by Amy Andrews
“You were the one who said I should go out with him to get up Chuck’s nose.”
“That’s because I was drunk. And now I’m sober, and as your friend, I am duty bound to inform you that all men are bastards.”
Em was still shitty on men in general and determined to concentrate on her career as a high school science teacher instead.
Knowing Em like she did, Harper thought that’d probably only last to next week.
“You know we’re talking about my situation now, right?”
“It applies to any situation,” Em said.
Harper doubted it. Considering she’d already blown the whole treating-him-mean thing by getting down and dirty with him two out of the three times they’d met, it was a little hard to go back.
“We’re not a thing,” she insisted. “That’s not what we’re doing. I just want to check he’s not freaking out.”
“He should be freaking out,” Em said around a mouthful of ice cream, jabbing her spoon in Harper’s direction. Harper had her own spoon, not that she was getting much of the sweet treat that Em was zealously hoovering up. “He slept with you and snuck out like a bloody thief in the night. I hate it when men do that.”
Harper shrugged. “I don’t care about that.”
“Well, I care.” More spoon jabbing. “He better not show his face around me or I’ll…”
She stopped and inspected the ice cream like it might suggest a suitable punishment. “Send him to the principal?” Harper ventured.
“Ha.” Em glanced at her, face stern. “You so funny.” Then she returned her attention to the ice cream, hunching over it further.
“Would you like me to leave you two alone?”
Em looked up apologetically. “Sorry,” she grimaced. “I can’t seem to stop.”
Harper sighed, placing her spoon down. “Don’t worry about it.” She patted Em’s hand. “It’ll just go to my ass anyway. And I have to go pick up Jace and Tabby from their gym class.”
Em nodded and handed over Harper’s phone. “I love you. Stay strong.”
Harper took it, nodding assuredly, with absolutely no intention of listening to a woman high on sugar and man-hate.
No matter how much she loved the nutter.
She waited till she got to the car before she texted. It took her another ten minutes to compose, edit, delete, recompose, and edit again before she settled on what she wanted to convey. That she wasn’t pissed about waking up alone. That she was up for some casual fun. That she didn’t expect anything from him.
Which was all true.
Sure, she didn’t normally do this kind of thing, but why not? Plenty of women did. And she was young and alive. If the sudden death of two parents had taught her nothing else, it was that everything could be over in the blink of an eye.
She read over the text one last time.
In overalls. Will be home in one hour. Need a hand with my zip if you’re around.
She hit send quickly, before she could change her mind, and then started the car.
Harper pulled into her townhouse complex one hour and ten minutes later. Dex hadn’t replied, and she didn’t know what that meant. Had she gotten the tone all wrong? Had she overstepped the mark? Had it freaked him out even more, and he was too chicken shit to tell her he didn’t want anything to do with her?
Or maybe…he was just busy and hadn’t checked his phone yet.
Thoughts churning wildly, she slowed her car down to ten, obeying the speed limit in the complex as she navigated to the driveway that serviced the block of four townhouses where hers was situated. A car was parked outside in one of the guest spaces. It belonged to Dex. She’d seen it the night of the wine and paint party. And even if she hadn’t, the rugby stickers on the bumper would have given it away.
Rugby players do it with grunt was her favourite.
The car was empty, so he must be waiting for her inside the hallway to her apartment. That was a good sign, right? Her heart thumped hard in her chest for a beat or two before accelerating at a lighter, quicker pace.
There was only one way to find out…
Harper garaged her car quickly, her hand unsteady as she reached to open the door. She paused with her fingers around the handle, making a snap decision. Quickly she unzipped her overalls, slid her hands around the back and unhooked her bra. Pulling the straps down her arms and out the end of the overalls, she whipped the bra off and tossed it on the backseat before zipping up again.
She pulled her hair out of its ponytail, too, and gave it a quick shake, scrunching the natural waves to give them some volume.
Maybe he was here to tell her he’d changed his mind about their arrangement. But if he wasn’t? Why not be prepared…
Dex was lounging against her door, his phone in hand, when Harper stepped into the corridor that fronted all four townhouses. She shut the door that led from her garage behind her and headed in his direction, anticipation tingling between her legs.
She’d been hoping for round four when she’d woken Monday morning, and had been frustrated to find that wasn’t going to happen.
She’d been fantasising about it ever since.
He straightened as she approached, slipping his phone into his pocket. “Wow,” she said, her gaze devouring the way the fabric of his dark suit outlined his shoulders and pulled taut across his thighs. His hair had been carelessly ruffled with some kind of gel into a sexy-messy combo, and he was cleanly shaven.
“You didn’t have to dress.”
The man looked hot in his jersey, sexy as hell in a pair of jeans, and goddamn mouth-watering in nothing but his tan.
In a business suit? He looked utterly fuckable.
As she pulled up in front of him, Harper had to grind her heels into the floor to stop herself from climbing up his body. She couldn’t believe she had carnal knowledge of every delicious inch of what lay under that suit.
