ever heard a faux-apology, that was it.

  ‘No, of course you haven’t,’ Lane said, and remembered at last to switch off the movie. ‘Come and sit down. And did you say vodka? I’d love a vodka.’

  Vodka—she’d love a vodka. More than she’d love Adam thrusting into her like an out-of-control, horny teenager, obviously.

  Adam chose that moment to zip up his own jeans, the sound as loud as a thunderclap in the poised silence.

  Erica made a strangled sound—like she was choking back a laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Adam. Oh! Wait! It is Adam, right? Not David?’

  ‘Adam,’ he said, sounding cold but feeling hot with temper. David? Not that he cared, really he didn’t, but who the hell was David?

  Erica shot Lane an admonitory look. ‘Lane, you should have told me you had Adam scheduled tonight. I would have gone to Jeremy’s.’

  Scheduled! Didn’t that put him in his place? Adam looked from Lane, to Erica, back to Lane.

  ‘Oh, Adam just dropped in to … to watch a movie. We weren’t scheduled tonight or I would have …’

  Would have what? Adam wondered, as Lane flicked an apprehensive glance his way. Wrapped a bra around the door handle to warn Erica away, college-style?

  ‘Would have let you know,’ Lane finished. ‘Anyway, no harm done. I’ll get some glasses.’

  And then she bustled off, leaving Erica and Adam alone, clearly unable to face what was a debacle in the making.

  Erica had removed her shoes and hat and loosened her scarf, but she was still wearing the rest of her airline uniform. Despite the half-assembled appearance, she looked both beautiful and glamorous as she deposited her limbs into a lounge chair.

  ‘I’m Erica, by the way,’ she said, and helped herself to a slice of cold pizza.

  ‘Yes, so I figured.’

  ‘Oh, you know all about me, do you? Good. Because Sarah’s told me so much about you.’ She eyed him, chewing slowly. Swallowed, still watching him. ‘How’s it going? With Lane?’

  ‘I’m not discussing Lane with you. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t—there’s a confidentiality clause in our contract, as I’m sure you know.’

  ‘Good answer,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Lane doesn’t like being gossiped about. She’s obsessive about it, in fact. No gossiping about Lane is rule number one ever since DeWayne Callaghan. And I know you know about him, because Sarah told me so.’

  Erica really was very beautiful. She reminded him of three ex-lovers he could name out of hand (Karen, Alexa and Corinne) and was wearing the exact perfume—Tresor—that Corinne had habitually worn. But she was having absolutely no visceral impact on his senses. Not even the tiniest twinge. Unless you considered annoying the hell out of him a visceral impact. She was doing that all right. She was warning him.

  Erica cast a weather eye towards the kitchen. ‘Lane will be de-flustering, but she does that fast, which means we don’t have long.’ She refocused on him, all business. ‘So I’ll say this quickly. This sex contract is a dumb idea. You know it, I know it, Sarah knows it. But Lane doesn’t know it, and at this point, if she knew what we all think, if she had any inkling of how it all came about, she’d be mortified. So that is not going to happen, okay? You’re going to have to forge ahead as though there’s nothing untoward in any of it. Now, Sarah says you can be trusted to treat Lane properly, and I want to believe her, I really do. But I know your type, Adam Quinn.’

  Her eyes flickered to the DVD cover on the coffee table. ‘I’m not too keen on guys who mess with a girl’s head by sitting through The Notebook—especially guys who already have a whole harem at their disposal and don’t need another girl gagging for them. You’re here to keep Lane out of trouble for as long as it takes her to discover—for herself—that the contrac
t is no way to go about things. She is not here for you to get your own back on womankind for any imagined slight you may have suffered in the past, she is not here for you to punish for not falling at your feet in a heap the way the other girls do, she is not here for you to attempt to make her fall in love with you for any reason whatsoever, she is not here for you to have sex with unless it is to her benefit. David is the main game for Lane, so you just get through the next three months as lightly as you can without messing with her head, then back the hell away so nobody gets hurt.’

  Adam’s temper had surged at Erica’s first mention of the contract, and it was like a fucking volcano by the end of her diatribe. He hadn’t asked for any of this … this babysitting job! How dare she question him! How dare she tell him what to do! How dare she accuse him of messing with Lane’s head! He wasn’t messing with Lane’s head, he was messing with her body, and he was only doing that because she was paying him to do it.

