“Ah, that makes sense.” I had never even considered that, because the thought of April and Sam together was unbelievable.
“I don’t know if it’s working, but I’ve been slowly ingratiating myself to him and dropping hints about you.” She sat on her bed and held her glass between her thighs. Her head hung forward, hair shielding her face. “Coming on this cruise was my idea. I didn’t want to let you down.”
“Oh, April. You should know me better than that. I whine when things don’t go my way, sure. But I never blame you or anyone else for my shortcomings.”
“This time, though, you could have blamed me.”
“I don’t feel that way.” I got up and made myself another drink. “I am giving you permission to stop this charade immediately.”
“I don’t know if I can. How can I get out of this without risking my job?”
“You could tell him you wanted to try something new, but that you aren’t that into him after all.”
“He’ll totally fire me.” She stood up and started to pace, even though there wasn’t much room for it.
“What’s the alternative? Marry him? Anyway, he can get in big trouble for firing you because you won’t have sex with him. I don’t know if he’d risk that.”
She yanked her suitcase onto her bed and pulled out a hot pink bandage dress. “Let’s just go out and have some fun. I’ll figure out what to do with him tomorrow. Are you really wearing leather?”
I looked down at my outfit. I’d packed the leather pants because I got a great deal on them at Loehman’s Plaza the week before the cruise and I couldn’t leave them behind. Since they’d taken up extra space in my luggage, I had to find an excuse to wear them. Tonight was that excuse.
April turned her back to me and got dressed. “I can tolerate him for one more night.”
“You don’t have to do this. In fact, I’d prefer you didn’t. The whole thing makes me feel dirty.”
“I’m doing it.” She finished getting ready and we hurried out. “If you combine a dark club with copious amounts of alcohol, Sam will practically be a hunk.”
“I think it would take a lot more than that,” I said.
Max and Sam were waiting outside the entrance of the ship’s adults-only club.
Max was dressed in dark pants, probably Dockers, and a black button-down shirt. He looked effortlessly handsome. Then I noticed Sam and my face fell. He was wearing a full suit and, without looking at her, I desperately hoped that April would be able to refrain from laughing. Sure, he was trying too hard, but he was trying.
Sam hurried forward. “Nice to see you both. April, I’m so glad you could make it.”
April offered him her hand. “Thanks, Sam. Let’s do this.”
We followed them into the club. We found a round table close to the dance floor and immediately marked it as our territory. The four of us sat down, April subtly moving her chair so that it looked as though she’d come with Max and I rather than as Sam’s date. I pushed the leg of her chair with my foot, and, with a scowl, she shifted back towards Sam.
Sam was watching April expectantly. “Do you want to dan—”
“How about a drink?” April asked before he could finish.
“Sure! What’ll you have?”
“Long Island Iced Tea.”
“That’s a strong drink for a young lady,” Sam said, chuckling jovially.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Long Island Iced Tea it is!”
“Let’s dance,” Max said, pulling out my chair and dragging me away from the oh-so-happy couple.
The touch of Max’s hand on my stomach made me tingle and I let him lead me wherever he pleased. I started to dance with him, brightly colored lights twirling above. “I think I’m having an eighties flashback.”
“You’re too young to have been going to clubs during the eighties.”
“I’ve seen a lot of movies.”
We continued to dance. The dance floor was tiny and packed with people. I was jostled into Max any number of times, frequently forcing me to hold on to his waist to prevent myself from tumbling over. “Stop smiling,” I finally said.
“Why? I’m having a good time. Aren’t you?”
“Of course. I love being a human ping-pong ball.”
He tweaked my nose. “You’re the cutest ping-pong ball I’ve ever played with.”
“Thanks.”
He brushed a strand of hair from my forehead. “You don’t say much when you’re dancing. Is it too hard to think and move at the same time?”
“Very funny.” I shook my hips to a Daniel Bedingfield song, mouthing the words I knew. I met Max’s gaze again. “Little did you know, I was thinking about you.”
His expression bemused, he replied, “Then don’t let me keep you from your fantasies. Please continue.”
April danced past with Sam, grinning at me when he wasn’t looking.
“I’m thirsty,” I spit out, trying to hide from April’s evil eye. “Want to go to the bar?”
“Sure.”
We navigated the crowd and when we reached the bar, I ordered a strawberry margarita. I leaned against a barstool. “I love this music.”
He nodded noncommittally.
“I mean, I know it’s synthesized and everything, but it’s still fun to listen to, don’t you think?”
“It’s all right.”
While Max nursed a Guinness, I took long swigs of my margarita. “It’s funny how this doesn’t taste like alcohol at all.”
“That’s how you get into trouble,” he said, watching my drink slowly disappear. “Be careful not to go past your limit.”
“What’s my limit?” I asked.
He shrugged. “You tell me.”
“The sky’s the limit!” I squeezed his muscular forearm. “Let’s have a good time, okay?”
Max agreed—somewhat reluctantly—and he was a man of his word. We had a great time. I was happy to finally be sharing an evening with Max without obsessing about what it meant, what his motivations were, and whether or not I was leading him on.
