by Serena Bell
He withdrew carefully and went to the bathroom. When he came back, he settled himself beside her, one arm and one leg thrown over her, warming her. She glowed from head to toe, bright, boneless, dopey with pleasure.
Sunlight streamed into the room around the edges of the gauzy curtains, and she basked in the warmth pouring off his body, his dazed smile, the slow travel of his fingertips over her arm and shoulder.
At the same time, she was aware of a countdown that had started in her own head. She’d seen it before with him, so many times. So many women in college, so many women in New York. At first she’d rooted for him to succeed, to change his ways. This one’s the one, she’d think. Later she’d place bets with herself on how quickly the sand would sift through the hourglass. A day? A week? Two?
And now she was the one on the clock, the one whose timer was slowly doling out her share. Steady, and relentless, ticking down the hours, the minutes, the seconds.
Measuring the time before Brett moved on.
12
HE WANTED MORE. He’d never wanted more until now. Never. That was the reason he was, as Elisa put it, a twenty-four-hour man. He worked himself into a lather wanting to have sex with a woman, but once it was over, it was over. He tried his best not to be a jerk about it. He didn’t sneak out before dawn or anything like that, but the previous urgency would always be gone. He couldn’t get it back. He could perform again, if she requested his services, but he couldn’t care. It didn’t matter, one way or another to him. All the fun, all that hot internal pressure, had fled.
If anything, the heat and longing was worse now. She was dozing in his arms, her breath buzzy, just shy of a snore, and he wanted more of her. He looked at the clock. Ten, maybe fifteen, minutes had elapsed since he had pulled out of her and tossed the condom, but he was already thinking about what he wanted to do to her next. Take his time, this round, going down on her. Lick all her folds and spend a good long while just lavishing affection on her clit. She was sweet. He’d dip his tongue into her, gathering her sweetness and giving it back to her. And when she was ready again—tipping her hips and making those little half purr, half moan noises that were his new “on” switch—he’d slide inside her and build her slowly up to another one of those screaming climaxes.
She shifted against him, her thigh pressing his erection. “Wake up,” he whispered.
She opened her eyes.
“Could you do that again?” he murmured close to her ear.
“Are you kidding?” She rolled and pressed the length of her body against his. She was much softer than he had imagined. The contradiction between her leanness and strength, and her softness was part of what had undone him. “Any time.”
He traced her cheekbone with his fingertip. “I want to show you that I can be more thorough.”
She smiled, and the familiarity of that smile, the sense of coming back to something long lost, made his heart hurt. “Okay. That sounds good. Do I just lie back and enjoy?”
He tucked a few kisses into the crook of her neck, and she moaned.
“You don’t seem like the kind of girl who is contented to lie back and enjoy. You seem like the participatory sort.”
Her expression grew very serious. “Is that okay? I know you said not to think about the other women, but I’ve never been with anyone who’s been with as many women as you have—at least not knowingly—and it’s really hard to not feel like I’m being compared.”
“You are being compared. And you’re winning.” Now he was drawing concentric circles on one breast, spiraling his way in toward her upright nipple.
She squinted one eye at him. “But you have a golden tongue, which makes it hard to believe it when you say stuff like that.”
He halted his drawing project. “Believe it.”
She shook her head.
“No. Really.” He wanted to tell her what he’d been thinking, about how he never wanted repeats but now he did. He could have sex with her for hours. All day long. Day after day.
Not very romantic, though, when he imagined saying it out loud. And meanwhile she was looking at him and shaking her head. Laughing.
I want more. I can’t get enough. I can’t get enough of you.
Where was the golden tongue when he really needed it? Frozen. It worked just fine when he didn’t mean it, but now it wouldn’t come to his aid.
She stopped laughing and looked at him with those tawny brown eyes, her lips slightly parted. She licked them, and he felt a jolt, an outrageous surge of desire for her. He began to kiss her, much more tenderly this time than he had earlier. Nipping and nibbling, soothing with his tongue, fitting himself properly to her. The kisses fell into a rhythm, long periods of savoring, pulling back, beginning again, and then she was tasting him, plunging her tongue deep into his mouth in a way that made him crazy with need. He had her pinned, and it was all he could do to hold off from driving into her; he wanted so badly to slake his desperation. But he held himself in check and let the insanity build.
The problem was, he didn’t want to let go of her mouth to fulfill his plan of sliding down her body. He couldn’t let go of her mouth. It was his anchor. So she got there first. She slid herself down, her mouth burning the length of his torso until she stopped and looked up at him, questioningly, and he said, “Oh, Jesus, yes, please,” and she took the head of his cock in her mouth, her tongue wrapping around him, finding all the little crevices and tender spots, and then—how was it possible that she had taken him that deeply? As she herself liked to point out, he had been with a lot of women, and he was pretty sure that no one’s lips had ever been that far down his cock. And she was moving up and down on him, too, letting out little moans of what sounded like unfeigned enjoyment. He made himself hold as still as possible, not wanting to gag her or force himself on her, but she showed no signs of anxiety or concern, and he could feel the back of her throat against the tip of his cock. If she kept it up, he was going to come.
