He waited a moment to see if she was going to pack another photo. He wanted to make sure she didn’t pack the one of her with Mason. Not that he cared, personally. But it wouldn’t be good for her to hold on to it. “Ready,” he echoed, gesturing for her to precede him out. Once her back was turned, he reached out and laid the photo of Mason on the dresser, smug, self-satisfied face down.
Chapter Seven
Dax Harris in a hotel room. Finally, Amy had him where she wanted him. The whole proposal thing had been a trip, but it had ended up being surprisingly emotional. She didn’t want emotional. So instead, she was returning to the plan she’d been formulating before her every move was projected onto the Jumbotron at the stadium. It was time to usher in the era of Amy the Single Girl—the phase she’d totally skipped because she’d gotten serious with Mason so young.
Wild. Oat. Time.
Dinner had been amazing, but endless. They’d opted for the tasting menu, which had been composed of seven tiny, perfect courses, each one an explosion of flavor. But seven! It took forever. She had stopped after one glass of wine so he couldn’t accuse her of having impaired judgment this time. He’d followed her lead, so they were both stone-cold sober as he clicked them into their room—Julie and Jason’s room—on the twentieth floor of the Ritz. She’d thrown on her best underwear when they’d stopped at her house after the game. She might even have tossed a condom (or three—hope sprang eternal¸ right?) in her handbag.
The hotel room was a stroke of good luck, actually, because she wasn’t sure it was proper to take a hookup to Cassie’s apartment. Even though Cassie would never know, it just didn’t seem right. So there was nothing stopping her now except a wicked case of nerves. Which she planned to cheerfully ignore. People did this all the time. She had even done it once or twice herself before Mason.
“You should stay the night,” Dax said as he drew aside the curtains and stood against the glass wall, gazing out at the city. “Treat yourself. Hit the spa tomorrow.”
She went to stand beside him. The view was good, but they were spoiled by working in the Lakefront Centre. They had views like this—better than this, since they were higher up—every day. “I just might. But let’s have a nightcap before you leave.”
“Want to head up to the rooftop bar?”
She shook her head. “Let’s stay here.” Bending over, she examined the minibar. “What do you want?” When no answer was forthcoming, she looked over her shoulder to find Dax…staring at her ass. He looked like he wanted to pounce on her. There was no mistaking it. And she hadn’t even been trying yet. Score! Maybe this was going to be easier than she thought. She raised her eyebrows in what she hoped was a provocative fashion and said, “What do you want?” And God help, her, she stuck her ass out a little more.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
He licked his lips, and she stood up. “If I say it depends on what’s on offer, does that make it sound like we’re in a porno?”
She burst out laughing. So much for seductive. She held up a beer. “Cameron’s?” She remembered it was the same kind they’d drunk at the bar on the night of her non-wedding.
“Sure.”
Instead of taking the bottle by the neck, he closed his hand over hers as she passed it to him, and oh my God, whatever was going on inside her ratcheted up a notch, and she suddenly wanted those big, warm hands all over her. Her skin positively itched for it.
So she wasn’t a natural at seduction. Maybe she should just go the direct route. Dax seemed like the kind of guy who would appreciate a straightforward proposition. The only thing stopping her was fear of rejection. He’d made it quite clear that night in his bathroom that it was only circumstances that had him rebuffing her. But what if he’d just been being nice, letting her down easy? Could she stand to be turned down on her first post-jilting attempt?
Well, there was only one way to find out.
Instead of releasing the beer bottle, she tugged it back out of his grasp and set it down on top of the minibar. “On second thought, I don’t think I want a drink after all.”
He didn’t take his eyes from hers. If anything, they sparked with a new intensity. He’d been laughing at the porno joke, but now his face was dead serious. “I guess I should go then.” His voice had taken on a rough, gravelly tone.
She swallowed hard. “I don’t want that, either.”
“What do you want, then?”