She smiled, searching his face for any hint of hesitance or withdrawal. She’d seen it in the faces of enough guys over the years to know the signs. All she found was a slow grin and eyes that had already locked onto her zip like a heat-seeking missile.
“Oh yes,” he said, glancing dismissively at his suit. “I have an official rugby thing to go to, so…”
Harper felt a hot spike of disappointment that he was going out. Without her. Which was completely insane. Whatever he did, wherever he went, was no business of hers—that wasn’t the kind of dating they were doing.
Besides, he probably already had a date. One of those women the WAGS liked to set him up with.
Skinny women.
“But…” He smiled at her as he shoved his hands in his pockets. The action parted his jacket below the buttons, revealing the tight pull of his trousers across the tops of his thighs, and Harper’s knees weakened. “I couldn’t leave you here wrestling with your zipper all alone, now could I?”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
“I figured I could offer my services, at the very least.”
“That’s very gentlemanly of you.”
He laid a hand across his chest. “But of course. That’s why I play rugby.”
Harper laughed. “Oh really?”
“Well, that’s why I do. I’m pretty sure guys like Lincoln Quinn only play it to get laid.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she teased. “That seems to be working out for you quite well at the moment.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth, and Harper’s breath hitched. “I can’t complain.”
They stood staring at each other for long moments, Harper trying not to grin like a goofball at Dex.
“You want me to give you a hand with that thing out here,” he asked, finally breaking their strange inertia. “Or you want to take this inside?”
Harper gave herself a mental shake. Pull yourself together woman. “Sure.” She stepped around him and shoved her key in the door, throwing “Come in,” over her shoulder as she strode ahead of him, determined to act cool if it killed h
er.
Act nonchalant.
Like she had hot rugby players help her with her zip every day of the week. Twice on Sunday.
“You want a drink?” She threw her handbag on the central island countertop as she headed straight for the fridge, pulling it open. “I have some beer. There’s some coke, too,” she mused, bending slightly to paw through an array of half eaten food in some sudden manic nervousness. “Although, I think it’s diet. Or I can do a coffee.”
She straightened and looked over her shoulder. He was leaning casually against the island, the two buttons of his jacket undone, clearly checking out her ass. Heated awareness of him darted seductively from one side of her pelvis to the other, and her mouth turned as dry as day old toast.
“Or tea,” she ended lamely. Christ…next she’d be going all Notting Hill on him and offering him some bloody apricots in honey.
He shook his head as he lifted his gaze to her face. “I don’t want a drink.”
Good for him. She sure as hell could do with one. A big one. A vat, preferably, of something dangerously alcoholic that would still the frantic pulse hammering between her legs.
“I wanted to say something…”
“Oh?” Harper hoped she sounded nonchalant.
“About Sunday night.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry I left the way I did,” he apologised, shoving his hands back in his pockets. “Without waking you. I don’t usually stay the…”
He broke off, obviously deciding against that choice of words before boldly ploughing on.
“I mean, I don’t usually fall asleep…after. Like that. And I guess I panicked a little because you’re the first woman I’ve felt really comfortable around. You don’t expect me to be on around you, to be the rugby star, and I was really petrified I’d probably blown that. But I still should have woken you or left a note or something. I wasn’t thinking. I just needed to get out in case you woke and thought…”
He broke off again, a deep crease furrowing between his eyebrows as he shoved a hand through his hair, messing up the already artfully messy style. She loved that he felt comfortable around her. That she put him at ease. She supposed some women would consider that an insult to their femininity, but the truth was she felt comfortable around him, too.
Appreciated.
Secure in his desire for her, and not self-conscious as she so often was around men.
Harper smiled at his obvious discomfiture, and quirked an eyebrow. “In case I thought that you staying the night was a sign of your undying love and fidelity and you were about to pledge me your troth?”
He gave a short laugh, thick with irony, as he shifted uncomfortably. “Something like that.” He inspected the ground for a moment before he raised his gaze to her again, full of earnest intent. “I really like you, but I really, really need to concentrate on rugby at the moment.”
Wow. The guy had obviously twisted himself in knots over this. “It’s okay, Dex,” Harper said, shutting the fridge door and walking toward him, halting a couple of metres away. “I understand. And you don’t owe me any explanations. Stay the night, don’t stay the night. I’m not going to read anything into it, okay? If you want to hang out, then I’m around. Your call. I’m not going to boil your pet bunny or tell Facebook you have a small dick, I promise.”
“Good to know.” He laughed, and the crease between his eyebrows ironed out.
Harper sucked in a breath as it transformed his face, and he went from earnest and serious back to utterly fuckable again. Her nipples, bare beneath the overalls, brushed against the material, scrunching into tight points. Awareness tickled low and deep as if he had swiped his tongue along the sensitive skin that sloped from her hip bone to groin.
Oestrogen fogged her brain with primal demands.
“So,” she said, taking a step closer, tugging the tab he’d been periodically eyeing down with a loud zzzzip.
Dex stilled as his gaze zeroed in on her chest. “Holy. Fuck.”
Harper wasn’t sure how much the fabric gaped or how much Dex could see but she could feel the touch of cool air on the centre of her chest, and the intensity of his stare spoke volumes.