And after my fifth drink, I was feeling even happier. Thrilled with the world. I danced with Max, no longer feeling claustrophobic on the small dance floor. “I love this song!”
“Sounds exactly like the one that came before it.” He was a surprisingly good dancer. He didn’t overdo it or anything, but he kept to the beat and didn’t embarrass me.
I tumbled toward him. “Is the floor a little slippery?”
“No.”
I sunk into his arms. “Then why is it so hard to stay on my feet?”
He shrugged, hooking my arms around his warm neck. “My lure is irresistible to you.”
My head on his shoulder, I inhaled the raw scent of him. “You smell good,” I mumbled, knowing how drunk I sounded. He did smell good, though. Absolutely delicious.
“Thanks.”
And his voice! The way it resonated through my entire body sent shivers down my spine, and made me want to stretch my body languorously like a cat in a beam of sunlight. “Your voice... it’s so deep.”
He held me at arm’s length. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked.
“Never better.” I danced a little, then looked towards the bar. “Where did April go?”
“She’s still keeping Sam occupied.”
“Thank God!”
He smiled at me.
I smiled back. Max was such a nice guy. Why hadn’t I noticed it before?
“I think it’s time to go.”
“One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor!”
Max put his arm around my shoulders. “I’m going to take you down to your room, okay?”
“And what are you going to do to me when we get there?” I responded huskily.
“Put you to bed.”
“Alone?” I swayed against him as he ushered me off the dance floor. I smiled to a middle-aged guy sitting at the bar. He smiled back. Everyone on this cruise was so f
riendly!
“Are you saying you don’t want to be alone?”
I laughed, then wondered what I was laughing at. “Alone? I never want to be alone.”
“You won’t be.” He said it with such conviction that I had to wonder what authority he had over my future.
“How can you promise that?” I finally asked, after another wave of nausea. “I swayed toward the elevator doors. “Are we in rough waters? I’m feeling seasick.”
“You’re stronger than you think.” Max held me, probably thinking it would help me to stay on my feet. If only he knew how his innocent contact made every bone in my body turn to jelly.
The elevator finally opened up to reveal two young, college-aged girls in skimpy club clothes. We walked inside—or perhaps Max walked and I was dragged. The memory is foggy. The two girls eyed Max without any concern that he might be with me.
One of them was wearing a purple sequined halter-top and body glitter on every inch of her exposed skin. She was wearing low-rise, skinny jeans and exposing most of her midsection. Her stomach was completely flat and she had a tiny, perfectly-formed bellybutton. She smiled while fingering the neckline of her barely-there top.
I smiled back at her. “You have an amazing body. It’s like perfect.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“I mean, seriously. Your body makes me want to switch teams. Actually, are you busy later?”
Max was doubled over laughing behind me. He put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s had a little too much to drink. Just ignore her.”
Suddenly I felt too dizzy to deny I was drunk. The two girls ascended before my eyes as though they were on a separate, but parallel, elevator. I felt Max’s hands in my armpits and I hoped I wasn’t sweaty. Why was I staring at the row of recessed lights in the ceiling?
With a jolt, the elevator stopped and I heard movement. I heard some quiet laughter, sounding like it was coming from miles away, then the sound of elevator doors closing.
Max was still laughing. He hefted me back onto my feet. “We’re almost there.”
Upright again, I saw that the two girls were missing. Good riddance. “What was I saying before?”
“That you don’t want to be alone.” He hooked his arm around my waist. “Nobody does.”
“My fifteen-year plan requires a man. I should have come up with a plan that would work regardless of my luck in love.” I gazed down at my feet and got distracted by my shoes.
“Why a man?”
“You mean I should try to find a woman? Those chicks in the elevator were pretty hot—”
“That’s not what I meant. I was asking why your plan requires a man.” Max moved me through the open elevator doors, my first indication that we’d reached my floor.
“Because one day I want to be married and have a baby,” I whispered as though it were a shameful secret. I let Max do most of the work involved in walking to my room. I saw marked stateroom doors float by and wondered which one was mine.
“There are always sperm donors.”
“Are you volunteering?”
“Nope. If I bring a child into this world, I’m sticking around.” He leaned me against a wall and wrestled me for my purse. I had hooked it around my head so that it crisscrossed on my chest. When he finally retrieved it, he rooted through it without even hesitating.
I watched him, outraged. The effort it would take to tell him to stop seemed monumental at that moment. “What are you looking for?”
He pulled out my room key and smiled. “Here it is.”
I nodded. Duh.
Max slid the key card through the reader thingy and the little red light flashed green. He pushed open the door, looked at me, then frowned. “Can you manage?”
“Manage what?” I asked, as I slid down the wall.
“Shit.” He lifted me up again, my ever-faithful angel.
I flopped into his arms and stared at his feet. One foot was holding open the heavy stateroom door, while the other was firmly planted between my leather-clad legs. Slowly, he managed to bring his legs together without losing me along the way. He carried me into the darkened room, the door swinging shut behind him.
Max turned on the lamp and then laid me down gently on top of the fully-made bed. He gazed at me while shaking his head.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t leave you like this.”
