Feeling elated, I grinned at her profile. She was no longer frowning. She was now gnawing on her bottom lip. I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Do you live near a gym?” I asked.
She laughed and shot me a smile. The open joy in her face, in her eyes, sent a lick of contented warmth straight through me. “You haven’t changed at all, Bren.”
My throat grew tight with a hot lump. I deal with compliments with ease, but Amanda’s statement . . .
I wanted to tell her not to be too nice to me. Not yet. Not until I knew why I was here. But I didn’t. Who was I kidding? I’d flown halfway around the world because she asked me to, without a word of explanation. It would take her confessing to be a serial killer or an exterminator of puppies and kittens to change my core feelings for her.
“I’ve changed,” I said instead with mock indignation. “I have at least three percent more body fat than I did the last time you saw me. But my strength is up, so it’s not all bad. And my biceps are fourteen percent bigger than what they were, and my quads are—”
She shut me up with a whack to the chest with the back of her hand and a laughing “Oh my God.”
I grinned and then rubbed my chest with a wounded pout. “You been working out yourself? I don’t recall you hitting me this hard before.”
The next ninety minutes flew past. Too fast. The interior of Chase’s Volvo proved to be a comfortable environment for Amanda and I to reconnect on a purely platonic level. We chatted about inane topics: our favorite movies we’d seen in the last year (mine, the latest entry in the Fast and the Furious franchise. Hey, I’m a Rock fan. Don’t judge me. Hers, the most recent Avengers sequel. She’s a geek through and through); what we thought was going to happen in Game of Thrones (both fans, as it turns out); the current state of the Australian political scene; the current state of the American political scene.
When I asked her if her mom and dad knew I was coming, if we were going to see them, she didn’t answer, complaining instead about the road-hogging behavior of the car in front.
Before I realized it, we were turning into a quiet, gum-tree-lined street, the high San Diego sun baking the air outside the car with a shimmering intensity that made me think of summer back home.
“We’re here,” Amanda said, killing the engine.
Here was on the street in front of a four-story red-brick apartment building. All the windows facing the road were open. An elderly woman sat in one of them, studying us with squinted eyes through the smoke wafting up from the cigarette dangling from her lips.
I frowned. This was not how I’d pictured Amanda’s home. Sure, I hadn’t stepped inside yet, but the building looked . . . tired. Beaten. Not at all the apartment of the beloved daughter of an upper middle class professional family.
“It doesn’t look like much,” she said from behind the wheel, as if hearing my thoughts, “but it’s rent-controlled and the neighbors are friendly. Old Mrs. Garcia there watching us helps me out often when I can’t . . .”
She faded off.
I frowned at her, unsettled by the ambiguous tension once again back in her face.
“When I need it,” she finished, offering a smile and a wave to the woman in the window. “And her son keeps the scum away when the need arises.”
“Scum?”
She shrugged at my surprised question. “It’s not the Hilton. But it’s clean and safe, I promise. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
The mystery surrounding this new Amanda and the reason for my being in her life again welled through me once more, like a thick wave of heavy pressure. Unnerving pressure. What had happened to her, what had happened in her life, for her to be in this place, now? This was not the kind of apartment I could see her father approving of for his daughter to live.
When it came to fathers, Charles Sinclair was up there with the best of them for being doting. Some would say over-protective. Especially when it came to who his daughters dated. When he first met me, he’d ran a contemplative look over me, sniffed at my “G’day, Mr. Sinclair”, and spent the next thirty minutes talking loudly about the importance of a solid education of the mind to provide security and safety for the future.
Secure and safe were hardly the words I’d use to describe Amanda’s apartment building. What was going on here? Charles never really thought I was good enough for her. Was she rebelling against him? And if so, was I here to help her with that?
Surely not. Amanda wasn’t that kind of girl. Vindictiveness was not her style. At least, it hadn’t been . . .
I opened my mouth to speak, but Amanda climbed out of the Volvo before I could say a word.
