Best Man's Conquest

by Michelle Celmer

  He looked at her for a second, just looked at her face, as if he were seeing it for the first time. She wondered what he saw. If he could tell how conflicted she felt.

  “You want to get out of here?” he asked.

  “And go where?”

  He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  He was right, it didn’t matter. As long as she was anywhere but here, torturing herself.

  She couldn’t run from the past any longer, and she couldn’t change the fact that her life was in total chaos. But this was a vacation, darn it.

  She would worry about fixing this mess after the wedding. Tonight, she just wanted to forget.

  Twelve

  It can be very tempting, particularly on lonely nights, to look up your ex. But the more you fall back on your old ways, the harder it will be to truly move on.

  —excerpt from The Modern Woman’s Guide to Divorce (And the Joy of Staying Single)

  It began as a walk on the beach. The air was warm and a full moon hung low in the sky, lighting their way. They didn’t say much. Just strolled quietly side by side. Then Dillon suggested they walk to the village for a drink, and alcohol in any form sounded pretty good to her.

  When they got there they found themselves in the middle of a Mexican carnival. Colorful lanterns and twinkling lights lined the street, and the air was scented with a mouthwatering combination of sugar and spicy fried food.

  They snacked on authentic Mexican treats, drank salty margaritas and danced to a live salsa band. The evening was a blur of bodies, bumping and grinding, laughter and fun. Ivy couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt more relaxed and…alive. Hadn’t it always been that way with Dillon? The man excelled at having a good time.

  It was well after midnight when they headed back to the villa. They were halfway there before she realized Dillon was holding her hand. She’d obviously been impaired by the alcohol, because she liked the way it felt. She didn’t pull away. Not even when they went inside. If someone saw them that way, they could get the wrong idea. Or may be it was the right idea. Either way it could get very messy and complicated for both of them. But mostly for her.

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right that after everything they had been through, after all the pain he’d caused her, Ivy still wanted him this much. Of all the possible men in the world, why did it have to be him? Why did he have to be the one?

  It was dark and still in the villa. Probably everyone else was already in bed. As he walked her up the stairs, disappointment began to tug at her insides.

  She didn’t want this night to end. She wanted to make this last, to feel happy just a little while longer. She didn’t want to fall asleep and wake knowing that it wouldn’t happen again.

  She wanted to invite him into her room. She wanted him naked in her bed. One last time before they said goodbye forever.

  That was a terrible idea. She should be trying to figure things out, not make them worse. And being caught sleeping with her ex would definitely make things worse.

  Ivy would never hear the end of it from her mother. There was nothing she loved more than reminding Ivy of the mistakes she’d made, and finding new ones to nag her about.

  So the decision that suited her best interest was to say good-night and go to sleep.

  When they reached her bedroom door, she turned to him. To tell him she’d had a good time, and she was glad they could part from this vacation on better terms. Heck, may be they could even be friends. But before she knew what was happening, Dillon was kissing her. And even worse, she was kissing him back. Not just your run-of-the-mill making out, either. They were ravaging each other, as if they were battling over who wanted it more.

  His mouth still on hers, he backed her into the room and shut the door. She couldn’t comprehend much over the moans and breathless sounds she had begun making, but she was pretty sure she heard the lock turn. Then Dillon was walking her backward. She wasn’t sure where until the backs of her thighs collided with the mattress.

  She was vaguely aware that she was pulling at his clothes. She wanted skin. Didn’t matter where. Just something to put her hands on. She needed to put her hands on him.

  Before she could get his shirt pulled from the waist of his slacks, she was on her back lying sideways across the bed, her calves dangling over the edge. And she couldn’t touch Dillon because he had her wrists pinned over her head with one of his hands.

  Then he was kissing her, pushing her clothes out of the way so he had more area to explore. More to touch. Her stomach, her rib cage, and…oh! Her breasts. First through her bra, then he pushed that out of the way, too. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was thinking how small she was there, how he must have had much better, much bigger. Then she felt his mouth, hot and wet, and as long as he kept touching her, just like that, she didn’t care what size they were.

  She felt his hand on her thigh and the sensation was so foreign to her, so exquisitely intense, she gasped and jerked with surprise.

  Dillon stopped what he was doing and looked at her, his lids heavy. “Do you want me to stop?”

  Oddly enough, his asking was even worse than if he were to ravage her without her permission. If she didn’t take this opportunity to stop him, she would only have herself to blame. And at the same time, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking it would be worth every bit of grief it caused her.

  “Yes or no?” he asked, his eyes dark and intense. And she had no doubt that if she told him no, he would stop. No questions asked.

  “Don’t stop.”

  A hungry smile curled his mouth and the hand on her thigh began to slide upward.

  At that point she knew there was no turning back. It was a done deal. She was going to sleep with Dillon. She was going to have sex with her ex-husband.

  She really was crazy.

  His breath was hot on her skin as he nibbled and kissed his way down her body. Touching, tasting. His fingers slipped inside the leg of her shorts, brushing against her panties…

  At that point things began to get fuzzy. One minute her shorts were on, the next they had mysteriously disappeared. The same thing happened to her panties. Then Dillon was touching her. Slow, steady pressure. Warm and slippery.

