Whispers at Midnight (37 page)

It took him about half a beat to get that. Mighty mouth. He remembered calling her that more than once when they were kids because she was so small and girly-looking and basically physically defenseless and yet so completely unable to keep her mouth shut even when staying silent was all she had to do to save her skin. All grown up and she was still at it, pretending to commiserate with him about his sexual performance when she knew as well as he did what he was talking about.

“Damn it, Carly—” he began, and she said “Let go!” and gave her hand a yank.

They weren’t going to play tug of war with the arm; he knew how that went, she’d start squeaking
you’re hurting me
when his grip wouldn’t hurt a gnat and then the whole situation would go downhill and he would end up being in the wrong and apologizing (which was the object of the exercise, he’d learned over the years) while she walked off with her nose in the air and a moral victory and he never even got to speak his piece.

To nip that whole scenario in the bud, he sat up, hooked an arm around her waist, and hauled her kicking and squealing across him,
depositing her back in bed beside him, trapping her between his body and the wall and holding her in place.

“You can’t manhandle me!”

“Looks like I can.”

They were lying on their sides, practically nose to nose and eyeball to eyeball with his arms around her waist while she braced her hands against his chest to keep some space between them and glared ferociously at him.

“Listen, baby, I’m not blaming you for this. I knew better. I knew the ‘no strings’ bit was a crock going in.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, taut with indignation.

Her nipples moved against his chest as she spoke. He could feel them like twin points of fire. Her thighs moved too. He was consumed by the thought of just how really, really easy it would be to just kind of shift his leg and slide his knee between them—

“Oh, yes, you do. Hey, Curls, I was there. Tell me how
I love you, Matt
fits in with no strings.”

Her lips compressed. “I always say that when I come. Well, not the Matt part, but the other.”

“You do not.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

She moved restlessly, pushing against his chest a little, but somehow managing to settle herself closer to him where it counted. The heat of her, the brushing of her nipples against his chest, the sliding of her thighs against his, the soft prickle of the curls between her legs pressed against his stomach, was driving him crazy.

“What’s your problem, anyway? Just because I said
I love you, Matt
when I was getting off doesn’t mean I really do. And even if I did, which I don’t, except like, as a really good friend, I don’t see why it creates a problem for
you.
”

She didn’t see why it created a problem for him? She ought to try looking at things from his point of view. She was flushed and big-eyed and tousle-haired and so pretty, and she felt so good in his arms, so hot and soft and sexy, that the panic he knew he should be feeling,
would be feeling if he was in his right mind, was being overcome by sheer heat.

“Because I don’t want you to get hurt. Because I care about you. Because doing you and then taking off into the sunset makes me feel like a fucking heel.”

And if he kept reminding himself of all that, maybe he would manage to get off this bed without doing her again. Or maybe not.

Carly stiffened in his arms, clearly less than pleased by what she had heard. Her eyes widened and shot sparks at him. She pushed against his chest again, which had the ultimate effect of getting her breasts just far enough away so that her nipples could joggle against him while shifting her lower body closer yet. Or maybe he was doing that by tightening his arms around her. Yeah, he was probably doing that by tightening his arms around her.

“News flash, sweet cheeks. You couldn’t hurt me if you tried,” she said. “How to put this so you’ll understand? The only thing I want from you is your hot hunky body.”

The word
bullshit
occurred to him, and he knew that was exactly what he was hearing, but he was so far gone now that he didn’t even feel like arguing about it. Lust was attacking him in waves, completely sweeping away any and all rational thoughts, fears, plans for the future. He seemed to recall telling her that men basically think with their dicks. If they’d been having that conversation now he could have offered himself up as Exhibit A.

“Sweet cheeks?” He should have said it with a chuckle, but chuckling was beyond him. Even smiling was beyond him. Actually, anything much removed from fucking was beyond him. She was pressed up against him now, and he could feel every soft, sweet, seductive inch, and she kept moving too, almost wriggling really, which made it worse. His knee bent, touched her legs, probed …

“Yeah, sweet cheeks.” The look she gave him was nothing short of truculent. “Baby, did I ever happen to mention that you’ve got a really great ass?”

He could smile after all. He did, at just about the same time as he got his knee between her legs and wrapped a hand around the nearest breast and kissed her. She went perfectly still for a minute, but as his
thumb found her nipple and he pressed his thigh all the way up between her legs until he could feel her all hot and wet against him, she moaned into his mouth and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him too.

Then he rolled her onto her back and did her, great sex one more time, and then rolled onto his back and pulled her on top of him and did her that way too.

Finally, as she lay atop him, sated and exhausted and hopefully bedazzled just as he had planned, it occurred to him that she had come twice more.

Both times she’d gasped out some variation of
oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God.

Not one
I love you.
Not one
Matt.

Which pretty much told the tale right there.

“Shit,” he said tiredly.

She stirred and looked up at him, propping her chin on her hands. It was almost dark outside now, and the light that had earlier filtered through the curtains was gone. Still, it was not so dark that he couldn’t see her, and for that he didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. There could be no doubt that the woman lying on top of him was Carly: Kewpie-doll cute, with her twists of blond curls and big blue eyes and soft, kissed-pink lips. All warm curves and silky, naked skin. She looked sleepy and wanton and vaguely blissed-out, and she smelled of shampoo and sex and him. She was Carly, the only girl he’d always liked too much to fuck, and now he’d taken a header down that slippery slope he’d first started sliding on twelve years ago and fucked her big-time. She made him hot as hell and he loved her like a sister—no, not a sister now, perish the thought—but
like
that, but Carly was all about forever and forever just wasn’t in his game plan.

