No. What mattered was the relentless tease of her fingers playing in the neckline of her dress. She leaned at an angle that exposed more than the swell of one breast.
He could see the dark circle of her areola, and the cherry tip of her nipple.
Neither of the men at Patrick’s end of the table faced her direction, their chairs clustered off to the right of his. With Chloe’s attention on her hands twisting in her lap, and Annabel’s back to the living room, she was in no danger of being found out.
But she was in danger of being tossed onto the table and having her legs thrown over his shoulders. This woman was going to be the death of him. The absolute death. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Ray, sweetie, are you about done here?”
Hearing Sydney’s voice, Patrick glanced from Annabel to his soon-to-be sister-in-law in time to catch Sydney’s grin.
“Dude’s reminiscing over my not-so-glorious glory days. He definitely needs to go home and sleep off that mountain of food he’s been shovelling in.” In fact, Patrick decided, reaching for the crutches propped on the wall at his back, it was time for everyone to go. He pushed himself to his one good foot and braced his weight on the crutches. Annabel took his unspoken cue and got to her feet, as well.
“I guess we should go,” Ray said, groaning as he forced himself out of his chair. “Don’t want to keep Santa waiting.”
Sydney hooked her arm through Ray’s. “Let me help Poe clean up this mess first—”
“No.” All eyes turned on Patrick. “I’ve got her, er, it. I’ve got it. I’ll help her.” Could he have been more obviously horny? “I’ll help her.”
Sydney fought a grin with a frown. “Are you sure? It won’t take ten minutes.”
“He’s sure,” Annabel said, making her way around
the back of the table. “We’re just glad all of you could come. The company has been wonderful.” She was right. As much as he’d pissed and moaned, it had been. Though not half as mind-blowing as hearing her refer to the two of them as “we.”
“The best part was her not making me cook.” He gave her a wink as she sidled up beside him. She smiled in return—right before sliding a hand down his back to cup his ass.
With the kitchen bar on his right, Annabel and the table on his left, he knew no one could see where she’d planted her hand. But that didn’t matter, since the view from the front was rapidly becoming as scenic as Everest.
“Good luck with Tony’s,” Macy said, as Leo helped her into her quilted denim jacket. “They’ll be lucky to have you.”
“Thanks,” Patrick answered, feeling the first tingling beads of sweat on his brow.
He shook the hand Leo offered, then returned Sydney’s one-armed hug before casting a sideways glance at the woman with her fingers probing between his legs. He cleared his throat. “Let me get the elevator, then I’ll be back to help.”
Her pulse beating visibly in the deep V of her dress, Annabel nodded, saying her goodbyes to Ray and Sydney as Patrick walked away. Eric and Chloe were already at the elevator. Patrick pulled back the grate, hit the code for the door and rolled it up on its tracks.
He shook Eric’s pitching hand with his own, sharing a moment of male bonding that was rare. Chloe pushed past them and got into the elevator; Leo and Macy followed. Sydney kissed Patrick on the cheek before following Eric inside.
Ray was the last to go. He took hold of Patrick’s of
fered hand, then pulled him into a brotherly bear hug. “We’ll see you and Poe out at the house tomorrow, right?”
Patrick nodded as his brother backed away. “Not sure what time we’ll be there.”
“Whenever. It’s an all-day-long, come-and-go sort of thing.” He stepped into the elevator car and grinned. “Thanks for dinner. And thanks for staying.”
Patrick tried to keep a straight face—and failed. It was good to see his brother smile. He waved as Ray pulled down the rolling door.
Once the car was on the way to the ground, Patrick made his way to the kitchen at his crutches’ top speed.
Anytime, anywhere, any way.
That was the only thing he could think about—especially once he reached the kitchen.
It was empty save for a sinkful of dirty dishes and a red silk dress on the floor.
W
ITH HER EYES CLOSED
and leather coat drawn tight against the evening’s chill, Chloe slumped into the curve of the Mustang’s bucket seat for the short ride home through Midtown.
