After a minute that might have been an hour, Sasha lowered her chest over his, and Sully wrapped his arms around her to hold her close. He knew he should get up, move in some way—hell, having a coherent thought might be a good first step—but he simply didn’t want to.
Because Sully also knew that once that happened, the clock would start ticking. And he only had two more days to convince her that some relationships were worth breaking the barriers.
CHAPTER SIX
Every muscle in Sasha’s body melted against the soft slide of the bed sheets beneath her, and she burrowed deeper as she let out a drowsy sigh. Despite having only gotten a few hours of sleep, the blissed-out relaxation running through her on a full-body circuit sent sparks of pure goodness under her skin. She turned her smile into her pillow, her eyes fluttering against the early-morning light peeking past the antique lace curtains as she rolled over to slide her arms around the very warm, very hard, very male body beside her.
Holy shit, the body was Sully’s. Her kitchen partner. Her wingman. Her friend. Who she’d slept with, not once, but twice.
And if she wasn’t so busy trying to fight the sudden burst of panic from that realization, she’d want nothing more than to make it a hot-sex hat trick.
“Mmmm. Morning.” Sully stretched, the lean line of his shoulders flexing enticingly beneath Sasha’s fingers. He blinked his eyes open, and oh God, did his crooked little smile have to be so utterly sexy? “Hey. You okay?”
“Me? I’m great. Couldn’t be better.” Okay, so she was fracturing the truth. But Sasha had felt so at ease—and, admittedly, so turned on—by the time they’d spent pretending to be a couple, she’d impulsively crossed the line by suggesting they sleep together. Now, in the light of day, reality was all too easy to see. She and Sully were way too close to be friends with benefits. Casual relationships were still relationships, all with the high probability of crashing and burning once both parties had seen each other sans apparel. How on earth had she thought they’d be able to go back to normal after sleeping together?
Not that they’d done much sleeping. But sweet baby Jesus, the man’s tongue was downright masterful.
She needed to get out of here. Fast.
Sasha ducked her chin to her chest, her cheeks prickling with heat at the recognition of not just how completely bare she was under the covers, but that Sully was equally, deliciously naked. “Right. So I should probably get in the shower. Thanks for bailing me out yesterday with my family. And, you know. For…um. Everything else.”
“Sasha.” Sully’s arms remained firm even though his voice had lowered to a whisper. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” The default spring-boarded past her lips without thought, and Sully met it with the no-nonsense resolve that he wore like a perfectly broken-in pair of jeans.
“Good. Then you have no reason to run from this nice, warm bed.”
“I’m not running anywhere. It’s getting late,” she said, although the argument sounded weak in her ears.
Sully raised a sandy-brown brow. “It’s seven-thirty in the morning. But nice try.” Keeping one arm wrapped around her rib cage, he turned to grab a bottle of water from the nightstand, offering it to her first before taking a long sip. “C’mon, out with it. What’s bothering you?”
Surprise burst through Sasha’s chest, but the matter-of-fact question pushed a matching answer right out of her. “Aside from the fact that we probably just wrecked our friendship?”
His body went bowstring tight against hers. “Do you regret last night?”
“No.” The honesty of her answer loosened the rest of her inhibitions, and screw it. They might’ve slept together, but she still trusted him. “I know we said what happened here in Ireland would stay here. I guess…I just want to make we’re still good now that the sun is up.”
“Well, I guess that depends.” Sully lowered the bottle of water back to the nightstand, hooking his arm back around her to angle her shoulders against the bed sheets. “Do you feel good?”
Without waiting for an answer, he slid the quilt from her body, lowering his gaze along with the fabric. The cool air combined with the heat of his touch, tightening her nipples and making the juncture between her thighs ache with need.
“I want to,” Sasha whispered, and as vulnerable as the words made her, God help her, they were true.
She wanted to spend all weekend with Sully. Just like this.
