The Last Guy She Should Call

by Joss Wood

  ‘What’s good for the goose...’ Seb muttered, pulling the half-eaten fruit from her hand.

  Rowan’s eyes clouded over as he pulled the triangle of fabric covering her right breast away and touched her with the tips of his fingers, tanned against her much lighter skin. Her eyes watched his intense concentration as he played with her breast, running the wet peach over her distended nipple, alternating with subtle brushes of his thumb.

  ‘To hell with this.’

  Seb tossed the peach onto the floor, wrapped one strong arm around her bottom and, with the other arm, lifted her onto the dining room table, yanking the chair out of his way. Rowan barely noticed that the chair had toppled over and clattered to the floor because Seb’s warm tongue was curled around her nipple and his other hand was burrowing into the back of her bikini pants, tracing erotic patterns on her butt.

  He claimed her mouth again in a kiss that flew past heated and went straight to molten. Her legs, operating independently, hooked themselves around his waist and she scooted closer to him to feel that hard ridge against her mound.

  Nothing else was important but to feel Seb, taste him, know him.

  Seb pulled his mouth away and his hands, still on her breast and her butt, stilled. ‘Point of no return, Ro. Yes or no?’

  Like she had a choice, Ro thought, dazed. There was only one answer and her body was screaming it. ‘Yes. Now.’

  ‘Here?’ Seb demanded.

  She couldn’t wait—had no patience to climb the stairs to a bedroom, to spare the couple of minutes that would take. ‘Here. Now. Please.’

  Seb muttered a curse and tried to step away. Rowan slapped a hand against the back of his neck and dragged him into a kiss that caused their feet to curl.

  Seb yanked his mouth away and held up his hands. ‘Ro, one sec...condom.’

  Rowan bounced on the dining room table, her body one long electrical current. ‘If you have to go upstairs for one I’m coming with you,’ she told him, deadly serious.

  ‘There’s a deal.’ Seb picked up his wallet from the counter near the door and cards and cash were scattered over the floor. ‘There should be one in here. Bingo.’

  He held it up in his fingers as he stood between her legs again. ‘You going to do the honours or must I?’

  Rowan smiled slow and deep as she pulled the little packet from his fingers. ‘Oh, I think I will. Why don’t you make yourself useful and get me naked?’

  Seb nipped the corner of her mouth as she pushed his running shorts over his erection, down his hips. ‘That’s a hell of an offer, Brat.’

  Rowan sighed as her fingers whispered the latex over him, encircling all that masculine strength in her fist. ‘I’m a hell of a girl, Hollis. Now, why don’t we slide your Part A into my Plot B and see if we fit?’

  * * *

  The luminous hands on the bedside clock informed Rowan that it was past midnight as she rolled over onto her stomach to watch Seb walk into his en-suite bathroom. She’d been in Seb’s arms, in his bed, for more than six hours. Six hours of intense, bone-dissolving, earth-spinning pleasure. She was one gooey, sexy mess and she wanted nothing more than to roll over and drift off to sleep.

  Instead, she forced herself to sit up, then stand... Ooh, wobbly legs. The nearest garment was one of Seb’s T-shirts and she pulled it over her head, unable to stop herself from sniffing the collar for that special combination of soap and cologne that she couldn’t get enough of.

  Just as she couldn’t get enough of his kisses, of the feel of his hard muscles under her hands, the way she felt...complete when he slid inside her.

  In between their lovemaking they’d dozed, before one of them reached out for another kiss, another stroke, and they fell into passion again...

  It was time to face reality. She didn’t want to, but she had to.

  She didn’t know how to do this. She didn’t do this... Well, she had—but not enough to feel comfortable waking up naked in his bed, with his room looking as if a hurricane had hit it after them rolling around like maniacs and bouncing off the furniture. She didn’t want to stay but she couldn’t just leave.

  She really, really needed to polish up on her one-night stand etiquette.

  And a one-night stand was all it was—all it could ever be. She had to be sensible about this... This was sex. Nothing more. They had acted on impulse, had used each other’s bodies for brief, intense pleasure. It wasn’t anything more—could never be anything more...

  Rowan placed the balls of her hands into her eyes and pushed. It was okay, she told herself. She was allowed to have sex with a single man. The world hadn’t stopped spinning. Wasn’t free choice high on her list of values? She hadn’t agreed to anything more than one night, to a casual hook-up, a night of pleasure.