“I want you to—”
“Remember what I said at the bar,” he interrupted gruffly. It wasn’t a question, but a command.
She nodded, mustering all her courage. She hadn’t been able to stop remembering. “Oh, I remember,” she whispered. “You don’t make love—”
“I mean it, Amy. I don’t do happily ever after.”
“No,” she said, forcing her voice to project, hoping that it would convey a confidence she didn’t feel. “You fuck. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”
He was on her then, and the answering spike of lust in her body—mixed with a big dose of relief—nearly made her knees buckle. Those hands. His hands were everywhere all at once, and it was as good as she had imagined. He ran them up and down her sides, bringing little sparks of electricity with them. Then they came up to frame her face as he kissed her, hard and deep, without any prelude. She sagged against him, and he caught her and walked her backward until the backs of her legs hit the bed. “This dress zips up the back,” she breathed against his mouth as she collapsed on the bed.
His hands kept moving—they were sliding up her bare thighs now, but he stopped kissing her and stared at her, eyes dark. “Then you’d better turn over,” he growled, and she gasped at the answering rush of moisture the command summoned from between her legs. She obeyed, and the sound of the zipper coming down was followed by cool air on her heated skin. “Oh!” she exclaimed as his tongue made contact with her lower back and slid all the way up her spine, tracing the path of the zipper in reverse. His mouth was soft and warm, but it might as well have been made of flame for what it did to her. Working her arms out of the dress, she writhed under him, and she wasn’t sure if her aim was to get away or to get…more. He was kissing his way back down now, and he tapped her hips, signaling her to lift them so he could pull the dress the rest of the way off.
“Turn back over,” he whispered, as he unfastened her bra clasp. “Let me see you.” She paused for a moment, went still. His last girlfriend had literally been a model. What if she didn’t measure up? And she was faking all this bravado, after all. Would he be able to tell?
He had knelt up on the bed to make room for her to sit up, but she when she didn’t move, he lay down beside her, on his side while she remained on her stomach. She expected him to exhort her to move, but instead he buried his nose in her neck. A deep inhale, and then on an exhale, he whispered, “Delicious Strawberry Girl. You’re beautiful, you know that?”
She hitched a breath in and turned to face him so she was lying on her side, too. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if he really believed what he’d just said, and seeing her was too much. She reached a hand out and stroked his chest, wishing he would take off his shirt. A renegade thought rose in her mind. Why not just tell him to take it off? “I…” Her voice came out all scratchy and quiet, so she cleared her throat and started again. “I want to see you, too.”
He shot her a grin and was up off the bed so fast it might as well have been made of hot coals. He made quick work of the buttons and—oh my God, he was shucking off his pants, too. She hadn’t even thought that far ahead. He had either grabbed his underwear in the same pass or he wasn’t wearing any because all of a sudden there he was. All of him. All the canoeing and kayaking had given him a surfer’s body, all lean muscle and long lines. She let her eyes fall from his sculpted chest down taut abs and traced the smattering of dark hair that ran from his waist all the way down to his penis. His fully erect penis. Had she done that? It looked almost painful. She felt an absurd rush
of pride at the thought and was hit at the same time with an almost overwhelming desire to climb on top of him. So she sat up. See? That wasn’t so hard.
She had hardly a moment to savor her newfound boldness before he sank to his knees and began kissing her inner thighs. “Oh my God.” Had she said that out loud? She feared she must have because he paused for a moment in his ministrations and shot her a wicked look before returning to his mission. She couldn’t get her breath under control as he slid his lips up, up. When they hit the edge of her panties—she’d worn a crazy bright purple silk pair even though they clashed with the green dress—he stuck a finger under the fabric. “These,” he said, lifting the elasticized edge and letting it snap back against her skin, “are evil.” She didn’t know if he meant he didn’t like them or he did like them.
It was a moot point when he shoved them down to her knees and pressed his face against her center. She could feel her face heat up and her pulse skitter out of control as he took another deep breath.