“Get back up here,” he said. Well, he tried to say it. He couldn’t find his breath, and he wasn’t sure that what came out of his mouth was actually English.
She shook her head. He could feel her tongue along the underside of his cock, slick and strong, and driving him closer and closer to the edge.
“I want to be inside you.” The words came out stammered and broken.
She let him go, but only long enough to say, “Tough luck.” And then she was down on him again, her hands clutching convulsively at his ass, pulling him deeper, and aside from the pure perfect sensation of it, her complete self-assurance and raw sexiness undid him. The tension built from everywhere in his body and concentrated itself where her tongue stroked him, and he came in her mouth with a long cry that was halfway between triumph and desperation.
She swallowed every drop and then crawled back up the length of him, dropped her head on his chest and said, “Ha!”
“Not fair,” he said, when he could talk.
She shrugged, her shoulder moving against his sweaty chest. “I wanted to show you I could be more thorough.” She sounded dead serious, but when she lifted her face, he could see that she was laughing. He wrapped his arms around her and dragged her back down.
I can’t get enough of you.
But the words wouldn’t come.
* * *
SHE STOOD LOOKING at herself in the mirror in Brett’s bathroom. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks were pink, and her mouth was red and swollen. She touched her puffy lower lip, remembering the feel of Brett’s teeth on it with a shiver.
I shouldn’t have done that.
Not that it hadn’t felt good. Not that it hadn’t satisfied some deep, pent-up need. But it had unleashed something, a bottomless pit of longing. She wanted to go back into the main room, wrap her fingers around his muscled arms and beg him to be hers.
Now that she
’d made love to him, she knew it wasn’t enough. All those years, when they’d been friends in college and afterward, some part of her must have known that once she got started, she’d never be able to stop. That was why she hadn’t let anything happen between them. That was why she had run away, years ago, when the incident with Julie had given her a reason to.
She washed her face slowly with warm water and a washcloth, reveling in the gentle scrape of terry over her hypersensitive skin. She wanted a shower, badly, but she knew if she ran the shower, he’d want to come in with her, and she wasn’t sure she could take more. More nakedness, more rawness, more need.
She wanted to leave before he could peel back her additional layers or expose her still-delicate emotions.
She came out of the bathroom to find him sleeping on his belly on the bed, his arms and legs sprawled out. She couldn’t help smiling. The sight of him like that clenched at her heart. She got dressed, never taking her eyes off him, praying that he would stay asleep.
She slipped out of the room without waking him, tugging the door silently shut behind her. Before she could take her hand off the knob, another door opened several rooms down, and Morrow stepped out. He saw her and waved, an economical gesture that went with the way he talked. There was nowhere to go. She had to continue down the hall in that direction and hope he didn’t put two and two together or want to make anything of it. She also had to hope that she and Brett hadn’t made enough noise to carry down the hall and that Morrow hadn’t come knocking at any point during their time together. Would he have stood outside the door, listening?
She was probably being paranoid. “Hi, Morrow,” she said, as casually as she could, hoping she didn’t look and smell like sex. She’d tied her hair back and cleaned herself up, but she felt permanently altered by what had passed between her and Brett, as if anyone looking at her could see what had happened and how she’d changed.
“Elisa.” A tight nod. “Find Celine?”
That made her realize she had to tell Morrow that the weekend was officially over. “No. Well. Her publicity guru has taken over. The video’s off. She’s romantically interested in that guy, the paparazzo she was singing with.”
Morrow’s normally pleasant face formed itself into a sneer. Freelance videographer was clearly, to his mind, a higher life form than paparazzo.
“Anyway, so we’re not making the video. I’ll pay you for your time, whatever percentage of the total you think is fair.”
He frowned at that.
Her heart kicked up. “I assume you’re comfortable killing it? Name your price.”
The frown eased. “Will do. Need to think a bit.”
“Okay, then. That’s good. Thanks, and I’m sorry about this.”
He shrugged, as if to say, Celebs—what can you do?
She put out her hand, and he shook it. They walked together to the elevator and rode down together. She felt like an entire lifetime had elapsed since she’d ridden the elevator up a couple of hours ago.
When she got back to her room, there was no sign of Celine, and she had to remind herself that it wasn’t her problem.
She took a scalding hot shower, letting the water run for a long time after she’d finished shampooing her hair and soaping her body to remove all traces of her lapse in judgment.
But of course, she couldn’t make it go away, just as she couldn’t stop wanting to run back to his room and throw herself into bed with him, beg him for more time, more closeness, more commitment. All she could do was wash away the physical traces of their lovemaking, get this damn weekend over with, and hope she could return to New York and put her life back together in some way that made sense.
