by Mia Sheridan
His eyes narrowed, and he stared at me for a few moments before finally breathing out and running a hand through his dark hair. “Fine. You make the rules, Audra. You always did.”
He turned to start walking toward the car again and I instinctively followed, joining him on the sidewalk. “What does that mean?”
“What we could talk about, what subjects were off limits, when to leave you alone, how hard to knock at the doors you locked yourself behind. Your rules, never negotiable.”
“I never spelled out any rules!”
“You didn’t have to spell them out in words. You didn’t have to make a list. Your actions spoke louder than words. Stay away. I don’t need you.”
What was he talking about? That’s not how it had been at all. Of course I’d needed him, but there had been no point asking. We’d been on completely different pages. I had been drowning in an isolated sea of grief, and he’d been . . . fine. He’d managed and I could barely put one foot in front of the other. And, damn it to hell, I didn’t want to think about that. I was past that—finally, blessedly—and I had no interest in going back. I felt filled with sudden and overwhelming anger.
We drove in heavy silence for the first ten minutes as my anger started to fade then fizzled entirely. I sighed, leaning back, turning toward Dane. When he met my gaze, his expression had softened. “We’re a hot mess together, aren’t we?” I murmured. “Another good reminder of why parting ways was the right choice.”
He smiled, though sort of sadly. “I suppose.” I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I was exhausted and ready to get off this roller coaster. None of this was worth rehashing, and I’d said as much earlier, and yet we couldn’t seem to stop doing it. If I’d needed a reminder about why I hadn’t wanted even a small update on Dane or what his life was like all these years, this was it. And thank God I hadn’t known about him and Winnie. Perfect Winnie Sinclair, whom his grandmother was always trying to set him up with. When Dane mentioned her name I thought I’d be sick. To think they almost made a perfect home together . . . slept together . . .
No.
I wanted my quiet, peaceful life back, free from information about Dane and Winnie Sinclair. And I worried that even if Luella backed off my business, I’d lost something I’d never find again. The life I’d carved out for myself suddenly felt like a mirage whereas before all this, it’d felt real and right. Good God, seeing Dane again was messing with my head. Messing with my carefully held-together life.
Dane smoothly pulled into a spot across the street from my building, and as he was starting to open his door, I put my hand on his arm. He turned toward me questioningly. I felt shaky and unsure, filled with emotions I didn’t want to feel, much less examine. “You don’t need to walk me in. Tonight was . . . hard, but good. Um, I really am so glad to see you doing well. You obviously love what you’re doing. Your life is good. You’re good.” I smiled at him. “Things turned out well for you. And I do appreciate you helping me, so much.”
“Audra—”
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning? Eight?”
He paused, his eyes moving over my face. He looked tired, and if I wasn’t mistaken, disappointed, but I supposed he’d hoped things would be easier with us—breezier maybe—but that would never happen. We should have ended dinner and skipped the gelato. Quit while we were ahead. “Don’t go in there.”
I blinked. “What?”
Dane rubbed the back of his neck. “Please don’t go back in that place. It’s not safe. Come home with me.”
I brought my head back slightly. What? “I can’t stay with you,” I croaked.
“I meant, I have a guest room. There’s no reason to put your safety at risk when you can stay with me.”
I managed a small smile. “That’s nice of you, but no. Thank you.” I glanced across the street at the ugly building. “It’s really not that bad.”
Dane appeared to be wrestling with something, whether to try to insist that I stay with him most likely. I put my hand on the door handle and he sighed. “Okay. Eight.”
I nodded, shooting him a small smile and hopping out, shutting my door behind me. I looked both ways and then jogged across the empty street and toward the relative safety of my hotel.
I felt hot and cold, shaken and saddened. And most of all, I felt the low buzz of panic I’d felt since our eyes had met earlier that day. I didn’t like it. It made me want to cry and scream, two things I never did, and definitely not at the same time.
