by Pam Godwin
I feel him watching me, and when I look up, my heartbeat ricochets in my chest. With his chin tilted down and hands resting in his pockets, his gaze roams along my bare legs, traces my hips, pauses on my chest. My nipples harden, my breasts unbound beneath the loose crop top. I think he likes what I’m wearing, given the way his lips part to accommodate the rush of his breath.
His attention drops to my hand—my naked finger—and his jaw flexes. “You took off the ring.”
“Yeah.” I clear my throat, feeling awkward. “Did you break the speed limit getting here?”
He continues to stare at my hand, a turbulence of emotions descending upon his features. Then he blinks, smooths out his expression, and lifts his head. “I drive a fast car.”
I don’t know what to make of his reaction to the ring, so I slip around him and step outside, shielding my eyes against the setting sun.
Parked behind the Midget is a sexy luxury sports car with charcoal metallic paint. Fat tires give it a wide stance, and the convertible top, black leather interior, and rear bumper spoiler all scream, Pay attention to me. It looks pricey, and I bet the inside smells like him—rich, dark, manly. I can totally see him driving…whatever it is.
“What is that?” I ask.
He makes a sound of disbelief. “A Maserati GranTurismo.”
“It’s like a fancier, forty-years-newer version of my car. Look, they’re the same height.”
“Except mine’s a lot longer. Sleeker. More powerful.” He punctuates every word with a heated growl.
“Are we still talking about cars?”
“You tell me.”
Our eyes meet and hold for several seconds before I glance away.
“Better check yourself, Trace. You’re dangerously close to flirting.”
“I came early to watch you practice.” He turns back into the house, vanishing inside.
He said he was sending his driver, but never mind that. He’s four hours early. That’s a lot of time to spend with a man who ties me up in knots.
But I want him to tie me up. And kiss me and love me and never release me.
I take a calming breath. I’m just going to let this run its own course. I won’t fight it. Won’t deny it. Won’t push it. But I might tease it a little. If he wants me to practice in front of him, I’ll give him a show.
Inside, I set Criminal on repeat and take my position before him. He found a folding chair and reclines on it, legs spread, fingers laced together on his flat stomach. Then, without a twitch or a word, he watches me dance. A god on his throne, immaculate power and authority, straight-faced and unmoved.
Until I dance closer, more erotically, putting everything I have into the roll of my abs and hips. I inch so close I’m swaying in the V of his legs, moving my arms to the rhythm and stirring the air around his tense posture.
He shifts on the chair, licks his lips.
Then he touches me. A knuckle against my inner thigh. The backs of his fingers beneath the short hem of my flowing skirt. By the time the song cycles three times, both of his hands are on me, curved around my thighs and edging toward my backside, which is bared by a thong.
Suspended in eye contact, lost in the pressure of his fingers, I give up on the choreography and free fall into improvisation. My hands drop to his shoulders, digging into the fabric and muscles beneath.
The slouch of his body begs me to dance on him. While I’m not a stripper, I know my way around a lap, having spent a year playing kinky games with Cole. I also know that the build-up, the sexy tease, is crucial.
As the song restarts, I perch my butt in the air, pushing my chest closer to Trace’s slack face. Then I nudge back on his shoulders, using his body to gracefully stand straight and step back.
Lips parted and smile playful, I strut around him, tilting my hips up and down and running my hands along my body. He doesn’t take his eyes off me, twisting on the seat to watch me dance behind him.
With my feet positioned behind his chair, I touch his jaw, nudging him to look forward. Then I gently lower my chest toward the back of his head, moving my body downward and twisting my hips to the beat.
Now would be a good time to take a step back and talk myself out of whatever this is. But every nerve ending below my waist rages at the thought. Instead, I reach around him and boldly graze my fingers along the thick shape of his cock through the slacks.
Hard and long, he jerks against my hand, and his head falls back. “Danni.”
Sliding upward, I explore the chiseled expanse of his abs and run my nose along his neck. “You smell hungry, Trace.”