Which was probably for the best. When it comes down to it, sitting inside a purple station wagon on a suburban street, watched closely by a woman who looked older than God, wasn’t the ideal setting for what was likely to be a significant moment in my life.
Climbing from the passenger side, I drew in a deep breath. It was hard not to remember what I’d felt like the last time I breathed San Diego air. The day Amanda told me – in her parents’ backyard – that we were over. I’d been confused. Shell-shocked. Numb.
Was I going to be experiencing that all over again this time?
No. I wasn’t. I refused to. For starters, as blind as I was to why Amanda had called me, my heart wasn’t in her hands. Sure, my body had reacted when I saw her, and it had got a little . . . hmmm, excited by her kiss, but my heart? Nope. Not hers. Not any more. Didn’t matter how great it was to talk to her on the drive here, how natural it was to be in her company again, what came after I walked through the door of her apartment wasn’t going to leave me reeling, confused or numb.
It wasn’t.
We walked together to the main door of the apartment building, Amanda giving me the rundown of her neighbors as we did so. Part of me wondered if it was a sales pitch – see how wonderful everyone is here? Wouldn’t you like neighbors like these? – the rest of me gave myself a mental slap down for being so egocentric.
Amanda was not going to ask me to live with her.
As we crossed the threshold into the grimy, hot and stuffy foyer, Mrs. Garcia called out something from above us, in Spanish I assumed.
Amanda burst out laughing. “Sí, sí,” she called back, waving her hand above her head as she flicked me a sideways smirk, “es muy grandé.”
I raised my eyebrows. In response, Amanda nudged my arm with her shoulder and winked. That was all.
Four sets of stairs later – with interruptions from Mr. Bradshaw, an off-duty firefighter in 1C, Miss Cox (who couldn’t have been a day under eight-six) in 2B, and Mrs. Murdoch, an out-of-work stuntwoman in 4A – we arrived at Amanda’s door.
She slid the key in the lock and then paused. “Oh God,” she said, without looking at me, “I don’t remember if I tidied up before I came and got you.”
Without hesitation I threaded my fingers through the hair at the back of Amanda’s head and turned her face to mine. I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t think; I just did it. “Hey,” I murmured, smiling down into her eyes, “I’ll take you as I find you any day.”
A soft moan sounded in her throat. Her eyes fluttered closed. “Bren, you don’t know what—”
I kissed her silent. Nothing aggressive or ridiculously macho, just a simple brushing of my lips against hers. Ah, but man, did it shake me to my core.
“C’mon,” I said, pulling back, trying like hell to gain some semblance of control over myself. “Let’s get inside. I need a shower.”
For the time it took my heart to beat twice, Amanda searched my eyes for something. And then she nodded, the lips I’d only just kissed curling into a small smile. “You do.”
“Hey.”
Laughing at my mock indignation, she unlocked the door and we both entered her home. It wasn’t as messy as Amanda feared. Books and magazines were scattered across the living area and the two sofas. Surprisingly, the magazines were all cooking ones, and the books had titles like The Fault
in Our Stars and My Sister’s Keeper. I had no idea what they were about – the “Stars” one sounded familiar, but they weren’t the kind of books I remember Amanda reading when we were together. Back then she was devouring titles like Horns and Pet Sematary, and the covers didn’t involve smiling people.
She had a lot of colorful cushions, all of them actually on the sofas, which was a hell of a lot better than my cushions, which were, I’m pretty certain, on the floor of my apartment.
The dining table was free of clutter—again, I couldn’t say the same about mine—as was the small kitchen. When I spied a jar of Vegemite on the counter among the more traditional American spreads like marshmallow crème and peanut butter, I couldn’t help but smile.
“Damn it,” Amanda said beside me. “I knew you’d see that.”
I grinned at her. She’d proclaimed loudly and proudly while in Australia that she thought anyone who liked Vegemite needed their head read.