I love you, Matt.

“What?” she asked.

He could just walk away but he knew he couldn’t, he’d want her again and not be able to keep himself from taking what he wanted any more than he’d been able to keep her out of his bed today. They could just have a red-hot affair until he was ready to leave town, but
he knew she couldn’t, she just wasn’t made that way. The idea of forever scared him. It made him nauseous. It made him break out in a cold sweat.

I love you, Matt.

Tough titty, he told himself, he’d known going in that this was a bad idea and now he got to reap the whirlwind he had sown. He knew Carly. She didn’t say
I love you
lightly. She’d always been a tough-talking, big-mouthed brat with a marshmallow center, and it was the marshmallow center part that worried him now. She hadn’t had that many people in her life to love, a crappy childhood with no family besides her stiff-necked old grandmother, and then a husband who’d cheated on her in the cruelest possible way before walking out on her for another woman. She was a good girl, a great girl; she didn’t deserve the hand she’d been dealt but she’d played it with a lot of courage. He was crazy about her really, loved her without being
in love,
whatever that meant, with her, and he’d cut off his left nut before he’d leave her all crumpled and crying like Shelby had been in her car today. And that was where this was headed. No doubt at all, just as he’d foreseen going in.

I love you, Matt.

If she said it she meant it, and he was basically screwed. It was either go with forever or give up Carly altogether, just get up, get dressed, drive her home and walk away, with the comforting reflection that sooner or later she’d get over it.

Yeah, and on the way out the door he’d kick a kitten and a puppy or two.

He couldn’t do it. She was sweet and vulnerable and
Carly,
and he couldn’t do it. Anyway, he could already tell that he was going to want to fuck her again. Soon, and frequently. A good guess was several times a day until the urge wore off.

“What?” she asked again, frowning a little at him because it was taking him so long to answer.

“I give up,” he said. “You win. You want forever? Fine. You got it. Marry me.”

27

H
AD
M
ATT REALLY
just asked her to marry him? Carly stared at him, hardly able to believe her ears. He looked big and dark and just about good enough to eat lying flat on his back on the white fitted sheet that was the only piece of bedclothes that still remained on the bed, one hand tucked beneath his head, the other warm and relaxed as it nestled in the small of her back. His hair was tousled, his eyes had a dark secret gleam that made her think of sex, and his mouth was twisted into a resigned-looking grimace.

A resigned-looking grimace? When he was
proposing,
for God’s sake?

“You’re joking, right?” she asked, giving a pseudo-playful tweak to a strand of silky black chest hair that just happened to lie beneath her fingers.

“Ouch.” He flattened her hand against his chest, presumably to keep it from inflicting any more pain. “No, I’m not joking.”

“You’re asking me to marry you?”

“Sounded like it, didn’t it? Yeah, I’m asking you to marry me.” With his tone, and expression, he could have been a poster boy for Testy-R-Us.

“You ever hear of candlelight, flowers, bended knee?”

“Hey, I’m asking, all right?”

And thereby doing her a big favor. Because he felt guilty. He couldn’t have made the subtext any more clear if he’d said it aloud. She couldn’t believe she’d gotten herself into this position, it was all because she’d lost control of her mouth and gasped out
I love you
when she’d only meant to think it. With anybody else, she could have pretended that she hadn’t meant it, that it was one of those things that just came out during sex, but not with Matt. He knew her too well.

She’d heard of pity fucks, but pity proposals? This was new.

“You
jackass.
” She punched him in the ribs and rolled off him.

“Ouch! What the hell was that for?” Rubbing his side, he glared at her as she came to her feet beside the bed and stood arms akimbo annihilating him with her eyes.

“Listen, sweet cheeks, what is it about ‘no strings’ that you don’t understand?” Carly said through her teeth, spotting her clothes and bending to snatch them up, then catching the appreciative widening of his eyes and turning so that she was facing him and snapping her arm across her bosom at the same time as she realized that bending was probably not the most modest move she could make.

“Give it a rest, Curls.” Matt turned on his side and propped his head up with a hand as he watched her with every evidence of continuing interest. With a fulminating eye on her audience, she managed to kneel in a very-ladylike-despite-being-naked manner in order to recover her clothes.

He continued, “You’re dying to say yes and we both know it. Say it, get over it, and come back here. We don’t have to get up for another—” he cocked an eye at the bedside clock “—hell, almost an hour.”

“Hey, Matt?” Carly picked up his jeans too, straightened, and threw them at him. “Screw you.”

“That’s the idea,” he said with a slow-dawning grin, neatly fielding her missile. “There’s time.”

Without another word Carly stomped off into the bathroom.

By the time she came back out, showered and dressed and looking as presentable as she could manage under the circumstances, he had turned on the overhead light and was dressed too and standing in the
middle of the room talking on his cell phone. He was frowning as he spoke, and running a hand through his hair as though what he was hearing frustrated the heck out of him. He looked so damned handsome and sexy and sure of himself that she wanted to kill him.

She would have stomped straight out the door, but he stepped neatly in front of her, blocking her path. For a moment Carly contemplated decking him. The problem was, she didn’t think she could do it. No, she knew she couldn’t do it. He was too damned big. But she wanted to.

Her eyes must have told him something of the sort, because he grinned mockingly at her.