by Noelle Adams
“Let’s just stay,” she concluded. She’d been staring out at the view, but now she slanted him an ironic look. “We’re married, after all. I’m sure we can manage. I just couldn’t bear to give this up.”
Paul murmured an acknowledgement of her decision. Noticed she had a little smile on her face and assumed she was taking pleasure in the view again. Then went to tip the relieved concierge and tell him the suite was excellent.
As the bellhops carried their luggage into the bedroom, Paul stood watching.
It would probably be all right. He and Emily got along fine, even in close quarters. The bed was huge. And fortunately all of those inappropriate thoughts he’d been entertaining had been snuffed out by the sight of Emily’s helpless suffering.
Sharing the room would be no problem.
The bedroom looked like it belonged in a honeymoon suite. It wasn’t tasteless or crass, of course. Like the rest of the suite, it was lovely and elegant, but the bedding was lush and sensual. There was a huge vase of red roses and orchids on the table and a silver bucket holding chilled champagne and two crystal flutes beside the flowers.
Quite against his will, Paul’s mind flashed to the image of Emily—looking like a wet dream in that new dress that left nothing to the imagination, with tousled hair, sophisticated makeup, and bare legs above her high heels. The sight of her so sexy that evening in New York had been like a hard kick in his gut.
Other parts of his body had reacted too.
Then he thought about her a few nights ago in the kitchen, when she’d woken him up in the middle of the night. She’d been wearing what looked to him like underwear, although maybe they were supposed to be shorts.
Whatever they were, they’d displayed more of her luscious ass than he could handle. Then she’d stroked the scars on his back. There was something about her deep sympathy and tenderness that he’d wanted, he’d needed. But his body had infuriatingly misinterpreted the stimulus and had leapt into eager arousal. He’d been achingly hard, from just a few brushes of her fingers on his back and the knowledge of how little she'd been wearing. He’d panicked when he realized that his pajama pants wouldn’t hide anything.
He’d used the refrigerator door as some sort of barrier, and he didn’t think she’d noticed his response.
Paul took a deep breath. He was over that now. He wasn’t going to react that way to her again. She was sick and only seventeen years old.
For thirteen more days.
He stared at the big bed, the only bed in the suite. He imagined Emily climbing into it with him tonight, wearing next to nothing. He imagined rolling over and feeling her lush curves pressed against him in the dark. He imagined her hands on his skin, stroking him, caressing him. He imagined her looking at him the way she was looking at the view, with the same uninhibited passion.
His body clenched with the kind of deeply physical interest that was supposed to have been snuffed out. He felt a familiar tightening in his groin.
He swallowed hard.
Maybe he would just sleep on the couch.
***
Paul was propped up on the bed with his laptop in his lap. He was pretending to work, but he was mostly just waiting for Emily to come out of the bathroom.
He’d suggested he sleep on the sofa in the sitting room, but Emily had been astonished and appalled by the idea because the antique sofa was too short for his height. He’d had to drop the subject completely when she started to make noises about sleeping on the couch herself, if Paul was so uncomfortable about sharing the bed with her.
After a delicious dinner from room service on the terrace, Emily declared herself exhausted. She was going to take a bath and go to bed.
He’d tried to busy himself in the sitting room, thinking it might be easier to come to bed much later than Emily, when she would hopefully already be asleep. However, she’d apparently found his procrastination strange and asked again if she should just sleep on the couch.
Paul was not about to let Emily sleep on anything except a bed, so he’d told her he was coming into the bedroom momentarily.
She’d been in the bathroom for twenty-five minutes now, evidently enjoying a leisurely bath, and Paul was having a very hard time not imagining what she looked like, naked and sensual, relaxing in hot, fragrant bubbles.
When he heard her moving around behind the closed door of the bathroom, he knew she’d gotten out of the tub. He felt his heartbeat speed up a little, and his skin broke out in a faint sweat. He tried to force down the reaction. His body was responding as though he were about to have sex as soon as Emily got into bed with him, when he knew very well that wasn’t going to happen.
