Sex was just sex, and if experience had taught her one thing, it was that men would say anything to get it. They lied and they spewed compliments. They dangled money and they offered modeling contracts. Sometimes they followed through with their promises, sometimes they didn’t. That was the way the world worked.
But this—these five years of friendship, that feeling of comfort when Ben walked into the room, the long nights in Tokyo when only his voice would do—it was rare for her to have something so consistent in her life, and he knew it. That was what hurt the most. He knew it, and he was still willing to jeopardize everything.
“What could you possibly know about pain?” she asked, her voice strained.
“I know enough.” His grip on her neck tightened, and she could feel the pulse in his thumb throbbing against the one in her throat. “Every time I see you, I feel as though the breath has been knocked out of me, and it takes me days to fill my lungs again. Missing you is like missing a part of my soul, and I find myself searching for you even when I know you’re halfway across the world.”
“Don’t, Ben. Please.”
“I have to. The next twenty-three hours or so are mine to command, and I don’t intend to waste them. I can tell by the panicked look in your eyes that there’s a good chance I’m going to ruin everything by being so honest with you, but it’s a risk I have to take.”
“But we work so well as friends. No pressure. No obligations. Why are you determined to wreck that?”
“Because I want you,” he said simply, and dropped his hand. And that was it. Ben saw. Ben wanted. Ben would stop at nothing to get. A man didn’t get to his level of success by age thirty without a stubborn and reckless streak. And a man didn’t get to his level of charm without leaving a trail of broken hearts behind.
Her body flooded with annoyance, and she welcomed it, grateful for all the other emotions it cast aside. “You know the harder you push, the harder I’ll push back, right? I’m not one of those women who only needs a few cheap compliments before she gives in.”
“You thought those compliments were cheap?” He pulled his lips down in a mock frown. “Damn. I paid a lot for them.”
She wouldn’t laugh. She wouldn’t even crack a smile. “And just so you know, if there’s a bottle of champagne and strawberries waiting inside the bedroom, I’m turning around and going home. I don’t care what the napkin says.”
“I’m insulted you think I’d stoop to such obvious tactics as those.” He paused. “But if someone knocks at the door in about five minutes, you should probably ignore it.”
She fell into a peal of mirth, unable to hold it back any longer. It was impossible to take Ben seriously for more than a few minutes at a time—in fact, that was a large part of his appeal. “Please tell me you didn’t actually think that would work.”
“No.” His lips twitched. “In fact, I’d have been disappointed if it did. I like that you’re making me work for this.”
Of course he did. His confession down there in the cab—that the first thing he noticed about her was her lack of googly-eyes—said it all. She was the only woman in the world who hadn’t fallen in a swoon at his feet, and he couldn’t stand it.
In fact, if she threw herself at him right now—if she gave in to stupid overtures like champagne and strawberries and a fancy room—he’d probably lose interest. Bored and disillusioned, he’d realize that nothing she had to offer was any different from what scores of other women had happily handed over in the past.
She stopped in the act of searching the linen cupboard for spare sheets to make up the couch. Of course. That was it. She could protest until she ran out of oxygen and still come nowhere near the amount of hot air Ben used in a single breath. You couldn’t argue with a brick wall.
But you could tear it down.
She closed the linen cupboard without extracting so much as a pillow and settled her back against the door. It wasn’t an aggressive stance, but if Ben had been paying attention, he would have noticed the shift. She was all liquid sensuality over here, the pose one she’d perfected years ago.
“You know, I think it’s been a whole forty-five minutes since you dropped your phone in my drink,” she said, her voice neutral. No need to give everything away all at once. “Aren’t you curious about what’s going on in Singapore right now? What if your secretary is frantically emailing you about an international emergency?”
He turned to her with a lifted finger, wagging it playfully. “Nice try. You can’t make me slip up that easily. She knows to call the hotel if there’s anything catastrophic.”
“Cheater. That renders number two null and void.”
“Untrue. The napkin doesn’t say anything about landlines. Cell phone only. I checked the fine print.”
“Then I’m adding a caveat. A lady’s prerogative.” No way was he derailing her with logic. Logic was for business meetings and contract negotiations. Not a mad-dash effort to preserve the most important relationship in her life.
“I would never deny a lady her prerogative,” Ben said.
That was Livvie’s cue. She moved to the side wall, where a vintage rotary phone sat in all its gold-leaf glory. Leaning over so that the short skirt of her black dress rode high, she yanked on the phone cord connecting them to the rest of the world.
“There.” She straightened and whipped the phone cord in a circle, bandying it like a feather boa. Lowering her voice, she added, “Now we’re all alone up here. Just two people enjoying a private evening together.”
“Yes, we are. It’s nice, isn’t it?” He looked around the room, seemingly satisfied with its painstaking elegance. “Since you nixed the idea of champagne and strawberries, do you want to play checkers?”
Was he missing the part where she was standing here with an enticing pout to her lips? This pout was worth a fortune. This pout was all she had. “Since when does the Montluxe have checkers?”
