Take Me

by Diane Alberts

  Fear and longing…wrapped up in one stressful package.

  The next night, Mike went straight to the hotel from work and found the table set for dinner. He blinked at the intimate arrangement, unable to believe his little hellion of a bride had gone through the trouble of surprising him with dinner. A flickering candle shone from the center of the table and two place settings were set out—complete with bubbling champagne flutes filled to the rim.

  As he stood there, jaw hanging open, Morgan came out of the kitchen area expertly balancing a serving platter filled with roast beef, mashed potatoes, and carrots in one hand. She wore a checkered apron and a pair of cowboy boots. When she spotted him, she did a little spin, showing him the only thing she wore underneath was a tiny red thong and matching bra. “Welcome home, husband. I didn’t cook this meal but I’m wearing the apron anyway. You like?”

  He growled and took a step toward her, the need to have her way too strong to deny. “You. Me. Now.”

  He was reduced to using one-word sentences like a caveman. He might as well beat his chest and pull out a club.

  She crossed the room and laughed, holding the platter of food out at him with one hand and touching his lips with the other. “Not yet. You need to eat the meal I ordered first.” He licked a drip of gravy off of her finger, their gazes locked the whole time. “Then you can have me any way you want me.”

  When had he died and gone to heaven? And what had he done to deserve this? To deserve her? The scent of dinner wafted over, making his stomach rumble. Usually after work, he heated up a frozen dinner or made grilled cheese…if he was feeling adventurous. But this? This was too much—in a good way.

  Maybe he did need a wife. His stomach would thank him, if nothing else.

  “I don’t know which one I want more, you or the dinner,” he said.

  “Why settle for one when you can have both?” She set the platter down on the table and sidled up to him, then gripped his tie and yanked him down for a kiss. When she pulled away, she smiled up at him. “I figured if I was going to pretend to be a wife for a little while, I might as well feed you. I draw the line at cooking, though. It’s not my style.”

  He snorted and cupped her bare ass, hauling her closer. He couldn’t not touch her. “Not all wives live in the kitchen. Some do work. You know that, right?”

  “Sure.” She flicked her tongue over his, then backed out of his arms. When he made as if to grab her, she shook her finger in his face. “Not yet. Anyway…they still do the cooking.”

  “Not always.” He scratched his head. “If we were really married, I would share the kitchen duties with you.”

  She eyed him. “You cook?”

  “Uh…well…I’d try.”

  A cocky grin slid into place. “Exactly. And my version of cooking is ordering off a menu. Therefore…welcome home, darling husband.” She nudged him toward his chair. “But don’t get used to it. I’ll be gone on Friday.”

  He froze halfway to his seat. “What?”

  “We agreed until the end of the week, right?”

  “Yeah.” He hesitated. He hadn’t meant Friday, damn it. He wasn’t ready for her to go yet. Just needed a little bit more time in her arms. Another couple of nights, and she would be out of his blood. “But can you make it Saturday instead?”

  “I don’t know.” She opened her mouth and closed it, looking torn. Was it so hard to spend one extra night with him, for fuck’s sake? “Why?”

  “Saturday is Kiersten’s wedding. You could be my plus one.”

  She sat down, her stare latched with his. “Wouldn’t you rather go alone and hit on the lonely women? Weddings are prime hunting grounds, aren’t they?”

  Yes. But why would he want to hunt when he already had the best catch in his room? Wearing nothing but an apron, some red scraps of lace that barely covered her perfect dancer’s body, and a pair of cowboy boots? “No. I’d rather bring my wife.”

  She swallowed hard. “We can’t go as husband and wife. No one knows.”

  “Actually…” He averted his eyes and tugged on his tie.

  “You told them?”

  “I only told Brianna.” He looked back at her and flinched. She didn’t look too happy with him right now. “But with how fast news spreads in my family, the grocery store clerk knows by now.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “Why did you—?”

  “It’ll be okay. I promise.” He leaned in and tried to catch her gaze. “Please go with me?”

  She dropped her hand and gave him a skeptical look. “Okay. But then it’s over. I go back to being a dancer and you go back to being…you. Whatever that entails.”

  “Fine.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his fingers at his stomach. “But you’re ignoring one small fact.”

  “And that is?”

  He canted his head. “You might not want to leave me at the end of the week. You might want more from me. You might want to love me.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Morgan cut a piece of roast beef off and stared at her plate, her good mood ruined. “I’m leaving, no matter what.”

  She knew she sounded cold and unfeeling when she refused to even think about a future between them, but it’s the way she had to live. She had goals. Priorities. Letting a man into her world would only mess it all up—even if she was, for the first time, tempted to do exactly that.

  Her path had always been so clear before but somehow Mike made everything all fuzzy.

  What if she did fall in love with him and they gave this marriage a real chance? Could a man like Mike—a man who swore to avoid marriage at all cost—really be happy with just one woman? Especially a woman who would be on the road a good portion of the time, leaving him on his own?

  She feared it was the chase that drove him, not the reality of actually catching her.

