by Amy Olle
Leo choked on the swig of water he’d just swallowed.
“Cat,” she finished. “Pussy cat.”
Shock receded, and then he smiled.
Oh. My. God.
He.
Smiled.
And oh, what a smile it was. Beautiful and breathtaking. With a flash of white teeth, two deep dents appeared on his cheeks, partially hidden in his dark scruff. A smile worth the wait and the work to draw it out.
But as soon as his lips curled up, they mashed back down into their customary pouty frown.
When he looked at her, his eyes burned with a fire rivaling the sun’s magnificent dying blaze. “I haven’t satisfied a pussy in a long time.”
“Don’t you remember the hotel room?”
He bent his head, slicing her with a look. “That never should have happened.”
The stern disavowal tore at her heart. “Wow, you sure have a way with the ladies, you know that?”
“I’m not saying I regret it, or that I didn’t enjoy every fucking second of it, but it was a mistake.”
“I don’t regret it either, nor do I think it was a mistake.” She risked a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. “I’d do it again.”
With a grunt, he rocked forward, visibly impacted by her words. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?” Her voice carried a plaintive tone that she hated but couldn’t restrain, not with the flood of heartbreak and humiliation that swamped her.
He’d said he enjoyed it, hadn’t he? But then why wouldn’t he want to do it again? Was it because of her? Had she done something wrong? Something he didn’t like? Maybe Aron had been right all those years ago. She was too inexperienced. Too unappetizing to men. Just plain bad at sex.
He lurched to his feet and she stood as he paced to the slider door. Whipping open the screen, he set Arlo carefully inside the house, then slammed the screen shut and stalked back across the patio to her.
But when he reached her, he didn’t stop. He kept right on coming, pushing his hands beneath her hair and cradling her head in his palms.
“Because if you keep talking about having sex, I’m not going to be able to stop myself from doing this.”
Then he kissed her. His mouth came down on hers hard, but quickly gentled. With tender nips and slow, lingering caresses, he explored her. Somewhere along the way, the last sliver of sun slipped behind the earth, and she couldn’t care less to have missed the miracle.
When the tip of his tongue stole inside her mouth, a tingling sensation shot from her heart to the spot low in her belly.
“This,” he murmured against her mouth. “I remember this.”
“Hmmm?”
He pulled her bottom lip between his teeth. “Your taste.” He moved to nuzzle the sensitive skin below her ear. “Your smell. I remember it so clearly. And yet… I can’t remember you. The feel of being inside you.” His thumb scraped across her bottom lip. “Prue, I have to have you again.”
A dizzying rush swooped through her and she gripped his wrists to steady herself.
“If I could take back our night together, I would.”
She crash landed from her blissful flight with a dull thud.
His thumbs traced soft circles on the side of her face. “You deserve so much better than sex with a drunk asshole who can’t remember anything the next morning.”
“Uh, Leo—”
“And your brother deserves a better friend than me.” The green in his eyes glittered like gemstones. “If I had it to do all over again, I’d make it right, but it’s too late for that now.”
She wanted to pretend she didn’t hear him.
Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her forehead to the center of his chest.
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and her heart wrenched. Once she told him the truth, would he still want to be with her? Or was her appeal wrapped up in the mystery of his lost memories? If he had it to do all over again, would he choose her?
“Leo?” She spoke into his chest, which muffled her voice. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
Chapter Thirteen
A rush of words poured from her. “There’s a reason you don’t remember that night. I mean, a reason that’s different than the one you’re thinking.”
Over his eyebrow, a pucker appeared.
Her nerves stretched tight and she licked her suddenly dry lips. “It’s because… well… we didn’t… do it.”
His jaw slackened with his astonishment. “I don’t understand.”
“We tried. You wanted to,” she was quick to add. “But you passed out before we got to the really good stuff.”
For several irregular heartbeats, he appeared frozen in time. She braced for his anger, or his accusations, but he didn’t lash out at her. Instead, he dropped his head and dragged a hand over his face. His shoulders shook, and she realized he was laughing.
At the deep, husky sound, her heart took flight.
His arms came around her. “Oh, Prue, I’m so sorry.” He pulled back and peered down into her face. “I’ve been such a jackass to you. Can you ever forgive me?”
His words pulled a frown from her. “You apologize to me too much.”
“Do you want me to stop apologizing?” A faint ring of amusement crept into his tone.
She pondered his question. “Only apologize for the things you could have prevented. You couldn’t have not passed out any more than you could have stopped that man from breaking into my apartment.”
His arms fell to his sides and he backed away from her. “I’ve been careless with you, Prue, and for that I am sorry. If I was that drunk, I can only imagine how badly I behaved.” He pinned her with a sober look. “If I hurt you—”
Shaking her head, she cut him off. “It wasn’t like that.”
He slipped his hands into the pocket of his shorts and regarded her with a skeptical scowl.
