Nothing more was said. But the seed was planted. They walked back to the parking garage in silence. He held the car door for his mom, then seized on the fact that Amy, who was standing behind the car digging for her keys, had not yet gotten in the car. Coming up behind her, he bent down to whisper in her ear, “You can’t tell, but that was actually a spectacular triumph.” He was glad there was no time for a reply, and that he’d only had to whisper, because about two words in, he got a noseful of that goddamned strawberry perfume and every intention he’d had to play it cool, to respect her need for distance, melted like a blob of gelato in the summer sun.
“You two come in for dinner,” his mother said when Amy pulled into the driveway.
“Can’t,” he said, before Amy could open her mouth. “We’re going to a movie.”
Amy shot him a quizzical look in the rearview mirror. He didn’t care. He was done respecting her space. He needed this girl underneath him again. Or on top of him. Or whatever.
His mom turned around in her seat, took off her sunglasses, and stared at him for what felt like an extremely long moment. Jesus. Enough with the feminine scrutiny from the front seat.
“Okay,” his mom said, opening her door. He hopped out, too. That was it? No arguing? He’d expected to have to make a federal case for why they needed to go to a movie and not come in to dinner. Or at least name the movie and theater so she could cross-check it against the newspaper listings later and bust his ass when she learned she’d been conned.
But no. She just leaned in, offering her cheek for him to kiss. Amy had gotten out of the car, too, and she stuck out her hand for his mother to shake. He bit back a laugh as his mother looked at her hand like it was a poisonous snake. “See you next week, same time. We’ll go look at another place.”
Amy nodded warily, but his mother had already turned and made for the front door. So he just got into the Fiat, folding himself into the little toy car’s front seat, which was only marginally more comfortable than the back. After a moment’s hesitation, she followed. He didn’t say anything as she started the car and backed out of the driveway.
Once she was cruising along Kingston Road back toward the city, she shot him a sideways glance. “I’m not sure in what universe that was a spectacular success, but I’m taking your word for it.”
“I think it was the gelato that did it. My mother has the world’s biggest sweet tooth. I can guarantee that right now she’s rehearsing a version of her life where she only has to walk two minutes outside her door to procure gelato. With her, the lack of negative comment is akin to a glowing review. The wheels are turning.” Thanks to you. The woman really was a freaking genius. But he didn’t say that. He was already playing it not-cool with the whole “we’re going to a movie, but we’re really going to have sex” thing, so he’d take it easy on the expressions of gratitude and amazement.
“So what movie are we seeing?”
Oh, come on. She had to have recognized that for the ploy it was. He took a deep breath, trying to think how to delicately broach the subject, but all that did was fill his head with more strawberries. And since she wasn’t in this to be wooed, he defaulted to the direct route. “We’re not going to a movie. You’ve been driving me insane all evening with that strawberry perfume and your cute little matchbox car, so we’re going to the condo for more fucking.”
If he hadn’t been watching her closely as he spoke, he would have missed the almost-undetectable hitch in her breath. She was getting good at covering her initial, genuine reaction in favor of a facade she thought was better presented to the world. He wasn’t sure he liked that notion.
But there was no time for analysis because she accelerated though a yellow light, and said, calmly, “I want to go to a movie.” He would have slumped in dejection if he hadn’t detected another infinitesimal hitch. Then she added, “First.”
He whipped out his phone and began scrolling through and announcing the listings for the various downtown theaters.
“We went to the Royal last time,” she said. “Well, we sort of went to the Royal.” She grinned, no doubt remembering their aborted Godfather Part III jaunt. “Let’s keep with the rep cinemas. What’s on at Mount Pleasant?” she asked, naming an uptown theater that played art films and classics. “It’s right near my house,” she added, gracing him with a look that could not be described as anything other than smoldering.
He brought up the listing and had to refrain from rolling his eyes. “An Affair to Remember.” Of course.
“Sold!” Accelerating, she changed lanes so she could hang a right and begin working her way uptown.
…
Man, what was the big freaking deal about movie popcorn? Amy clutched her peanut butter cups as Dax discussed in great detail the topping situation with the acne-ridden teenager manning the concession booth.
“It’s real butter, right? Because if it’s some kind of bullshit butter-flavored topping, I’ll just skip it altogether.”
Once the authenticity of the butter had been established, and its placement at precise intervals throughout the bag assured, they finally found their seats, just as the lights were going down.
Amy didn’t want to see this movie. Didn’t give a flying fig about Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant and whether they were going to show up at the godforsaken Empire State Building. She just wanted to go home and let Dax put his hands—and his mouth—all over her. But a girl had to have a little pride. Maintain a little dignity. So by the time Deborah was all, “It’s the nearest thing to heaven, blahbity, blah, blah, blah,” Amy was gathering her bag. And when Cary was carrying Deborah over the threshold from the point of view of that damn dog, she had stood up.
“You don’t want to wait for the end?”
She sat down with a thud. “Oh my God. You have a thing about the credits, don’t you? You have to stay to the bitter end.”
“No. I just would have thought you would. You seem like the type.”