  What if she gave up her dream only to find out a year from now that Mike really didn’t want to be married to her?

  No, she couldn’t risk it. She had to stay firm in her decision to leave at the end of the week.

  “Mike, I—”

  “So even if you fell in love with a guy, you’d leave him?” he interrupted, leaning forward. He watched her as a predator watches its prey, and she fidgeted. He sought out weaknesses, and she couldn’t show him any. “Just walk away?”

  If ever a man could awaken her heart, it would be Mike. Everything about him called to her, begged for her attention.

  Begged to be loved by her.

  No.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” She forced a casual shrug. “I’ve never been in love but I probably love dancing more than I’ll ever love a man.”

  He relaxed in his chair again. “Oh. So you’ve never been in love, then?”

  “Nope. Never wanted it.” She took a long sip of wine. “And you?”

  “Hell no.” He cut a piece of meat and popped it in his mouth. “But since you haven’t been in love, you can’t say what you’d do.”

  “And you—the man who has never been in love—are an expert?”

  “I’ve seen what love does to people. It makes them forget all the reasons they shouldn’t be with someone, until only one thing is left—why they should be with them. It turns smart men stupid and makes a man forget everything in life but being with that one woman.”

  Like what happened to her mother.

  She cut her meat but felt like she would never be able to swallow past the panic in her throat. He’d just described her. Hell, she was sitting at the table half naked because he’d suggested he would like it. If that wasn’t stupid, she didn’t know what was.

  By his description, she was in love with him. She snorted out loud, earning herself a weird look from him. She cleared her throat in an attempt to make it look like she choked or something. “Sorry. I’m fine now.�
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  His expression suggested that he clearly doubted her sanity, but he returned to eating. She did the same, but couldn’t stop staring at him. Scared of his answer, she’d been trying to avoid asking him a certain question, but she couldn’t hold back any longer. “So you don’t want to ever get married?”

  “I’m already married.”

  “Oh, please.” She waved a hand. “I don’t count.”

  His eyes flashed. “The hell you don’t. You’re my fucking wife in every way that counts.”

  The possessiveness in his voice sent a primal surge through her veins. He said that as if…as if he didn’t plan on ever letting her go. And somewhere deep down inside of her, buried beneath the independence and the goals, there was a part of her that liked this side of him. That wanted to be cherished and held and wanted.

  That part of her had to be denied, starved, and killed.

  She set down her fork and pulled her napkin from her lap. “Maybe I’d better go.”

  He gripped his glass, his knuckles white. “I’m not some lovesick school boy you have to worry about falling for you.”

  She flushed. He made it sound so far-fetched that she wondered if all of this was in her head—that he never even looked at her the way she thought he did, with hope and tenderness in his eyes. And if all his long, meaningful glances were in her imagination…then what did that say about her? “I didn’t say you would fall in love with me.”

  He studied her from under his hooded lids, now totally relaxed against the back of his chair. As if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Don’t worry, we’re cool. I promise that you won’t have to worry about me chasing after you once you leave. And for the record, I don’t break my promises.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  He cocked a brow. “I thought I had.”

  “I asked if you ever wanted to get married again after me. You didn’t answer.”

  “I doubt it.” He popped a piece of roast beef in his mouth and chewed, as if considering his answer. “But maybe it’s a non-issue anyway. Maybe we should just stay married and scratch each other’s itches, knowing we won’t fall for each other. We could be a couple, but without the sloppy emotions. A modern day marriage of convenience.”

  Did that sound so horrible? But the idyllic picture he kept trying to paint of what their marriage could be like wasn’t realistic. She’d dated men before. All of the guys in her past had been supportive of her dreams…in the beginning anyway. But once the I’m-with-a-Vegas-dancer bragging rights had worn off, they hadn’t been able to handle the realities of her profession.

  Mike was different from all of those men in every way, and much more confident and open-minded than any of them, but she couldn’t believe he’d be any different once the honeymoon phase was over. He was just being too stubborn to see it. “So you would stay faithful to me, your not-real wife, and be fine with me being gone half of the time? Touring the country? Working until all hours of the night, every night? Not knowing who I was with?”

  “Well, I…” He hesitated, seeming torn. “I don’t know.”

  She nodded, appreciating his honesty. “Yeah, I figured as much.” She stood. “Look, Mike, no offense, but I’ve heard the promises before. The I trust you’s followed by the you can trust me’s. And neither turned out to be true.”

  “Wait a damn minute.” He rose from his chair so fast that it fell backward on the floor, then caught her wrist, not letting her retreat. “If I actually, sincerely loved someone, I wouldn’t cheat on her. I wouldn’t even want to. I’ve seen it in my friends. They go from complete manwhores to faithful husbands without a second thought. I know it happens. When you love someone, you don’t want to hurt them. You want to make them happy. So, hell yeah, I would be faithful, if I loved my wife.”

  She shook her head sadly. “But you don’t love me, Mike. And I don’t want you to. So why stay married? What’s the point?”

  “There isn’t,” he said, his voice flat. He reached down and righted the chair he’d knocked over, then sat back down and settled his napkin in his lap. “There wouldn’t be. Which is why we aren’t going to do it. I was only teasing you.”