“It’s what I packed in your satchel. Checkers and a toothbrush. I hope you don’t mind. It has an oscillating head.”
She gave a strangled laugh and let the phone cord slide through her fingers. For a man intent on having sex with her, he was making it incredibly difficult to get to first base.
“What? I thought we might get bored. And oscillating head sounded too good to pass up.”
“If you wanted oscillating head, you could have just asked.” Without waiting for her comment to fully register, she drew close—close enough that he had to take a wide step back, his calves hitting the edge of the couch. The heat emanating off his body was a force of its own, raw with power and sex, and she had to swallow to remind herself that she was in charge here. She was seducing him, forcing him out on this high wire to see how he liked it.
It was dizzying and exhilarating up here, yes, but one misstep meant the loss of everything. Ben was too good a businessman—too aware of the value of calculated risks—not to recognize the folly of pushing forward.
“Checkers is a poor substitute for the other kinds of games we could play,” she cooed, infusing her tone with a throaty purr that would have done a phone-sex operator proud. She ran one hand up the inside of his tie, holding him firmly in place. From there, it would take one push of her hand on his chest to send him sprawling onto the cushions. One hitch of her skirt to straddle him. They were essentially two seconds and a leg lift away from full-on fornication. “I’m starting to think you might be onto something here.”
“Strip checkers, you mean?” he asked, amusement and desire deepening his voice. He had yet to do more than mold his body against hers, letting her lean in, but she could tell he wanted to do more. There was a tense strength to the way his muscles unfolded along hers, as if he could unleash his full potential at any moment. “Checkers role play? No—I’ve got it. You want to paint my body and make it the board.”
“No, Ben. I want us t
o fuck.”
“Wait—what?” An adorably perplexed frown moved across his face, and the tense strength of him snapped. She didn’t give him a chance to use it to push her away, taking advantage of his momentary imbalance to brush her lips against his instead.
It was a slight touch, more of an exchange of breath than a true kiss, but it was all she needed to convince her that every boundary she’d put up against this man was a necessary one. His lips were impossibly soft and easy to fall into, and she found herself straining for more. Her thighs knocked against his as she used him for balance, sparks of sensation springing to life as her bare legs scraped the fabric of his slacks.
Although he had yet to do much more than stand there in a state of stupefaction, she lifted a hand to the nape of his neck, allowing her fingers to curl through his hair. A tiny tug had his mouth angled to let her in, and she wedged her leg firmly between his. At those extra touches—her insistence in their embrace—he finally emitted a groan and began moving his lips in return.
From everything she knew about Ben, she’d assumed he would kiss in an attack on all her senses. Stubborn, arrogant men had a way of doing that—of getting down to business and making their demands—but this was little more than a few nibbles at her lips, a brush along the side of her mouth that left her panting for more. She tried to deepen the kiss, her mouth open and her tongue willing, but he held back, refusing her entry. It took her a moment—a mind-meltingly long moment in which her arms turned to gelatin and her thighs trembled to think of him moving between them—to realize he was savoring it.
This was their first kiss. The first time they’d embraced in anything but a platonic manner. And he was making sure they’d both remember it.
She almost lost it.
At the first brush of his tongue against hers, she knew she’d made a mistake in thinking she could prove anything but what a terrible idea this was. He was too good at this, at kissing her, at making her feel like the most precious commodity he’d ever put his hands on. A jolt of awareness moved through her as his arms wound tighter—once again, with respect and consideration, the actions of a man who intended to take things slow. Even though her dress rode up under his touch, exposing her ass to the draft in the air and making it very easy for him to cup her willing flesh, he didn’t move any farther north or south than propriety dictated.
“Livvie...” he said, and pulled his head back.
Compelled partially by the urge to prevent the heat of desire from waning, and even more determined not to let Ben monopolize the embrace like this, she pulled his head down for another kiss. She didn’t let this one turn careful and slow, refused to take it easy with a moan into his mouth. Her hands moved to his chest, where she memorized the flat plane of his musculature. Fabric bunched under her roving fingertips, and she felt his strength in ways that rocked her entire body.
It was an impression that didn’t abate as she slipped her fingers lower, eliciting a groan and a firm press of his pelvis against hers.
This is all it would take. Forget being a leg lift away from sex on the couch. If Ben continued making those noises—as if her body was beyond all his imaginings, as if his body was beyond his control—she didn’t need his cock inside her. A grind or two was all it would take to send an orgasm rippling through her, destroying what remained of her dignity.
And probably their friendship. And most likely life as she knew it.
“Livvie...stop.”
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” she asked as a pair of strong hands grabbed her around the waist and pushed back, forcing distance between them. Her body pulsed at the sudden rift, desperate to shackle itself to him once more. “You and me. A not-so-seedy hotel room. A night of unbridled passion.”
