Miki snored. A little louder this time.
“Miki,” Frankie poked her again. “I need you to wake up. I need that logical mind of yours.”
Miki snuffled, but that was it. She didn’t even flinch at Frankie’s insistent finger.
“Miki?” Frankie leant forward and gently opened Miki’s right eye. White. Just white.
Oh, boy, she’s out of it.
Letting out a huffed sigh, Frankie settled back on the bed, her hand resting on her best friend’s stomach. The steady rise and fall of Miki’s chest acted like a balm of sorts, and she found herself taking deep breaths in synchronized rhythm with her sleeping friend. “What am I going to do, Miks?” she murmured, staring at the bed’s simple cedar headboard. “I just…Alley Cat…”
She shook her head, drumming her fingers lightly on Miki’s flat belly. “Oh God, Miki, I just had the most amazing sex with Alec Harris in a freaking powder room. A powder room. How cliché is that? And I want to again. Maybe not in a powder room but if that is the only option I’d leap at it. It was…it was…real. Does that make any sense? I mean, I’ve had some pretty fucking mind-blowing orgasms in my time, but this…it was sex, it was fucking, but holy shit, it was so much more. It was like for the first time ever in my life someone knew exactly what I wanted. Exactly. How can that someone be Alec Harris? How?”
She gave Miki a gentle shake, scowling when all she got in return was a low moan and hitching snore.
“Am I truly that messed up?” she continued, her throat tight. “One look at him and I was bloody hot-to-trot. Then when he kissed me…” She stopped. Licked her lips. Dragged a hand through her hair. “When I kissed him back…I know you always told me I protested too much over Alec. In fact, I’m pretty certain you used to throw that Shakespeare line at me every time I mentioned his name…how’d it go? I think the lady doth protest too much? Something like that. But, Miks, I really need you to wake up and tell me what to do?”
Miki didn’t. Damn her.
With a grunt, Frankie flopped back on the bed, resting her temple on Miki’s calves. “I can’t deny the sexual chemistry between us,” she muttered. “But…but…” She licked her lips again. “It’s Alec Harris. I despised the guy all through school, not just because he kept beating me at everything, but because he was a challenge to…to…bloody hell, Miks, he was a challenge to my ultra-alphaness. He still is. More so. The man I just made love to in the powder room will never let me do whatever the hell I want whenever the hell I want to. I can tell just by looking at him. That scares the shit out of me. Big time.”
She closed her eyes, puffing out a sigh.
“It’s not just Alec’s challenging personality that frightens me. It’s his strength and assurance as well. A rock-solid belief in who he is, what he wants. Do you remember that from school? God, it used to piss me off, that personality trait. So much. He’d walk into a room and own it and it didn’t matter how cheap his money was, he was sure of himself.”
Miki mumbled something, shifting on the bed. Frankie gave her a little shake, but it seemed that was it. Miki lapsed back to her silent, sleeping self. Frankie stared at the window, the dark sky beyond a shimmer of black behind the gauzy silver curtain. “I mean,” she went on, flicking Miki a quick look, “my job is all about looking at someone and knowing—just from that one look—if they have it, that illusive quality that makes them…more. Alec has that. In spades. It isn’t just a star magnetism, although there isn’t a hope in hell of denying he’s the sexiest bastard in the country, but a grounded control I’ve never had in my life. Ever.”
The statement filled Frankie’s chest with a dull weight. That was it, wasn’t it? One of the things that unnerved her the most about Alec Harris, right there. It wasn’t just that he was sexy and gorgeous and all together too in control of his life, it was that he had a solidity her soul knew, without doubt, she ached for. Craved. He knew who he was and wasn’t ashamed of it. He knew who he was and was fine with that. Things she couldn’t say about herself.
