A Kink in Her Tails (23 page)

She looked—pensive.

Fabulous, incredibly sexy and amazingly fuckable, but pensive.

Brian paused and watched her as she stared into her coffee with all the intensity of a fortune-teller waiting for her crystal ball to reveal the secrets of the universe.

He wasn’t quite sure if this was how she should be looking, given that last night they’d screwed themselves into a sexual dimension that he never even knew existed.

They’d touched, rubbed, loved and fucked just about every part of each other they could lay their hands on, and a few they couldn’t. Brian’s balls still tingled at the thought of her toes, delicately playing with them as he sucked her clit into mindless ecstasy.

Yep. It had been one hell of a night. He wanted more of it. Like a whole lifetime more.

But the woman sitting at the kitchen table didn’t look like someone ready to drop her robe, spread her thighs and welcome his cock deep inside her.

Brian frowned. “You okay, love?”

She jumped. Real, honest, slop-her-coffee kind of jump. She’d been so deep into her thoughts that she clearly didn’t have a clue he’d been watching her.

“Hey. Good morning. Want some coffee?” She slid from her seat and crossed to the counter, reaching for a mug.

Brian followed, slipping his hands around her waist and giving her a hug. “I missed you. I kind of hoped I

’d wake and find you next to me. So did he…” He nudged her hip with his hard-on.

She didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Sorry. I’ve always been a bit of an early riser. Here…” She held out the mug, forcing him to let go of her and take it.

Brian immediately pulled back, sensing her withdrawal and not wanting to make her any more uncomfortable than he felt she was already.

He pulled out a chair and sat down with a sigh. It was time for that awful experience that he, personally, loathed. It was time to “talk.”

* * * * *

Adele couldn’t look at him.

If she did, her eyeballs would probably roll back into her head, glare at her brain and demand to know what the fuck it thought it was doing.

She was awfully afraid that a rumpled and sleepy Brian McMillan was even more delectably edible than the regular version, and that wouldn’t do at all.

Not when she was about to explain to him exactly why they couldn’t do this anymore.

She’d sat with her coffee for a long time, going over and over the situation between them. Trying to come to terms with the enormous wealth of emotions he’d aroused within her, and battling the desire to curl up into his life and settle there for ever.

To rest her head on his chest and lay her burdens down along with it. To surrender to someone else the worries and difficulties that came with life as a successful business owner. To share her hopes and fears, to hold on to at night and wake up next to in the morning.

She’d gone through one pot of coffee and had started another before she’d finally accepted that it couldn

’t work between them. No matter how great their level of entanglement, nothing overrode the fact that she was eight years older than he was.

Adele prided herself on her practicality. She’d had no choice, following her disastrous marriage. What was supposed to have been a “Happily Ever After” had turned into a “Movie of the Week” when her husband, a cool, polished, moderately successful playwright, had left her. For another man.

The marriage had been ruthlessly exposed for the sham it was, and her small-town background hadn’t prepared her for the criticism that she would have to endure.

Many felt that she should have done more,
been
more, to hold the marriage together. Especially his parents. And that had hurt. She was left feeling emotionally battered, physically inadequate, and with a stubborn streak of determination germinating in her soul. Having no immediate family of her own, she was able to close down that portion of her life completely.

She had packed her clothes and her cameras and nothing else. Few friends even knew where she’d gone. She took a new name and put it on her first photographs, and thrust herself into the advertising scene with all the panache and style she could muster.

She’d never looked back. Until now.

Until the man watching her from across the table had silently asked that she step over an invisible line and take a huge chance.

Well, the answer, as always, was no. She couldn’t. She’d fail. It had happened before. She’d let him down, become an embarrassment and turn into an old woman while he was still in his prime and his contemporaries would be dating nubile twenty-two year olds.

It wasn’t fair, but it was real. Real life. And it sucked.

And somehow, she had to make him understand.

Chapter 8

“Nice coffee,” said Brian, waving his mug at her.

“Thanks. I like it. Vanilla-mocha blend.”

Brian tried again. “Domestic or imported?”