For the most part the evening had gone well. Eric had been attentive if not as solicitous as Leo had been with Macy or as openly affectionate as Sydney with Ray. And then there was the way Patrick looked at Poe, which had caused even Chloe to shiver.
She wasn’t sure Eric had ever looked at her like that, as if wanting to singe off her clothes with his eyeballs. Then again, she knew he had, and more than once, though a particular mechanical room on one of the lower floors of the Renaissance Hotel was the first incident that
came to mind. The way he’d wanted her then…She shivered and sighed and curled in on herself even more.
“You cold, princess? Say the word and I’ll up the heat.”
The comeback to his double entendre didn’t even make it all the way to the tip of her tongue. She missed that fiery passion they’d once shared. “No. I’m fine.”
“You sure?” he asked, moving his hand from the stick shift to her knee.
She wanted to touch him, wanted to remind him of how hard it used to be to keep their clothes on around each other. She wanted to know if he remembered the Renaissance Hotel, or the strawberry shortcake she’d made of his body.
“I’m good. Don’t worry about me.”
He returned his hand to the steering wheel, and she felt him sit straighter in his seat. “I do worry about you, Chloe. That’s part of loving you. It bugs me that you haven’t been yourself lately.”
Her eyes came open at that. She turned a bit in her seat, leaning back against her door as, arms still crossed, she faced him. “You think that
I
haven’t been
myself?
”
He pressed his mouth into a line, and nodded. “I’m trying not to be a pig about it, but it’s like you’re on permanent menstrual cycle.”
“Well, sugar, I guess that’s better than being on permanent spin.”
“Spin?”
“Yeah, you know. Turning a situation so that your viewpoint is the one people see.”
His tight expression quickly became a frown. “I’m trying not to seem dense over here, but you’ve lost me. What is it that I’m supposed to be spinning?”
Men! Were they all this incredibly clueless? “Our re
lationship, Eric. You’d think there wasn’t anything going on with us, judging by what all of our friends think. We’re the only ones who don’t seem to be moving forward, making plans. It’s like we’ve stalled, and I’m not sure why.”
There. She’d said it. She’d given him an opening to spill the gripes, the complaints, the bitching and the moaning, all that he’d been holding back. But he didn’t say a word. At least not right away.
He simply kept his eyes on the road ahead. She stared at him for a long time, for what seemed like ages though was no more than seconds. Seconds became suspended while nigh on two years of their time together unwound in her mind like a movie reel. He’d broken into her house once, like William Hurt had broken into Kathleen Turner’s in
Body Heat,
wanting her that much, needing to set things right before they lost another day.
Now their days seemed nothing but a blur.
“What is going on with us?” he finally asked, his voice low and tense, a restrained whisper. “It’s obvious that you’re unhappy, but I can’t fix anything until you tell me what’s broke.”
Oh, why the hell not? She’d had just enough wine to loosen her inhibitions and with the Red Hot Chili Peppers as background music she was sufficiently pumped. “Okay then. You used to talk about wanting kids. Now when I bring up the subject, you change it. Every single time.”
Eric ground his teeth. The light of the moon and that from the streetlights glinted off the hard lines of his jaw. “We’re not ready for kids, Chloe. Not to mention that I’d like to get married first.”
She pushed away his comment about marriage. It was the issue of babies confusing her most. “What do you
mean, we’re not ready for kids? That’s all you used to talk about.”
“I do want kids. Eventually. But you don’t decide to have them just because your friends are starting their families. Baby-making isn’t like scrapbooking. It’s not a trendy little hobby.”
Is that what he really thought? That she wanted his babies in order to be fashionable? “Macy doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
He snorted. “Hell she doesn’t. You’ve been baby-obsessed ever since you heard she was pregnant.”
“Maybe that’s because it got me to wondering why you’d changed your mind.” She drew her coat even tighter.
“I haven’t changed my mind, Chloe,” he said, his voice softer now, more patient, more like that of the Eric she’d fallen in love with instead of the one she couldn’t even coax into bed.