“Nope!” She was halfway down the aisle before she knew for sure he was following. So much for playing it cool. But she could no longer be bothered to care. They had sat there through that whole freaking two-hour movie without touching. There hadn’t even been a Rico Suave arm over the back of the seats. And now her skin was on fire.
She led him outside to the tiny parking spot right in front of the theater that she’d gloatingly squeezed into on their way in, instructed him to buckle his seat belt, and hightailed it up Mount Pleasant.
He didn’t speak until they came to a stop in front of her place. “You’re selling your house?”
“Oh. Yeah.” She’d just signed the papers with the Realtor yesterday, and they must have put the sign up while she was at work today. “The place is too big for just me.” She skipped the part where since all her life plans had gone up in smoke, she was jonesing for fresh digs, a place that didn’t remind her at every turn of how inadequate she had been.
“Where you going to go?”
“Parkdale, I think,” she said, naming the up-and-coming neighborhood where she’d squatted in Cassie’s apartment the first week post-jilting. It had been fun and vibrant, and she was suddenly feeling like Forest Hill just wasn’t…age appropriate. Look at her right now, for God’s sake. She was bringing a hookup home to her giant empty house. It was full of rooms. So many rooms, when they really only needed one. “But I’m not in a hurry. If I don’t find anything I like before I have to close on this place, I’ll just rent for a while.”
He raised an eyebrow. She hated that his reflexive reaction to her plan was skepticism. “Because you’re so freewheeling? Just drifting though life with no plan, no agenda.”
She ground her teeth. “Exactly.” Seriously, if they were keeping it casual, did he have the right to psychoanalyze her? She hopped out of the car and strode up the path to the front door. She was just turning the key when he started to say something. She didn’t think she could stand it. If he said another critical word, she might remember all the reasons she used
to hate him and send him away. And that was unacceptable.
So she held up a palm. “Less talking.” She left the rest unsaid.
“Less talking, more…?” he prompted. Of course, he wasn’t going to let that slide.
Screw it. New Amy took what she wanted, no shame. So she whirled on him, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Less talking, more fucking.”
…
It served him right. It fucking served him right. You play with fire—and Amy Morrison was nothing if not made of flames—you get burned.
But, speaking of fucking, and since he was already burned… When she closed the door behind her, he backed her up against it, crashing his mouth down on hers. But she was already there, meeting him halfway—more than halfway, reaching down and shoving her skirt down as her mouth opened greedily under his.
“Oh my God,” he moaned, slipping his rough palms along the impossibly soft skin of her hips, then sliding around to cup her ass as he ground his pelvis into hers. Foreplay, he tried to tell himself. Foreplay.
But before he could command his clumsy limbs to obey, she wrapped her arms around his neck and hiked her legs around his waist, so that she was pinned between him and the door. “Please tell me you have a condom somewhere on your person,” she panted.
In fact, he did. Feeling ambitious, he’d stuck one in his wallet when he’d come out to his parents’ house to crash the real estate manipulation tour. He couldn’t obey her fast enough. Even as the logical part of his mind continued to chant, foreplay, foreplay, he yanked his pants down and fumbled the condom on. Forcing himself to pause then—they were both fully dressed in work clothing from the waist up, for God’s sake—he continued to support her with one hand while extracting the other to begin working on unbuttoning the millions of tiny pearl buttons that ran down the front of the sky-blue sheer gauzy thing she called a blouse.
She shoved his hand away with a vehemence that startled him. “I want you inside me now,” she breathed, clamping her legs even harder around his waist. The need in her voice catapulted his lust, which was already hovering around an eleven, out of the stratosphere. So he pushed inside her, and oh, God, she’d been right—she was ready. So slick, so hot. He had to fight not to close his eyes against the onslaught of pleasure gathering in his lower back. He wanted to look at her. Her head lolled back against the door, scarlet lips parted and eyes closed in ecstasy.
Beautiful.
He rested his own mouth against those lips. Not kissing her, because that seemed opposed to what she wanted here, which was for them to focus all their energy on the tower of flame they were building, one breath, one thrust at a time. But he wanted those red lips, wanted to be marked with them.
He was trying to prolong things, but he was close. Just as he was trying to slow things down, his orgasm came over him all at once, and he let loose an involuntary shout and ground himself into her as deeply as he could as he was towed under the tidal wave.
But he only surrendered to the gutting pleasure for a moment before settling her legs back on the floor and sinking to his knees. She hadn’t come yet, and he didn’t think his own legs would work anymore anyway. Pressing his face against her, he took a moment to inhale, to savor the moment.
Once he started moving his tongue, she began moaning and squirming under him. When he added two fingers inside her, it only took her a minute. Then she was calling his name and sliding down the door to join him in a heap on the floor.
“That was…” She sighed, leaving off the end of the sentence.
“Yeah.”
He didn’t know whether to smile or to run. Because he had a feeling that when a person was sitting on the floor of one’s casual hookup’s entryway, wearing a suit jacket and tie but no pants, drunk with pleasure, a person might have somewhat of a problem.
Chapter Fourteen
A week later, just as she was about to leave work to go pick up Lin for their second outing, Dax appeared in her office.
“We’ll take my car this time.”