He stared fixedly at his laptop as the bathroom door opened and the spicy, pleasant scent of ginger and vanilla wafted over to him.
“Do you always work in bed?” Emily asked, stopping in the middle of the room to look at him.
At the sound of her voice, he couldn’t help but shift his gaze over to where she stood. His body tightened with interest as soon as he saw her.
He’d been hoping she would be a little self-conscious about sharing the bed and would thus choose one of her less revealing sleep outfits. No such luck. She looked lovely and utterly tempting in a little tank-and-short set in a smoky purple satin. There was nothing overtly sexy about the simple cut of the top or shorts—he knew she wasn’t trying to turn him on. But the color highlighted her fair skin and her shiny, tousled hair. The soft fabric looked like it wanted to be touched and clung to the curve of her breasts. One thin strap was slipping down her shoulder, and the slight flare of the shorts emphasized her hips.
“Do you?” she prompted, since he hadn’t answered her earlier question. She lowered her eyes.
Paul tore his hot gaze away from her, reminding himself with ruthless determination that she was seventeen, she was sick, and she wasn’t for him. “Sometimes,” he said, finally answering her question. “But I was just going through some email until you were finished in the bathroom.”
“Oh,” she said, slanting him a shy little look that was irresistible, tantalizing.
He cleared his throat and was glad the laptop covered his groin. His body had leapt to attention in every way. “I need to shower after the flight too.”
“Oh,” she said again, this time with a different resonance. “I’m sorry. I should have let you use the bathroom first, since I took so long with my bath. Was I too slow?”
“No, no. You weren’t slow at all. This worked out well. I wanted to clear out my email anyway.”
Emily had walked over to her side of the bed and turned down the covers. “I’m going to get a bottle of water,” she said, “Did you want one too?”
“Sure.”
She padded out of the bedroom to get the bottles of water from the refrigerator in the kitchen, and Paul took that opportunity to set down his laptop and get into the bathroom before Emily could notice his physical condition.
The bathroom smelled like Emily—strongly like ginger and vanilla from her bath but also a faint whiff of the herbal scent of her shampoo and the mint of her toothpaste.
He turned the shower on hot and stifled a groan as he stepped under the spray. The smell of Emily just intensified his arousal, as did the sight of her little pink robe hanging from a hook on the door.
With the water beating down on him, he wrapped his hand around his erection and pumped quickly, bracing himself with his other hand against the shower wall.
He tried not to visualize Emily, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He saw the tumble of her hair around her face, the lush curves of her small body, that irresistible expression in her blue eyes. He came, biting his lip to make sure he didn’t make any noise.
He grabbed the soap and lathered himself up, thinking about Emily waiting out in the bedroom for him, under the covers. He hadn't yet softened all the way and was hard again by the time he’d rinsed off.
Absolutely disgusted with his body, which hadn’t been this out of control since he
’d been a teenager, he brought himself to another fast climax, this one relaxing him more completely.
He felt better when he finally turned off the shower. He thought he might actually be able to make it through the night without doing something unforgivably stupid.
Emily had turned off all of the lights in the room except for the lamp on his side of the bed. He’d been hoping she would be asleep or mostly asleep when he came in, but her eyes were opened and she watched him as he walked over and got into bed.
She smiled, and he couldn’t help but smile back. Fortunately, his body seemed to be satisfied for the moment. It didn’t do anything untoward, despite the fact that he was wrapped up in her fragrance again as soon as he slid into bed.
“Are you tired?” Emily asked, when he reached over to turn off the light.
“Yeah. It’s been a long day. I’m sure you must be exhausted, since you’re still recovering from the fever.”
He couldn’t see Emily’s expression very well in the dark, but there was a strange resonance to the silence in the long pause that followed his words. She sounded almost disappointed when she murmured, “Yeah. I guess I am.”