His chest heaves, and one leg stretches out, scraping his shoe along the floor. “Come here.”
A hand curls around my wrist, and I let him pull me around the chair. When I return to his front, I give him my back, writhing sensually, tauntingly between his knees.
“You have a great ass. Not big. Not small.” His voice is hoarse, raw, lacking its usual eloquence as he caresses my backside. “It’s a perfect shape that looks incredible on your body.”
Emboldened by the compliment, I slowly lower onto his lap with my back to him, grinding gently and shivering against the hard press of his erection. His hands slide to my thighs and move upward beneath the skirt, settling on my hips.
“Your skin feels like silk,” he breathes raggedly at my ear. “And the dips here…” His thumbs stroke my waist. “I dream about these curves and the way you move them. You’re built for sex.” He touches his mouth to my neck, groaning. “Christ, I’m so fucking hard.”
Quivers race along my inner thighs, and my core tightens, pulsates, driving my movements to the music. I lean back and press my backside into his lap, my shoulders against his chest, and wrap an arm around his neck.
“You always smell like Nag Champa.” With his hands beneath my skirt, one sinks between my legs, over the thong. The other lifts, slipping under my shirt to cup a bare breast. “Such a sexy, potent, exotic scent. It lingered on my sheets for a week after you left.”
“Your maid didn’t wash them?” I moan against the tweak of his fingers on my nipple.
“I wouldn’t allow it. Not until I couldn’t smell you anymore.”
My chest flutters.
Who am I kidding? There’s a damn butterfly migration taking off inside me. His confession is just so…unexpected. So is the hand caressing the soaked crotch of my thong.
He’s rock hard beneath me. I’m dripping wet. Why are we still talking?
I remind myself he was with another woman two nights ago. Hell, he could’ve spent the night with another woman after dropping me off at the concert.
Miserable thoughts. But my body doesn’t seem to care. His touch feels too good, and I’m so fucking worked up my pussy throbs with its own heartbeat.
“I love your tits.” He squeezes my flesh. “Perfectly round, sitting up high on your chest and driving me insane every goddamn day.” His finger circles around the bud. “I bet these perfect little nipples are pink.”
“See for yourself.”
“Turn around.”
I’m not fully standing before he spins me to face him, pulls me onto his lap, and guides my legs to straddle the spread of his.
“So damn beautiful.” He cups my face, seemingly hypnotized by whatever he sees there.
I look him in the eye and give him a sweet subtle grin, communicating that I know how entranced he is.
His attention lowers to my chest, and his hands follow, lifting the hem of my shirt with slow, agonizing patience. Cool air brushes my nipples. Then his gaze.
“Pink.” His expression intensifies, lighting me on fire.
He grips my ass and shifts me up his chest to nuzzle my breasts. I use my hands to squeeze what little I have around his face. His breaths become shallow, and his teeth graze my skin. When he swirls his tongue around a nipple, my head falls back, my fingers clutching his shoulders for support.
But he has me, his arms holding me tight as he lowers me onto the rigid coc
k trapped within his slacks. He rocks his hips upward, groaning, his hands roaming everywhere—my thighs, my breasts, my neck, always returning to knead my butt.
I slide my face along the side of his until I reach his ear. Then I draw the lobe between my lips and suck.
It sets him off, his hands plunging into my hair and his tongue sweeping into my mouth.
“You’re so fucking hot.” He growls into the kiss, the fingers in my hair wrenching my head back for a deeper angle. “You make me crazy.”
I know the feeling. All reason has abandoned me in the powerful arms of desire. I want him, need him, and none of this is rational. But I’m caught in the rapid rhythm of his breaths, the flex of his body, and the expert strokes of his tongue.
With my legs hooked around the back of the chair, my skirt rides up to my hips. I gently grind against him, rocking up and down, like I’m riding a bull in slow-motion. The wetness between my legs will no doubt leave a stain on his slacks, and the thought makes me grin against his lips.
