Sophie stared at him. “All right,” she said after a long silence.
Clay was certain he looked stunned. Because he was. All right? That was it? He’d expected the third degree, tears, maybe even some observations about her sucky luck with the wrong men. But he sure as heck hadn’t been expecting an all right.
“One day maybe you can tell me about that.” She tipped her head to the envelope. “And I want to hear it when you’re ready to tell me.”
That sounded like something a woman would say when she trusted a man, something Sophie shouldn’t be doing. Not after the heart-stomping Brantley had given her. And she especially shouldn’t be trusting him.
“Since we’re not going to talk about pink envelopes,” she went on. She reached in her pocket, and for one heart-stopping moment, Clay thought she was going to take out something else Brody had sent. But no.
Because it was a condom.
“It’s not from Vita,” Sophie explained. She dropped it on the end table beside him. “I got it from Garrett’s bathroom.”
Clay repeated that mental hell, but the only part of him not pleased with the sight of that foil wrapper was his brain. Of course, his brain had been present when he’d bought some condoms yesterday. He didn’t have to explore why he’d done that.
Because the reason for that purchase was right in front of him.
Sophie looked up at him. “Anyway, if we decided not to have sex, I didn’t want it to be because we didn’t have protection. I wanted it to be our choice. A choice made by two people who understand just how much sex will totally screw up their lives.”
It was a decent argument and a reminder that he should step back. Clay stepped all right, but it was in the wrong direction. Or the right direction if he was aiming for totally screwing up their lives.
He pulled Sophie into his arms and got started on the screwing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SOPHIE HAD PREPARED herself in case Clay sent her home with her condom still unwrapped. But the kiss was a good sign that wasn’t going to happen.
Of course, she should be trying to talk herself out of using a condom, something she’d done on the drive to his house, but clearly it was a verbal battle she’d lost. And it felt really, really good to be a loser right now.
Clay kissed like someone in charge. Like a cop. She wouldn’t mention that because it might spoil the mood. At the moment she couldn’t mention anything, anyway, since he was kissing her blind. She went from the simmering aroused stage to full-blown “take me now” heat.
Sophie wanted more. Still, she wanted a different kind of more. She wanted to touch Clay. To kiss him. To make him as crazy as he was making her. So she slid her hand between them to touch his chest and encountered his hand along the way.
“I’m sorry,” he said, lowering those kisses to her neck.
Clay and she had only had two kissing sessions, but he’d already located a couple of the most sensitive parts of her body—her neck and her breasts. He was doing a great job of teasing her neck with his tongue, but his fingers weren’t doing a bad job on her nipples, either. In fact, he was doing such a stellar job that it took Sophie a couple of moments to realize what he’d said.
“Why are you sorry?” she asked.
“Because I’m not being the responsible adult I should be.”
If she could have shrugged, Sophie would have. In this moment being responsible seemed highly overrated. That likely explained why there were unplanned pregnancies, therapy and regrets. She could avoid the first two, but they might have a serving or two of regret after the orgasms.
And she was bound and determined that this time there’d be two orgasms. Both Clay’s and hers.
To get started on that, Sophie lowered her hand to the front of his jeans and did some touching there. Clay cursed, backed her up a few inches, and using just one of his hands, he pinned her wrists to the wall. Since it was the same wall where her other orgasm had happened, it had good memories for her, but without the use of her hands she was going to have trouble with the “making him crazy” part.
Clay, however, had no trouble escalating the insanity. Speed suddenly mattered, no doubt because of the urgency building inside them, and he used his free hand to shove up her top and pull down her bra.
The next round of kisses got very interesting.
He used his tongue again and his warm breath to create a special feeling inside her special place. Too bad that feeling only escalated matters even more.
Since she wouldn’t wiggle her hands out of his grip, Sophie wiggled the rest of her body instead. Specifically, she brushed her midsection against his. She found a wonderful surprise.
His erection.
All ready for that condom she’d brought over.
Clay cursed again, but she was pretty sure that’s because he was enjoying her wiggling a little too much. In his mind he probably didn’t want to put an end to this too soon, but Sophie was up for some quick and dirty sex against the wall. Or on the floor. Maybe even the sofa. And then they could use the second condom in her pocket for a second round of slow and dirty.
Either way, she just wanted dirty.
She wanted this fire to dictate the pace, intensity and even the amount of clothing removal. At this point, she would just settle for getting Clay and her unzipped.
Sophie tried for the unzipping again, and she managed to get one of her hands free. However, her hand got distracted along the way to the front of his jeans because his shirt had come unbuttoned, and her fingers landed on his chest.
Nice.
Very nice.
Pecs, chest hair and all. Everything she wanted in a lover, and it made her rethink the minimal clothing removal. She wanted to see him naked. Wanted to touch him while he was naked. And since she didn’t know if there’d be a repeat of this night, she decided to tick off everything on her “take me, Clay” wish list.