He wished he hadn’t brought up her being sick. She’d been having a good day, enjoying finally being in Egypt, and he’d brought her down by reminding her of depressing reality. He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. “You can sleep in tomorrow if you want. It’s usually more comfortable to go out early in the day, but there’s really no rush. I can reschedule our—”
“Oh, no. I’m sure I’ll be ready to get going early. I’m exciting about seeing everything.” She paused. “Do you snore or anything?”
He gave a huff of amusement. “I don’t think so. No one has told me I do, anyway.”
“Well, they might not tell you.” Emily’s voice was light and ironic, as if she were feeling less self-conscious. “I’m sure all of your bed-partners were secretly dreaming of being Mrs. Paul Marino and didn’t want to sully the experience for you with the unpleasantness of snoring. But, since I’m already Mrs. Paul Marino, I’ll definitely tell you if you snore.”
He smiled in the dark, although hearing Emily declare herself Mrs. Paul Marino, when they were lying in the same bed, did something odd to his chest. “I'll appreciate the honesty.”
“No, you won’t. You’d get all bristly if I were to tell you that you snore.” He started to object, but she must have predicted it and continued, “Don’t try to deny it. I know you too well. You would definitely get bristly. Not that it would stop me from telling you.”
“Never doubted it.”
Emily made the mattress shift as she turned on her side so she faced him. “You can tell me if I snore too.”
“I’m sure you don’t snore,” he murmured, smiling again as he turned his head in her direction. His eyes were adjusting to the dark, and he could see her dimly, her eyes wide, her mouth turned up, and her body softly rounded under the blanket.
“What makes you say that? Girls snore too, you know.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Are you discreetly trying to warn me about something?”
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t think I snore. But you shouldn’t make snap judgments based only on a person’s gender. Both men and women can snore equally.”
“Thanks for the insight. I’ll remember that the next time I’m tempted to be a male chauvinist.”
“I don’t think you’re a male chauvinist, although you do have an incredibly strong chivalrous streak in you that might occasionally be confused with it. But it’s not the same thing.”
He frowned. “I’m not chivalrous.” Even the word made him awkward, conjured up silly, romantic visuals that were not at all in keeping with the experienced, cynical man he took himself to be.
“Of course, you’re chivalrous!” She sounded absolutely astonished by his denial of what she evidently took for an undeniable fact. “What are you talking about?”
He looked up at the ceiling again and frowned deeper, feeling slightly flustered and not sure why.
She propped herself up on one elbow and gazed down at his face. “You’ve never been anything except chivalrous with me,” she murmured, very softly, her voice feeling to him almost like a caress.
He shifted his eyes and met hers in the dark. They gazed at each other for a moment that lasted too long, and Paul felt a tug in his chest that was both thrilling and terrifying. Emily seemed to be caught in the moment with him, and she adjusted a little, bringing her face closer to his.
It was all Paul could do to stop himself from grabbing her and pulling her into a deep kiss. His body wasn’t even reacting at the moment, but he still seemed to want her so much.
He clenched his fist in the bedding and fought the impulse fiercely. He wasn’t going to take advantage of this situation and use Emily as the fix to his horniness.
Desperately groping for a way out of the tense moment, he said, “You better get some sleep, if you want to have energy for seeing all the sights tomorrow.”
Emily let out a whoosh of air, as if she’d deflated. Then she flopped over onto her back, evidently realizing that she really was tired. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I do want to get out early. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Paul relaxed once she was safely on her side of the bed and not so tantalizingly within arm’s reach. He was still conscious of her. She’d rolled over onto her side, and her back was to him. She adjusted the covers several times and rearranged her pillow. He could hear her breathing in the dark.
Eventually, she fell asleep. Not long after, Paul fell asleep too.
* * *
He woke up before five the next morning.