The song loops again, and he eases back but not away. “I can’t do this anymore.”
A fist of dread clenches inside me. “Can’t do what?”
“I can’t keep pretending you aren’t the first thought in my head when I wake and the reason I can’t fall asleep at night.”
I stare at him in shock.
Eyes hooded, mouth parted, he cradles my face and touches our foreheads together. “I lied to you.”
My heart skips. “What do you mean?”
“I want you, Danni.”
Oh. “That’s not exactly a secret.” I press my weight down on his erection.
“It’s more than that. I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you.” His fingers tighten against my jaw. “I want all of you.”
“You want all of me?” My pulse accelerates, and my voice cracks on a fragile breath. “What does that mean?”
“Just when I think I can’t possibly want you more,” Trace says roughly, heatedly, “this hunger, this gut-deep need I feel for you consumes me until I can’t imagine a future without you in it.”
My mouth dries, and the room spins around me, tipping me off balance.
“I don’t understand. All this time…” I slide off his lap and back out of his hold on my neck. I don’t know what this is, but something’s off. “You said you wouldn’t fuck me. You didn’t want the mess. Why would you lie?” I shove my hair away from my face. “Why are you telling me this now?”
He bends forward, dropping his head, and bracing his forearms on his knees. “This isn’t about sex.”
“Really,” I drawl, incredulous.
“Okay, yes, sex is… I want to be inside you. Desperately.” His eyes burn into mine. “But that’s not all.”
I cross my arms over my chest.
“I need to know, Danni.” Scraping a hand through his hair, he releases a breath. “If Cole was in this room right now, where would I fall? Would you shove me aside to get to him?”
“What kind of question is that?” Blood pumps hard and fast through my veins. “You wouldn’t be here, because I would’ve never left him.”
“But he left you, and I am here. What if we were both here? Who would you choose?”
“That’s not fair!” A chill sweeps over me as I pace through the room and power off the sound system. “Way to buzz kill my libido, by the way. You’re like your own cockblock.”
“Answer the question.” His glare doesn’t waver.
“There is no answer. Because one, Cole’s dead. And two…he’s fucking dead. Why are we even talking about this?”
“Am I your second choice?” His tone is angry and confrontational, but the creases around his eyes and the uncertainty in those blue depths halt my feet.
Is the right cup full?
If Cole were here, there wouldn’t be a choice. He’s my forever.
Was.
He was my forever.
Empty the cup.
“You’re not a choice.” I take a step toward Trace, and another, softening my expression. “You’re my second chance.”
“Not good enough.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “Too bad. I’m not making a choice that doesn’t exist.”
“It exists to me.” He stands and charges into the kitchen. “I won’t live in his shadow.”
“His shadow?” I chase after him, voice rising. “What are you talking about?”
He grabs a water bottle from fridge and shoves it into my hand. “You can’t love me, because you’re trapped in another life with another man.”
Love him? Why did he go there? Why now? And I am not trapped!
“That’s not true!” I scream, slamming the water down on the counter. “I lost someone I loved. I miss him desperately, but I’m moving on. I am!” My breaths wheeze as I fight to rein in my temper. “What do you want from me?”
He reaches toward my face and slips his fingers beneath the hair hanging near my eyes. Without touching my skin, he slowly, tenderly, slides the strands back to expose my distressed expression.
“I need to know if you’re mine or his.” He lowers his hand, scrutinizing every twitch on my face.
What have I done to make him so fixated on Cole? Is it the shrine of photos in my bedroom? The motorcycle in the dining room? The ring I only just took off this morning?
They’re keepsakes. Memories. Fundamental pieces of my life. I would never be with someone who asks me to give that up.
Except… If I turned the tables, if I walked into his penthouse filled with physical reminders of another woman, I wouldn’t like it. My heart sinks. I’d lose my fucking mind.
I uncap the water bottle and drink, calming my sprinting pulse. “What about the woman on your lap two nights ago?”
