The Bare Facts

by Karen Anders

  3

  HALEY WOKE wrapped in Dylan’s arms—naked, boneless, weighted with a delicious heaviness. She remembered every single erotic moment of last night. Her fingers itched to get to a keyboard so she could relive the whole thing over again. It hadn’t stopped with the fire and the raspberry sauce, but had only moved upstairs to the shower. He’d teased her under the heated spray, finally taking her against the wall with hard, quick thrusts. Afterward, dried off and sated, they’d fallen into bed.

  Dylan stirred. Haley panicked, acutely aware of his wonderful body pressed against hers. The fantasy was over and she needed to get herself out of bed and dressed. She slipped out of his arms and picked up a damp towel that was on the floor. All her clothes were downstairs.

  Dylan’s arm reached out and held her wrist. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To get dressed. I’ve got to go, Dylan. I have an article to write and a deadline to meet.”

  “It’s early, come back to bed. I’ll make it worth your while,” he promised, looking up at her with heavy-lidded, sexy green eyes, a wicked grin and the promise of pleasure a kiss away. He looked lethal in the morning, all hard, hot male, tousled, irresistible.

  She was tempted. So very tempted, but that wouldn’t help her to stay focused on the ball. At least not the one her father had been talking about. She could lose herself in his arms. She knew it.

  “I can’t.”

  He sighed. “Can’t say I’m not disappointed. It’s beautiful up here. We could go for a quick hike before we leave.”

  She watched his powerful muscles contract and release as he stretched like a big lazy cat. Lethal. He was a lethal combination of prime male and hot sin. And she wanted him, but not for a fantasy. That thought tried to worm its way into her heart. The new sensations clung to her like the stickiness of the raspberry sauce. They clamored for a satisfaction she could only fantasize about. A fulfillment of a need she had sworn she’d deny.

  She’d promised herself that she would not have these cravings. Ha! Like she could control them.

  His next words threw ice water on her warm, stupid little fantasy.

  “If you want to put on fresh clothes, there’s a closet full in the next bedroom.”

  Haley stepped into the hall, her stomach dropping like a stone. She leaned against the wall for support, closing her eyes. She’d been right. She should have known he’d bring his women friends here. Well, she’d never wear clothes from his other lovers.

  Strangely, not even that seemed enough to tame the almost savage craving still running through her. It was as if some deep, elemental part of her was acting on a primitive instinct to find someone that would protect her, love her. Only her. The need to be loved overwhelmed her. It was the same need to explore all the fascinating facets of being a woman, being alive, of learning exactly what life itself was about.

  Dylan made her want all those things with him.

  It was quite impossible.

  WHEN DYLAN CAME downstairs, he was only wearing his tight, unsnapped jeans. Bare-chested and barefoot, he walked past her and disappeared into the kitchen. She sat on the sofa tying her bootlaces and watched through the kitchen doorway as he busied himself with starting a pot of coffee. Haley couldn’t take her eyes off his flexing back. His words startled her and she looked away guiltily.

  “Want something to eat?”

  “I’d rather get on the road.”

  “Come on, Haley. Don’t you know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?” His teasing only made her want to escape his presence all the more. This familiarity, closeness and shared amusement just wouldn’t do. She had to keep her distance.

  There was a faint scent of raspberry in the air. It only reminded Haley of Dylan’s warm hands, his hard body, and the way the man kissed. It had to be illegal.

  She got up off the sofa and reached for her jacket. As he appeared in the doorway, he flashed her an engaging smile. His teeth were stark white against his tan skin. “Let me guess. You’re not a morning person.”

  Answer him, Haley, she told herself. He’s asking you a question, but just then Dylan put his hands over his head and grabbed the top of the door frame. He cocked his hip and leaned lightly, causing his biceps to bulge, his achingly beautiful chest to go taut. She understood what the phrase “The devil made me do it” meant because the man was sinfully gorgeous. Now she knew what pure, unadulterated temptation was.

  She turned away, because if she didn’t, she’d walk over there and put her hands on him. She was afraid they wouldn’t get out of this cabin for a week.

  “I’ve really got to go, Dylan. Can’t we pick something up on the way?” Her need to get away from him made her voice petulant. She turned her back on him, unable to look at him and not want him.

  “Haley, let me at least give you something for the road. It’s only breakfast. It’s not like you’re accepting something that you can’t repay, for crying out loud.”

  Haley knew she was being stupid. It was making him wonder what her problem was. She didn’t want him to think she had difficulty being in his presence. “All right,” she said ungraciously.

  “What would you like?”

  “French toast.” She folded her arms over her chest, not looking happy about it.

  “Now you’re talking.”

  She evaded his eyes and the soft look of compassion she knew would be there, and totally changed the subject. “Do you like coming up into the mountains on a regular basis?”

  “I like it all right.”

  “I always thought it would be nice to live on the ocean,” she said wistfully, looking out the windows that overlooked the backyard. “It must be great to fall asleep listening to the waves against the shore and walk along the beach in the morning while watching the sunrise.”

  “I imagine it is. Ever been to the cape?”