She let out another sigh, this one harsher. Louder. “Do I go back to the party, Miki? Do I tell him it was a mistake? Was it a mistake? I don’t know. I truly don’t. All I know is right now, at this very moment in time, all I want to do is wrap my arms around Alec Harris’s smooth, hard body, wrap my legs around his low, lean hips and feel him against me, in me. Feel his heart beating against mine as we taste each other’s lips again and again. Hell, he challenged me to best of three, but I want to make it best of twenty. Best of forty.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, the confession sending shards of decidedly agreeable tension into the junction of her thighs. Best of forty? Fuck, would that be even close to—
A faint scraping sound behind her made her jerk upright, her stare snapping to the open doorway where Dayne stood motionless, his expression telling her he’d been there a while. He gave her a nervous look. “Err…”
Frankie shoved herself to her feet, glaring at him. “What?”
He blinked, giving himself a slight shake. “I…err…Grant said you were here. I just wanted to say g’day.” He shuffled his feet, the action incredibly boyish. If Frankie hadn’t been so flustered she would have laughed. “And check in on Miki.”
She waited, knowing something else—a name, perhaps? A question?—sat on Dayne’s tongue. Both he and Grant knew of her rather edgy, over-wrought relationship with Alec Harris during school. If he’d heard what she suspected he had…
“I’m still wondering,” he said instead, shaking his head and giving her a somewhat apprehensive grin, “how the hell you can party like you do, Frankie?”
She wasn’t convinced. Feeling her cheeks grow hot, she strode across the bedroom floor. As much as she desperately wanted to wake Miki up, to hear her best friend put the whole confusing thing in perspective with succinct ease like she did with every other mess Frankie found herself in, she knew it wasn’t happening tonight. Not with Grant and Dayne waiting for Miki in the wings. Not with the way both men seemed to almost breathe Miki’s name with a reverence unlike any she’d heard.
What? You mean the very way Alec spoke your name back in the powder room? That way? Like you were the very essence of his life?
A heavy knot rolled in her gut. A constricting flutter claimed her sex. “Yeah, yeah,” she muttered at Dayne, pushing past him. “Whatever. Tell Miki I’ll be back to collect her in the morning.”
“I can park your car in our driveway if you want. Rather than leaving it on the street,” Dayne offered, following her down the hallway. “I promise it’ll still be there when you…” he paused for a second, “…finish.”
Frankie felt her cheeks fill with heat again. Finish what, she wanted to ask, although she suspected his answer would only make her want to scream. Or groan. Or both.
Oh God, what a freaking joke you are, Francesca.
Forcing out a steady breath, she swung back to Dayne and gave him a cheesy smile. “Thank you, Dayne, but if you think I’m letting you anywhere near my car… I remember how many times it took you to get your license.”
He laughed, a deep chortle so very much like his best friend’s, and for a moment a longing memory of what was once theirs—carefree, uncomplicated adolescence—made Frankie ache. There and gone just as quickly. She fixed him with a melodramatic stare. “Oh, and Pearce? If I find Miki in any state apart from deliriously happy when I get back tomorrow morning, both you and Rogers are dead. Got it?”
Dayne snapped off a sharp salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
Frankie rolled her eyes. “Always the funny bastard.”
He grinned. “That’s me.”
Like with Grant, Frankie was giving Dayne a kiss on the cheek before she realized it. “Be patient with her,” she murmured against his warm skin. “She’s been through hell.”
Dayne sucked in a quick breath and then gave Frankie a small nod. “We will be,” he murmured back.
We.
The plural personal pronoun wasn’t lost on Frankie. Nor
was the clear emotion in Dayne’s eyes as he walked her to the front door. She suppressed a wry chuckle. If it had been any other two guys making obvious designs on Miki, Frankie would have torn them a new one and left them strung up by their balls from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. But Grant and Dayne… Well, if nothing else, they knew their fate if they messed up.
Oh, such a tough-girl swagger, Francesca. Who would have thought it was all a façade?
“Shut up,” she snarled at herself, storming back to Lil’s house. The revelry had not ended in her time away. In fact, the noise coming from the house seemed to be louder, more raucous. The word “scull” wafted from the open door and windows in various laughing chants, the low throb of music a counter beat to the fun.
Frankie stood on the footpath, staring at the house. Inside, waiting at the bar in the living room, was Alec Harris. Waiting for her.