The sensation of his exhale against her sensitive flesh was like a shove. If she’d been turned on before, she was teetering now, on the edge of a cliff. How could it be this easy? She’d been prepared to throw herself into their coupling, to work hard. How did he just…do that?
He let his tongue slide against her, groaning his pleasure, and she had to bear down to stop the wave that was coming at her. She had to push it away. It couldn’t be this simple. He couldn’t be allowed to just do this.
“Hey, hey, sweetheart.”
A hand flew to her mouth. Apparently she hadn’t just pushed her oncoming orgasm away, she’d pushed Dax away. Oh my God, and with some force, too, judging by the way he was sitting back on his heels a good two feet from her holding up his hands like she had a gun.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said, mortification rushing in to fill the empty space where desire had been just moments ago.
“It’s okay.” He levered himself up and started pulling on his boxers.
She opened her mouth to protest and surprised herself by bursting into tears. Why did she have to keep doing that in front of him?
He’d been just starting to put his pants back on, but he abandoned the task, walked over to the closet and produced a big white robe. As he held it open, she stepped into it gratefully, her tears leaving as quickly as they had arrived. It seemed now almost as if someone else had taken over her body for a brief time. Someone who was prone to overreaction and hysterics. Gah, he was going to think she was a total amateur. “I’m really sorry,” she said again, looking at the floor, too flooded with shame to meet his eyes. “I don’t know what happened.”
He tipped her chin up and, amazingly, smiled at her. “I do. Mason did a number on you. You’re not ready—you got spooked.” The smile became a grin. “Unless I really am that bad. I have to say, I’ve never had a woman burst into tears before.”
The fact that he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it was a huge relief. She sat on the bed and scrambled back against the headboard. Now that the panic was subsiding, regret was beginning to creep in. All that sensation, barreling down on her. She didn’t have an orgasm every time with Mason, and when she did achieve one, it was usually the result of some intervention on her part. Not that there was anything wrong with that, just that she was accustomed to pleasure being…a lot of work. Getting there so quickly, with so much intensity, had felt like driving too fast on a slippery road. Like he would see something about her she wasn’t ready to show—something she hadn’t even seen herself.
But now, looking at Dax stretched out beside her, the golden light of a bedside lamp painting the gorgeous planes of his torso, she was berating herself for not just…faking it in reverse. She almost laughed then, because that obviously wasn’t the right terminology. But God knew, she’d faked it enough with Mason. Well, not faked it exactly, but allowed him to assume that she had…enjoyed herself. The point was, if she could pretend to have an orgasm, why couldn’t she actually have one and pretend that it was a normal thing that people did, that it was happening to her but not, like, vanquishing her soul?
The worst part? She hadn’t even touched Dax. She’d wanted to—had planned to all evening with great anticipation. His hands had been all over her, but she’d been too busy with the whole soul-vanquishing thing to think straight.
Yes, she’d had Dax Harris in her sights, and she’d completely blown it.
…
“Will you quit it?” Dax said to Amy, wishing he could just turn on the TV and find something to watch to take his mind off the worst case of blue balls in the history of the universe. She was trying to apologize again, but he wasn’t having it. “Look, there’s no need to be sorry,” he said.
He was sorry, though. Not that they’d called a halt to the proceedings. Well, okay, he was sorry about that. But he wasn’t into pushing people into doing things that were clearly not good for them, even if they didn’t realize it. That was exactly why he’d checked himself that first night on the ferry. That made two times now that they’d gone from sixty to zero in a heartbeat. He was beginning to see something about Amy, and that was what made him sorry. All these years of bickering with her, he’d thought she was such a ballbuster. She’d brazened her way through any number of arguments and confrontations with him, and he hadn’t been very nice to her. He’d had no idea she was actually kind of fragile. It wasn’t that she lacked confidence, at least not professionally. It was just that she had always seemed so sure of herself personally, too, like she, with her stable, long-term relationship and her old-money family, was so much more grown up than the rest of them. And then of course there was the part where she was so wound up she couldn’t let herself orgasm even when she was on the very brink. In the midst of an encounter that she had initiated, at that.
