by Anna Durand
"Yes. It's over." I paint tiny patterns on his chest with my finger. "Unless we do it one more time. Which, you know, would really be part of the same night."
"Right. I haven't fully inducted you into the world of earth-shattering sex yet, have I?"
"Mm-mm. Better get back to it."
He rolls me over so he's on top of my body and grins. "Are you ready to come even harder?"
I grin too. "Oh yes, please."
Chapter Nine
Reese
I wake up in the morning and realize I'm lying in Arden's bed. I'd meant to sneak out after she fell asleep. First, I'd meant to kiss her good night and casually walk out and go to my room. But she was so sweet and warm tucked under my arm, with her head on my chest, that I couldn't make myself tell her to move. Once she fell asleep, I kept lying there listening to her breathing and inhaling the scent of her, while she still had her head on my chest.
Eventually, I fell asleep.
Which explains why I'm in her bed, but not why I couldn't bring myself to leave her last night. I never spend the night with a woman, not anymore. The few times I did, the girl would get clingy and needy the next morning, and I had to be an arse and sneak out when she wasn't looking. Trust me, telling a woman you don't really want to date her, that having sex doesn't mean you're signing on for a lifetime commitment, never works. So yes, I skulked out.
But not last night. And not this morning.
I'm lying here in Arden's pink bed, but she isn't in it.
Have I been sneaked out on like I'd done to women in the past? Maybe it's my punishment for behaving like a "sleazoid." I'd only done that three times, and not in at least four years. Chance had given me a dressing-down for that behavior when he found out what I'd done, and believe me, there's nothing like a big-brother lecture to make a bloke never want to go through it again.
Besides, I never liked letting my family down.
Which sounds odd, I know. I'm the brother who screws around and doesn't stay for breakfast, but I also don't run off without saying goodbye. Not anymore. Not after seeing the disappointed look on Chance's face. He hadn't told our parents what I'd done, but his disappointment was more than enough.
I turn on my side in Arden's bed and get an exhilarating dose of her scent. Not only the aroma of sex from the three times we'd done it. The scent of her. I crush her pillow to my face and haul in an even bigger dose of her. The aroma fills my nostrils and overpowers my senses, making me feel strangely... relaxed.
Ah, the scent of Arden.
What am I doing? I spring up, sitting there with her pillow in my hands, and try to answer my own question. I can't be... enjoying this. Being in her bed. Waking up here. Spending the night with her.
No. I'm still sleepy, that's all.
I drop her pillow and get out of the bed, gathering my clothes and pulling them on while employing every fragment of my tattered willpower to keep from thinking about how fantastic her pillow smells.
Other aromas waft into the bedroom now. Is that bacon? Pancakes? I sniff the air, and my stomach grumbles.
Maybe Arden hasn't skulked away from me while I slept. In her bed. The pink one.
I tiptoe out into the hallway and down to the living room, like I'm a prowler about to get caught. Arden is in the kitchen, cooking something that sizzles on a skillet and humming softly to the music playing through her earbuds. I can't hear the music, but I recognize the tune as one of those power ballads from the eighties. The bar blocks my view of the lower half of her body, but I can see her shirt. The pastel plaid fabric looks so good on her, and she's left the shirt half unbuttoned so I can see the center of her chest and get a tempting glimpse of the sides of her breasts.
Why couldn't she have worn a turtleneck? Is that too much to ask for?
She looks up, sees me, and smiles as she takes her earbuds out. "Good morning, Reese. Hungry?"
That smile. It's the single most beautiful thing I've ever seen, full of bright, sunshiny joy.
Christ, I've turned into one of those lovey-dovey idiots.
"Good morning, Arden," I say. "I'm starved. Is that pancakes I smell?"
"Mm-hm. Blueberry this morning. I hope you like that."
"I'll eat anything. Just ask my family. Dane once dared me to eat a handful of grasshoppers, and I did it."