He cleared his throat and went on. “My foster family was amazing. If I’d gone to live with them as an infant, I’d never have known my folks weren’t my birth parents. I want that sort of security for my kids. Our kids. I’m not going to be bringing babies into the world when I’m not certain a family is what we both want.”
“And you don’t think that’s what I want,” she said over her audibly pounding heart. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear his reply, fear ringing as it was in her ears.
“I don’t know what you want.” He shifted down for a red light, gunned the Mustang and shoved it back into third at the green. “You started gUIDANCE gIRL. You went back to school. Don’t get me wrong. I admire you like crazy for going after what you want. But it’s like
nothing you do satisfies you, like you have to keep looking.”
Chloe blinked, not knowing what to say, blindsided at hearing her own words coming out of Eric’s mouth. She’d thought him unsatisfied with her; he thought her unsatisfied with herself. She was at a loss, a total loss, even as she knew he’d hit on a corner of the truth.
She wasn’t happy. Or satisfied. But she had no idea where to find, even to look for, the root of either emotion. Swallowing hard, she closed her eyes again, wondering why she found flirting with Devon Lee so easy, yet talking to Eric brought her nothing but a big fat ache to the heart.
She heard him fiddle with the temperature controls and shift into a turn before he asked softly, “Why would you think I’d changed my mind?”
She huffed. “Because you never come to bed with me anymore. Because we’re lucky to have sex every couple of weeks.”
He didn’t respond to that immediately and when he did it wasn’t at all what she’d expected to hear. “The bar’s not doing so well. I’ve cut back on the staff, which means I’ve been working a lot of extra hours. I know you know that—”
“But I didn’t know the part about the bar,” she interrupted, opening her eyes and straightening in her seat. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“So you decide not to sleep with me so I could worry about that instead?” Men! Arrgh! Couldn’t live with ’em, couldn’t feed ’em to the dogs. “All I’ve been doing is fretting and wondering why you’ve been ignoring me. And the fact that you have has really pissed me off.”
He reached over and squeezed her knee. “I really am sorry, Chloe.”
Well, she hadn’t exactly been Miss Merry Sunshine. “Is there anything I can do? Rearrange my classes? Get Deanna or someone at the office, Rennie maybe, to take over more of my gUIDANCE gIRL duties?”
Eric chuckled.
“And now you’re laughing.”
“I know. It’s not funny. It’s just that if we’d talked about all of this sooner—”
“We, sugar?”
“Right. If
I’d
talked about all of this sooner, maybe we wouldn’t have to figure out how to get back to where we were.”
The fact that he wanted to, that he recognized they needed to, that he thought they’d be able to…She allowed herself a private smile. No, their issues weren’t
all
about the trouble Eric was having with the bar. A lot of this was about her strange inability to find herself.
But for the first time in months, she felt a flicker of hope.
“Uh, Eric?” she asked after a minute or two of staring out the window. “Where are we?”
“Hmm. About two hours out of San Antonio.”
“San Antonio? What the—” She turned her head sharply. “Aiden’s. We’re going to see my brother?”
Eric nodded. “Jacob and Melanie are already there. I talked to Rennie this morning. She begged me to bring you out. Said Aiden was moping because he wouldn’t get to see his baby sister for Christmas.”
“What about his baby brothers?” She’d been too depressed to plan anything for the holidays. The thought of seeing Aiden lifted her spirits, which Eric had already sent flying.
“Actually, Colin and Jay are there already. Richard’s supposed to arrive first thing in the morning.”
Chloe didn’t even try to disguise the sob that escaped from her throat. “I can’t believe this. We haven’t all been together in…God, it’s been years.”
“So Aiden said.”
Chloe launched herself toward the driver’s seat as far as her seat belt allowed and threw her arms around Eric’s neck. “Step on it, sugar. Give these horses their head. We don’t want to keep Santa waiting.”
T
HE BATHROOM OFF
the master bedroom had definitely been designed for baths rather than showers.
The stall in here, unlike the one in the guest room, was relatively narrow and utilitarian, while the tub was a massive piece of marble, square and deep and orgy-size.