Was it possible that he’d been wrong about Amy Morrison all these years?
“It’s just that I know you could be somewhere else right now, probably having a lot more—”
“If I hear one more word of apology or regret out of your mouth, I swear to God…” He trailed off, unsure how to finish the threat. The image that sprang to mind was covering her mouth with his own until she couldn’t talk anymore, but, yeah…that wasn’t happening. He grabbed the remote then and clicked on the TV. Screw it. He didn’t quite feel like he could abandon her yet, so why the hell not some insipid reality show to take the edge off?
“Real Housewives of Atlanta reruns? Really?” She was giving him the side-eye.
“Really.” He wasn’t watching the show, though. He was trying to figure out how long he had to stay. He was pretty good with post-sex etiquette, but post-not-sex-leave-the-lady-sobbing etiquette, not so much. Clearly, the best thing in this whole situation was just to back way the fuck away from Amy. She obviously needed to sort out her shit without him pawing at her—or bickering with her. It was time for a whole new era in Amy-Dax relations: polite but distant. Colleagues. Not unfriendly colleagues—no need to freeze her out after all they’d been through—but no more baseball games. No more making out on Jumbotrons. None of it. He sighed, relieved at having settled on a course of action.
Which was why, after the show, as he pulled on the rest of his clothes, his only explanation for what came out of his mouth was that aliens must have taken control of his body. “You should come to the island on Saturday. We’ll go paddleboarding or canoeing—whatever you want.”
What? The Fuck?
Then hell if her face didn’t light up like a little kid on Christmas. “I’d love that.” Then she smiled sheepishly and her cheeks turned pink as she said, “And maybe I can, um, make this up to you.” She waved her hand back and forth between them in a way that was hard not to find endearing.
“Nope,” he said. It was the aliens talking again. It must be, because the woman who’d turned his dick harder than it had ever been before—it was still protesting its abrupt dismissal—was basically propositioning him, and he was declining. “You, Ms. Morrison, do not need a
lover. You need a friend.”
As soon as he said it, he realized how true it was. She was tight with Cassie, but Cassie was new to the scene. And her maid of honor had been Mason’s sister. If she was anything like him, she was probably too busy working to have much fun.
She blinked a few times. It was like she was trying to decide if she should be offended. But then a slow smile began to blossom. “You know what? I do need friends. Most of mine are couple friends I had with Mason.” She hopped off the bed, and for a moment he just stared at her. She was such a strange mix of qualities that should be contradictory. Was this the same woman who’d freaked out not thirty minutes ago? She stooped to pick up her clothing. “But don’t we hate each other?”
He just shrugged and shot her a wink, neither confirming nor denying. “Hey, you gotta start somewhere. Doesn’t sound like you’re in a position to be choosy.”
Grinning, she dropped the robe and began shimmying back into her dress. He wanted to shake his fist at the heavens at the injustice of it all. He would never see Amy Morrison naked again.
The thought was a lot more disappointing than he would have liked.
Chapter Eight
On the ferry over to Dax’s, Amy tried to reconcile herself to the idea of being friends with him. She had well and truly blown it on the sex front. “Ha!” she laughed as the wind whipped her hair. Maybe she should say that she hadn’t blown it—that was part of the problem. Regardless, two strikes, and she was out. Life wasn’t like baseball. A girl wasn’t automatically entitled to a third swing. Dax had quite reasonably decided that two aborted attempts to get it on were enough, and now he didn’t want her. There was no way to argue with that and retain her dignity. Gah, she couldn’t pull off the whole monogamy-for-life wedding thing, but apparently she also couldn’t pull off no-strings-attached sex, either. You couldn’t make someone want you for a wife, fine, but it seemed she couldn’t even make someone want her for a hookup.
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