The Dating Game

by Avril Tremayne

  ‘It’s not little.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘That huge problem seen to. That humongous, gigantic, towering problem.’

  ‘And it’s not once a week, is it? The last two weeks it’s been twice a week! And one of those times at—what is it now?—three o’clock in the fucking morning!’

  ‘You didn’t know I was going to call you tonight,’ she argued. ‘So you could have had someone in bed with you if you wanted. In which case, a simple, “Don’t snort the coke, Sarah,” over the phone would have done the trick.’

  ‘Oh would it?’

  ‘Yes. So I suggest you go and get laid!’

  ‘At three o’clock in the morning? And where am I going to find someone? Or are you suggesting I visit a brothel? Which I have never done in my whole fucking life.’

  ‘Well then, get laid tomorrow night.’

  ‘I cannot believe this!’

  She stuck up her chin. ‘Yes, get yourself laid, improve your mood before Wednesday, and put us both out of our misery.’

  ‘Cannot. Believe. This.’

  Neither could she! But anger had taken hold of her now, and she couldn’t seem to stop herself, even though those sickening tears were threatening again. ‘You must be getting desperate, to get bent so out of shape over nothing! What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sex, anyway?’

  ‘Not counting the fourteen years from birth to puberty, two weeks and four days. The last nineteen days, to be precise.’

  ‘Well, then, it’s no surprise that you—’

  ‘And you?’ he interrupted.

  She calculated, came up with Liam, and her eyes went wide. ‘Nineteen days,’ she said faintly.

  ‘I’m going to go take a wild guess here and suggest you mean the last nineteen days.’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Okay then,’ he said, and grinned like a wolf, with teeth but no dimples. ‘Time to get laid.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ she agreed fervently.

  ‘I mean right now, Sarah.’

  ‘Right—? What?’

  ‘Right now. As in this second. You’re the one who decided to draw attention to my permanent erection. So if it’s time to get laid, Sarah, bring it on. Bring it the fuck on.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In two strides, David reached her, grabbed her upper arms and hauled her onto her toes. ‘Three seconds to tell me no,’ he said. Don’t say it, don’t say it, please don’t. ‘One. Two. Thr—’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and threw her arms around his neck.

  And just like that, they were kissing. Hard, hungry, sucking kisses, broken only to breathe, and David would have given up air at that moment. Hands on her bottom, boosting her until she was high enough, close enough, for their mouths to all but merge. God, her mouth! The shape, the taste, the feel. He wanted to have it all over him. Her hands were in his hair now, fingers winding in the strands, gripping hard enough to hurt and he did not fucking care if she yanked it out by the roots.

  The smell of her was in his blood. She smelled so damn good, every single time. Musk, tonight. Sexy as hell. He wanted to lick the scent off every pulse point she had. And tonight, he could. Tonight, every scent, every breath, every beat of her heart, was his. And she still wasn’t close enough, goddammit. He edged her legs apart as far as they would go in the snug skirt she was wearing and rubbed his aching erection at the apex of her thighs, groaning with frustration and need. God, he needed this, needed her.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said feverishly, rubbing her mouth against his, trying to lift one thigh high on his hip, as though she’d cram him inside her on the spot. Well, if Sarah wanted him on the spot, by God he was ready for it. One-handed, he fumbled with the button and zip of his jeans, undid them, slid himself free of his boxer briefs, but her sweet spot remained tantalizingly out of reach; her skirt was too tight, no matter how they both tried to get it up, out of the way. ‘Bed,’ she said. ‘Hurry, behind the blind.’

  David thrust his tongue into her mouth almost before the words were out, edging backwards with his arms full of her until his back hit the blind. He needed to stop. Slow down. Find the catch to raise the blind. Proceed in an orderly fashion. Surely he could wait two minutes. He could wait. He could. But as he reached a seeking hand behind him, Sarah slipped fractionally down his body, and the pressure of that one small slide right there nearly sent him insane.

  ‘David,’ she cried, sounding as desperate as he felt as he hoisted her higher again. ‘Please.’