Patrick was ready for an orgy. A wet and wild orgy for two, though managing such with his leg in a cast was going to be a superhuman feat. He was up for it.
Not to mention being
up
for it.
Having grabbed a white plastic garbage bag and a roll of duct tape from beneath the kitchen sink in a halfhearted effort to keep his cast dry, he stood in the bathroom doorway and shucked off his clothes. Tie, then shirt, then boot and belt, pants and boxers, until he stood jaybird bare with a stiff second and third leg.
He leaned on one crutch, holding the garbage bag in the same hand, while in his other hand he held Annabel’s dress. He made his way into the bathroom, figuring he’d find her up to her breasts in bubbles. No dice. She was in water, all right, but it was clear, tinted a pale green, obviously salts or oils or whatever women bathed in that turned their skin to silk.
Speaking of silk…He wrapped the hand holding her dress around his cock and began to stroke. Annabel turned her head to the side on her bath pillow and
watched, her gaze never meeting his but focused on the bulbous head of his penis as he shoved it through the silk.
“That dress cost four hundred dollars.”
“I’ll replace it.”
He continued to stroke. She continued to watch. He moved his gaze from her face to her body, to her breasts and her nipples, which tightened as he stared. The tempo of his stroking increased, increased further when she drew up her knees and spread open her legs.
He swallowed hard, watching as she smoothed the fingers of one hand down her belly, over her dark patch of hair to her clit. He stroked as she circled the knot with her fingertips, stroked as she pinched it and tugged. He then took the silk and began to rub circles over his cock’s head, sweat beading, heart beating, watching Annabel slide one finger, then another down through her folds.
He watched her finger herself; she watched him stroke. He wanted to come, to make her come, but not this way. He wanted to shove himself inside her—fingers, cock, tongue, he didn’t care. He wanted to be there and feel her spasms. He wanted her to come for him, with him, because of him.
And he sure as hell wasn’t about to say no when she pulled her fingers from her sex and crooked one his way.
He hobbled another few feet into the room, watching as she stood, water running down her sleek body. That’s what she was. Sleek. She had the curves he wanted in a woman, no poking ribs or jabbing hipbones. She was her own class of muscle car, hot and sexy and wild under the hood.
He imagined her painted with flames, and the image fit, as did the fantasy of making love to her on the open road in the seat of his car, her legs spread wide as she
straddled his lap, her back arched, her breasts thrust forward….
She raised her brow and her hands went to her hips. “If you’re determined to use my dress to get off, I’ll get back to my bath. But if you’d rather use my mouth…”
Four hundred dollars was nothing. He tossed the dress to the floor, his gaze on Annabel as she stepped out of the tub, easing down to sit on the square edge. He moved forward—step, clump, step, clump—and still she crooked her finger. Wanting him closer. Wanting him where she could slide one hand between his legs and wrap the other around the base of his cock.
He sucked in a breath as she did.
She pressed her lips to the ridge beneath his head and held him there, using her tongue to swirl and tease the tight skin and the slit. He groaned, one hand flat on the wall, the other gripping the handhold of his crutch. He slid his good foot out to the side until it hit the baseboard against the wall. That was good, yeah. Now maybe he wouldn’t fall flat on his ass.
Besides, Annabel had this thing about him spreading his legs. She got off on playing with all the goods, and he couldn’t find any objections to raise. Not anymore, when she had his implicit trust. He especially wasn’t going to object now that one of her hands fondled his balls and the thumb of the other teased the seam beneath the head of his cock.
His knees shook. His pulse raced. A quickening of nerves sizzled at the base of his spine. Annabel continued to perform magic with her mouth, in a rhythm that increased the closer to coming he came. She measured his readiness with her fingers pressed to the bulge on the near side of his ass.
And then it was too late to think about pulling away.
The warmth of her mouth, that incredible heat and moisture, her tongue that swirled, her fingers that probed…Hell if he wasn’t going to come all over the place.