He laughed, shakily and soft, but a sound still very much his own. Without checking to make sure she could balance on her own two feet—and, for the record, she couldn’t—he lifted his hands away and ran one through his hair. She allowed herself one swoony wobble before taking a necessary step back to stabilize herself.
Holy shit. That had been close. Too close.
“You little brat.” He shook his head, his laugh gaining confidence the farther their bodies grew apart. “You almost had me going there.”
Almost? If the thrumming between her legs was any indication, she was still going. She might not stop for weeks.
“I can see I’m going to have to be more careful around you. You were about five seconds away from being ravished beyond your wildest dreams.”
“So? You’re such a clit-tease, Benjamin Meyers. Five minutes ago, you said you wanted me.”
“I did. I do.”
“You drank tap water and destroyed your cell phone in hopes of luring me into the sack.”
“I’d drink another glass if I had to.”
“Then why did you stop that kiss? It was a good kiss.”
He smiled softly, his gaze catching hers. “It was, wasn’t it?”
There was no need to respond. They both knew it was.
“But I’m afraid it’s not going to work that way.” He pointed in the direction of the satchel on the floor. “Get your hot ass over there and set up the checkers. I’m going to need a minute to compose myself.”
She flicked her gaze down over the crotch of his pants, unable to help herself from admiring the bulge of a cock that had reacted just as much to that kiss as she had. She sighed in contemplation of what was never to be. It was a really nice-looking bulge, the length of him compressed against fashionably formfitting slacks.
“This was your idea,” she said, her lip between her teeth. “I thought you wanted to ruin our friendship with sex.”
“No—you want to ruin our friendship with sex. I’m trying to improve it.”
“With sex.”
“Yes.”
She threw up her hands, exasperated and frustrated and no closer to making him realize the folly of his persistence than she’d been before. “That’s the stupidest logic I’ve ever heard. Admit it—you just like the challenge of not having me. I’m here. I’m willing. I’m wetter than I’ve been in my entire life. And all of a sudden you want nothing to do with me. If your desire for me is so overwhelming, why are things different when I’m the one doing the asking?”
“Because, Livvie.” He swallowed heavily and pointed again in the direction of the checkers, banishing all hope of another kiss like that one. “Unlike you, I mean it.”
Chapter Three
The third item on the list was by far the easiest one.
Ben had spent considerable time going over the pros and cons of each item, knowing he was putting much more thought into them than Livvie ever intended. He could still see the way she’d chewed on the end of the pen as she’d playfully identified what she imagined would be the most difficult tasks for him.
Oh, he wasn’t deluding himself—she didn’t actually care whether or not he did any of these things. She’d made her decisions based solely on what would teach him the strongest lessons in humility.
Cheap food and tap water, to show him how the other 99 percent lived. How her people—the people she’d grown up with—lived. A day without his phone, to demonstrate that he was a workaholic who didn’t have time for real relationships, who couldn’t make room for the people who mattered.
And number three, which was intended, he was sure, to indicate his inability to commit. You must hang out with my model friends without ogling them. Not even a little. As if he could look at another woman when she was in the room. As if the meaningless flings he’d enjoyed over the years were anything but a desperate attempt to distract himself from the feelings between them Livvie refused to acknowledge.
He picked up a piece of bacon from the room service tray and chewed silently, determined not to wake the woman sleeping in the bedroom until it was absolutely necessa
ry. Livvie was a mercurial delight on a full night’s sleep. Cut her beauty rest short by so much as fifteen minutes, and he didn’t know a man alive who would willingly face her glorious wrath.
Except him, of course. He quite enjoyed watching her glorious wrath as it went up in flames, fast and hot and burning at both ends. He enjoyed even more the pile of embers those flames left behind. Buried in there was the real Livvie, singed but not damaged, the phoenix no amount of pyrotechnics could hold down.
Which was why it was so surprising when she waltzed through the bedroom door, looking well rested and poured back into the skimpy black cocktail dress that had graced her elegant form the night before.
“Pour me a cup of that coffee, would you, gorgeous?”
He glanced at his watch and back up at her, his brows raised in a question. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Yes. It’s that horrible time of day when it’s too late for a nightcap but too early for a mimosa. I like to call it the bitching hour.”
He laughed and poured her out a stream of the deep, rich coffee—manna for a man whose body was on so many time zones at once he felt as if he might live forever. Livvie was the only other person he knew who traveled as much as he did, and if the state of preservation of her body was anything to go by, continually crossing the international date line was some kind of secret fountain of youth.
“You’re in a good mood this morning,” he said.
She dropped her arms around his shoulders and leaned in to kiss the side of his neck. Although he tried to fight his reaction, he stiffened as her lightly spiced scent wrapped around him and the press of her lips hit him right along his jawline.
“Oh. You’re still mad.”
“I was never mad,” he countered, passing the coffee off with an admirably stable hand. “But it’s cruel to tease me unless you intend to follow through.”
“Oh, I’ll follow through. Let’s go have sex right now. Any position, any hole. I bet the bed is still warm.”
Model Behavior Page 3