The Virgin's Revenge (13 page)

“So explain to me how all this happened.”

“Do I have to?”

He laughed, glancing up at her with those knowing brown eyes of his. He’d already put it together, she could tell. Too smart for his own good sometimes. Which, in this case, was just the way she wanted it. Sort of…

“I had an idea,” she started, thinking back to how the idea had come to her in the store. How hard could it be to pretend to be playing with the cuffs and manage to get one around his wrist? That was the beauty of working in an erotic wonderland. Access to all kinds of things you normally couldn’t get your hands on. She’d taken her shower and was still drying off when she’d had her next brilliant thought.

“I was trying this flip trick I saw in a movie once. The cop clapped one cuff on this guy, then swung the other one and it latched onto the guy’s other wrist. It didn’t look hard or anything. I put one on my wrist as the starting point, and I was trying to swing it and get it on my other wrist—”

“But you missed,” Cole finished for her.

She nodded as miserably as she could. Missed, aimed, what’s the difference? She still had her wrist cuffed ever so conveniently to the upper bar of her brass headboard. Right where she wanted it.

“Yeah, I missed. And when I tried to put the key in to get myself out, it slipped right through my fingers.” Unfortunately, that part was true. She’d gotten a little too pushy with the tiny key when she realized she’d forgotten to make one crucial stop in the bathroom before setting herself up here on the bed. “I heard it go into the grate, and I realized the only way I was getting out of here was to wait for you.” Also unfortunately true. “At least I’ve only been here for about twenty minutes or so, but right after I settled, I realized I’d put off going to the bathroom…”

Yeah, that’s sexy, Amanda. Talking about having to pee. Brilliant. That’ll get him in the mood.

“I know how that goes. As soon as you can’t go, it’s all you can think about. Like not being able to swear in front of people you just met or not scratching your balls in the outfield.” He flashed a smile at her, and relief soothed most of her discomfort away.

“When did
you
ever play baseball?” Before the elder twins got their paws on him, Cole had been a tall, skinny, self-professed geek boy who lived and breathed next to his computer and comic books. He lost the skinny after a year or two, but his ability to duck sports of any kind had never gone away.

“There are only so many fake doctors’ notes you can pass off to the PE teacher. We all had to play sometime. Just because not all of us are blessed enough to be volleyball goddesses.”

She barely kept from snorting. “As if. I only made the team because they needed a tall center. Admit it, you’re just jealous I can hit the things I aim at.”

“Not last night, you couldn’t.” And oh, he sounded good and smug about that.

She forgot her plan for a second and narrowed her eyes at him, but the glare was lost on his bowed head. “How’d you do it?”

He finally looked up from his project. “Do what?”

“Win a game that doesn’t include a game console. We both know you usually can’t hit a ball to save your life.”

He cocked his head to the side, one corner of his mouth lifting. “Are you actually accusing me of cheating? At
minigolf
?”

“Cheating is a harsh word that I did not actually use.” But yes, that’s exactly what she meant.

He
tsk
ed, but she heard the evil smile in it as he went back to fishing. “What is it about Jackmans that none of you can handle losing?”

“What is it about techies that you can’t answer direct questions?”

His bark of laughter at that gave her a warm feeling in her stomach. She leaned back on her pillows, strangely enough feeling the closest to normal that she had since moving out of the family house. It didn’t matter that she was naked under a thin piece of silk or that he was trying to find the key to her fuzzy padded handcuffs. It could be just another Saturday morning while he ate her cereal and they watched SyFy.

“Fine, keep your secrets. But just because I can’t prove it doesn’t mean you weren’t cheating.” She knew she sounded haughty, but that was half the fun. She closed her eyes, content to relax and squabble like kids. Even if it didn’t advance her goal, it was…fun.

“You’re only mad because I caught you trying to sneak a double tap.”

One of her eyes opened, and she speared him with as cranky a glare as she could manage. “How many times do I have to tell you? I was not double tapping. The first stroke was a practice swing.”