He moved his hand from the wall to the back of her head and unloaded into her mouth. He thrust once, twice, standing still then as his body convulsed and a visceral burst of sensation fired at the base of his cock.
Annabel stayed with him all the way, matching her tempo to his need, easing back when she knew he’d grown too sensitive to touch. He shuddered, shuddered again, a third time before he was spent.
And then there was nothing left to do but pull out of her mouth. He glanced down through bleary eyes in time to see her lick her lips and smile. Merry Christmas, but he loved this woman. His heart ached with how very much.
Shivering, she slipped back into the water, swirling her hands in and around and beneath her bent knees. “Too bad about that cast.”
“Why’s that?” He croaked out the words, giving up and dropping down to sit on the edge of the tub.
“I’ve got warm water and soap and a lot of body parts I’d love to have you wash.”
The look in her eyes…His next breath caught on a strangled groan. Recovery time, hell. He reached for the trash bag and taped it securely beneath his knee—right before sliding bottom first into her lap.
“D
INNER WAS FUN
.” Swearing that Patrick’s body temperature was perfect for reheating the cooling water, Annabel cuddled back against his chest.
He slumped farther down on his spine, his arms around her middle, his bagged and casted leg hanging over the edge of the tub. “Dessert was even better.”
“Which dessert?” Oh, but she loved the feel of him, his strength, his warmth, the nice soft package of his penis tickling her bottom. “The one before dinner, the one after or the one I ate just now?”
“The last one, definitely.” He growled out the words, his sex beginning to stir. “Feel free to indulge anytime.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, and spoke the truth. She loved taking him into her mouth. The change of textures from shaft to head, ridge to seam amazed her; the idea that she was able to please him so thoroughly thrilled her no end.
Even now, feeling him thicken and pulse against her hip brought a corresponding arousal to bear deep within her body. Warm water lapped at her nipples, swirled and eddied between her legs when she shifted position.
Contentment enveloped her as she rocked back into the cradle of his arms. Temptation followed, teasing her with the possibility that she didn’t have to give this up, didn’t have to let him go. Confusion was the last to set in.
He loves me, he loves me not. I love him, I love him not.
Why were complications so very…complicated?
She toyed with his fingers as if plucking at flower petals, keeping his hand from drifting lower on her belly even though she clenched her inner muscles, preparing for his penetrating touch. “I’m glad you stayed tonight.”
“Where was I going to go?” he asked, working his hand free from hers and sliding both up her rib cage to cup her breasts.
She was getting way too used to this, she admitted, settling as close as possible to his body. If not for his heat, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to tell her skin from his. “Where do you usually go when you walk out on a meal?”
He shrugged the shoulder on which she’d laid her head. “Since most of the time I’m cooking at Ray’s house, I head out to the pool.”
“Water baby,” she teased.
“I got spoiled after three years of having the Caribbean in my front yard. I swam off a hell of a lot of frustration and stress.”
“Physical exhaustion makes for great therapy.” She slid a palm down the outside of his thigh, from his hip to his knee, circling her index finger over the intricacies of his tattooed snake.
“It also makes for shaping a lazy frat boy into a lean, mean sex machine.” He pumped his hips against her.
She didn’t even try to fight her smile. “You couldn’t have been too lazy, playing college baseball and all.”
He playfully tweaked at her nipples. “What’s up with this eavesdropping crap? That was a private men’s-only conversation.”
“You don’t think I would’ve been interested to know about your pitching arm?”
“Nah.” One hand started drifting down her belly again. “You don’t seem the pitching-arm-groupie type.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m female, therefore I’m not sports-minded. Is that it?”
He snarled. “Are you getting all snotty on me?”
“Answer the question.”
“It’s not about you being female. It’s about you being Annabel.” He nuzzled his cheek to hers. “The only time I’ve seen you break a sweat is in bed.”
“That’s because I work out at the Memorial Athletic Club for
Women.
Ouch.” She slapped at his hand, which was busy pinching her belly, then wiped the splashed water from her face.
“Just measuring your body fat.”