  He knew the score—sex, just sex. Three months, then out. No emotional connection. He didn’t want one more fucking thing from Lane Davis or her housemate! And all right, maybe watching a chick flick was underhanded, but it didn’t appear to have changed a goddamn thing. And it didn’t mean he had to sit there and have another man’s name shoved down his throat.

  ‘I said I wasn’t discussing Lane with you,’ he said.

  ‘That wasn’t a discussion,’ Erica said. ‘That was an instruction.’

  ‘I take my instructions in this house from Lane.’

  ‘I suspect you don’t take instructions from anyone.’

  ‘Well certainly not you. Now, unless you’d care to explain who the fuck David is, given you’ve deliberately mentioned his name twice, I suggest you take your vodka and my pizza and go, because you definitely were interrupting something when you came in.’

  Erica laughed. ‘Clever you! I do believe I’ve forgiven Sarah for landing us with you.’ She got to her feet. ‘Lane, jet lag is calling,’ she called. ‘I’m leaving you to Mr Quinn’s tender mercies and will see you in the morn-ing.’

  When Lane returned, all that remained of Erica was a waft of Tresor.

  Lane appeared supremely unruffled, as usual, but Adam had enough of a handle on her now to check her hands, and he saw that her fingers were tight and white as they clutched three stacked shot glasses. She looked inquiringly at Adam. ‘She never suffers from jet lag,’ she said.

  ‘I think she’s trying to be discreet,’ Adam said.

  ‘She’s never discreet either,’ Lane said.

  And Adam couldn’t believe it, but when Lane sat slowly beside him, he felt his wayward loins stir dramatically. This was crazy. Lane wasn’t his type. She had no idea what she was doing when it came to anything remotely sexual, whereas he was used to the best, most acrobatic lovers. He apparently had no impact on her unless he actually had a body part on her somewhere. And he didn’t even like her.

  Nope. He wasn’t doing anything more until he processed exactly why it was that a stunner like Erica left him cold, but an uptight sex-free zone like Lane got his nether regions jumping to attention.

  And why it infuriated him to have Lane’s oldest friend toss the name ‘David’ around like a ping-pong ball. ‘David,’ whoever-the-hell-he-was, was none of Adam’s business and Adam didn’t want to spare him even a moment’s thought. There was enough to stew over without adding ‘David’ into the mix. Goddammit!

  He located his boots and shoved his feet into them.

  ‘Is that all for tonight?’ Lane asked, and the fact that she sounded so calm about the way the evening had ended annoyed the shit out of him. Like he was a load of washing with an interrupted spin cycle rather than a horny-as-hell guy who’d just been interrupted by a woman flinging another man’s name around.

  Washing, driving lessons, Mandarin class. Each one worse than the last. What came next? Garbage disposal? When was he going to revert to being a red-blooded male women lusted after?

  He focused on his shoelaces, tightening them so sharply, one snapped. ‘I’m sure you don’t want me grunting and groaning all over you with Erica in the house. You might break out in a sweat, and how would you explain that to her?’

  There was a slight tinge of colour in Lane’s face—no other reaction. ‘Do you still want to go shopping on Saturday?’ she asked.

  ‘Ten o’clock,’ he said. ‘I’ll pick you up.’

  ‘I could meet you—’

  ‘Ten o’clock. I’ll pick you up.’ And as Lane opened her mouth—to argue, Adam guessed, he added, ‘It’s an alpha male thing. Remember your lessons and don’t push your luck, sweetheart.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When Lane clambered into the jeep on Saturday morning, one look at Adam’s dark, forbidding countenance told her he was still mad about Thursday night.

  Not that she could figure out exactly why Erica’s unexpected arrival had made him so angry.

  Lane was the one who should have been unhappy about Thursday night’s interruption since she was the one who’d been so determined to keep Adam and Erica apart. If Lane had managed to get over their worlds unexpectedly colliding—and it had been such a brief, harmless encounter, there seemed no reason not to—what did Adam have to be upset about? He’d actually wanted to meet Erica because of the whole I-am-not-a-prostitute thing, hadn’t he?