“You didn’t, Leo. Please believe me.” That he even considered he might be capable of such a thing caused her heart to ache. “That night, you were sweet to me. So much so, you were the first guy I’d wanted to be with in a really long time.”
His scowl deepened. “How long?”
“Six years.” Furious heat burned her cheeks. “I hadn’t been with anyone in six years. I hadn’t wanted to be with anyone. Until that night.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “What were you waiting for?”
“For you.” She lifted one shoulder. “Someone worth the trouble.”
“You were wrong about me.” His voice sounded unsteady.
“I wasn’t wrong.”
A hint of exasperation touched his features. “I disappointed you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
When Aron King seduced and betrayed her, she’d been disappointed. Devastated in fact, and disheartened that she’d been too naïve to sense the threat. Now, six years after Aron shattered her world, she was no longer that naïve girl. Except when it came to sex. In that regard, she was as naïve as ever, and painfully gun-shy to boot.
But Leo could change all that.
“Okay, maybe I was a little disappointed,” she teased.
Despite her attempt at levity, his gaze slid away.
She inched closer to him. “But the disappointment I felt was from not being with you.”
Without lifting his head, his eyes found her face.
“You were right when you said I deserved better that night.” The intensity of his fierce gaze set off a trembling in her hands and voice. “The way I see it, you owe me.”
His head came up slowly. “What do you think I owe you?”
“S-sex.”
He concealed his reaction to her words behind an inscrutable mask. “We settled my debt in that hotel room.”
With the sharp bite of her mortification, heat rushed into her face.
“So the way I see it,” he began in a low voice, “it’s you who owes me.”
Her eyes flew to his face. The cruel glint she
expected to see in his eyes was absent and her breath caught at the heat and hunger that shimmered among the green-and-gold jewel tones.
The soles of his flip-flops scraped on the wood deck when he drew a step nearer to her, and then stopped. “But as much as I want to call up your debt, Prue, I can’t do it. Your brother would never approve of me with you.”
She blinked away a sudden surge of irrational tears, drawing instead upon her anger, the way Leo had taught her. “Owen has no say in who I do, or do not, sleep with. Zero. You forget, I left that bar knowing exactly who you were, and that Owen might one day find out about it. I thought you knew who I was, too, and that you felt the same.”
“I don’t need Owen’s permission to be with you, but he’s my friend and I prefer to keep it that way.”
His unaffected calm only added to her upset. “He wouldn’t stop being your friend if you and I were… together.”
“He would if he thought I was going to hurt you.”
“So don’t hurt me.”
“I can’t help it. It’s what I do.” It was a statement, and she detected nothing casual or callous in his tone.
Her mind reeled with confusion. “You hurt people?”
“I don’t set out to do it, and I don’t want to hurt anyone, especially not you.” Regret clung to him. “I just don’t know how not to. It’s who I am. I break things. People. I break people.”
“Why do you do that?” she asked softly.
The shadow of a humorless smile touched his lips. “Well, if I knew the answer to that, I’d stop doing it, wouldn’t I? Until I figure it out, I won’t get involved with anyone.”
“Get involved? You mean get into a relationship?”
“Definitely no relationships. It’s a lot harder to break someone if you’re not in a relationship with them.”
“You don’t have to be in a relationship to have sex, do you?”
A light in his eyes sparked. “It’s often better that way, but no, it isn’t required.”
“So you won’t do relationships, but—theoretically speaking, of course—you would consider an arrangement?”
The spark flared. “Depends on the arrangement.”
Her courage faltered, but her heart refused to retreat. “How about a hookup? A short-term, sex-focused nonrelationship. Isn’t that what everyone our age is doing?”
A full-fledged green-gold firestorm raged in his eyes now. “Not many women are okay with that.”
If given a choice, Prue doubted many women would turn Leo down. Her expression must’ve said as much.
“They might agree to the terms and say they don’t want a relationship either,” he said. “But it never works out that way in the end.”
“You’re just too irresistible, I suppose.”
His mouth tipped with a sensual curve. “When two people are compatible, it’s natural to want more.”
Her heart, already pounding, tripped over in her chest. “Natural for them, but not for you?”
“No. Not for me.” The invisible shield went up, shutting her out before she got even a fraction of an inch closer.
With a frown, she contemplated him. She didn’t like the barrier. She liked the real Leo and wanted to talk more to that guy.
“So that’s it? We’re never going to happen, and I’m stuck with these impure thoughts I keep having about you?”
His eyebrows climbed. “Impure thoughts?”
Just like that, her Leo was back.
She bit back a smug smile. “I grew up in a religious household, so it was probably inevitable.”
“I’d like to hear more about these thoughts. Are you naked in them?”
“Do you want me to be naked?”
He made a sound in his throat, sort of like a whimper of pain.
With it, a memory bubbled up from the night they met at the hotel bar. When he kissed her, he’d murmured something about it being so long since he’d seen her. Well, she’d thought he was talking about her, but as she found out the next morning, he hadn’t remembered her at all. So what had his words meant? Could it be, like her, he hadn’t been with anyone else in too long?