“What about her?” He steps out of the kitchen and pauses in the hallway with his back to me.
“Were you thinking about how you can’t possibly want me more while you fucked her?”
Silence vibrates from his rigid posture.
Why is he just standing there? He can turn left toward the bedrooms. Or he can walk his sexy ass through the dining room and out the front door. Instead, he pivots right and grips the one doorknob in the house that I avoid.
“What’s behind this door, Danni?” He twists the glass knob, unable to open it.
I try to keep my voice casual, but it scratches. “The basement.”
He lifts his hand and tests the padlock I installed two years ago. “Where’s the key?”
My stomach knots. I pass that door countless times every day. I don’t look at. Don’t think about it. I certainly don’t want to open it. Everything Cole left behind—his personal things, our wedding, the life we lost—is on the other side.
I retreat into the kitchen and chug the rest of the water.
“That’s what I thought,” he says quietly behind me.
Tremors grip my limbs, and my throat seals up. I feel myself crumbling, and I hate it.
Trace slides around me, and for a second, I think he might hug me. I hope, I want, I ache for his arms to hold me.
“I need to think.” His keys jingle as he removes them from his pocket.
He’s leaving.
“Don’t go.” I grit my teeth at the pleading sound of my voice.
“I’ll send my driver to pick you up for work.” His mask falls into place, vanishing all emotion into oblivion.
Turning, he calmly strides through the dance studio, toward the back door. Always walking away. Always so fucking remote.
Anger quivers through my body, curling my lip. “Are you sure you don’t want to look around some more? See if you can find a personality that doesn’t suck?”
His detached gaze connects with mine as he steps outside. I follow, flexing my hands with the need to strangle him. His direct eye contact only pisses me off more. He sees how upset I am, and he’s unmoved. Climbing into his car without a care in the world.
“Fine. Go.” I shove my hands on my hips. “I was saving my
self anyway. For Mark the siding guy. Remember him? Turns out the foreveraloner has a foot-long boner. And he’s not afraid to use it!”
What a childish thing to say. But the fury reddening Trace’s face? Worth it!
He slams the door, throws the car in reverse, and burns rubber out of the neighborhood.
Choking on fumes of frustration, I trudge back inside and stand before the mirrors. What does he see when he looks at me? A defeated, trapped, eternally grief-stricken woman?
Blonde hair hangs in waves around my face and down my chest. My cheeks glow with a pink flush, my lips swollen and parted. And my gray eyes are bright, unblinking, and full of yearning.
I look like I’m in love.
Because I am.
I’m in love with Trace Savoy.
“You get off on your own pain, don’t you?” I ask my reflection. “Love could bring you more agony. Are you willing to risk that again?”
The woman in the mirror doesn’t have the answers, but as my temper cools, it becomes easier to break down my confrontation with Trace. For the next couple of hours, I lie on my bed with a framed photo of Cole and me in front of a Christmas tree. Our first and only Christmas together.
He was in and out of my life in ten months. An infinitesimal amount of time for such a lasting impact. His love branded me, left its mark beneath my skin, like swirling colors of ink. I don’t need pictures or an engagement ring to be reminded of the euphoria, the fuzzy whirling dream state that swallowed us in those ten months. I feel his absence in my blood, in my thoughts, every day.
Because love doesn’t end with death. It doesn’t shrivel and disintegrate with the ashes. It hovers, follows, haunts the living.
But after months of missteps and drunken pity parties, I learned how to cope with it. I learned how to breathe again. And in the past four months, I rediscovered my smile in a man who scowls through every emotion.
As much as I bitch about Trace being cryptic and impersonal, I’m magnetically drawn to his confidence, his strength. He challenges me, pushes me, and I need that. Because I’m not without shortcomings.
He wanted to see the basement. I should’ve showed it to him. Hell, I should’ve cleared out the space a long time ago. But he didn’t ask me to do that. He didn’t ask me to get rid of anything, not even the seven-hundred pounds of steel and chrome sitting in the dining room.