The good news was, the way she felt about Brett had erased nearly all her emotions about the fate of Rendezvous.
The bad news was, she had no idea what was going to erase her emotions about Brett.
13
SHE HAD JUST dried off and gotten dressed when she heard a knock on the door. It was Brett.
He glared at her. “You left!”
“I needed some space.”
His face softened into hurt. He was not used to being left. She wondered if he’d ever woken up to find a woman gone. She was not proud to be the first, but there was a small savage part of her that was glad she’d left before he could.
She pushed the door open wider to let him in, then pulled it shut behind him.
He was still wearing the same clothes, as if he’d simply pulled them on and come to find her. “Why?”
How was she supposed to answer that? Because you can’t give me what I want, and I need to stop wanting you to.
How would he answer, if their situations were reversed? If she came to him, demanding to know why he’d gotten dressed and disappeared in the middle of the night? She took a stab. “This bed’s more comfortable.”
“You regret it?”
Of course he wouldn’t let her off the hook. He didn’t pull punches. It was part of what she loved about him. She shook her head. “I just—can’t.”
He turned away, tension hard in the lines of his hunched up shoulders and back.
“It was good,” she told the back of his neck. “It was better than good. It was amazing. But I—I’m not your type.”
He turned. His eyes were bleak. “What’s my type?”
“One-night stand.”
This time he didn’t deny it, and he didn’t get angry.
She crossed the room to the balcony, and he followed. They stood, hands on the railing, looking out at the ocean. It was easier to breathe out there with the sun shining and the salty sea breeze ruffling their hair.
He spoke to the water. “Maybe that’s my usual type, but not this time.”
She sighed. “I don’t trust it.” She had almost said I don’t trust you.
“I don’t trust it, either.”
She glanced up at him, surprised, and found him watching her intensely.
“So maybe it would be better if we—?” she said.
“No. You can’t just run away.”
This was not at all how she’d expected this to go. This reversal of the natural order. She’d spent so many years hoping he’d change, and she’d sworn she’d never do it again. And now he was pleading with her, and her heart wanted to believe it.
But she knew better. “Why shouldn’t I? I watched you date for years. Woman after woman. No one lasted longer than a month.”
“You gave me twenty-four hours last time,” he said darkly.
“I was exaggerating.” There had been a few women he’d gone on multiple dates with, if she was being fair. But no one serious. Not ever. “I saw how you were. Why would I think I’d be any different? None of them were.”
“That was different. A different time.”
A different time. She’d wanted him to say, You’re different.
He hadn’t known how she felt about him back then. And she wasn’t sure she ever wanted him to know. It was bad enough, feeling this way and doubting he could ever return her feelings. It would be humiliating if he knew she’d wanted him all those years when he’d been busy screwing half the college campus and a solid chunk of the population of Manhattan island.
“I’m changing. I know you don’t think people can change, but I’m asking you to give me a chance.”
“Brett?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you really want from me? Because if you just want to have sex with me again, you could probably talk me into that without feeding me a whole pile about the future.”
If she were honest with herself, if she were brutally frank with him, maybe that would keep disaster at bay. Maybe that would draw the lines, erect the fences, that would protect her heart.
At a distance, the sea broke over a rock beneath its surfac
e, a persistent splash of white in the blue. She kept her gaze on it.
“What if I want more than that?” His voice was a harsh whisper.
“Don’t go there. You might think you do now, but you don’t. And I’m telling you, you don’t have to promise me more to get what you want. I don’t want you to promise me more. I don’t want there to be bullshit between us.”
“It’s—”
Her heart raced. He was going to deny it. He was going to say, It’s not bullshit. He was going to say—
Instead, he put his hands on her waist and turned her, then slid his hand up to cup her breast. He made a small sound in the back of his throat that she could feel between her legs. When he kissed her, his mouth was the most tentative it had been yet, which was sexy in a way she didn’t want to analyze. His thumbs moved back and forth over her nipples through the thin T-shirt and lacy bra, and she gasped.
He wrapped his arms around her. Pulled her close and molded her body to his. She felt his lips in her hair. He was warm and smelled so good she wanted to sink her teeth into him.
They stayed that way for a while, her cheek resting against his shoulder. Then it wasn’t sustainable any more. Their bodies heated up. The air around them shimmered with their desire. The places where they were touching scalded and sent long spikes of sensation to all the parts of her that knew the score. She sighed. “Why is it like this?”
“I don’t know. It’s like a permanent high simmer. And that’s with you holding perfectly still like that. God help me if you move. Or make a noise.”
“Any noise?”
He shifted down against her, so the hard length of him found her inner thigh, and she made a sound that wasn’t quite a sound, more a caught breath.
“That one especially.”
She tilted up her face so that when he brought his mouth down, it felt like they were sliding and locking into place.
He broke the kiss. “What would you say if I said I needed a shower?”
“I just had one.”
He took a handful of her damp hair. “Maybe you need another one.”