  She closed her eyes and gave herself permission to relax and enjoy. How could she have thought she didn’t need this? How had she gone so long without a man’s touch?

  And no man knew her body the way Dillon did. No one made her feel as good. And what the hell was wrong with feeling good every now and then? Who better than a man who needed no road map to please her, who would never expect or want more than a very brief physical relationship? A fling.

  Without warning Dillon pressed her thighs open, lowered his head and took her into his mouth. The sensation was so wickedly intense she cried out. Her hands fisted in his hair and she was making sounds, raspy and nonsensical. She didn’t seem to have any control left. She was flying on autopilot, and about to crash and burn.

  Her breath was coming hard and fast, and the room slipped in and out of focus. Each individual sensation merged and tangled and fused together like the wick on a stick of dynamite, then it sparked and ignited.

  The flame hissed and licked its way up, building and climbing. And when it reached her core, she blew apart, splintered into a million pieces.

  She hovered there, somewhere between pain and pleasure, conscious and unconscious.

  It seemed as though she melted back together, one little piece at a time, slowly, gradually, her pulse returning to normal. When she finally opened her eyes, Dillon was there, leaning over her. Watching. Waiting for her to return from the outer stratosphere. Then he leaned down and kissed her. So gently, so sweetly.

  “I’ll see you later, Ivy.”

  Wait. What?

  Later?

  She sat up, still dizzy and a little disoriented. “Where are you going?”

  “My room.”

  “But…” They had just gotten started.

  “I don’t und
erstand,” she said. “Did I do something wrong?”

  He looked almost…sad. Which made no sense at all. “No. You did everything right.”

  “Then why are you leaving?”

  “You know where I’ll be if you need me.”

  Then he left, closing the door quietly behind him. For several minutes she was too stunned to process what had just happened. To make sense of it.

  Was this just another part of the game for him? Wasn’t it enough that she’d let him into her room? That she’d let him touch her?

  Apparently not.

  What did he want? For her to chase him? Would he settle for nothing less than total surrender?

  And wasn’t that just like him?

  She didn’t know if she should feel angry or hurt or disappointed, so she allowed herself all three. Was he honestly that arrogant? He had chased her relentlessly for days; now he was just going to turn his back on her?

  Unless…

  May be Dillon wasn’t as sure of himself, as self-confident, as she’d assumed. May be he needed her to come to him. May be, like her, he’d spent so long pushing people away, he had no idea how to let someone back inside.

  Was it possible that under that arrogant facade he was just as lost and confused as she was?

  And lonely.

  Very, very lonely.

  The idea was as sad as it was empowering.

  And she knew exactly what she needed to do.

  Ivy stepped into Dillon’s room. The light beside the bed was on, but he wasn’t lying there.

  Her eyes were drawn to the curtains blowing in the open French doors. Dillon stood on the balcony, his back to her, leaning on the edge. He wore nothing but a pair of loose silk pajama bottoms.

  She walked up behind him, and though she didn’t make a sound, he sensed her there.

  “You lost?” he asked, not turning around.

  Lost?

  She’d been lost for the last ten years and was only now beginning to realize it.

  “No,” she told him, hearing a quiver in her voice. Everything about him, about being close to him, both frightened and excited her. “For the first time in a long time I know exactly where I am.”

  He just stood there, facing the ocean. She knew what he was waiting for. He wanted her to make the first move. He needed that validation.

  The idea gave her an unfamiliar but exhilarating sense of power.

  She stepped up behind him and lightly touched his bare back. He didn’t tense, didn’t flinch, as though he’d been expecting it. She flattened her hands, smoothed her palms across warm skin, feeling only lean muscle underneath. His back rose and fell steadily as he breathed, while her own breath seemed to be coming faster. She could feel the steady beat of his pulse while her own fluctuated wildly, knocking around inside of her chest like a Mexican jumping bean.

  She slipped her hands around to rest over his solid abdomen just above his waistband, and felt the muscles contract. She pressed her cheek to his back, breathed in the scent of his skin, felt that rush of familiarity pour over her.

  His hands didn’t stray from their perch on the railing but he said, “You’re trembling.”

  “I’m scared,” she admitted and she let her hands wander higher, across his chest.

  “No reason to be scared.”

  She had every reason to be scared, to be terrified, even.

  She was falling for him again. She was falling for a man she knew she could never have. They were stuck in a hopeless situation. A vicious cycle of piss-poor timing.

  But she’d come too far to stop now. She was going through with this. She’d never wanted anything more.

  She undid the tie on her robe and let it fall to the balcony floor, then pressed the length of her naked body against him. He sucked in a breath and groaned somewhere deep inside. She could feel it rumble through him, through muscle and skin into her breasts and her fingers and the curve of her belly.

  They stood that way for several minutes, neither moving or making a sound. It was…nice, but she wasn’t looking for nice. She wanted fantastic. She wanted mind-blowing, rip-roaring ecstasy.