Clay had moved his kisses lower, to her stomach, and while he was heading in a good direction, Sophie created a detour. She caught onto his hair, pulling him back up so her mouth could play with his chest. Fun stuff, and it got a lot more fun when she pulled open his shirt.
On a scale of one to ten, he was off the scale so Sophie didn’t even bother assigning a number. But seeing all that beautiful manhood only made her want to see and kiss the rest of him. She twisted her body to unpin herself from him, dropped lower and played her own game of kiss the stomach. It was fun but not nearly as much when she kissed the front of his jeans. She made sure there was a lot of breath in that kiss, too.
More cursing. That seemed to be Clay’s go-to response when things were moving faster than he wanted. But it was Sophie who was suddenly moving faster. He picked her up, threw her caveman style over his shoulder and headed up the hall. His shoulder hit the wall, so did hers, and her head would have smacked into the door frame if she hadn’t ducked at the last second.
Clay dumped her on the bed—and yes, it was a little rough, just like she wanted.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about how you’d be in bed,” she said.
He didn’t answer. Not verbally, anyway. Clay shucked off her top, rid her of her bra and gave her some more of those nipple kisses all while getting her out of her jeans. So, this was how he was in bed.
In charge and silent.
And possibly with the sleight of hand of a magician since he had her stark naked in under fifteen seconds.
Except he wasn’t actually in bed. Nor was he naked. And now he was looking at her in a head-to-toe kind of way. Since she wasn’t used to being under naked scrutiny, she reached for the covers, but Clay stopped her. There he was, being in charge again.
“Perfect,” he said.
All in all, it was the perfect thing to say. And it stopped her from making a second attempt to cover herself. Not t
hat there was time to do that. Clay pulled off his shirt, and her girl parts shouted yes! The shouting continued when he unzipped, hooked his thumbs around the waist of his jeans and dropped both the jeans and his boxers to the floor.
He moved toward her, but Sophie caught on to him. Because she was sitting, that meant she caught on to his hips and butt. She wasn’t in the best position for her to give him a head-to-toe look as he’d done to her, but she got an up close view of the part that would play a big role in her life.
Well, for the next ten minutes, anyway.
But that part was missing a condom.
Obviously, Clay wasn’t in any shape to sprint, but Sophie was about to do just that and get the condom from the living room. However, Clay had something else in mind. He reached into his nightstand drawer and took one out.
“I bought some,” he told her. But that was all he said.
With the same speed he’d used to undress her, he got that condom ripped open and on, and he got onto the bed with her. Sophie expected that fast pace to continue, but Clay slowed down considerably. He kissed her. So slow and sweet. Sliding his body against hers. Stoking the fire that needed no such stoking because it was already at full blaze.
Just when Sophie was certain she could take no more of the maddening pace, Clay eased into her. Also slowly. She hated to admit it, but it gave her a few moments to savor this. To savor him.
The savoring didn’t stop. It just went up a notch when Clay started to move inside her. And then the savoring climbed and climbed until it was into the “fire, hot” zone.
No way could she tell him how good this felt. No way could she form something as complex as human speech. That’s because she was a cavewoman now, all need, no finesse. She just wanted him to keep hitting the right spot to make her come like a nympho after a dry spell.
And Clay didn’t fail her.
He hit the right spot until both of them got the intended use from the condom.
It wasn’t ten minutes, though.
It was fifteen.
* * *
WHEN HE FUCKED UP, he really fucked up. Literally in this case.
Clay figured he wasn’t going to have to spell that out to Sophie, though. Now that their animal urges had been satisfied, she was probably hitting her head against the wall.
Or not.
When Clay came out of the bathroom, he found no head hitting going on. Sophie was sitting in his bed, still naked, though she had pulled the sheet over her lap, and she was eating some pumpkin pie.
“Sex makes me hungry,” she said. “And I didn’t eat any pie at my house.”
“Help yourself.” Though the invitation wasn’t really necessary since she was in already in midbite. However, she stopped eating to give him a long look.
He was naked, too, and she was giving him the once-over. Twice. When he reached to pick up his boxers, she shook her head, smiled and motioned for him to join her on the bed. Clay sighed. It was a mistake, of course, but he did it anyway.
“Let’s play a game,” she offered.
Since she was naked and looking at him as if he were the whipped cream on that pie, Clay would have agreed to anything. Even if he shouldn’t.
“What kind of game?” he asked.
She fed him a bite of pie before she answered. “It’s called ‘we’re not going to feel guilty about this and here’s why.’ Then, we start naming all the reasons why there’ll be no guilt or regret.”
Clay drew a blank.
“All right, I’ll start,” Sophie continued. “I don’t regret it because it felt amazing.”
“That’s the orgasm talking,” he concluded, and had another bite of the pie.
She smiled. Shrugged. “Second reason. We both had really bad days and needed to relieve some stress.”
Now he shrugged because it was true. To a point. “There are other ways to relieve stress that won’t screw up your life.”