“Uh, Leo, how long has it been since you’ve, you know, been with someone?”
He hardly hesitated. “Four years.”
“Four years?” She couldn’t swallow her gasp of surprise. “Sorry, but wow. Four years? That’s like twenty in guy years, isn’t it?”
“At least,” he said dryly.
The mellow breeze pushed a strand of hair across her forehead, and when she reached up to tuck it behind her ear, her hand still shook. She’d never propositioned a man before, and never in all her years of secretly being in love with Leo did she imagine she’d ever actually get a chance to be with him.
She pushed aside the tempest of emotion swirling inside her. There was no need for sentimentality. This was a puzzle she could solve with logic.
“You know, I think we’re just what each other needs.”
He watched her with hooded eyes.
She plunged ahead with her thesis. “You break people, right? Well, I can’t be broken, because I’d never be so stupid as to put my trust in you in the first place—no offense. And even if we did fall in love, we have no chance at a future because Owen would never approve and I know you’re not going to pick me over him, which means I can’t even be hurt or mad at you for not choosing me because I knew upfront that’d be the outcome.” With a sharp intake of air, she stated her summary conclusion. “So there’s no risk for either of us. We can just have sex without worrying about all that other stuff.”
A grimace bracketed his eyes and mouth. “I don’t like several things you said just now.”
She bristled. “Tell me, where am I wrong?”
“For one, and this is just for starters, if you don’t trust me, why would you want to sleep with me?
She waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, it’s not you personally. I don’t trust men. Any man. Not completely. At least not one who wants to sleep with me.”
“Any particular reason why?”
“Lots of reasons why.”
“Care to share any?”
“No, I’m good.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “Why not?”
“Probably the same reason you don’t want to talk about your allergy to relationships.”
His mouth thinned with his displeasure, but he didn’t argue.
Fearing a stalemate, she offered a compromise. “Maybe we could agree not to talk about the past?”
“Deal.”
With his quick agreement, she frowned, suddenly beset by curiosity. Why was he so eager to bury the past?
But before she postulated a working theory, he launched his next line of questioning.
“Why are you so certain you’d come out on the losing end of any choice I might make between you and your brother?”
“I grew up surrounded by military men,” she said. “I’m fully aware loyalty to the brotherhood is stronger than anything else.”
“The ‘brotherhood’ is strong enough that choices like the one you’re describing don’t have to be made.”
“You think Owen wouldn’t mind?”
Leo recoiled at the mere suggestion. “Hell yes, he’d mind. But the choice I’d be given is to have my balls cut off and either fed to his dog or tossed in the lake. My balls, my choice. See? Brothers.”
“The male species is far more complicated than I realized,” she said dryly. “Nonetheless, it’s a moot point because Owen will never find out about us. I’m not going to tell him, and as part of the terms of our arrangement, I’ll swear you to secrecy, too. Problem. Solved.”
“There is no such thing as sex without the other stuff.”
Her shoulders sagged. “There isn’t?”
“Prue, you have had sex before, haven’t you?”
Okay, screw logic.
“Leo, look. I like you. And I really liked what we did in that hotel room.” Her heart throbbed in her ears. “I promis
e I won’t fall in love with you, or try to extort a marriage proposal out of you, or whatever else it is that you’re so afraid of happening—”
“I am not afraid.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
“I won’t make you own up to your hang-ups—that’s between you and your conscience. But as long as we’re stuck on this island together, why shouldn’t we enjoy each other’s company?”
“You sure you didn’t study to be a lawyer? A prosecutor, maybe?”
His nearness overwhelmed her senses. “We can help each other.”
“I don’t need help.” A muscle ticked along his jawline.
“You do. You’re a man in his prime who hasn’t had sex in four years.”
“I don’t like the turn this conversation has taken.”
“If you want to stop talking, that’s fine by me. We could go inside and….” She tilted her face up to his.
He didn’t budge a centimeter. “We’re not done here yet.”
She bit back a groan of frustration. “What’s left to talk about?”
“You haven’t told me how I would be helping you.”
“I’ve got hang-ups, too. You’d be helping me get over them.”
“What hang-ups?”
She eased back. “Yeah, I’m not going to tell you that.”
One of his eyebrows inched upward. “What if it’s one of my conditions?”
“Not admissible. Hang-ups fall under the no talking about the past clause.”
With a smooth, nearly imperceptible movement, he closed the space between them. “Overruled.”
She swallowed convulsively. “M-my issues are really none of your business.”
His mouth near her ear, his voice dropped into that husky register. “If we’re sleeping together, they sure the hell are.”
“I don’t need help either.” With his scent tormenting her senses, she failed to filter her words before they fell out her mouth. “All I need is sex. A lot of sex. All the various kinds of sex.”
He closed his eyes and a hiss of air wheezed from him. “So, me personally, you have no use for. You just want to use my body?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Just your body.”
“Sounds kinky,” he rasped.