  She dragged her nails lightly down his chest, from his shoulders all the way to his waistband, felt him tense. He was trying to be strong, trying to milk this for all he could but she could feel him losing it. And she liked it. She liked being the one in control.

  She continued her exploration downward, just below his silky waistband, teased him there. “You told me you don’t wear pajamas.”

  His reply came out breathy and uneven. “I lied.”

  “I know you want me. Are you going to make me beg?”

  She could swear she felt him smile. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

  He turned abruptly, and before she knew it she was in his arms. Body to body, soul to soul. Then he was kissing her. And, oh, did he know how to kiss. He took control, possessed her. If he had wanted her to be the aggressor in this scenario, that moment had passed.

  And what gave him the right? What if she wanted to be the one calling the shots for a change?

  His hands wandered down her back, over her behind, his erection long and hard between them behind the slippery silk. He cupped her backside and squeezed so she bit his lip. Hard.

  He gasped and jerked and for a second she thought she’d gone too far.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  His lids were heavy, eyes glassy and unfocused as he gazed down at her. “Yeah, but I liked it.”

  So she did it again. She wrapped her hands around his head, pulled him down for a kiss, and sank her teeth into his lower lip. Dillon groaned and tunneled his fingers through her hair, fisted his hands in it. He pulled her head back to look at her, hovering on the line between pain and pleasure. This time there was a smile on his face. “I’m not sure what happened to you in the past ten years, but I like it.”

  “It gets better.” She reached into his pajama bottoms and circled a hand around his erection. He mumbled a curse and his eyes rolled up. But when she tried to pull the pajamas down she only got them halfway past his hips before he caught her hand.

  “We’re outside,” he reminded her.

  She knew that. And to top it all off the light from the bedroom was silhouetting their bodies quite clearly.

  “Oh, yeah?” She shook off his hand and shoved his pajamas the rest of the way down. “What’s your point?”

  Then she was off her feet. She gasped as her back slammed hard against the villa wall beside the door. She was pinned between the door and the balcony railing, between rough stucco and Dillon’s long, lean body. He hesitated for a second, went stone still, as though he was afraid he might have gone too far.

  “Did I hurt you?” he asked.

  She wrapped her legs around his hips and ground herself against him, so he could feel how wet she was. “Yeah, but I liked it.”

  He seemed to know exactly what she wanted, and he didn’t hesitate. He drove himself inside her, hard and swift and so deep that she cried out. With pain and shock and pure ecstasy.

  Dillon pulled out, hovered there for a second, torturing her. Then he plunged forward, and she gasped as the rough wall dug into her back. She’d spent such a long time dulling her feelings, pretending they didn’t matter. Now all she wanted to do was feel. Pleasure and lust and pain. She wanted it all, right here, right now. There was no such thing as too much.

  “Harder,” she gasped and he drove hard against her, inside her. And when it wasn’t hard enough, she dug her nails into his back, dragged them across his skin. “Harder.”

  He did as she asked. He may have been the one driving, but she had her foot on the accelerator. She was still in control.

  She could feel him tensing, feel him losing it. Bit by bit.

  She was doing that to him. She was making him lose control.

  And when he took the plunge, when he shuddered and roared with release, she went over with him.

  Thirteen

  Nothing will change for you until
you take control of your life and decide that you will be happy. You need movement in a positive forward direction.

  —excerpt from The Modern Woman’s Guide to Divorce (And the Joy of Staying Single)

  There were orgasms, and then there were orgasms. The kind that grabbed hold and didn’t let go until the absolute last bit of energy had been wrenched out. The kind that released so many endorphins and pheromones that it took several minutes for her body to realize it was twisted like a pretzel, to register that the tingling in her back was not from arousal, but the sharp stucco facade shredding her skin like cheddar on a cheese grater.

  “Ow.”

  Dillon lifted his head from her shoulder, where he’d dropped it a few minutes ago while he caught his breath. He shifted and she winced. “Problem?”

  “Wall…sharp.”

  Only then did she notice the grimace on his face.

  “Disengage your claws and I’ll let you down.”

  Oh, jeez! She hadn’t even realized she was still clinging to him. She loosened her grip and he eased her away from the wall and set her on her feet.

  He pulled her into the bedroom, into the light. “Turn around. Let me see the damage.”

  He examined her back and she watched him over her shoulder, trying to gauge his expression. “How bad is it?”

  “Is the dress you’re wearing for the wedding backless by any chance?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Then it’s bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “It looks like someone ran a belt sander across your back. And you have pieces of the wall still stuck to your skin.”

  “That would explain the pain, I guess.”

  He touched her lightly between her shoulder blades and the sting made her wince. “We need to get this cleaned up.”

  He turned her again and nudged her in the direction of the bathroom. When they were inside he switched on the light. Just like her bathroom, it was really bright with lots of mirror space. Miles of it. The floor-to-ceiling kind that screamed out each and every detail, down to the tiniest imperfection. Ivy crossed her arms over her breasts and sucked in her tummy, wishing she could suck in her hips, too. And her butt.