by Jill Shalvis
Wade shifted his mouth to Sam’s inner thigh as her shudders finally slowed. He loved her like this, all hot and bothered and breathing like crazy. “You okay?” he murmured against her soft, delicious skin, kissing her because he couldn’t seem to stop.
Her fingers loosened their death-grip on his hair. “No. I’m blind.”
He tilted up his head and felt a smile curve his mouth. “Your eyes are closed.”
“Oh. Right.” She opened them slowly, leveling the dreamy, dazed orbs on his, which cracked his heart wide open.
It was a shocking feeling, a new feeling, and he found himself just staring up at her, a bit stunned. He went to stand and felt a stab in his ribs, and shocked at the pain, sat back on his heels instead.
Sam hopped off the table and in just her heels, crouched at his side, her hand on his abs. “Your head or your ribs?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re gray.”
He let out a careful breath. “It’s nothing. Christ, you should see how gorgeous you look right now in only those heels.”
“You are such a guy.” She helped him to his feet. “Come to the couch. Sit a sec.”
He allowed her to draw him around to the couch, and then held on to her hand when she would have moved off.
“I was going to get you Advil from my purse.” Her questioning eyes ran down his body, snagging on the tented front of his sweats.
“Advil isn’t going to help my condition,” he said.
“What will?”
“Looking at you.”
She let him tug her closer so that one knee hit the couch next to his thigh. Surprising him, she used her own momentum to lift the other leg over and straddled him.
His eyes met hers as his hands went to her hips. “I’m already feeling a little bit better,” he said.
“I think I can improve on that.” She tugged his sweats down enough to wrap her hand around him and stroked. “How’s this?”
He rocked helplessly up into her fingers, and pain speared through his ribs. He went very still and carefully didn’t breathe. He didn’t dare.
“Wade? Dammit—” She tried to lift herself off of him but he dug his fingers into her hips.
“No, don’t,” he grated out. “I just—I can’t move like I want to,” he admitted hoarsely.
“Then let me.” She lifted up, guiding him to her, slowly, holding his gaze as she sank down on him. “Okay?” she whispered, eyes locked on his.
He could barely speak as she held him inside her body. “Yeah.” He stared up at her, taking in her hair, long ago rioted from his fingers. She was still flushed, and she had a red mark on her jaw where he’d gotten her with his stubble. She looked like she’d been claimed, he thought.
As his.
And then she began to move, and as was usual when he was with her like this, he couldn’t think at all.
“So,” she murmured some time later. “Still mad at me?”
Cradling the warm, sated, naked woman in his arms, Wade stirred. His face was plastered against her sweet-smelling neck, her hair drifting in his eyes, a strand of it sticking to his unshaven jaw. He’d just had an orgasm that had rocked his world. In truth, he couldn’t have summoned mad to save his life. “Let’s go to my bed.”
“I have a meeting,” she said.
“Be late.”
“Gage hates late.”
“Not if there’s a good reason.”
She smiled. “According to Gage, the only acceptable reason to be late is death.”
“Or sex.”
She laughed, the woman he’d only meant to play with, the woman who instead had become the only steady hold on reality that he had. “I’m pretty sure the only sex Gage would consider as an excuse would be his.” She rose off him and began to gather her clothes.
Watching a woman dress was usually fascinating for Wade, and one of his favorite pastimes. Well, actually, watching a woman undress was his favorite pastime.
But dressing was fun, too.
But now, all he could feel was the dull thump of his heart as he watched her pull on her panties and turn around, looking for her bra.
He scooped it off the coffee table and handed it to her, not letting go when she tugged. “It’s not the meeting,” he said.
“Of course it’s the meeting.” She yanked hard and he let go of the bra.
“It’s the bed,” he said. “I said bed and you got all flustered.”
She covered her gorgeous breasts with her bra and hooked herself in without answering.
“Yeah,” he said grimly, some of his after-sex glow fading. “The thought of my bed scares you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“What then? Tell me.”
She grabbed her dress off the floor. “Why would a bed scare me?”
“I don’t know, we’ve never done it in a bed. Maybe a bed represents something other than sex. Maybe a bed says we mean more to each other than just a quickie on a couch.”
“Or in a backseat,” she said.
“Yeah, or an elevator.” He held her gaze. “Or a bathroom.”
“Wade.” She covered her eyes and breathed in deeply. “Do we have to do this now?”
Quiet, a little unnerved at the urge he had to try harder to coax her into staying, he watched her nip and tuck herself together, then twist her hair up.
And voila.
In less than three seconds she went from sweet, warm, tousled Sam to all-business Sam.
Frightening how good she was at that.
She moved past him to the door, and he barely caught her hand.
She looked down at their entwined fingers instead of meeting his gaze, and suddenly he was forced to face an unsettling fact.
For the first time in his life, he wasn’t trying to figure a way to get rid of a woman he’d just slept with. He wasn’t running for the door. He wasn’t working up an excuse or a pretty lie about why he had to go. Because he didn’t want to get rid of her. He wanted more.
He honestly hadn’t seen that one coming.
“I have to go,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” He waited until she met his gaze, her own unusually bright. “I see that.” Still a little bowled over by his own thoughts, he dropped his hand from hers, watching as she stepped to the door.
“It’s not what you think,” she said, her back to him.
He’d never pushed for more with a woman, ever. It made him feel a little bit like he was standing balls-out-naked. Oh, wait. He was balls-out-naked. “What do I think, Sam?”
“That I don’t want to be with you. I do.” She paused, then turned to face him. “I do. But I know your terms, Wade. Light and fun and easy. Only sometimes something inside me forgets, and I have to back off to regroup.”
At her words, his chest ached. “Sam.”
“I just need to regroup,” she repeated softly. “That’s all. I’ll see you later.”