  Fuck it. Fuck the blind. Another step backwards. Long tearing sound. Clatter. David, half-stumbling over the debris, reaching into his back pocket without stopping—please let it be there, yes, thank you God—until he connected with the bed.

  He all but fell onto it, pulling Sarah with him. Another tearing sound as she straddled him and her skirt gave at last, and the luscious heat of her panty-clad sex connected with his straining cock for the first time. Hot, searing hot. He thrust against her once, twice, again, before he could stop himself, and then rolled them both so she was beneath him, never once losing contact with her mouth, kissing her harder, a fever of hungry lips and delving tongues. In the midst of it all, he managed to control his trembling hands long enough to get the condom on. A shove at the crotch of her panties, and he was there, just inside her. Just.

  It was the tightness that stopped him. Excruciatingly, tauntingly good. ‘Sarah, you are so … God, God, I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t think I can stop.’

  ‘Shut up, David, and just get in there, will you, or I really will punch you.’

  And he was laughing and groaning and kissing her all at once, his heart pounding, blood roaring, his whole body shaking as slid an inch further inside. He held still, poised, desperate to slow it down but he was going to die, he really was, if he didn’t get there soon. Head dropping to her shoulder. Panting. Struggling against the powerful urge to move.

  Sarah, making a noise of frustrated impatience, took the decision away from him and thrust upwards, and he was in her all the way. He groaned, she gasped … a perfect, motionless moment … and then she tightened around him and he went blind with the sheer pleasure of being inside her, grinding out a tortured, ‘Jesuuuuuus.’ He was mouth-breathing through clenched teeth, trying to contain himself. ‘Sarah, I have to move. I have to, you understand? I’m sorry, so sorry, but I have to.’

  ‘Then why aren’t you?’ she demanded, hips rolling restlessly, legs shifting, trying to make him. He pulled out, slid back in, and when she moaned out a breathy, ‘That is sooooo good,’ he kissed her harder, wishing he could stay inside her for ever. Her hips were moving again, her tongue lunging hungrily, in, out, in, out, of his mouth, and David realized she was setting the rhythm—what she wanted him to do to her, how she wanted him to thrust inside her. And it was hard, that rhythm. Hard and fast.

  So he let himself go at last, lifting her thighs in the torn skirt around his hips so he could go deeper. Mine, mine, mine was echoing in his head as he thrust to the rhythm she demanded, trying desperately to stay connected to her mouth despite the fact they were both breathing in erratic bursts. Hold back, hold back dammit, he urged himself, but it was coming, he could feel it. So good. Too good to stop.

  She keened out a long, loud, ‘Ahhhhh,’ and he felt her clutching hands under his jacket twisting his T-shirt, her legs tensing, her insides clenching him even more tightly. And then his name, ‘David,’ tore out of her. He loved the sound of it, loved the feel of her body shaking under him, loved the way her eyes went wide, then closed. He was aware of one shimmering thought before his mind went hazy with passion: at last.

  And as the pleasure burst in him a hot second later, and his body flooded with beautifully sated lust, his heart felt like it was melting. Spent. Drained. Consumed. And yet he was holding her even more tightly in the aftermath. He didn’t want to let her go. She moved one of her hands to his face, touching his cheek, and even though he knew he was
in deep trouble here, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from turning his head against her touch, just so he could kiss her palm.

  Deep trouble.

  ***

  ‘David,’ Sarah said, just because she wanted to say his name.

  She didn’t know what she expected in response, but it wasn’t for him to roll off her and just lie there, staring at the ceiling.

  She heard him breathing. Deep, rhythmic, controlled. And then, abruptly, he sat up, swung his legs off the side of the bed, peeled off the condom, and made an adjustment to his underwear and jeans. He looked around the room, eyes coming to rest on the magenta-coloured shambles on the floor—the blind that had been ripped from its mooring in their rush to the bed.

  ‘Yeah, about that,’ Sarah said, forcing a laugh in an attempt to lighten the darkly uncertain mood. ‘I asked you to critique my place, not rip it apart quite so literally.’