"Ew." She wrinkles her nose. "I don't cook insects for breakfast. Only for Thanksgiving dinner."
"Is that an American tradition?" I ask, taking a seat at the bar. "I thought it was turkey and pumpkin pie, but insects sounds a lot more interesting."
She aims her spatula at me. "You do realize I was kidding, right? I never touch insects, much less eat them. They're icky."
"Afraid of grasshoppers? Don't worry, I'll protect you from them." I pat my chest with both hands. "I'm your personal insect repellent."
Her snort transforms into a sputtering laugh. "That's even ickier. You're a walking bottle of chemical spray? Not sexy."
"Sorry. No more talk of creepy-crawlies, I promise."
"Good. Because I saw bugs the size of buses down in Ecuador." She flips a pancake, and only half of it lands on the griddle. She scoops up the half that's hanging off the side and tries to get it all on the cooking surface, but it winds up wrinkled. "Ugh. I'll eat that one."
"You're still doing better than I would. My mum won't let me near uncooked food anymore, not since I tried to poach an egg in the microwave and it exploded."
"How do you make an egg explode?"
"By cooking it with the shell on."
Arden smiles with her lips sealed, and it's the sweetest expression I've ever seen. "Guess you win the worst chef award."
"Don't I also win the wow award for most incredible taking of virginity?"
Her sweet little smile broadens into a grin. "Yep, you win that one for sure."
For some reason, I feel the need to add, "We can't do that again."
Her grin fades, but only for a few seconds, then that lips-sealed smile returns. This time, it carves out divots in her cheeks, like she has a brilliant secret that she's not going to share.
"What are you plotting, Arden?"
"Oh, nothing." She flips another pancake, this time getting all of it on the griddle, her head down but her eyes turned up to look at me. "Just imagining how I can seduce you."
"No, Arden." I try to sound stern, but I'm bloody awful at it. Resistance is not my strong suit, remember? "We can't do that anymore."
Even I don't believe me.
But dammit, I will try to not fuck her. Honestly, I'll try.
No, I won't try. I absolutely will not have sex with Arden. Never again. End of story.
She laughs, and her eyes sparkle.
"You think my resolve is funny?" I say.
"No, I think it's cute that you think you, a total player, can keep saying no when a woman wants you so bad she'll do anything to get you naked again."
Luckily, she finishes making the pancakes before I can think of anything to say in response. She wants to eat on the sofa, but I insist we have our breakfast at the bar.
Arden leans across the bar to set our plates there, making her half-unbuttoned shirt fall away from her body. I can see even more of her breasts.
My mouth waters, and not from the savory food she's placed in front of me.
She ambles around the bar to where the stools and I are waiting for her. The barmy girl whose shirt is half open is wearing nothing else but those plaid knickers I'd seen on the night we met.
"Why aren't you dressed?" I ask, and I almost cringe at the humiliating, panicked tone of my voice.
"I am dressed," she tells me. "Not ready for public viewing yet, but dressed."
And I can't think of anything to say to that.
Of course, she perches on the stool right next to mine. When I move to the next one over, she moves over too. The girl is relentless. I can't possibly be that good in bed. I mean, I'm good. But not so fantas
tic that women can't bear to not fuck me. Her insistence must be strictly because she was a virgin. I'm all she knows, about sex, so naturally she thinks I'm the most incredible lover on the planet.
Being around her might give me an ego the size of Australia.
I have no choice but to sit there with her inches away, the intoxicating scent of her more powerful than the smell of the pancakes and bacon. My willpower, which I'd thought---or maybe prayed---had reassembled itself, is getting new cracks. I'm only a man, not a robot with no feelings and no dick. Mine, by the way, is awake and ready for action. I really hope Arden doesn't peek under the bar and see that. The woman does not need more ammunition for blowing holes in my self-control.
She wriggles her bum on her stool while humming with pleasure as she chews a bite of bacon.