“What?”

Brian sighed. “Adele, sweetheart. I may be sleepy, but I’m not stupid. Something is buzzing in that bonnet of yours. Time to let the bee out, babe.”

Adele swallowed and raised her eyes, looking at him fully for the first time that morning.

Brian wanted to howl at the pain he saw there. How could loving someone make them hurt like this?

What had he done?

He reached for her without even realizing it, until she pulled back, away from his touch.

Now
he
was beginning to feel the pain.

“Brian,” she began, licking her lips as if they were dryer than the desert. “I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of thinking this morning.”

“No shit,” muttered Brian into his coffee. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure
that
out. “And it would probably be safe to assume that your thoughts weren’t revolving around the current political situation, global warming or the Dow Jones averages,” he added dryly.

She snorted a laugh. “Nope.”

“So…you gonna share or make me guess?” Brian raised an eyebrow.

“I love you.”

Her words tumbled out, clear but ragged. Brian’s breath congealed in his lungs. “I—” She raised a hand to forestall any interruptions. “Which is why we can’t be together anymore.” Brian’s thought processes got inextricably tangled up. His mental gears screeched from second into reverse without hitting neutral. The clutch that regulated his brain patterns blew out and left nothing but a whirling void of blankness behind his optic nerves.

She didn’t want to see him any more because she loved him. Whoa.
Does not compute
. Error reading data. Blue screen of death appearing on eyeballs. Aaaargh. File not found.

“What the
fuck
are you talking about?”

Where the words came from he had no idea. But they did, in fact, capture his immediate sentiments.

Now that she’d gotten it out, Adele seemed a little more at ease. Well, swell.

“I love you. I’ll say it again, and I want you to know that I’ve never said that to anyone since…since…well, for many years. We connected with a kiss a long time ago in some strange way, and recently you’ve become…more than just a friend. You’ve become important to my life and my well-being. To my happiness and my professional career. And after these last few days, I’ve realized that you can give me, sexually, what I’ve never ever found with anyone else.” She looked up at him again, her heart in her eyes.

“You give me passion. You give me love. You desire me and make me feel beautiful. You give me something so perfect there is no name for it.”

Brian swallowed over the lump that had lodged itself in his throat as he listened to Adele and watched her eyes gleam with unshed tears. “Okay. I’m with you so far. So where does the ‘we can’t see each other anymore’ bit come in?”

Her eyes dropped and she pushed her mug around on the table. “Hear me out, Brian. Let me get this off my chest.”

She glanced up and he nodded, knowing that she had to clear the air before he could begin changing her mind.

“I’m a practical woman, or at least I like to think I am. I am forty-one years old. I have a fulfilling and quite successful career, and one very bad marriage behind me. A marriage whose ending forced me to take a good hard and realistic look at what I am and where I am going. It took any illusions I had and stomped on them. It killed them quite dead.”

Brian winced. This was a little more blunt than he’d been anticipating.

“We are…compatible.” The hand waved again. Brian tried to hold his tongue, wanting to shout at her that that was the biggest bunch of crap he’d heard this month. They were
so
much more than just “ compatible.”

“Well, all right. We’re more than just compatible.” Her lips twisted wryly.

Huh. Brian’s mind flashed back to sweating bodies and the huge number of empty condom packets.
I
should damn well think so
.

“But our compatibility
now
, doesn’t negate what will happen
later
. It doesn’t negate the fact that in nine years I will be fifty years old. I will be looking menopause in the face. I will be losing elasticity in my skin and in my body, along with calcium from my bones. My fat cells will overwhelm my thin cells and dominate them. My hormones will be going nuts and my hair will be turning gray. These are facts that women must face. We try to face them with intelligence, humor, acceptance, chemicals, medication and surgery.”

Adele allowed a small grin to cross her face, in acknowledgement of her little attempt at humor.

Brian clamped his lips together, once again torn by the urge to let her finish, while he desperately wanted to negate each and every one of her arguments.