  There was no answering laugh. ‘I tore your skirt, too,’ he said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Pause, during which Sarah felt her heart thudding fearfully in her chest. But she had to know. ‘About the blind, my skirt, or the sex?’

  Eyes to her, over his shoulder. ‘Did I hurt you, Sarah?’

  Not exactly an answer to her question.

  She sat up. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I was in a hurry, and I was rough. And you’re so small.’

  Okay, that was getting chalked up on the adorable slate. If that was all that was bothering him, she could deal with it. ‘You know how babies are born, right?’ she teased. ‘Women are made to fit a whole human being through there.’

  There was no lightening of his expression. In fact, the opposite—his eyes, before he looked away from her, were bleak. Something was very wrong. She just didn’t know what.

  ‘I need the bathroom,’ he said. Quite the response! ‘Condom.’ Definitely not going on her list of most romantic moments.

  ‘Through there,’ Sarah said, pointing. ‘Take your time.’

  As soon as David was out of sight, Sarah threw herself onto her back on the bed and squeezed her eyes shut. Take your time? How long did it take to throw out a condom? Five seconds? Take your time?

  How about, instead, don’t take your time. How about come out here right now. How about talk to me and tell me what just happened was as mind-blowing as I thought it was. Tell me you’re going to have sex with me again tonight, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow night, and the next day, and the next. Reassure me that I didn’t just betray my friend for nothing more than a one-night stand. And if you can’t tell me any of that, then how about at least promising me I’m not permanently ruined for any other man, the way I think I am. That I’ll get over this. That the women you take to bed always do get over this.

  Cleared throat.

  Sarah stayed as she was, on her back, but she opened her eyes so she could see David, standing in the bathroom doorway all zipped and ready to leave.

  He came further into the room with the air of someone who’d rather be catapulted into a Siberian ice storm. ‘It’s late,’ he said.

  ‘And you’re going.’

  He shoved his hands into his hair. ‘Sarah, I …’

  She waited for what he would say, hoping …

  But he shrugged and mumbled, ‘Just send me the details, okay?’

  ‘Details of what?’

  He gestured to the blind. ‘I’ll get it fixed.’

  She laughed then. Not funny. That was it? The most earth-shattering sexual experience of her life, and he wanted to fix the blind? ‘How about I get it fixed?’ she said.

  ‘As long as you send me the bill.’

  So he was really, truly, actually going to find a way to pay her for what had just happened. Which was only marginally better than the brothel option he’d eschewed. ‘Fine. I’ll send you the bill.’

  ‘Fine. Then I’ll …’ Another clear of his throat. ‘I’ll see you Wednesday night.’ Slight pause. ‘As usual, right?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you see me Wednesday night as usual? Nothing out of the ordinary just happened, did it? Nothing special. But don’t worry—as per the rulebook, I won’t denigrate your performance to my next lover.’

  His mouth tightened. ‘Was there something to denigrate, Sarah? Because it didn’t sound like it when you were coming.’

  ‘Oh, when I was coming, it was fine.’ Little tinkling laugh as she got off the bed and stood facing him. ‘But let’s just say I’ve been foreplayed a little more comprehensively in the past.’

  Pause as he looked at her, narrow-eyed, and she prayed he would take the blush she could feel hot on her face for whisker rasp.

  ‘In that case,’ he said at last, ‘by all means, go ahead and share tonight’s lewd, crude details with Kilimanjaro Kyle on Monday, and then on Wednesday, you and I can compare my disappointing performance to his stellar one, and we can rank him on that sexual compatibility scale of yours.’

  ‘How about we do a deal? I don’t tell Kyle and you—’ She had to stop there to take a breath, afraid her voice would break. ‘You don’t tell Lane.’

  ‘Lane?’ He took one furious step towards her. ‘Are we really going to talk about …?’ He checked himself there, and his face went soul-destroyingly blank. ‘You know what, Sarah? Deal. Tonight will be our dirty little secret. Lucas Green at your service.’ With that, he walked away—but he wasn’t feeling quite as cold as he wanted her to believe, judging by the savage kick he gave the broken blind on his way to the door.