Never in my life have I needed my willpower so much, and it's failing me at every turn. Am I a complete and total arsehole? I'm starting to think the answer is yes.
"Let's go for a walk," I say. I'm done eating, since unfulfilled lust apparently makes me as ravenous as a starved lion who's caught a tasty gazelle. "It looks like a beautiful day out there."
"It is." She slips a forkful of pancake between her lips, and syrup dribbles down those lips and onto her chin, a single drop of it threatening to fall off. "But I was thinking we should go to the zoo."
"The zoo?" I say the words, but I'm not actually listening to her. That drop of syrup has captured all of my attention, because if it drips off her chin, it will land on one of those gorgeous tits.
While I stare at her chin and half pray for, half curse at the possibility of the syrup splashing onto her breast, she launches into a description of everything that's "awesome and so ridiculously fun" about the zoo. When she starts rambling on about museums, even that doesn't catch my attention. That drop of syrup is still hanging there, like it's frozen in place.
I'm five seconds away from licking it off.
Arden grabs a napkin and wipes her mouth and chin.
Something like disappointment ripples through me. Maybe later, I'll get the syrup and drizzle it over her naked body so I can lick off every last molecule of it.
No, you will not do that, you raging arsehole.
I volunteer to wash the dishes while Arden gets dressed. Actually dressed this time. She comes out of her bedroom wearing jeans, a loose-fitting shirt that falls below her hips, and sandals that show off her adorable toes and the neon-green nail polish on them.
"Let's go," she says. "You're a New York virgin, and I'm going to show you all the most fabulous places in the city."
"Sounds like fun." The zoo and museums don't appeal to me that much, but I love listening to her talk about... anything. "But as a reminder, there will be no sex."
I can't say for sure which of us I'm reminding.
Arden smiles, sexily, and takes my hand. "Don't you trust me, Reese?"
Not with my willpower. Absolutely not.
But I let her lead me out of the apartment, with my hand wrapped around her smaller one, and try not to think about how good she looks in her oversize shirt.
Christ, every last thing about her turns me on.
I'm absolutely doomed.
Chapter Ten
Arden
Reese hadn't been thrilled about going to the zoo or museums, but he gets really into it once we're there. I haven't done anything this fun in a long time, since way before I went to Ecuador. I love to have a good time, but my family history can make that difficult. When I mumble something like that to Reese, thinking he won't hear me, he does hear it.
"Don't you get along with your family?" he asks.
"Of course I do. They're amazing, I love them."
"What's the problem? Why does your family keep you from having a good time?"
Reese and I are in the butterfly garden, so I focus on the beautiful critters flitting around in here when I say, "It's nothing they do. It's the fact of who we are."
"I don't understand."
How could he? Everyone in New York knows my family, or at least my grandmother, but Reese isn't from here. I don't know how to start, so I go with the blunt approach.
"My grandmother is Celeste Arnaud."
Once I announce that, most people get it right away. Reese doesn't. He stares at me like I've babbled in another language.
"She's the founder of Bonsoir Beauty Inc.," I tell him. "The second-largest cosmetics company in the world."
"Oh." His brows crinkle with the cutest confusion. "I'm a man. Why would I know what you're talking about?"
"Because my grandmother is famous. Bonsoir is huge, and she's an icon."
He glances at a big orange butterfly, shoves his hands in his pants pockets, and sighs. "Afraid I've never heard of her. She's your mother's mother, right? Her last name is different, so I assume---"
"Nope. Grams kept her maiden name when she married Granddad because her company was already making a name for itself. She's also very proud of her French heritage. She's American, though. No accent."
"She's your father's mother, then."
"That's right. My dad is Marcel Pesti. My mom's name is Tally."
He watches me with a strange expression for a few seconds, then asks the question he's obviously been working up the nerve to ask. "I know it's a cheeky question, but how rich is your grandmother?"
"She's the number three female billionaire in the world. There are over two hundred of them, you know."