“This is still just me and you, Sasha. Same as always.” He cupped her face, pressing a shockingly soft kiss to her mouth. “I promise.”
“And it really won’t...” She paused, arching greedily into Sully’s touch as he lowered his palm from the curve of her cheek bone to her shoulder, covering more of her skin. “Change anything?”
“No.” His mouth followed the path of his hand, trailing a line of slow, sexy kisses all the way across her collarbone. “None of this is going to change how I feel.”
A smile tugged at the edges of her lips, and Sasha delved her hand past the covers, circling her fingers around Sully’s already-hard cock. “Well,” she said, stroking him with clear intention. “You do feel pretty good.”
But then his fingers found the slick folds of her sex, offering up the same treatment as he parted her thighs with his palm, and good became the understatement of the millennium.
“Baby, you have no idea. Now go ahead and find something to hold on to. Because I’m going to make you feel so good, it’ll be a while before you stand.”
#
Sasha propped her elbows on the cozy pub table in front of her, laughter bubbling up in her chest even though she tried her damnedest to fight it.
“Let me get this straight.” She leaned past her empty lunch plate to pin Sully with a look mixed with awe and doubt. “You went into the kitchen of an Italian brick oven pizzeria and corrected the owner’s recipe for pizza sauce. In a suit and tie. In the middle of Brooklyn. In August.”
“It was really more of a gentle suggestion,” Sully answered, his laid-back smile threading all the way through her. “But the restaurant was failing, and the changes we came up with to the menu and the management made all the difference. Plus, I learned more about homemade crust on that trip than in all of our culinary classes combined. The guy was a genius, even if he was kind of heavy-handed on the oregano.”
“Still. That’s a pretty ballsy move for a guy in corporate management.”
Sully reached for his pint glass, draining the last coffee-colored sip of Guinness from the bottom with a wink. “Maybe. But you forget, when I want something, I go after it. Getting into the kitchen to tweak the recipes was part of the plan to save that restaurant from going under. And it all worked out in the end.”
Sasha nodded and sat back against the polished wood of her chair, resting a hand on her blissfully full stomach. She had to admit, while she’d wrestled with giving in to the sexual attraction that had built between them, Sully’s sexy smirk and his uncanny ability to chill her out regardless of the circumstances made him desirable in a more-than-friends way. She’d been clear with her intentions, both last night and then again this morning, and he’d promised that sex wouldn’t wreck either their trip or their friendship. As much as Sasha had waited all day for the giant shoe of awkward to drop and crush the rest of their weekend, it hadn’t. She and Sully really were one-hundred percent business as usual.
Even though she’d slept with him. Her kitchen partner. Her confidant. Her friend. The sex had easily been the most toe-curling, wall-climbing, mind-scrambling experience she’d ever had.
The day they’d spent together after? Even better.
“Hey, you okay in there?” Sully’s light brown brows lifted in concern. “You’re not worried about the rehearsal dinner later, are you?”
“Oh, no. Well, not really,” Sasha amended. “Our system worked pretty well yesterday, all things considered.” She paused to twist her paper napkin between her fingers, but let it go just as quickly. This was Sully, not one of her idiot
exes, and anyway, he’d promised things would be fine. “Actually, I was thinking that even though we agreed nothing would change, I’m still surprised the being friends part isn’t more…awkward. Between you and I.”
For a second, his expression was completely unreadable. “Because we’re having sex?”
Biggest. Euphemism. Ever. The pair of orgasms he’d given her this morning alone could’ve probably been measured by the Richter scale. “Well, yeah,” she admitted, trying—and failing—to fight the heat that the memory triggered on her face. “I’m just glad it’s not going to change anything between us, for real.”
“It’s not.”
Sully pushed back from the table, standing to guide her chair out so she could join him. They made their way through the dwindling late-lunch crowd, exiting the brass and mahogany double doors of the Willow Cove Tavern. Narrow cobblestone walkways stretched both left and right in front of them, and Sully’s boots thumped out a soft rhythm as he kicked his feet into motion along the path.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, extending an elbow in her direction, and Sasha slid her arm through his with a laugh.