  “No. Not the cape. I want tropical. Palm trees and white sand and warm, salty water.”

  “Ever tried surfing?” he asked as he pulled out a large skillet and sprayed the bottom with cooking spray.

  “Just a little body surfing. Plates?”

  “In the top left-hand cupboard.”

  She pulled them out and walked past him, setting them on the small kitchen table.

  “You?”

  “Once on a trip to Hawaii. It was really hard. Would you like coffee?” he asked.

  “Yes. Let me. You have your hands full,” she said as she took the carafe of coffee out of the automatic maker and poured two cups. Picking hers up, she sipped the hot liquid.

  “Ever made love on the beach?”

  She dropped the cup; liquid splattered on the white tile floor and the cup smashed into little pieces. Hot coffee splashed on her hand and she cried out.

  He immediately turned off the stove. Avoiding the smashed cup, he pulled her over to the sink. He turned on the cold-water tap and held her burned hand under the water.

  He didn’t say anything, but she could feel the heat of his hand holding hers under the spray as he periodically took her hand out of the cool stream to examine it. His intensity made her want to squirm.

  He frowned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. Thought you were a little more open-minded about… I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. Ignore me.”

  He gently dried her hand with a towel and again inspected her hand.

  “I don’t think it’ll blister.”

  She shook her head. “If you point me in the direction of the broom, I’ll clean up the mess I made. You don’t have any shoes on.”

  He moved away from her and the shards of ceramic on the floor. The air he stirred made her shiver. His delicious cinnamon scent was driving her wild.

  While he was getting the broom and dustpan, she pulled a bunch of paper towels from the roll on the counter and mopped up most of the mess. By the time he came back with the broom, she had all the coffee cleaned up.

  She made short work of sweeping the floor, making sure to get
all the shards. “No. I’ve never made love on the beach. Have you?”

  Dylan was back at the stove and he was working on the French toast once again. “No.”

  Haley poured another cup of coffee and sipped it slowly, savoring the taste.

  “Would you like to?” he asked as soon as she set the cup on the counter.

  Haley couldn’t help herself. She smiled, “Yes. Someday I think I would.”

  He dished up the toast onto the plates on the table and put the pan in the sink.

  They sat down and Haley asked him, “Would you?”

  He buttered his toast and poured out a generous helping of syrup. “Yes. With the right woman,” he said quietly, licking his fingers clean of the sticky syrup.

  She watched his pink tongue flick in and out and remembered how the wet heat felt against her skin. Her mouth went dry suddenly. Electricity, sizzling and charged, coursed across her skin, singeing her nerve endings.

  There was something about this man that robbed her of her sanity. Sure, he was good-looking and that’s what she’d noticed first about him, but there was something else buried deep in him that called out to her. Enticed her with a need to know the things she saw in his eyes. He had a devotion to the beautiful things in life. She knew it was there in him and it drew her like a moth sure of its own death to the source of that light again and again. Her eyes couldn’t seem to get enough of absorbing all that finely controlled male energy.

  “Where?” she asked, her voice a husky whisper. She cleared her throat.

  “There’s this place in Hawaii on Maui where they have these amazing black sand beaches. The water is like azure blue and so crystal clear you can see the bottom.” He paused and looked at her with those intense green eyes. Leaning toward her, he said, “I’d like to see your body against that sand and through that clear, clear water.”

  To her utter dismay, she wanted to touch him, his chiseled chest and every sleek contour, run her fingers along the strong line of his jaw, over those compelling lips. When his tongue snaked out to lick his lips, her body stiffened at the thought of taking its hot slickness into her own mouth, simply to savor the spicy taste of him, and once sampled, lured like a deep aching hunger for more.

  She got up from the table on the pretense of getting her coffee cup. She heard his chair scrape across the floor. “Wow. That sounds wonderful,” she managed to say as her body involuntarily moved while he crowded her against the countertop.

  Dylan’s well-formed chest rippled when he moved his arms on either side of her, his biceps bunching as he leaned toward her. His scent was overpowering, shutting out all thoughts of anything but this compelling man. His restless gaze locked on to hers. “You know what else I’d want to do to you on that beach, Haley?” he said, a darkness shadowing his eyes, his voice hushed as if the words spoken too loudly would make it true.

  She looked at him expectantly, but not able to name the emotions that raged inside her. Still, she could see him on that beach—the sun making his dark skin glisten, his powerful thighs and hips crushing her into the sand, making her writhe with his lovemaking.

  She felt strange then, a fierce tender feeling that she had never felt before for a man she barely knew. She admired him even though she thought he was a womanizer. It seemed all his intensity was focused on her for this one moment in time. This one reckless moment.

  When she didn’t answer him, he moved closer, his eyes reading the need for her to know what he had to say. “I’d want to taste every inch of you while the sun heated our skin, my hot mouth all over you. I’d want to take you every way a man can take a woman.”

  She closed her eyes to gain her composure. She could feel his lips gently caress her cheekbone. “You really know how to play this game, Dylan. Maybe I should have you write my column.” She searched his compelling face looking for clues to the inner workings of him.