“It’s small,” she said, as she moved past me, deeper into the apartment, “but it’s home.” Trailing her fingertips along the back of the largest sofa, she ran her gaze over everything around her. “It’s not like in the movies, I promise. There’s no train right next door to rattle our teeth every hour, and we’re not under any flight path. The walls are soundproof and the plumbing works.” She looked back at me, a smile I could only describe as hopeful on her face. “It’s home.” Her voice cracked on the word.
“It looks good,” I said honestly. And it did. It spoke of the Amanda I knew. Even with the slight chaos of books, magazines and a few jackets, shoes and hats strewn about the place, it was Amanda. On the walls were framed posters of famous art works (my high school art teacher would be very impressed with the fact I remembered what a Mondrian and a Klimt looked like), and framed posters for the movies Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The King’s Speech and The 40 Year-Old Virgin.
The whole interior was a mishmash of eclectic taste, and looking at it, taking it all in, filled me with a warmth in my chest I should have found unnerving. Dangerously close to my heart, that warmth was. Dangerously close.
“The shower is through that door,” Amanda said, pointing to a closed door on the far side of the apartment. “The water hardly ever runs cold, so you can take all the time you need in there to decompress.”
Hitching my gym bag farther up my shoulder, I gave her a wide smile. “Be out in five.”
“Ah, that’s right,” she rolled her eyes. “The austerity of the Aussie shower. Get in, get clean, get out. I still remember that backpacker’s hostel we stayed in Queensland with the timed showers. The one that cut off my water when I still had shampoo in my hair.”
I chuckled. “And I remember you demanding you join me in my . . .” I stopped talking. Just like that. Snapped my mouth shut and kind of froze. Crap. The last thing I needed was to be thinking about Amanda in the shower with me. That kind of thinking would lead to certain things coming up that really needed to, well, not.
“That door,” Amanda said, pointing again to the other side of the apartment, her expression unreadable.
“That door,” I echoed. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. There are clean towels on the rack. You can use them.”
I nodded.
Before I could say anything else, she turned and made for the kitchen. “I’ll make you a cup of tea. Green still your tea of choice?”
“Yep.”
She didn’t look back at me. I didn’t let myself watch her move about in the kitchen. The air was charged with a tension I couldn’t describe, like sandpaper scraping exposed nerve endings. I hurried to the bathroom and closed the door behind me, my pulse pounding in my throat. Were we both suddenly aware of the fact I was going to be naked in her home? Or was Amanda unsettled by my blundering reminder of one of the many times we shared a shower? Or was it all in my head? Was I reading too much into it? Maybe it was me, hyped up on zero sleep and the scent of her in every breath I took?
I ran the cold water. It was either have a cold shower, or take care of the, umm . . . situation with my hand, and if the thought of being naked in Amanda’s home was messing with my head and body, the thought of masturbating in it . . .
Fifteen seconds later, I stood naked under water nowhere near as cold as I wanted it to be, with my head bowed, my eyes closed and my hands rammed flat to the tiled wall.
Crap. This was harder than I thought, and I wasn’t just referring to my—
The shower curtain slid open. Amanda stood on the other side, still completely dressed, her eyes wide and enigmatic as she looked up at me. “Bren . . .” she whispered.
Without a word or hesitation, I reached out, cupped my wet hand at the back of her head and drew her into the shower with me. She came without resistance, pressed her body to my eager one, tangled her fingers in my wet hair and met my hungry mouth with her own.
We kissed for a lifetime. Reacquainted ourselves to each other’s mouths and tongues. The water streamed over us, drenching Amanda’s shorts and shirt.
I needed to fix that problem. And yet, I couldn’t drag my mouth from hers. So I resorted to undressing her without breaking the kiss. That meant tearing her shirt open – for some reason I couldn’t find the patience to undo its tiny buttons. Amanda didn’t seem to mind. She moaned as I did, and again as I pulled the clinging wet shirt over her shoulders.
Another moan vibrated deep in her chest as my hand found her breast, contained by the lace of her bra. Her nipple rubbed at the center of my palm through the lace, a scraping friction both wonderful and frustrating. I wanted to feel her flesh, all her flesh, without anything – even something as flimsy as lace – getting in the road. I wasn’t exactly gentle as I yanked the edge of her bra aside and took her nipple in my mouth.