I pulled the door to the lobby open and ducked inside, breathing far too harshly for what had been a short jog across the street. The front desk stood empty, and I took a moment to catch my breath, leaning back on the wall next to the door, putting my palms flat against the cool stone behind me. Something inside me wanted to step back into the night, wave Dane’s car down, and beg him not to leave.
Stay. Please don’t leave me, Dane.
But why? For what?
I’d run from him because I didn’t want to feel this way. I wanted comfort from this feeling, and the worst part about it was that I wanted him to provide the comfort, no one else. Oh God, I was turned inside out. A small whimper came up my throat and the door next to me banged open, causing me to startle.
Dane stood in the doorway, looking toward the elevator, the unguarded expression on his face filled with both yearning and indecision. I blinked, pressing myself further into the unforgiving wall and the small movement must have caught his peripheral vision because he turned and saw me. A thousand partial words and statements seemed to pass between us, unfinished, unformed, and yet despite the confusion—the breathless tangling of thoughts and gazes—he moved toward me and I welcomed him.
He stepped right up to me, a wild look in his eyes, his breath as shallow as my own. “I . . . don’t want you here alone. Why don’t I want you here alone, Audra?” He gripped my upper arms, and though he looked angry, I felt a sudden jolt of sympathy for him. For whatever was causing him to suffer, to put that look on his face, that tone in his voice.
“It’s not up to you,” I whispered.
He let out a hot gust of breath and I leaned into it. He smelled like tangy lemon gelato and red wine and something that was him and would only ever be him and was still—unbearably—part of me too.
“I know,” he gritted out and then softer, more controlled, “I know.” He pressed his forehead against mine, and for a second we just breathed together. He was beautiful. God, he’d always been so beautiful. I hadn’t been this close to Dane for so long, and despite my mind whirling with confusion, something about it also felt . . . right. I didn’t look away. I didn’t push him back. “So why does it feel like it is?” he asked. “Why does it feel like it always will?”
I opened my mouth to answer, with what I wasn’t sure. But before I could utter a sound, he moved forward, pressing his body into mine and bringing our mouths together. We collided with a mingled groan, a sound quickly muffled as our lips fused, tongues seeking those warm, wet, still-familiar dips and crevices. I brought my arms up and around his neck, my hands seeking the softness of his hair, weaving into it, fingertips finding the curve of his skull, the small imperfection near his hairline. That tiny scar, the result of hitting the edge of a coffee table while wrestling with his brother when he was nine. A small secret that I sought out as if it were only mine, something precious that had been lost and now was found.
Dane’s tongue stroked mine, making me feel needy, dizzy, filled with aching want. And the noises he made. Oh God, the noises. Those small masculine sounds in the back of his throat that meant he was as lost as I was. I was hot everywhere, tingling, blossoming to life as if it’d been a long, long winter. That life’s breath spilled through me like warm sunshine, touching every dark corner within, a burst of dazzling color. “Audra,” he groaned, pulling me with him as he moved backward toward the elevators, his chest rising and falling.
I had a moment of reservation, but I couldn’t work out why. Nothing felt important
except the heat cascading through my veins, so I focused on his chest, got lost in the quickened rise and fall as he pulled me in through the open door of the waiting elevator. The door closed and he kissed me again, even more frantically, more intimately, and I knew it was because we were moving closer to a bed. A bed. And all I could think was yes, yes, yes. Dane broke free of my mouth to kiss my chin, my ear, the side of my neck, and I panted, lifting my leg to wrap around his hip, to bring our cores closer together. He hissed in a breath as the door dinged open, taking my hand and dragging me down the hall to my room.
“The key,” he said, his voice a sharp command. I gave it to him, my hand trembling as I put the plastic card in his. Three seconds later and his mouth was on mine again, the hotel door clicking shut behind us, and I had the distant thought that he didn’t want to give me time to think, to consider this, though in the moment, I didn’t much care. I wanted him. Needed him. I tried to organize my thoughts. I had a notion I should stop this, wasn’t even really sure how it’d started, but all I could focus on was an untethered elation—so bright it blotted out everything else. Still, I managed, “What are we doing, Dane?” his name ending in a moan as both hands came to my breasts, flicking my nipples through the material of my shirt.