“You’re worried about getting personal after the twelve hours we just spent together? I hate to break it to you, but I think that ship has sailed.”
Sully bumped her with one hip while still keeping up his easy stride. “Okay, smartass. You seem to want to keep friendship and sex in different boxes, that’s all. I guess I’m kind of curious why you think the two don’t mix.”
“Oh.” Sasha faltered a tiny half-step, letting her feet make up for her silence for a minute before answering. “Well, to be honest, I’ve never really tried to mix them.”
“So you don’t like any of the guys you date?” The shock on his face outweighed the teasing edge in his voice, but Sasha simply shrugged.
“I don’t hate them, obviously, although they usually turn out to be jerks of varying magnitude after a while. Either that or we both lose interest and things just fizzle out. It doesn’t seem worthwhile to risk that on someone who’s really a friend, since relationships never tend to last and friendships do. So yeah. I keep sex and friendship separate.”
“And that makes you happy.” Sully’s words arrived without mocking or judgment, as if he was simply asking for clarification rather than trying to pin her under a cynical-girl microscope.
So she said, “It works for me, yes.”
“Ah, but that’s not what I asked.” He broke out that charming-as-hell smile that told Sasha her carefully constructed defenses would be toast if she didn’t nail them into place, and damn it, how did he not just hear her, but get her so easily? “You told me the other night that you want to be happy, right?”
Easy enough. “Mmm hmm.”
“And are you?”
Shit. Not so easy. “I already told you, I don’t think forever and ever applies to me. Not for relationships. They just never seem to work out. My parents are a prime example of how sour ‘true love’ can turn.”
Sully guided them off the cobblestone sidewalk, toward one of Willow Cove’s many scenic walking routes. The well-traveled dirt path led through a wooded area, with trees on either side to create a lush, private archway extending out from the adjacent village street. Dappled sunlight fluttered through the leaves, the kaleidoscope patterns leading the way deeper into the copse of trees as they walked. Sully’s arm felt warm around hers despite the bite in the chilly spring air, and even though Sasha knew she should hesitate, or better yet, shut up completely, something loosened in her chest, causing her words to spill out.
“I know the way I look at relationships makes me pretty cynical.” Sasha paused to hang a humorless smile on the word she’d worn like a shield ever since she could remember. “And I don’t mean to be negative and trash happily-ever-after. It’s just…”
She broke off, a low, familiar ache thudding through the pit of her stomach, and Sully stopped short to face her.
“It’s just what?”
“I don’t think I’ve got what it takes to make a relationship work.”
Sully’s gaze tapered over a flicker of emotion she couldn’t quite label. “What are you talking about?”
“Look, relationships are precarious to begin with.” Sasha crossed her arms over the front of her sweater as if the move would guard her stupid, vulnerable heart. “Most of them don’t work out all on their own. But when you add a defective part to the mix…I don’t know. It seems like a recipe for disaster.”
“Wait…” A muscle ticked in Sully’s clean-shaven jaw, and he stepped in even closer toward her. “You think you’re defective?”
Sasha rushed to qualify. “Not in a pity-party sort of way. It’s just kind of the truth. I mean, my dating history pretty much resembles a pileup on the freeway, and I can’t please either of my parents, although Lord knows, I’ve tried. I couldn’t even nail down a career without a couple of strikeouts first. What on earth should make me think I’d have what it takes to make a relationship work out, when the odds are stacked against me like that?”
She dropped her chin toward the path at her feet. All this talk about relationships was turning her brain to custard, with her heart becoming whipped cream to match. She’d gone and opened her yap, and now Sully was probably going to make some awkward joke, or worse yet, give her an obligatory you’ll-find-love-someday pep talk. Then he’d hightail it back to the inn, counting down the minutes until they boarded the plane back to the land of the emotionally stable, and Sasha would be out one really good friend, all because she couldn’t keep her feelings stuffed inside.