Sophie gave him a flat look. “Name one. Wait. Name one that won’t make me drunk, fat, broke or sweaty.”
With those added conditions, he was drawing a blank. That possibly had something to do with Sophie shifting her position on the bed, and he got a glimpse of what the sheet had been covering. Suddenly, he was thinking of another reason not to regret this.
A stupid reason.
It involved curing the regret of the first time by going back for seconds.
She must have seen the attentive look in his eyes because she smiled again. “I have to get back home soon, or my mother might come looking for me. I don’t think either of us is up to a chat with her tonight, are we?”
No way. That cured him of the notion of seconds and slapped some sense back into him. It gave him a much-needed reminder of why this was a fuckup. And why he should give Sophie a reminder, too.
“You should be keeping away from me,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “We don’t have much willpower when it comes to each other so I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen.”
He hated when the truth interfered with what he knew he should be doing. “I might never be able to tell you things that you think you want to know,” Clay tried again.
She nodded. “You mean the story behind the pink envelopes. Yes, I think I want to know, but I can wait. But I should tell you that the scenarios I’m creating in my head are probably worse than what really happened.”
“No, they aren’t. In this case, reality is worse.”
Clay thought that might send her running from the bed to get dressed so she could leave, but other than eating another bite of pie, she didn’t budge.
“You’re a good man, Clay McKinnon,” she said. “You moved here to look out for your sister even when that meant taking a job that’s almost certainly beneath your skill set.”
Clay focused on the two words in the middle of that. His sister. He certainly hadn’t forgotten about April, but she was another reminder why being with Sophie like this was a bad idea.
“April will have a cow if she finds out about us,” Clay started. “I could just say to heck with it and point out that she’s always done what she wanted, even when I didn’t approve.”
“But she’s pregnant,” Sophie finished for him. “And in a fairly new relationship with Brantley. This might put too much stress on both April and their marriage.”
Sophie had spelled out the big picture. Plus, there was that whole part about his knowing this was a mistake.
“If everyone learns we’re together-together,” Sophie added, “and it doesn’t work out between us, then I’ll have to go through another pity party showered on me by nearly everyone who lives in Wrangler’s Creek. Those same people will blame you, and it’ll make it harder for you to do your job because you crushed the heart of the town’s resident princess.” She paused. “Yes, I know they call me that behind my back.”
They did. It wasn’t flattering since it was beneath Sophie’s skill set as a competent businesswoman, but most people said it with affection. And those most people would indeed blame him for a breakup.
Hell, he was already thinking breakup, and they weren’t even together.
“This doesn’t sound pretty, but we could just sneak around and see each other,” she went on. “That way, we could keep it between us and at the same time, figure out if whatever this is has a chance of working. If not, then no one but us will know about it.”
He frowned. Then frowned some more when the sheet fell from her left breast. Instead of doubts, the word perfect jumped into his head. His dick did a little jumping, too.
Still, even with his dick’s reaction, Clay tried to latch on to some reason. “Certainly, sneaking around and having sex with me can’t be part of your life plan.”
Sophie smiled that perfect, evil smile and kissed him. “It is now.”
&
nbsp; CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SNEAKY SEX WAS a huge distraction. Mainly because Clay couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maybe after Sophie and he had been together a time or two more, then the desire to have sex with her would fade, taking the distraction right along with it.
Pigs could also learn to fly.
Clay cursed, admitted that it was going to take more than a time or two to get Sophie out of his system and forced his attention back on a budget report he had to review. That worked for a couple of seconds until he saw Sophie outside the window. Not heading his direction but rather to the bank. His office was the last place she would go, since in her mind, being sneaky meant not being seen with him in public. Of course, people would notice they weren’t being seen together and draw the same conclusion as if they had been seen together.
And that conclusion was that Sophie and he were lovers.
Clay could no longer deny that to himself. Wouldn’t be able to deny it to her brother, either, if Garrett came out and asked. However, everyone else was on his denial list. Who was or wasn’t his lover was nobody’s business but his and Sophie’s, and the only reason he would let Garrett in on it was because they had an unspoken camaraderie as big brothers.
He watched Sophie until she was out of sight and then went back to the budget report. He got two lines into it when his phone rang, and he saw Agent Mike Freeman’s name on the screen. Finally, a real, work-related distraction.
“Please tell me that Billy Lee called Arlo and that you managed to track him down,” Clay greeted.
“Not yet. We had Arlo use the phone to call him, but Billy Lee didn’t answer. Arlo left him a message, but so far, there’s been no response.”
Clay tried not to jump to some bad conclusions, but it was too late. He was already jumping. “Billy Lee could have been watching Arlo and could have seen him come here to the police station.”
‘How hard would that have been for Billy Lee to do?” Mike asked.
“Hard but not impossible. Did you check Arlo’s truck for a tracking device?”
Those Texas Nights Page 18