"No, I didn't know that." He scrunches his lips and hunches his shoulders. "Your grandmother is a billionaire?"
"Yeah, but she's not super stuffy or anything. Grams is pretty cool, when she's not butting into my life."
His mouth opens, but he seems incapable of speaking.
Yeah, talking about my grandmother often has that effect on people.
Desperate for something to say to break the tension, I announce out of absolutely nowhere, "I don't have any brothers or sisters."
At least his blank expression has disappeared.
He seems genuinely interested when he asks, "None at all? I can't imagine not having brothers."
"You guys are close, aren't you?"
"Always have been. Chance, as the oldest, thinks it's his job to keep the rest of us in line. Dane is the intellectual, the one who invents things. I'm the youngest, and the biggest disappointment."
"You are not a disappointment."
"If you knew me, you wouldn't say that."
"Does your family say that?"
"No. They're always supportive." He scrunches his mouth up again. "Well, except for one time. When Chance found out I'd shagged a girl and run away while she was asleep, he gave me a lecture about respecting women. The girl in question was best friends with Chance's girlfriend, so that's how he found out."
"You don't run out on women anymore."
"No. I did that three times, but never again after my brother's lecture." Reese glances at me, his mouth twisted into a wryly crooked smile. "Chance will call me an arsehole and a complete fuck-up when he finds out what I've done to you."
"You haven't done anything to me. We did it together." I move closer, leaning into him. "From what Elena says about Chance, he would never call you anything nasty."
Reese leans into me. "You're right. I'm feeling sorry for myself, that's all."
"Because you slept with me after promising not to."
"Not only that. I also lost my job."
I slip my hand into his big palm, threading my fingers through his, and rest my cheek on his arm. "What happened?"
"Does it matter?"
"Maybe it's not my business, but I'd like to know."
He closes his fingers around my hand. "I was a copywriter at an advertising agency, but I was made redundant three weeks ago."
"Redundant?"
"It means I was let go. 'Laid off' I think is what Americans call it."
"That's awful. What will you do now?"
/> He shrugs. "I'm getting redundancy pay, but I need to find a new job. I probably shouldn't have come here for a holiday instead of searching for a new position, but I needed... I don't know. A break."
"That's understandable. I'm sure your family gets it."
Reese squirms, his face pinching into a tight expression. "I haven't told them yet. They think I took time off from work."
"Why haven't you told them about getting laid off?"
"It's humiliating. Chance is a successful lawyer, even has his own firm now with Elena. Dane is successful too, has his own company, which leaves me as the unemployed loser in the family."
"No one would say that." I turn toward him, still holding his hand. "Getting made redundant doesn't mean you're a loser. It happens to a lot of people."
He angles toward me and studies me for a moment. "What about you? What's your profession? If you're from a wealthy family, do you even need to work?"
Though I would completely understand it if he were envious of my family and my life, he doesn't sound like that at all. He seems curious, not irritated.
Starting with the less shocking truth seems like the best plan. "I'm a freelance fact checker."
"Fact checker? What does that mean?"
"Authors and publishers hire me to make sure they got the facts straight in the stuff they publish, which means I do a lot of research. I specialize in science topics."
"I guess that shouldn't surprise me, since you're very clever." He gives me a playful smile. "Even if you are barmy."
"You should know by now that I'm not sensitive about how weird I am. I like being kooky."
"And you should be proud of your barmy nature. It's endearing." He pauses, glancing down at the ground, then looks at me again. "You didn't answer the other question. Do you need to work, or do you just like to?"
I want to tell him the truth, but that's never worked out well for me. Over the years, I've used the truth as a means of testing guys to find out if they're really interested in me or if they like the prestige of dating Celeste Arnaud's granddaughter. Ninety-nine percent of them fail the first test---my kooky behavior. Their eyes light up when I tell them the part hardly anyone knows about. And ninety-nine percent of the one percent who pass the first test will fail the second one.