The first thing he was aware of was that he’d slept surprisingly well—he hadn’t woken up all night, which was very unusual.
The next thing he was aware of was the fact that he was very warm and very hard.
And the next thing he was aware of was the feeling of a little radiator pressed into his side.
He blinked down and saw Emily, cuddled up beside him, her cheek pressed against the side of his chest and her arm wrapped around his middle.
She was sound asleep. He should have known she was a cuddler. During the night, she must have rolled onto his side of the bed and nestled into him.
Part of him liked the feeling. She was warm, her body soft and clingy against his. He liked the heat from her body. He liked the weight of her arm on his belly. He liked the way her hand instinctively clutched his side.
But the arm that had ended up wrapped around her during the night was numb from a lack of circulation. And arousal pulsed uncomfortably at his groin, no doubt intensified by Emily’s soft body pressed into his.
So he gently pulled his numb arm from under her weight and eased her back over toward the middle of the bed. Then he rolled out of bed and made his way to the bathroom to take an early shower.
* * *
Paul wanted to shake Emily, and she wasn’t even in the same room.
He was getting out of the shower, and she was in the bedroom. But he knew—he just knew—that she was still being irrational, stubborn, and infuriating.
She’d taken a shower earlier than evening, before dinner, so she hadn’t needed one before bed. Paul had showered earlier too, since he’d been hot and sweaty after sightseeing. He hadn’t absolutely needed a shower before bed either. The argument he’d been having with Emily had put a damper on any physical responses prompted by going to bed with her.
But he’d taken a shower anyway and had jerked off with quick efficiency under the spray, since his body didn’t necessarily follow the lead of his mind, and he didn’t want to risk it.
When he came out of the bathroom, Emily was curled up under the covers, facing away from both the bathroom and his side of the bed.
Maybe she’d decided to give him the silent treatment, which would be all right with him.
He sat down on the side of the bed and noticed she’d put a cold bott
le of water on his nightstand, despite being angry with him. It touched him, for some reason.
He’d been a fool to let himself be distracted even momentarily by sentiment.
Without turning over, Emily said in a tight, defensive tone, “I’m not being irrational. I’m not being stubborn. I’m telling you that I’m not an invalid. When I don’t have a fever, I feel as good as anyone else, and I don’t appreciate your acting like I’m too sick to do anything normal.”
Paul rolled his eyes and let out an impatient exhale. “And I’ve said at least six times now that I wasn’t treating you like an invalid. It was the hottest part of the afternoon, and even healthy people get sick from the heat.”
“But I wasn’t getting sick. I was having a good time, and I wasn’t ready to go back yet.”
“I know you were having a good time, but we have two more days in Egypt to do everything you want to do. We didn’t have to pack everything into one day, when there was a chance that the heat could prompt a fever.” He turned off the light and got under the covers, lying on his back and looking at her tense shoulders and unyielding spine.
“I wasn’t getting feverish,” she gritted out, her earlier attempt to control her tone obviously failing as she got even angrier with him. “You’re treating me like a child who can’t tell whether she’s sick or not.”
“I’m not saying you were sick then. I’m saying you could have gotten sick. And there was absolutely no reason for you to risk another fever.” He rubbed his jaw in frustration and got tired of looking at the back of her head. “Would you please turn over so I don’t have to talk to your back?”
Emily rolled over, obviously not appreciating his exasperated tone. His eyes had adjusted enough to the dark to tell that she was glaring at him. “I get fevers because I have this virus. I don’t get fevers because I get too hot.”
“But how do you know external conditions can’t trigger a fever? You were hot, Emily. You can tell me all you want that you were fine, but you were getting too hot out there.”
Paul had been hit with a flare of worry that afternoon as he’d noticed Emily’s very flushed face and the dampness of perspiration on the back of her shirt. Since he’d already been tired and annoyed about other things, he hadn’t hesitated to call an end to their tour, digging in his heels despite Emily’s very vocal objections.