Her pussy contracted. Her pulse quickened. Her nipples grew tight. Every nerve ending and fibre and cell in her body told her to walk inside, find Alec and fuck him senseless, even as her stupid, prideful brain screamed at her to call a cab. Now. Right now. Call a cab, climb in it and go home to her vibrator. The one that didn’t come with complication and back-story and confusion. The one that filled the need her body was craving—if only on a superficial, physical level.
Her heart however…
Frankie let out a strangled groan, glaring at the luxurious house before her. Damn it, when did she ever, ever listen to her heart?
Alec stared at the drink in his hand, ignoring the rather agitated grumblings from his older brother to his left. Mac, it seemed, wasn’t going to let up on this US contract offer, repeating his advice for Alec to sign it as soon as possible. “Hell, Al—” he gave Alec an exasperated look ten minutes into the wholly one-sided conversation, “—why are you even thinking about it? The contract is amazing. It’ll propel Going Bush Landscape and Design into a whole new stratosphere of demand. You’ll be so damn successful I’ll need to make an appointment just to talk to you.”
Alec grunted a wordless reply. He didn’t feel like talking about this at all. Mac however, was like a dog with a bone. He went off on a whole new spiel about the offer from the US television talk-show queen, a spiel that at one point veered off into a highly surreal rant about Lillian McDermott’s career and the sleazy photographer shooting her latest advertising campaign before circling back to the original topic of Alec’s growing fame and fortune and success with no apparent segue.
Alec couldn’t give two flying fucks about the television queen’s desires, nor the contract Mac was so hung up about. Not at the moment. He didn’t want to be famous, he didn’t want to be on television and he sure as hell didn’t want to be thinking about signing a large chunk of his life and time away. Only one thing played on his mind. One thing only.
She wasn’t coming back.
The Gun wasn’t coming back. She’d loaded both barrels, shot him straight in the chest and left him for dead.
Fuck a duck, mate, how pathetic do you have to be to resort to a pun like that?
Pretty bloody pathetic. Pathetic enough to wish Mac, the brother he loved with all his heart, would shut the hell up and leave him alone with his lukewarm drink and aching balls.
“I can’t even find Lily,” Mac ground out, and Alec blinked, realizing his brother was back on the topic of the supermodel. “She could be anywhere…with anyone!”
Alec shot him a sideward frown. “Why the hell the sudden carry on over what Lillian McDermott does? And with whom? Isn’t she just your best friend’s sister? I mean, the three of you have been sharing a house together for what, a few years now, right?”
Mac let out a barely audible growl. “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled, sounding very un-Mackenzie like, before lifting his beer to his mouth and taking a sharp pull.
It was the second time tonight that Alec’s control-freak brother had come unruffled thanks to Lillian McDermott, and if Alec wasn’t so self-absorbed with his own apparent failure to convince Frankie he was worth a second go, he would have been worried.
As it was now, he wished Mac would find the balls to go look for the supermodel and take the bloody US contract with him.
So what? You can sit here and mope?
No. So he could design his next phase of what was fast being called Project Winchester in his head.
He wasn’t giving up. He didn’t give up. His parents hadn’t raised him to be a quitter, and just because Frankie hadn’t returned to him didn’t mean he would roll over and show his belly to defeat. Hell, he’d spent too many years of his life beating her to stop now.
Okay, that didn’t sound quite as heroic and romantic as he’d intended it. But damn it, there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that he and Frankie were meant to…
He paused, gripping his glass tighter. To what? Fuck each other senseless? Be together forever?
Be in love?
“You okay, bro?” Mac’s sudden question—spoken with worried haste—made Alec start. Again.
He turned to his brother. “I think I fucked up a chance with someone special, Mac.”
Mac raised an eyebrow. “Really? I didn’t know there was someone special.”
Alec snorted a wry chuckle, turning back to his untouched drink. “You remember Francesca Winchester?”
“The Gun?” Alec could hear the incredulous mirth in his brother’s voice. “I thought you’d gotten over her back in high school, mate?”
Alec let out a ragged sigh. “Me too. Apparently, I hadn’t.”
“So when I saw you talking together earlier…”
“It was the beginning of the end of my sanity.”