And with that, she was gone.
Sam ran into the meeting with one minute to spare. Gage looked up, then frowned. “You’re almost late and you’re . . . smiling. What’s up?”
She’d noticed the smile in the rearview mirror on the way over here. Even with the seriousness of the conversation she’d had with Wade after the whole couch-sex thing, she couldn’t get rid of it. Damn multiple orgasms. “Nothing.”
He looked her over very carefully, then let out a low breath. “I could use a nothingsmile like that.”
Sam survived the meeting, and then the phone call with her father as she informed him of her intention not to resign her contract when the season was over, that she’d instead be starting up her own PR firm. She’d sounded cool and collected as she told him that she hoped he would hire her an as independent contractor to continue to run the Heat’s PR needs, but that she’d have other clients as well, and would no longer be a McNead employee.
He’d argued. He was unhappy with her decision, and claimed that she was letting the family down, but she thought the truth of it
was that he didn’t want her out from beneath his thumb.
But for her it was as good as done. Maybe she couldn’t choose her family, but she sure as hell could choose her own path.
And when she hung up, she was still smiling. Seems sex really did a body good.
She was still smiling that night over macaroni and cheese with Tag. But when she got up the next morning, the smile was finally gone. She lay in bed and thought about getting herself over to Wade’s for another twelve-hour smile, but she couldn’t come up with an excuse so she called him. “How are you?”
“Define okay,” he said, his sleepy morning voice rough and sexy enough to make her nipples hard.
“Not a murder suspect would be good.”
He blew out a breath. “Then I’m okay. At least for now. But don’t worry, I’ve seen a lot of movies. I think I can get away with it without getting arrested.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Breathing.”
“Is he drinking?”
“Oddly, no. At least not that I’ve caught him at. But he’s eating me out of house and home, and he won’t stop talking.”
“Are you feeling better?” she asked. “Your head? Your ribs?”
“I can’t feel anything but my blood pressure rising. Can your blood actually boil? I think mine’s boiling.”
“You need to watch a movie,” she suggested. “Or eat some brownies. Relax.”
“I’ve got a better way to relax.”
She actually felt herself go damp. “Sex isn’t the answer.”
“Sam, sex is always the answer. Come over.”
“By the time I got there, we’d only have five minutes.”
“Five minutes is all I need.”
“Maybe I need more.” Like six. She could probably do it in six if they skipped the preliminaries and got right to it.
He sighed. “You’re right. Maybe you’ll come over tonight.”
“I’ve got Tag and you have your dad.”
“I’ll hire us both babysitters, and we can sneak off. Maybe to the beach. Since a bed scares you, let’s do it on the cliffs,” he said, his voice husky, like he was already picturing it.
And now so was she . . . “Wade.”
“See this,” he said, “this is why life is better when it’s all fun and games.”
She laughed and disconnected, then woke up Tag for breakfast.
“Outta milk,” he grumbled sleepily. “What are you going to put in your coffee?”
“You’re worried about my coffee, or your Frosted Flakes?”
“That, too.” He smiled sweetly.
Her heart tugged. She knew he wasn’t missing his dad as much these days, if he’d ever really done so. Most likely what Tag had missed was being at the only home he’d known, and Sam wanted to think that she’d given him a more than decent replacement. Given the lack of recent complaining on his part, she figured she was at least on the right track. Problem was, she’d gotten herself good and attached to him, and knew that at the end of the three months, when Jeremy came for him, it was going to hurt like hell.
Apparently that was the story of her life. Fall in love for a predetermined amount of time, then get her heart stomped on. “How about we go out for breakfast?”
Tag sat straight up. “Really?”
“Not fast food this time, but really.”
Tag leapt out of his chair and headed for the door.
“Bring your backpack, your tutor’s meeting us at my office today.”
“’Kay. Can we get pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream?” He batted his already gorgeous eyelashes at her, reminding her that someday in the not so far future, he was going to be charming girls with little to no effort. “I know how you love pancakes,” he said, making her laugh.
She should have said no, but just as it was with Wade, it was also happening with Tag—she was losing her famed self-control. “If we hurry.”
Chapter 25
No matter how good you are, you’re going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you’re going to win one-third of your games. It’s the other third that makes the difference.
—Tommy Lasorda
Wade pulled on a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt, and tried his usual morning run. He got a quarter of the way through his five-mile route before caving in to the rib pain, which sucked. He sank to the curb and called Pace. “Come get me.”
“Can’t. I’m in the middle of an ET shoot, and I’m looking damn fine, too, I should add.”
Wade disconnected and called Sam. “Come get me?”
There was a beat of disbelieving silence. “I can’t drop everything and have sex with you!” she whispered, clearly trying to sound appalled, but really sounding very interested instead. “I’m inspecting the hotel’s ballroom for the auction.” She paused. “How about later?”
He had to laugh, and didn’t bother to explain. Hell, no. Not if she was going to give him a booty call out of the deal. “Later.” He limped home and found his father passed out cold on the damn couch. “Ah, just like old times.”
“Except I’m not hungover.” John sat up, and Wade had to admit, he wasn’t drunk. He was bright-eyed and strung out, but not drunk.
And he was trembling ever so slightly. His entire body was in alcohol withdrawal. “You okay?”
“No, but I’ll get there. Let’s do something father/son-like. Bowling. Surfing. Anything.”
Wade raised a brow.
“I’m serious.”
“How about we just try to coexist.”
“I need more.” John paced. “I really need more to pull this whole quitting thing off.” He looked down at his hands, which even when he fisted shook badly. “Need to,” he repeated.
“You need a drink,” Wade said flatly.
“More than I need air.”
Wade let out a breath. “Go to rehab, dad. I’ll take you. I’ll pay.”
“Don’t you get it? I need more than your money, Wade.”