“If I’m not entitled to know about your pitching arm, you sure as hell have no business knowing about my body fat.”
He stopped pinching and slid both hands over her inner thighs, spreading her legs as he did. “I haven’t thrown a ball in years. I’ve thrown coconuts and dates, pitched fish heads and tossed ammo belts. But no baseballs to talk about.”
She felt her legs quiver, her pulse race. Yet at her back his heartbeat remained steady and sure, as if mentioning ammo belts in the same breath as baseballs was no big deal. Amazing man that he was, he’d learned to cope. She wasn’t sure her character had that same sort of resilient strength, otherwise Devon wouldn’t be harping on her refusal to leave Jericho. And she wouldn’t have freaked earlier and thought about running away. God, she was becoming her own worst contradicting nightmare, she mused, moving her hands to the backs of Patrick’s, where they rested on her thighs.
She twined their fingers together. “It’s hard to think about the danger when we’re here, like this.”
“Then don’t.” His thumbs began drawing circles in the creases of her thighs. “Think about how we’re going to get out of going to Ray’s tomorrow.”
She laughed softly. “It’s Christmas, Patrick. Of course we’ll go out to Ray’s,” she said, realizing how her statement branded them a couple.
“Hmm.”
“Hmm what?”
He drew his thumbs along the lips of her sex until she forgot how to breathe. “I grew up in that house, ya know? But it stopped feeling like home awhile ago. It feels like Ray’s place now. And Sydney’s.”
“As well it should after they’ve lived there as long as
they have,” she said, contracting her abs and moaning as the stroking of his thumbs grew more intimate.
He continued to toy with her, to tease her, pressing over her entrance but never dipping inside. “I guess I’m going to have to get a place of my own here soon.”
“I guess so,” she said, only halfway listening, much more involved with the arousing work of his hands.
“Especially since you’ll be kicking me out of here in another week.”
“That’s true.”
“Humph.”
“Humph what?” She turned her head toward his.
“You were supposed to say you’ve changed your mind and don’t want me to go.”
“I see,” she said, frowning to herself when he moved his hands back to her thighs, then to her knees, where he left them.
Feet flat on the floor of the tub, she grabbed the edge for leverage and stood, turned, then sat back down to face him. She leaned against one enameled side. He leaned against the one opposite and sat with his casted leg draped over the tub’s edge near her shoulder. She slipped her right leg beneath his raised thigh.
Her left leg, well, she ended up with her knee bent and her foot on the far side of his hip. The contortions put their bottoms in full contact, with Patrick’s balls pressed against her and his partial erection nudging the lips of her sex. He didn’t say anything for several long seconds, and with his arms stretched out along the tub’s edge, he appeared to be comfortably biding his time.
But then he pushed his hips forward. His cock was now fully hard.
She felt the probing tip, saw the pulse beating at the base of his throat, and wanted more than anything to
reach down and guide him into her aching sheath. But she waited, certain what he was feeling was more than desire. She saw it in his eyes, which sparkled with a glimmer of pain.
He cleared his throat before speaking. “I’d feel a lot better hanging out here until Dega’s behind bars.”
She leaned to the side just enough to rub her cheek against his knee, which was near her shoulder, and then with complete honesty replied, “I have to say that would make me feel better.”
His tension lifted as visibly as if she’d pulled on the curtain’s ropes at stage left. She kissed his knee, nuzzled her nose against it. “What if it takes longer than you think?”
“Then I’ll be around for a while.”
“Well,” she began, feeling strangely impish, as if the decided course of action allowed her to push away her misgivings as well as her fears. “I have been meaning to finish furnishing the guest room.”
“Guest room?” His arms came down with a splash. “What kind of crap is that?”
Teasingly, she went on. “You can choose your own color scheme, of course. And accessorize the space yourself.”
“I’m not staying in the friggin’ guest room, Annabel. I’m staying with you.”
She pressed her lips tight to hold off a laugh at his endearing adamancy. “Do you realize that when you’re thirty-six I’ll be forty-three?”