Woozy and confused, I looked down at my own body. I was wearing black leather from head to toe. It was my ‘Jennifer Garner in Daredevil’ look and I thought I knew how to work it. “What’s wrong?”
“You’ll never be able to sleep like that.” He sighed. “Would it bother you if I undressed you? As long as you’re wearing underwear, which is like being in a bikini, and I’ve seen you in a bikini many times this week.”
I nodded. His rationalization sounded pretty good to me. And now that he’d mentioned it, I did feel pretty restrained in all this leather. Leather pajamas were unpopular for a very good reason.
Besides, I didn’t want him to leave.
The light hit Max from behind, reflecting through strands of his dark hair. “What do you think?”
God, he looked good. “Let’s lose the clothing.”
Max bent over me, giving me another pleasing whiff of his cologne. He gingerly touched my waist, not realizing that a light touch from him had more of an effect on me than a rough slap would from anyone else. He stared down at me, moving his hands up the sides of my body. He exhaled loudly. “Doesn’t this thing have a zipper?”
Secretly amused, I shook my head. “Nope. It has hook and eye closures all down here,” I said, using my finger to draw a line between my breasts.
He gulped. “And you’re wearing a... something under there, right?”
Duh. I wasn’t Pamela Andersen. “Yes, Max.”
His gaze locked with mine for an indeterminate amount of time before it returned to my chest. “You sure this is okay?”
I squirmed about uncomfortably. “I could never fall asleep in this stuff.”
“You seem to be getting better. Maybe you could do it—”
“If I move again, it will be toward the bathroom.”
He nodded. He touched me with his large hands, tucking his fingers underneath the top of the corset. Then he unhooked the first row.
I exhaled happily. “I feel better already.”
Max smiled and went for the next one. Slowly, his thick fingers trailing across my skin, he undid the hooks on the top. He was so careful not to touch me anywhere vital.
I shivered a couple of times, in spite of my best efforts to remain calm. I remembered the way his hands had felt on my back. I’d thought they were magic hands then, not knowing that they’d belonged to him. My workplace had always been the home of the mundane, not anything magical.
When he got to my belly button, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the tickling, pleasurable touch of his hands. Then I felt the leather fall away, and the cool air in the stateroom caused goosebumps to spring up on my stomach.
“All done,” he whispered.
I opened my eyes and raised my head a little to look at myself. I didn’t realize until then that I was still teetering on the edge of consciousness and a dizzy spell made me immediately drop my head back onto the pillow. “What about the pants?”
He chuckled, his tone so deep that it resonated through my entire body. “I’ll take care of it. Do they have a zipper or do they button all the way down the back?”
I laughed languorously. “They have a zipper, but they’re a little bit of a tight fit. You might have to fight my thighs for them.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll win.”
I had no doubt that he would. This time, when I felt his hands touch my waist, I didn’t suppress the reflexes that threatened to consume me. I arched my back, delighting in the feel of him trying to hold me down.
Without a word, he unzipped the pants and started to shift them down my hips. Every new inch that he exposed tingled with the prid
e of discovery. I moaned softly behind closed lips, begging him to slow down and hurry up at the same time.
“You have a beautiful body, Kate.” His thumb pressed into my lower thigh and I trembled, making me decide that any place Max touched me became an erogenous zone.
“Maybe you’d like to show me yours.”
He made that sexy, rumbling sound again, originating from the back of his throat. “Is that what you want?”
“I’ve been thinking about it all night.”
He finished slipping off my leather pants and I heard them drop to the floor with a heavy clunk. He sat on the edge of the bed, his weight causing me to roll toward his hard body. “Kate,” he said, caressing the hollow between my jaw and neck, “I should probably go.”
“I don’t want you to go,” I gushed in an exhalation of breath. I started to sit up again, to touch him, to wrap my arms around his body. My head ached with each broken movement.
“I don’t know,” he said, turning to gaze at me. He took in my black lace thong and matching bra, probably not as close to a bikini as he’d expected. “You might have a different answer in the morning.”
I pulled him down onto the bed beside me and cuddled into his muscular arms. “I need you. I’m sorry if I talked about my family problems too much, but I really do want to be with you regardless of all that.”
He pulled me harder against his chest, so that I could feel every breath. “The last thing you are is messed up.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I wouldn’t want to make love to you if you were.” His eyes burned with conviction.
If anyone else had spoken those words, I would have considered it a line and either shoved them away or ignored it as meaningless pillow talk. Max was different. Every word he’d ever spoken to me had been honest. I kissed the scraggly stubble growing on his square jaw. “How do you see right through me?”
“It’s easier than you think.” He returned my kiss, rubbing his lips lightly against my skin, starting from my cheek and ending at my mouth. Once there, he quickly deepened it, urgency in his every move, as though I might suddenly change my mind.
I reached down for the waistband of his pants, wanting him to feel as unfettered as me—in body and in soul. I struggled with the loops and buttons and zippers while he nibbled at my neck. When my hand brushed against the evidence of his arousal, he groaned in my ear.
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