“You, on the other hand will be in your early forties. An age where a man becomes more interesting, mature, more relaxed about his life, his body, and his personality. You have, as I have learned recently, an extraordinarily successful financial career, as well as a position as an in-demand photographer’s model. Your body will change as well, but nowhere near as extensively as a woman’s does. The lines and wrinkles that will appear on your face will give you character, charm and a measure of wisdom.” She pursed her lips in a little pout of distaste. “You will be hailed as extraordinarily attractive with that little dash of gray at your temples. Look at Mel Gibson. Harrison Ford. Even Paul Newman and Sean Connery. Gorgeous. Desirable. Sexy. Capable of attracting just about any woman alive.” She took a ragged breath. “What I’m trying to say, Brian, is that because I love you I am facing this insurmountable issue now. Before we go too far down a path that can only lead to pain. Before I start to really let it all hang out and you find yourself stuck with someone whose breasts are flapping in the breeze like someone off the cover of a National Geographic magazine.” Brian drew a deep breath, but she wouldn’t let him speak. She clearly needed to finish.
Damn
it.

“I love you too much to let you tie your life to a woman who can only embarrass you in a few years time.

I love you too much to let you become entangled with someone who won’t have as much energy for sex and who won’t be able to keep up with you. Who is going to have skin that isn’t so fine to touch, or eyes that see so clearly anymore. Who is going to need glasses and calcium supplements. Who is going to deprive you of the chance to be with the right person.”

Adele turned away at this point, not letting him see her expression.

“The right person for you Brian needs to be someone who can share in your life fully. Who looks ‘right’

when you’re out together. Who will grace your life and your career, and…” she swallowed noisily, “

…and can give you a family. I can’t do that either. Not now. It’s too late.” She turned back, eyes sheening with tears. “Now do you understand? Do you understand that it’s because I love you that I have to let you go?”

* * * * *

Brain’s mind turned Adele’s speech over and over, analyzing, dissecting, dismissing, and ignoring. It was his turn to rise and pace the kitchen floor, rinse out his mug, pour another cup of coffee.

Anything to quell the completely irrational anger that was building inside him.

He returned to his seat and met Adele’s worried look straight on. “That’s bullshit.” She flinched.

“Do you really expect me to calmly toss aside what we’ve discovered between us just because you have some stupid age issues?”

Adele’s eyes narrowed slightly, but before she could open her mouth, Brian raised his hand, imitating her gesture.

“No. You let
me
have my say this time. You just succinctly categorized every single bad thing that is going to happen to you as you age. Well fine. Sure. Age happens. It sucks, but there it is. Age is a fact of life, along with cancer, arthritis, heart disease, snakes and a bunch of other unpleasant things.” He paused and took a sip of his coffee, fighting for control. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d burned like this.

“And you know what? I didn’t hear a word about how it’s going to make you so mentally impaired that you won’t love me anymore. All I heard was about how it was going to make you
look
. As if how you look was the only, the crucial, the be-all-and-end-all of what’s between us.” Brian leaned toward her as he spoke, emphasizing his point. “What really pisses me off is that you are presuming to make a decision about our future based on the sheer superficiality of our appearances.” He narrowed his eyes. “I thought better of you, Adele. But I guess you’ve spent so many years peering through the lens of a camera you’ve forgotten that there’s more to a person than what’s on the outside.” Adele’s brows snapped together. “That’s unfair.”

“Is it?” Brian lunged back in his chair, pulling away from her angry glare. “Is it really? Where’s the part about how because you’re going to get old you’re going to stop loving me? I didn’t hear that. I didn’t hear how age was going to affect our lives together. Our ability to share a laugh or a joke, or just a cuddle at the end of the day. No. I didn’t hear any of that.” He snorted, seething now. “I heard a lot of
shit
about how your boobs are going to sag. I heard a lot of shit about what
you
think is best for me and you’re doing it because you
love
me. Well, I’m pissed, Adele. I’m good and mad. Mostly because you have presumed to make a decision about
my
feelings and what’s good for me based on
your
incorrect assumptions.” Without thinking, he grabbed his clothes from the pile that he noticed on the kitchen chair and began dressing.