Once again, Amanda didn’t seem to mind. She never had before. When it came to sex, neither of us had been shy or self-conscious. She’d often laughed when we were together that I approached sex like I approached a workout session: go hard, or go home. Of course, she would also point out that the very fact I was hard kind of negated the “go home” bit. That and the fact we were going at it like rabbits in my home.
When it came to sex with Amanda, none of the rules I lived my life by mattered though.
The second I sucked her flesh into my mouth, she clawed at my scalp and begged me to do it again. “Oh God, Bren,” she panted, knotting her fingers in my wet hair and holding my head closer to her breast. “I’ve missed you doing this so much.”
For a cruel moment the thought of someone else doing what I was doing now smashed through me. Jealousy – hot and furious – flooded me and I growled around her nipple. She wasn’t someone else’s, she was mine.
At that thought, an emotion I couldn’t identify – far hotter and angrier than my jealousy – swept through me. Although swept is not really the correct word. Pummeled me, is better. Consumed me, also more accurate.
This half-dressed, soaking wet woman in the shower with me was responsible for the most incredible and destructive moments of my life, and the very notion of someone else, anyone else, being in her heart, her thoughts . . .
It undid me. Crap. So much for not letting her get to me. So much for okay, good, gravy and chillaxed.
Lifting my head, I stared down into her face, ready to tell her we had to stop.
“Please don’t,” she whispered, cupping my jaw in a shaking hand. Beads of water clung to her eyelashes, turning them spiky. Her glorious hair hung around her face in dark, shining strands. Her lips glistened. “Let’s just give ourselves this, okay?”
I didn’t have the strength to deny her. When had I ever?
Without a word – for none formed in my head – I took her lips with mine once more and lost myself to the pleasure of being with her.
At some point, I stopped kissing her. I was on my knees, peeling her wet shorts from her hips and rolling them down her legs. The water trickled over her belly, little rivulets that ran over the soft flesh in mul
tiple paths down past her pubic hair. The last time I’d seen Amanda she’d been waxed free of hair and her stomach had been firm and flat with the subtle lines of a strong core and abs. I’d reveled in the smooth, satiny-slick mound of her hairless pubic curve. I’d worshipped that stomach, admiring the physical strength and healthy lifestyle it spoke of. And yet, there was something utterly female about the belly, and the dark curls I now devoured with my eyes. Something beyond me.
I watched the water stream over her flesh, traced the path of more than one down to her wet pubic hair with my fingers. A choppy breath tore from her. She moaned my name, along with words I didn’t understand. My brain was too fogged with a raw pleasure I hadn’t experienced since she’d ended us. I’d had sex since then, but nothing had rocked me like this. Nothing had moved me.
Ah, fuck, I really was in trouble.
And still, I couldn’t stop. Nor did I want to. I licked the shower water from Amanda’s belly, and then stroked my tongue over her trimmed curls . . . and lower, until I found her warm flesh.
She snagged my hair in a tight fist, sending pain and incredible pleasure through me at once. “Oh Bren . . .”
With the water streaming over my head, my shoulders, and flowing down my back, and Amanda’s fingers tugging my hair, I lingered for long, delicious moments on her sex, giving myself over to the taste of her, the feel of her, the sound of her. The memory and the reality of her.
It was exquisite. Perfect.
And even more so when, her voice shaky and shallow, she panted my name, held my head hard and came. It had been too long since I’d had Amanda’s release on my tongue. Too long. The warm flow of her orgasm detonated a hunger in me I could only describe as primitive. It wasn’t enough that I’d made her come with my mouth. I wanted to own her, fill her in the most elemental, animalistic way possible.
Dragging my mouth from her receptive flesh, I pressed my face to the soft curve of her belly and curled my arm around the back of her thighs. “Mandy . . .” I groaned.
Unforgettable (Always Book 2) Page 4