“All I know is my father’s golden rule—if you shake it more than once, you’re playing with it.”

She laughed. “You’re so gross.”

“I’m also your hero.”

Amanda turned her head to see him holding up a key on the end of the screwdriver. “Oh, my God, you did it!”

“I’m hurt you doubted me.” He captured the key, and before she could finish sitting up, he’d unlocked the shackle on her wrist.

“I love you so much right now.” Struggling with the towel and the backward robe, Amanda leapt to her feet and kissed his cheek before dashing out of the room, hoping to God she didn’t flash him her bare ass on the way toward sweet relief. Since she could hear him laughing even through the slammed bathroom door, she had to chalk that one up to lost hope.

Five minutes later, after as much fussing as she could think to do, she came out, her robe on correctly, the vivid, colorful flowers painted on the white silk now at the hem where they belonged. She tied the belt at her waist as tight as possible and hoped against hope she could maybe get back to looking like a competent woman sometime in this lifetime.

Cole was still in her bedroom, putting the tools into the bag again. The grate was back in place, and the nightstand was returned to its previous spot. The pink cuffs were even off the headboard bar, folded neatly on the bed next to the bag. He looked up when she came in, a welcoming grin on his face.

Shyness suddenly gripped her. This wasn’t exactly how she’d plotted this to go. The idea was for her to be “helplessly” waiting for his rescue. Then she’d get to wait in the comfort of her bed for him to come to her, a much stronger position. But now, she was coming to him. Vulnerable.

She took a breath, a shiver that had nothing to do with the warm air flowing in through the windows. Her stomach tightened and her blood began to race, giving her a hot, quavery feeling throughout. This wasn’t shyness. It was
awareness
. Of the man in her bedroom, his smile fading slowly, looking decidedly in place amongst her things. How that was possible with his big work boots, beat-up jeans and yet another of his ancient T-shirts, this one black and completely washed-out with small holes in the shoulders. Even the collar was bedraggled.

Amanda concentrated on that ripped-up fabric to give her confidence to move closer. Cole stayed quiet, allowing her to do this how she wanted. Relief flooded her as she realized he wasn’t going to stop her. She walked over to him, reaching for the dangling piece of his shirt and smoothed it. Her fingers touched the warmth of his skin briefly before she slid them over the hard contours of his chest.

She kept her eyes there, tempted for a second to end the whole farce before she did something stupid. She was no seductress—these nerves just proved it. Her every attempt to move him forward met with unmitigated failure. Those minutes when they’d just been Amanda and Cole instead of manhunter and man-refusing-to-be-hunted had been temptingly comfortable.

If only she could have both…

But she couldn’t. Even if she could forgive his role in her brother’s marriage scheme, she would never get past his reservations about marriage. Not for the first time, she bit back a curse in his parents’ direction. On their own, his mother and father were fairly decent people. But together, the bitterness and angst was like an unbreakable wall no one could possibly scale. Certainly not their son, who in turn had built some pretty impressive walls of his own. She had her fantasies, but she didn’t have any illusions. He cared for her, but only because she was safely inside the box where he’d put her. For whatever reason, Locke had forced that box open and left her to deal with what fell out.

This time, this stupid, stupid hide-and-seek game they were playing was all she would have. Probably ever.

The sadness of that dulled the excitement. His hand came slowly up over hers, holding her palm tight across his heartbeat. She looked up, her breath growing shallow in her chest. He waited there, not saying a word, until she got enough courage to meet his gaze.

There was no censure. No judgment, either, thank God. He tugged her closer, until her robe was brushing against his clothes and he fit his other hand against the side of her face.

The kiss, when it finally came, was so soft, so fragile, she was afraid the slightest sound would break it. He pressed his forehead to hers, curling his fingers around hers between their chests.

“What’s happening between us,” he murmured. “It doesn’t have to happen all at once, Amanda.”

Yes, it did. Because if he kept doing things like this, slowing everything down and making it meaningful, her heart was going to start thinking it was something he didn’t intend. The same way it had talked itself into falling head over heels for him when he didn’t have a clue that she wanted more than his friendship.