“I believe you were going to help me with this?”
He swallowed as he dragged his gaze north. “Your zipper seems more than fine to me.”
“You got me.” Harper shrugged knowing the motion would cause the fabric to gape even more. “I used it to shamelessly lure you here.”
“You’re so bad.” He grinned. “I don’t know how you live with yourself.”
“You’re right,” she murmured, taking the last two steps toward him slowly, until the front of her body was a whisker from the front of his. Their level gazes locked. “I may need to be punished.”
His pupils dilated as Harper’s ears filled with his unsteady breath and the ring of her own heartbeat. Her nostrils filled with the intoxicating accents of some posh cologne. Heat poured into her belly and streaked down her thighs.
He kissed her then. Hard and hot. His smell, his taste, the harsh, feral suck of his breath, the pure urgency of his mouth, flamed through her. His tongue thrust into her mouth as his hands invaded her gaping overalls, sliding onto her waist, yanking her body against his before turning them, switching positions, trapping her between him and the island bench.
“I want to fuck you,” he muttered, grinding the steely hardness of his cock between her legs as his mouth left hers, nipping and sucking a trail of kisses down her neck.
Harper moaned as she ground back, her eyes squeezing shut at the wild clamp of her internal muscles. God. Yes. If this was the way he punished her, then she was going to be bad a lot more often.
His mouth savaged lower, the sheer force of his passion bending her back against the bench, his tongue tracing over her collarbones and lower, his hands pushing at the opening of the overalls, exposing her breasts, groaning at the sight of them, cupping them, kneading them, his fingers squeezing the taut, tight nipples until she cried out at the twin sensations of pleasure-pain before lowering his head to soothe them with the hot lick of his tongue.
Harper closed her eyes and buried her hands in his hair, arching her back shamelessly as the scrape of his teeth and the deliciously brutal suction of his mouth rendered her incapable of coherent thought.
Too soon he broke away, and she cried out a weak protest, but he simply moved north again, his hands urging her into a more upright position, before sliding to the backs of her thighs as he whispered a ragged “Up,” in her ear, lifting her onto the bench as if she weighed nothing at all.
She clutched his shoulders as he seated her and then thanked the kitchen gods that her high benches were the exact level required to bring the big, beautiful bulge in his trousers directly in contact with the big, bitching ache between her legs.
She locked her legs around his waist and moaned as he rocked into her, claiming her mouth with the same mastery as before—deep and hard. But Harper was done with the dry humping. Done with clothes. She needed to touch him. To feel his cock in her hand. Feel it inside her.
She needed that intimate connection with him so damn much that nothing else mattered.
Still kissing him, she pushed frantically at his jacket, desperate to get closer to him. She made a triumphant sound in the back of her throat as it fell off his arms, and she greedily smoothed her hands across the breadth of his pecs, over the roundness of his shoulders, and then down his back.
Her hands landed on his ass and she pulled him in tighter, rocking him closer.
He groaned, breaking the kiss, his forehead pressing into hers. “God, woman, you make me see stars.”
There was a bulge in his back pocket and she yanked out his wallet, opening it without asking, finding what she wanted. “Condom,” she said, slapping it against his chest.
The wallet fell to the benchtop as she reached for his belt buckle, her fingers making surprisingly short work of both it and his fly, considering how crazily they trembled.<
br />
As crazy as the wild clatter of her heart.
He groaned, their foreheads still together, when Harper breached the waistband of his underwear and pulled out his erection, stiff and eager, the head plump between the press of their bodies.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “That’s so damn good it hurts.”
“Feels pretty damn good to me, too,” she murmured, loving the silk and the steel of it as she closed her fist around him, sliding up and down a couple of times. “Condom,” she panted.
“Lie back,” he said as he ripped at the foil packet with his teeth.
Harper didn’t have to be asked twice, lowering back onto her elbows so she could watch him sheath himself, then catching the flare of his gaze as he glanced at her once he was done. He was looking at her as if he was a sugar addict and she was his own personal lolly shop.
He slid both hands up her torso, pushing her gently all the way back, as he palmed her breasts and squeezed. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said on a ragged breath, his hands smoothing down her body again.
So used to her love-hate relationship with her body, Harper realised that when Dex told her she was beautiful like that, with a note of reverence in his voice that almost made her cry, she actually believed him.
He shook his head as fingers brushed the lace edge of her purple satin underwear. “I don’t know if I thought this through properly,” he said, tracing down the two vertical lines of black ribbon decorating the front of her full-figured brief. “I should have ditched your clothes before I put you on the counter.”
Harper closed her eyes to clear the sexual fog as his fingers continued down, brushing closer and closer to her aching sex. Thank God the baggy overalls were long in the crotch, giving them plenty of room to manoeuvre.
His thumb whispered over the satiny fabric between her legs, already damp from their making out, and she bit down on her lip. “Just push it aside,” she urged, her voice all deep and growly, too far-gone to worry about logistics. Then she clamped her legs around his hips, her strong solid calves anchoring tight against the taut globes of his ass, and rubbed against him.