  And then Sarah was alone, standing near the bed in her torn skirt. And although she didn’t generally cry, she found she was doing exactly that.

  ***

  David reversed out of Sarah’s driveway, controlling the car with unusual care in case she was watching. He would not speed. He would not screech. He would not crunch the gears. He would be the cool, calm, unruffled man he always, as in always, was.

  But when he reached the road and knew he was out of sight, he pulled into the kerb and jerked viciously on the handbrake. Because his hands were shaking and there was a manic pounding in his head, and he was not cool, calm and unruffled, and he needed to get it together before he went zooming into the night and killing some innocent person who didn’t know to get out of the way of the madman.

  What the actual fuck had he just done?

  Aside from the actual fuck.

  He buried his face in his hands, only to smell Sarah’s perfume on his fingers and jerk them away with a curse, rubbing them furiously on his thighs.

  He couldn’t see her little doll’s house from the road, but he could remember it. Charming and colourful and exactly her—from that purple couch, to the chaotic perfection of the snow domes filling one wall, to the chartreuse of her bedroom walls, to the mini-sized hot tub and stack of perfume bottles in her bathroom.

  To the bright, bold blind … that he’d trampled into the floor.

  He’d torn he place apart and then he’d fucked her. Screwed, shagged, banged.

  He hadn’t even undressed—him or her. Hadn’t seen her body, hadn’t licked any of those pulse points he’d wanted to put his tongue to. Forget comprehensively ‘foreplaying’ her, he hadn’t foreplayed her at all! All he’d done was claim her. Wham, bam, thank you Ma’am—only without the thanks. Wham bam sex! Him!

  Wham bam …

  So why had it felt so different? Why was it making him feel as though his heart had been wrenched from his chest and mauled, then thrown back behind his ribs bruised and aching?

  Oh God. This was not happening.

  Sarah Quinn was not going to be the one to thaw him out.

  A thirty-four-year-old man who didn’t believe in happily-ever-after couldn’t fall in love with a twenty-four-year-old girl who did. Not her. Please not her.

  ‘Four more times,’ he said into the awful silence. ‘You see her four more times, as scheduled. You paint her, you keep your distance while y
ou do it, you say goodbye at the end. She keeps her illusions, you keep your disillusions, and you both move on.’

  And with that promise, he reached into the car’s glove box, yanked out the packet of wet wipes he kept there for emergencies, and wiped Sarah Quinn off his hands.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  By Monday afternoon, Sarah’s colleagues at Frisk & Frolic Events and PR were tippy-toeing around her. This had never happened before and she wondered why it was happening now when she was taking such pains to be normal … until she caught sight of herself in the mirror in the office bathroom: her usually-sunny smile had a rictus-of-terror quality about it, and her eyes were those of a sociopath. That was what betrayal of a friend, heartsickness over a man and two sleepless nights did to a girl.

  Tuesday morning showed no physical improvement. Of course by then, she’d endured three sleepless nights, so it was hardly surprising she was a little on edge.

  A little became a lot when she answered her desk phone just after nine o’clock and heard her name, ‘Sarah,’ come coolly down the line.

  Lane, sounding her usual imperturbable self … but Sarah could easily envisage her friend’s fingers clutching the phone as though they’d snap it in two, because Lane always carried her freak-outs in her hands. And Lane couldn’t have been as composed as she sounded—not when it had been almost three weeks since they’d spoken, and her last view of Sarah was of her stomping off in a temper at the gallery.

  Then Sarah looked at her hand on the receiver and saw that her own fingers were doing a fine crush-kill-destroy impression. And because Sarah didn’t have the self-control Lane wore like a second skin, when she said, ‘Hi, Lane,’ it came out like a strangled, breathless mumble that she hated. She wanted to add something easy like, ‘Good to hear from you,’ but couldn’t seem to unstick the words from her throat. Because it wasn’t good. It was a disaster to hear from Lane now that Sarah had taken things with David to an unforgivable level! She hadn’t come to terms with that she’d done herself, let alone being ready to seek absolution from Lane for her sin.