She didn’t know whether to slap him or kiss him. The competing urges were equally strong. He thought he could just waltz in a week after they’d had the most mind-blowing sex in the history of humankind, after not communicating with her all week, causing her to turn into a big pile of neuroses worthy of starring in her own Woody Allen movie, and act like everything was completely normal?
Apparently he could, because she was following him out to the elevator and watching as he hit the button for the garage. And she had to admit, they’d both agreed, that day in the canoe, that they were keeping things casual, so who was she to complain that things were unfolding as advertised?
There was also the part when they entered the dark garage, where she wanted to shove him inside his ginormous SUV and demand a repeat performance of last week.
Sighing, she buckled her seat belt and resigned herself to her fate. Which was tromping around a new development in Markham with quivering loins. Honest to God quivering loins. A month ago, she would have said that loins only quivered in romance novels. She shot Dax a glance. No investors today, apparently, because he was wearing dark jeans and a white oxford that made his olive skin pop.
He must have felt her watching him because he turned to her as the car was disgorged onto the street. As the dim light of the garage gave way to the sunny day, it was like heaven had aimed a sunbeam down on him, lighting up all the little lines at the corners of his eyes and the wash of a five-o’clock shadow along his jaw.
Quivering loins and hearts skipping beats. Apparently both those things were real.
“How’s Tinder?”
She blinked, resisting the urge to rear back as if he’d slapped her. How could he think she was still on Tinder when they were…well, what were they doing? “I haven’t been on Tinder for a while.”
He smirked. “Too busy?”
“Something like that.”
“I’m just wondering how it’s going, now that you’re really post-Mason.”
“Are you calling me a slut?” It was funny how it only took a second for them to fall into their old patterns of fighting, from before they were…whatever they were.
“No!” One hand left the steering wheel in a “hands up” gesture, as if he were surrendering. “Not at all! You know I have a history of endorsing the casual relationship. I may have my faults, but misogynistic double standards aren’t among them.”
She performed an exaggerated smirk. “So if anyone’s a slut here, it’s you, is that what you’re saying?”
He laughed. “I’m just saying I’m glad you seem to have Mason out of your system.”
She considered the statement. She didn’t really miss Mason per se. It was a little startling actually, how quickly she’d grieved him. But in truth, she wasn’t really comfortable with all the upheaval in her life, the uncertainty. Where was she going to live when the house sold? How long should she wait until she started looking for a serious relationship again? She was supposed to be back from her honeymoon now, pregnant with baby number one, and it was proving difficult to fully let go of the…certainty she’d had. That was the only way she could think to put it, but that sounded stupid. But you didn’t have those kinds of conversations with your frenemy-with-benefits. So she just said, “I think you might be right.”
“So where are we taking my mom today?” he asked as they left the skyscrapers of the financial district behind and started making their way east.
“Markham. There’s this development going up of small houses targeted at active retirees. But they’re in a condo corp, so all the exterior maintenance and landscaping is taken care of. And you can buy into a plan that covers interior repairs and upkeep, too.”
“Sounds promising. The house itself wouldn’t be that much different than what they have now.”
“Yeah, except it’s newly built with the idea of aging in place. So there are railings in the shower, and the counters are slightly lower than is standard and have an overhang so a wheelchair coul
d be accommodated if need be.”
He let loose a low whistle. “Damn. You are good at this.” The praise warmed her insides, foolish girl that she was. “Thanks for colluding with me to such epic proportions.”
“You know, I felt a little bad about it initially, but I can see now that your cause is just.” He really did love his parents. It was kind of remarkable. “I think it’s better for them to make a move while they’re still mobile and active, rather than wait until they’re forced to, and—” She stopped. She was talking about them like she was a third sibling, like she had a say in the matter along with Dax and Kat.
But he didn’t call her on it. Didn’t even seem to notice, just said, “You’re right.”
“I usually am,” she shot back, falling back on their bantering ways to hide her discomfort.
He smiled softly—not mockingly—and glanced at her sideways. “Don’t I know it, Strawberry Girl.”
Gah! What was happening here? He was being all cryptic. And nice. Neither of which she was prepared for. Flustered, she looked out the window as the streets of prewar bungalows indicated they’d arrived in Scarborough.
When he pulled into his parents’ driveway and cut the ignition, he turned to her. “Hey. After we drop my mom off tonight, you want to…go to a movie?”
Her face went red. It must have because she could feel the heat surging into her cheeks. She wiped a speck of imaginary lint off her sleeve, and as she reached for the door handle, said, “Yes. Yes, I do.”
…
“Holy fuck.”
“Such a potty mouth,” Amy said, laughing as she fell over next to him and landed on her back.
Had he said that out loud?
Well, at least this time he’d managed to get all their clothes off and steer them onto a bed before nuclear annihilation occurred. And thankfully, he’d been able to…draw things out a little more. Not that she’d been any help in the matter, constantly exhorting him to go faster, harder, begging for more. And when it turned out that he was like a teenager with her, ready to go again in a shockingly short span of time, she’d shot him a look and burrowed under the covers. He’d thrown them off, because if Amy Morrison was going to wrap her lips around his cock, he was sure as hell going to watch.
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