  Teasing. Wow. Who was playing who now?

  She sank into her chair and drank deeply from her wineglass. “We should just call it quits now. Separate and get our divorce or annulment or whatever the hell it is. Why are we playing this game? Why continue to spend time together knowing we aren’t going to keep at it? Why even get married at all?”

  His eyes shut down. “Because we were drunk.”

  “Bullshit,” she said, echoing his earlier reply to her. “Why didn’t you want to ever get married? There has to be a bigger reason besides not wanting it.”

  “Fine, but mine is dark and ugly,” he gritted out. “I didn’t want to get married because my parents were happily dating for ten years but then they got married. After that, my father cheated on my mother and my mother fell apart. Buried her heartbreak in a bottle.”

  He pushed his drink away and she swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s life. There’s no use in me being a pussy over it.” He clenched his hands in his lap and looked up at her. “Dad left and my mom spent the rest of my teenaged years crying into her liquor telling me never to get married. Telling me her whole life ended because they got a scrap of paper that made their relationship legal.” He ran a hand through his hair. “That’s why I’ll never get married.”

  “But we’re married.”

  “Exactly,” he snapped, tossing his napkin on his empty plate. “I married you, even after knowing I’d never wanted that. I married you, and it had to be for a reason. Had to be for something. I refuse to immediately throw this away. I need to understand the reason I did what I did.”

  She clenched her fists and curled her toes in her boots. “We were drunk! That’s it. Drunk.”

  “So that’s the only reason we have anything between us at all? Because we were drunk?”

  “Yes.” But her heart screamed no. “You’re putting all this shit into something that doesn’t even exist. It’s all in our heads. Something we’ve built up that is this amazing feeling, but it’s just sex. Meaningless, fun, wonderful sex.”

  “Liar. Even I can admit we have more than sex.”

  “No.” She rose and placed a hand on her hip. “It’s not. Just sex amplified by being drunk.”

  “Are you drunk right now?” He stood up and headed toward her, his gaze dark and threatening.

  She stepped back, but then forced herself to stand still. She wouldn’t retreat from him. “W-What? No.”

  “Neither am I.”

  She expected him to try to strong arm her into staying, to become all alpha male, but in his usual Mike fashion, he completely surprised her. Instead of throwing her over his shoulder, he tenderly ran a finger down the curve of her jaw. His lips hovered over hers and his warm breath tickled her skin. He stood there, unmoving for a few moments, until her eyelids fluttered closed. She felt his lips gently brush against each lid and dance across her face, until he settled on the sensitive part of her neck.

  Emotion clogged Morgan’s throat as her body—her heart—came to life.

  She clung to him, pressing against him, needing to feel him against her. Inside of her. The magnetism between them was still there, as it had been before.

  “Don’t go,” Mike whispered in her ear before nipping her earlobe. “Stay.”

  And she wanted to stay so badly it hurt. Wanted to be everything he wanted her to be, and then maybe a bit more. Damn it, he was right. This was more than sex. If it was just sex, it wouldn’t be so hard to walk away from him. If it was just sex, she wouldn’t want to stay even though she knew she should go.

  He tugged her apron over her head, hungrily latching onto her lips as soon as it h
ad cleared her body.

  She kissed her way down his face, his neck, his chest, until she was on her knees in front of him. With trembling fingers, she undid his belt and then his pants, unzipping him carefully. Once he was free, she flicked her tongue over the tip of his penis. He dug his fingers in her hair, and groaned, “Morgan.”

  God, she liked that. Liked the way he said her name when she pleasured him. Liked the way it made her feel when he needed her like this. She closed her mouth around him, taking him in deep. She rolled her tongue around his length as she sucked, increasing the suction as he groaned louder. She could taste him, knew he was close to exploding, but he pulled back and helped her to her feet.

  “You’re fucking amazing, my beautiful dancer.” He punctuated each word with kisses and her heart fluttered at the endearment. My beautiful dancer. “But you have too many clothes on,” he said, his voice guttural. “And so do I.” He kicked off his jeans and grabbed the hem of his shirt while she discarded her bra and panties. Once undressed, they melted into each other’s arms again, then fell to the soft carpeted floor.

  She climbed on top of him, one leg on either side of his hips and scratched her nails down his chest, loving the contrast of tight muscles on smooth skin. He arched up, his hands on her butt. She rubbed against him, moaning when his erection touched her clit.

  He grasped her tighter, holding her flush against him. “Morgan, I need you now.”

  He needed her. And she needed him, too. She grasped his penis and prepared to lower herself down on him. He stopped her, his face red and his mouth pinched. “Condom first.”

  She couldn’t believe she’d been so lost in the moment she’d completely forgotten the condom. That had never happened. Just another first in a long, long line of things she didn’t normally do—but she did with him. She retrieved a condom and gently slid it over his erection, wanting to do it for him. She’d never put one on him before, so she fumbled it a bit, but he lay there and let her explore. Let her take the lead.