“I’m pretty certain you lost your sanity somewhere around the time you turned fifteen,” Mac said, the words laced with laughter. “The day your balls dropped and you realized Francesca Winchester looked damn fine in a pair of tight jeans.”
Alec shot his brother another sideward frown, accompanying it with a shake of head and grunt. “You’re not helping, Mackenzie.”
Mac grinned, a wide goofy grin Alec bet no one in any courtroom in the country ever got to see. “Okay, sorry. Let me ask you a question then. If you’re designing a garden for the latest celebrity sensation—still think you need to sign that contract, by the way—and there’s a tree growing where you want to locate an arty-farty water feature, what do you do?”
Alec raised his eyebrows. “Arty-farty?”
Mac waved a dismissive hand, very much the ruthless lawyer for a split second. “Shut up and answer the question, squirt.”
Alec chuckled. “Okay, depending on how well it fit with my design, I’d do one of two things. I’d either pull it out and replant it elsewhere, or redesign the garden around it.”
Mac looked at him. “And how well does The Gun fit with your design, Alec? You know the one I’m talking about? The design that takes the rest of your life to finish? How well does she fit with that design? Are you going to rip her out of it and plant her somewhere else you don’t have to water or tend, or approach the whole…thing…from a different perspective?”
“You know,” a very husky, very feminine, very familiar voice murmured behind Alec and Mac. “I’ve been compared to many things in my life, but never a tree. It’s a first for me.”
Alec jumped and spun around on his bar stool to stare at Frankie standing but a mere metre away from him. Her lips curled in a small smile, her eyes holding his in an unreadable gaze.
Mac laughed, rising from his own stool and dipping slightly at the waist. “And a beautiful tree it is.”
Frankie’s reaction was to raise one of her eyebrows. A little.
Mac laughed again. “And on that note, I shall leave talk of gardening to you both. There’s a supermodel somewhere in this party I need to have a few words with.”
He left. Or at least, Alec assumed he did. Alec didn’t take his attention from Frankie long enough to be sure. His heart thumped in his chest as if it were a sledgehammer trying to spli
nter a stubborn tree root.
He swallowed. She’d come back. But for the reason he hoped? Or to tell him the powder room was a mistake.
Too bad. If that’s what she’s thinking, I’ll do whatever it takes to change her—
“So—” she took a minute step closer to him, her smile curling wider, “—any chance you’re up for another round of Suck and Blow?”
Alec stood, pushed himself from the bar and destroyed the distance between them with one step. He slid his hands over her hips to the small of her back and tugged her to him, pressing her hips to his as he lowered his face to hers. “I think,” he murmured against her lips, “there’s a very good chance.”
Chapter Five
Frankie pressed her hands to his hard chest, reveling in the pounding rhythm of his heart under her palms. The second she’d seen him sitting at the bar, his back so broad, so wide, his hips so lean… The second she’d heard his voice, heard its wrought frustration as he talked about gardening of all things, she’d known she wanted more of him. No, not just more of him. All of him.
“How does my place sound?” She slid her hands over his nipples, her pussy squeezing when they grew taut under the material of his shirt. “I’ve got an apartment on the harbour. We could be there in…”
Her suggestion faded on her lips as he shook his head. “My place.”
Frankie’s heart thumped into her throat and she stared into his smiling eyes. His place…
She’d never gone back to a lover’s house before. It was always her place—where she was in control. Going back to Alec’s house…
“Okay,” she agreed, dragging her thumb over his hard nipple again.
With a strained chuckle, Alec smoothed his hands up her arms. “I take it you found Miki?”
Frankie nodded. “She’s in good hands for the night.”
His lips brushed hers—a teasing caress that made her pussy flutter some more. “So are you.”
Her pulse danced in her neck, her sex fluttering anew. It wouldn’t matter what his home was like. She didn’t care they weren’t going to be fucking in her massive king-size bed with its multi-million dollar views of the harbour. All that mattered was stripping his clothes from his body and impaling herself on his oh-so-amazing cock again. Soon.
Suck and Blow: Party Games, Book 1 Page 6