Of course, soon, that would be gone too.

And that made her sadder than anything else.

“You don’t understand,” she found herself whispering, hating the situation so bitterly it hurt. She felt as if she were in an hourglass, the sands constantly pouring out from under her. Her time with him was ticking away. In the end, she could lose so much more than her brother had realized. “You don’t know what it’s like to have wants and dreams and wishes and be completely invisible to everyone around you. To search and search for something that makes you special or interesting or proves somehow that you’re worth something and never find it. You don’t know what it’s like to
need
—” She bit her lip to keep the words in, the tears. The sad desperation she had lived with for so long—not just the craving for him, but for herself.

“It wasn’t
only
my brothers getting in my way, Cole. It was me too, buying in to all the limitations. They weren’t holding me at gunpoint. I had choices, and I made them because it was easier to just give in. Telling myself that just because they said I couldn’t do something meant I really couldn’t. They might have put me in a box, but I
let
them. I made myself into a victim, and you don’t have any idea how angry that makes me.”

“Yes, I do,” he said in a clipped tone, his voice deep and full of a conviction she rarely heard out of him. “For a long time, I let my parents’ unhappiness dictate my life. I made it my job to make them happy, to the point that I almost quit on what made
me
happy.”

She could only stare. Even when the elder twins were driving him crazy, throwing away his cigarettes and annoying him into weight lifting or running miles, Cole had always been his own person. His own force of will. Then again, she’d never imagined he would go along with her brother’s autocratic edicts before, either. She was so tempted to ask him why. Why was he giving in to Locke when he’d never given in on a single thing in his life? In this moment, she felt as if their game was on pause. This was real, possibly more real than any moment they’d shared before.

“Remember the school thing?”

She blinked, snapping back from her revealing thoughts. Oh yes, she remembered the school thing. Shay Engstrom had pushed hard to get Cole to consider law school, to the point that she’d enlisted her family connections to get him a position as a senate page for an entire summer back in high school. Not terribly amusing to his surgeon father, who had plans to groom his son to follow in his own distant footsteps. When Cole had disagreed with attending his father’s school of choice, Jason had told him to pay for his own education, going so far as to insist on Cole joining the military or leaving his house for good. Cole had left, on his own, without ever looking back.

“I didn’t think there was ever a question of you becoming a doctor or a lawyer.” Which was naïve, she realized now. He’d spent his entire life as a bone for his parents to fight over.

“Of course there was a question. But there was no way to answer correctly. Not for them. My father wouldn’t have been happy with anything less than what he wanted, and Mom would have hated seeing me turn into him. The only way to go was the way I made for myself.”

“Which you did.”

“But I almost
didn’t
. I almost gave my father exactly what he wanted, because it was the least scary choice I had. And I hated him for that. For caring more about himself than he ever did about me. But it wasn’t easy, so I understand how hard it’s been for you to walk away from the protection your family wants to give you. I know what it’s like to live in that box.”

“Then why are you treating me like I’m still there?” They both knew why she’d had those cuffs—she wasn’t hiding anything, so she just said it. “Like I don’t know that I want you?”

He closed his eyes, for a second looking almost pained. “If I didn’t think you’d regret it, I’d lay you down right now and make love to you until both of us were pretty sure we broke every bone in our bodies.” His lids opened at her sharp intake of breath, and his expression finally had warning in it. “You’d regret it, Amanda.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” Especially not right now, when it wouldn’t have anything to do with Locke’s command or her own stupid vow. She knew it wouldn’t. His heart thumped madly under her palm, and she could feel his desire pressing firmly against her belly. But emotions weren’t what he was warning her against.

Always,
always
, his stupid walls.

“Sex isn’t going to make you magically independent,” he added into the silence.

There were so many things she could say about that, but she knew Cole’s implacable expression. He wouldn’t back down on this, despite the intimate way he held her, the truths he’d shared. The moment that could have turned the tide in her direction was gone. The only thing she could do was hope for another one.