  Unless maybe it wasn’t the interruption as such that was the problem, but something a little more … personal …? Such as the way Lane had leapt away from him like he was a leper, perhaps. A man who regularly had women throwing themselves at him can’t have liked that very much.

  Still, what had he expected her to do? Stay sprawled half-naked on the couch?

  No, of course not! So his reaction didn’t make sense.

  But then, nothing about their relationship was making sense. Nothing had made much sense since he’d invaded her living room and scoffed at her smoked salmon on rye.

  After five minutes of silence, she decided to channel Adam at dinner at Benedetto’s, adapting his innocuous conversational gambits over the lasagne into queries about where they were going and how long he expected it to take, but she got such un-encouraging one-word answers, she quickly lapsed back into silence. By the time Adam parked, there was so much tension between them Lane’s head had started to ache. She was dreading what was to come.

  Without waiting for him to open the jeep door for her, Lane got out and stood on the footpath, looking up and down the tree-lined street he’d brought her to and feeling a twinge of dismay. She usually chose big, impersonal malls to do her clothes shopping, getting in and out as quickly as possible. Stately, leafy Woollahra, with its beautiful melding of contemporary and heritage architecture, smart cafes and intriguing galleries, was the antithesis of a mall. Its street-front boutiques would have made any fashionista’s mouth water, and Lane—no fashionista, despite wearing her new pink silk dress—felt very keenly that she didn’t belong.

  Of course, it didn’t help that she’d teamed the dress with a cardigan that wasn’t required on this sunny autumn day and a pair of Nana shoes. She looked down at herself, and then she looked at Adam’s slim-fit jeans, pale blue shirt, and brown suede boots.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lane said quickly.

  But Adam was frowning down at her hands.

  Then something about him changed. In the space of a heartbeat, he was less forbidding. He touched his fingertips gently to her cheek.

  ‘You look fine, Lane,’ he said. ‘Stop worrying.’

  Before she could recover from the shock of his reading her mind, Adam had pulled her into the nearest shop.

  Several hours later, she was the owner of three too-short dresses in jewel colours, two flirty skirts, an array of skimpy tops, a pair of low-rise, pencil-leg jeans and a red semi-formal gown, hemmed with a series of flirty ruffles at mid-thigh level in the front and dropping gracefully to the ankle in the back. And shoes—she had four
new pairs of shoes: all too high, too bright, too fancy, too … sexy.

  ‘You’re freaking out again,’ Adam said as she paid for one last purchase—a royal blue, cowl-necked mini dress that hugged her hips like a second skin.

  ‘I’m just not sure I’ll ever have the nerve to wear any of this.’

  Adam smiled. ‘Well you know what they say—no time like the present.’ He gestured for the shop assistant to remove the tags on the blue dress. He then took the dress, shook it out, and handed it back to Lane.

  ‘You mean put it on now?’ she squeaked.

  ‘Yep.’ He held out another shopping bag. ‘And these, too.’

  ‘The dress and the shoes?’

  He nudged her towards the change room. ‘Move.’

  Lane was shaking as she came out. The dress exposed too much leg. And the shoes—nude, pointy-toed pumps, four inches high—made her feel like a giant.

  But Adam whistled appreciatively. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘But don’t hunch your shoulders. You’re with me and I’m six feet five—you’re practically a pygmy by comparison.’

  Lane obligingly thrust her shoulders back, but she was blushing and fiddling with the neckline (far too swingy and therefore too revealing in the breast department) as she followed him to the jeep.

  He opened the back and together they loaded the shopping bags.

  And then: ‘One more thing,’ he said, and pulled the elastic off her hair. ‘Better.’

  ‘I don’t think it suits me out,’ Lane mumbled. ‘Not unless it’s been curled, anyway.’

  Adam smoothed her hair then made a tiny adjustment to the neckline of the dress. ‘You look gorgeous,’ he said. ‘So gorgeous, I am going to give you a lesson as we drive.’

  What did that mean? She knew people did it in vehicles, and they’d come so close to actually doing it two nights ago, but it was broad, bright daylight. Still, maybe … maybe … ‘What lesson?’ she asked a little tremulously.

  ‘The lesson about getting fondled in inappropriate places. Lesson Number Nine.’