  Thick dark lashes dropped over his astonishing eyes like a black curtain and she felt bereft at the loss of his vital gaze. He was thinking about what she’d asked. When he had an answer, his lashes raised, and he said, “You think I’m playing a game. Let’s get to that sandy beach someday and I’ll show you I’m not playing.”

  Dylan came so close to touching her, his heart pounding in his chest as if he’d run a difficult mile. His hands tightened on the countertop. He wanted to press his mouth against the sweet fragrance of her skin right at her pulse point. He could see it beating as erratically as his heart was beating right now. Hunger, vicious and insatiable, curled through his body, reacting to the obvious response in her. This clear interest she had in him warmed something cold and lonely inside him. Yet, he could feel beneath all her bravado that she wasn’t as tough as she pretended. It intrigued him. A sensual pressure urged him to find out what kind of woman she was hiding under all that hardness.

  He forced himself to move away from her. He leaned his hip against the counter, casually resting his elbow on the cool polished marble top to give him time to get himself under control. She was trying to put distance between them. He felt it the moment he woke. He didn’t want distance but he understood her logic. If there was only sex between them, there couldn’t be anything else. Instead, he returned to his plate of French toast and talk of Hawaii ceased. He asked her to pass the sugar and he felt the slight tremble in her hand as their flesh met. The simple brush caused his heart to start pounding again.

  IT DIDN’T TAKE them long to clean up. Haley found that she was relieved and strangely bereft that he’d moved away from her earlier. She did everything she could to keep her distance. As soon as the dishes were done, she asked, “Could we go now?”

  She felt him come up behind her. His voice was soft, “Sure, honey.” Then very gently he moved the mass of her hair and kissed the back of her neck. Every single cell in her body went liquid. Dylan slid past her and walked back up the stairs.

  A tremor of fear rumbled through Haley. Fear of the control she had lost so completely. Fear of the incredible pleasure Dylan had given her. An old fear that told her if it felt too good to be true, it usually was.

  She couldn’t let herself want Dylan for anything more than a man to help her experience sex so she could write a realistic article showing women how to spice up their sex lives.

  Dylan was the kind of man a woman fantasized about. A man who was selfless in love, knew where to touch her and how to touch her. A fantasy man.

  He had a little black book filled with names and numbers. He played the field and she would have to remember that. He was that way in college and it was why she continually told herself she couldn’t get involved with him now.

  He was the perfect man for the job but not the perfect man for her.

  The bare facts were that Haley wanted a man who only wanted her. The idea might be outdated, outmoded or just plain fantasy, but she wanted that white picket fence, her 2.5 children and a husband who would not stray. And, if her readers were honest with themselves, they would admit, in the secret part of their hearts, they wanted the same thing.

  Too bad Dylan was the perfect temporary man for the job. It would be easy to fall for him.

  And love with a skirt chaser was just not in her plans.

  HALEY STOOD in the intimate apparel section of Bloomingdale’s and eyed all the merchandise. It’s not that she’d never shopped for bras and underwear before, but prior to Dylan she’d never shopped for sexy, drive-him-crazy underwear before. She went to the black lace bras and perused the selections. They were much more revealing than she would have chosen, but she wanted the striptease fantasy to be very hot.

  She closed her eyes and a flutter of nerves began in her stomach. The thought of taking her clothes off in a seductive fashion for Dylan made her both scared and aroused. It was perhaps the forbidden of disrobing for a man that made the idea both sexy and frightening.

  She took the bra into the dressing room and tried it on. She needed one that was strapless because the dress she’d bought had such thin straps.

&nbs
p; The lace material cupped her breasts, pushed them up, and she looked at herself, trying to see herself through Dylan’s eyes. Did he find her sexy or was it sex without strings he found so appealing?

  Back in college Haley had noticed him right away. He always sat behind her in English class. She could smell his male scent, a combination of spice and soap. She was sure that a couple of times when she’d left her hair down, he’d played with the end of her curls, but every time she turned around, he looked as innocent as the driven snow.

  And innocent he was not.

  Not with those dreamy, I’ve-got-what-you-need eyes that promised ecstasy and safety at the same time. Not with his dark, dangerous good looks. Oh no, innocent was not the right word at all.

  Warning sounds had buzzed in her head that whole last semester. Every time he’d even hinted that he was going to ask her out, she’d change the subject or find some way to leave.

  She made sure she was always in a group situation with him. It kept her safe in two ways. There were always plenty of women hanging around him, and that provided a great buffer against her having to spend any time with him.

  Besides drinking way too much alcohol at the infamous graduation party, there had been one time, and one time only, when she’d let her guard down. It was shortly after she’d broken up with Sean and not many of her friends knew it. It was in a bar and it had been late. Haley hadn’t noticed that most of the group had left. There was only Dylan and a couple of their friends.

  He had asked her to dance. She remembered so vividly the feel of his hands at her waist, the smell of him that was simply overwhelming as she stood so close to him. He’d pulled her in as easily as a fisherman reeled in his catch.