“What I’ve wanted to do since I showed up at your door earlier tonight. Hell . . .” His words faded as if he’d gotten distracted or perhaps thought better of them. His hands were up my shirt now, his mouth on my throat and the sweet pleasure reverberated from my breasts to between my legs. He sank to his knees and I let out a small sound of loss that ended in another groan as he put his mouth over my crotch. I was still wearing my jeans, the fabric a barrier between my body and his mouth, and yet the sensation was so strong I cried out, pressing toward him.
“Jesus, Audra,” he groaned. And then we were a tangle of clothes and limbs as we undressed ourselves, each other, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I needed to feel his skin on mine desperately. He kissed my body as each item fell away, his lips skimming my cleavage, licking between my breasts, taking a nipple in his mouth.
“Oh God, yes,” I breathed, pressing toward him, reaching down to take him in my hand, already knowing the shape and girth of his hard length before my hand wrapped around it. Stiff and smooth, both the hardest part of him and the softest. I’d always loved the beautiful dichotomy, gloried in the way the two merged together to form him. We both moaned, and he pumped into my grasp, sucking harder at my nipple. I thought I might orgasm right then and there.
Naked, Dane lowered himself, his large palms taking hold of my hips as he opened me with his tongue, taking one long swipe that made me cry out deliriously and grip his head in my hands. His hair was slightly damp at the hairline and I pushed it back, looking at him through half-lidded eyes. A dark-haired god worshipped between my thighs, and for a moment our gazes held, clashed, sending a jolt of hot arousal to the place he was licking. My mind might be tangled, twisted, but my body, ah, my body . . . Everything inside me was coming undone beneath his mouth and hands. It was too much, too much, and with a gasping moan I came, crying out his name, my knees buckling with the intensity of my orgasm.
Dane growled softly, the reverberation causing an aftershock to thrum through me as he caught me behind my knees, rising swiftly and lowering me to my back on the bed. He stood over me—naked, gorgeous—his eyes raking my skin, a look of such blatant triumph in them that it shocked me, caused some of the lust fog to clear minutely. But then he was on top of me and that feeling, skin on skin, felt so amazing that I dismissed whatever direction my mind had been trying to go. Nothing mattered except his weight pressing on me, knowing he’d fill the aching emptiness I felt. His skin was hot, his body hard, his torso as lean as I remembered, the ridges of his belly defined. The coarse hairs on his legs rasped over the smoothness of my own, and the feel of his size, his strength, his utter masculinity, sent a thrill through me as I reached for him, leaning up to claim his mouth again. He kissed me back for a moment, his penis prodding my thigh—hard and insistent—before he pulled away, looking down as he took himself in his hand. I felt the rounded tip of him pressing at my opening and gasped, feeling the slight sting as I stretched to accommodate him. I closed my eyes, unable to process both the vision and the physical sensations as he pressed into me, slowly.
“Open for me, honey,” he said, his voice tight as if he was barely holding on to control. The term of endearment warmed me even more than the solid press of his body. “Ah, God,” he hissed. “You feel so good. You’re so damned tight.”
I whimpered, a small sound, as I stretched even more. He stilled and when I blinked up at him, an expression of. . . knowing was on his face, and along with it, a tightening of his jaw and a softening of his eyes. With a sudden movement forward, he pressed all the way inside me. I released a harsh moan, borne of some discomfort, but mostly an arcing rainbow of pleasure that spiraled through me, traveling all the way to my fingertips and toes.
Dane pulled out and then pressed slowly back into me, then again, the look on his face filled with such blatant lust, such unbridled pleasure, that it aroused me all over again. I moaned, pressing upward, reaching for the next wave of pleasure.
“I love the way you light up beneath me,” he growled. “Love it so fucking much.”