“Sasha?” Sully looked at her, his hazel gaze completely indecipherable, and her belly tensed as she braced for impact.
“Yeah?”
“Respectfully? I think you’re full of shit.”
A laugh flew from Sasha’s lips without consulting her brain, unravelling her nervousness in one sweet snap. “You do.”
“Yeah, I do.” He smiled, the honest, familiar expression carrying over into his words. “Look, I’m not saying that relationships aren’t difficult sometimes, and yeah, they don’t all work out. But just because you took some time to find the right career and your parents have different expectations about what your happiness should look like doesn’t mean you’re defective.”
“How do you know?” Rather than loading the question with her usual dose of skepticism or sass, Sasha released the words on a whisper, and Sully hooked a finger under her chin to meet her query full-on.
“Because when I look at you, I see a smart, funny as hell woman who’s just a little cautious about what’s out there. Not someone who’s too damaged to make herself really happy.”
Her lips parted in surprise. Sasha had carried around the certainty that she’d tank any sort of meaningful relationship for so long that she’d never really stopped to think it might be wrong.
And when Sully said she could be happy, she was tempted—just for a second— to believe him.
But then reality sank in, hard and fast. They had two days left in their Irish weekend fling, and they’d had an incredible night together, followed by a great morning of local sightseeing. No sense in boogering up the rest of the trip by dwelling on her relationship status—or lack thereof. Especially when she and Sully could be focusing on other more relaxing things.
“You’re not just saying that because you’re my glass-half-full friend, are you?” She tilted her head and stepped into the cradle of his arms, gathering the intoxicating scent of leather and rainstorms all the way into her lungs before exhaling on a smile.
“Nope.” He smirked back at her, brushing a lingering kiss over her mouth. “I’m a strategist, remember? I’m just calling it like I see it.”
“Why don’t we call it a trip back to our room? We’ve got a few hours before we need to get ready for the wedding rehearsal, and I can think of a whole lot of ways for us to spend that time.”
#
>
Sasha slid her gaze from the softly lit bar area of the Willow Cove Tavern just in time to catch her brother’s ear-to-ear grin.
“Don’t look now, sister dear, but that smile on your face suggests you might actually be having a good time.”
Despite her desire to roll her eyes just to prove him wrong, the smile in question only grew at Jace’s teasing. “It’s a great party. Delaney’s family is really welcoming.”
Sasha nodded toward the lively group of locals clustered around the room, everyone laughing or enjoying a pre-dinner drink or some combination of both. Delaney herself weaved in and out of the crowd, looking radiantly happy as she embraced each guest with a warm hug and an even warmer smile. Her family returned the gestures with ease, and they’d shared that same open hospitality with Sasha throughout the evening.
“Yeah. It’s a bit of a foreign concept for us, I know.” Jace’s expression remained firmly in place, even though their mother was on her third gin and tonic of the night with no end in sight and their father’s surly glares could double as long-range weapons. Sasha knew, because she’d been fielding both for the last hour. But withering looks from their father and snarky comments from Gigi aside, the actual rehearsal had gone without a hitch. Seeing Jace’s true happiness right there in front of her had hit Sasha like a box full of rocks. As he’d stood at the front of the church, joking with the minister and making Delaney giggle through what had to be a huge bundle of nerves, Sasha’s cynicism had melted into something decidedly different.
Possibility. Maybe happily-ever-after wasn’t such a myth after all. At least, not for Jace and Delaney.
“Looks like Sully’s having a good time,” Jace noted, inclining his head across the room to where Sully stood next to a massive fireplace, chatting up a couple of Delaney’s cousins over a pint of beer.
Sasha’s laugh came all the way up from her chest. “That’s because Sully could have a good time in a morgue.”
“He’s not your usual fare, that’s for sure.”
Just like that, Sasha’s carefree mood slipped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Something Borrowed Page 6