I twisted my legs around his hips, pressing my head into the mattress, running my hands over his biceps that bulged with the effort of holding himself above me as he sought his own orgasm. I ran my hands down his back, over the hard globes of his ass. We moved together, the glorious nature of this dance—the joy—causing my lips to tip upward. I felt free, bursting with life. With another soft cry of Dane’s name, I came again. I watched Dane’s face, drank in that beautiful grimace of pleasure that made my stomach tighten with a small blissful aftershock. But then his eyes opened and something passed through them, just under the pleasure. A small clearing, and it brought me from my dream-like state too. Yet still, I startled in surprise when he pulled out of me, the hot splash of his release across my lower belly bringing me up cold. Because . . . oh God, of all things to forget about . . . birth control. I hadn’t once considered a condom or . . . Oh Audra, what were you thinking? Audra, Audra, Audra.
Dane gazed at me, his expression cautious, and somehow I felt . . . shattered. Brought back to sudden, undeniable reality. That one action summed up everything I’d pushed away, everything I’d chosen to disregard by having sex with Dane. “Audra,” he said. His voice held a note of defeat as if all the thoughts in my head were clear on my face and they wounded him. Maybe they did. But I felt wounded too. Not by him, but by myself.
I scooted out from under him, sitting up on the bed, his release cooling on my belly.
“Audra, honey—”
I stood, practically running to the bathroom where I closed the door behind me, leaning back against it momentarily. I caught my reflection in the mirror and stared. My cheeks were red, my lips swollen, my hair in complete disarray. But my eyes . . . my eyes looked stricken. Grabbing a piece of toilet paper, I rubbed the sticky wetness off my belly, right over the three stretch marks I’d gotten at the end of my pregnancy, now white and shiny, only noticeable in the harsh lighting of the dingy hotel bathroom.
I traced the scars, swallowing. “God, what did you do?” I whispered to my reflection.
I’d hurt and grieved for years and years after we’d separated and now . . . now what? It wasn’t like we were going to get back together—that ship had sailed long ago. So, I’d willingly put myself back emotionally because I was so desperate for sex that as soon as he touched me, I lost all sense? All reason? God. I used the bathroom and then washed my hands, wrapping a towel around myself.
When I stepped into the room, Dane had put his jeans on but was still shirtless, sitting on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees. I bit my lip as I considered what to say. But before I’d figured it out, Dane sat up and held his hand out to me. I walked toward him tentatively and he took my hand in
his, pulling me to the bed where I sat next to him. He tapped the side of his foot on mine and I let out a smile on a breath. “Please don’t regret this, Audra. Because I don’t.”
My heart softened. “I don’t . . . regret it.” I took in a big breath, releasing it slowly. “It’s been a long time.” I laughed softly. “I guess I was sort of—”
“Dammit, Audra, don’t minimize it either. That was more than scratching an itch and you damn well know it.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean? Talk to me.”
I sighed. “You were right, there is still that something between us . . . I . . . feel it too. Obviously.” I glanced at him, a small, embarrassed chuckle coming up my throat. He smiled gently, sweetly, his eyes watching me so closely, and my heart caught. I looked away.
“But?” he asked quietly.
“But”—I shook my head—“why are we even talking about this? You and I both know we can’t be more. We tried and failed. I don’t want to dredge all that up, and I don’t think you do either. I’m your ex-wife, Dane. Emphasis on ex.”
“So, you just want to have uncommitted sex with me?”
“What? No.” I laughed uncomfortably. “I mean, this was a one-time thing. Exes have sex sometimes. It happens. We live in different states so it’s not like it could become a regular thing anyway, which it couldn’t under any circumstances because I wouldn’t want that.”
“I know.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking like he wanted to say something, but maybe not knowing what. I could relate.
Sorrow welled inside me, a desperate need for . . . something I didn’t want to think about. After a second, he reached for his shirt, where it lay crumpled on the floor. “I’m assuming you don’t want me to stay?”