  It didn’t change anything... In a couple of weeks her parents would be back. She’d say hello and how are you doing, make nice, and then she’d borrow that money from Seb and fly away. Because that was what she did best: she flew, caught trains, ox-carts, buses... That was how she lived her life. She didn’t stay in one place, in one house, couldn’t imagine a steady life with one man.

  Staying still, coming face to face and heart to heart with a man terrified her. Mostly because she’d been disappointing people all her life and she’d have to love a man very much to stay still. The thought of losing her freedom—so hard earned—caused a cold, hard ball of something icky to form in her stomach.

  She should leave, go back to her own room...take some time to regain her equilibrium.

  ‘God, you look like someone shot your favourite dog,’ Seb said from the doorway of the en-suite bathroom.

  Rowan’s eyes shot up and met his. Earlier they’d been warm with desire, laughter. Now they were cool and flat, and his expression was guarded and remote. Ah, so she wasn’t the only one in the room having second—or third—thoughts.

  Good to know.

  ‘Ah... I was just...’ Rowan placed her hands on her hips and looked around.

  ‘Leaving?’

  Since she was clear across the room and two feet from the door, what was the point in lying? ‘Yeah...’

  Was it her imagination or did she see his face harden? It was hard to tell in the dim light spilling from the bathroom.

  ‘No cuddling required? After-dinner pillow-talk?’

  Oh, that was sarcastic, and it blew any of her few remaining warm and fuzzies away. The problem was that there was a part of her that would have loved a cuddle, a gentle hand down her back, listening to his heartbeat under her ear, drifting off to the sound of him breathing next to her...

  Because she felt weak and vulnerable—girly—she gave herself a mental slap and straightened her spine.

  ‘Do you need pillow-talk and cuddling?’ Rowan demanded, equally facetious.

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ Seb ground out, walking naked back into the room.

  There was no point in feeling embarrassed, Rowan realised, since she’d explored most, if not all of that luscious body. He had a swimmer’s build, broad shoulders, slim hips, muscular thighs.

  Rowan felt she should say something to dissipate the heavy, soggy blanket of emotional tension in the room. ‘Look, Seb, you don’t need to get all weirded out by this... I’m not going to get all hearts and flowers over you.’

  ‘Oh, goody.’

  Sarcastic again. He did it so well. ‘For someone who is anti-commitment, and who doesn’t do emotional connections, I would’ve thought that me leaving and getting out of your face would be the perfect scenario for you.’

  ‘Yep, you’d think,’ Seb said, in that bland voice that made her itch to smack him.

  Rowan threw up her hands. ‘How can we be so great in bed but so pathetically useless at actual talking?’

  ‘Beats me.’

  ‘You’re ticked bec
ause your big brain is running at warp speed, trying to rationalise this, trying to intellectualise what just happened. You’re frustrated because you don’t understand how you can have mind-blowing sex with a woman you’re not sure you like and who has driven you nuts your entire life.’

  ‘I am not doing anything of the sort!’ Seb retorted.

  But Rowan caught the flicker of guilt in his eyes. Of course he was. She sighed. It was what Seb did. When something caught him off guard he put his extraordinary intellect to work and tried to figure it out on a cerebral level. Hadn’t she watched him do exactly that growing up? She and Callie would wail and whine when things went wrong. Seb and her brother Peter would ignore the emotion and look for the cause and effect.

  Men are from Mars, indeed...

  ‘Your brain is going to explode. Attraction and lust can’t be measured, analysed, categorised. It just is—like some things just are,’ Rowan said softly. ‘It was just sex, Seb, not quantum physics.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  Seb made a production out of yawning, pulled back the covers on his bed and flicked her a quick glance before climbing into bed.

  ‘I’m going to sleep. Night.’

  Rowan narrowed her eyes at him as he punched the pillows before rolling over and snuggling down. No Thanks for a fun time? No See you in the morning? He couldn’t be more clinical about it if he left a couple of notes on the dresser table...

  No—no!—that wasn’t fair.

  Be honest, here, Dunn. You were the one who set the tone for the way this ended... You were heading out of the door when he returned to the room. You were running scared and saying that you didn’t need the mushy stuff...

  And you don’t.

  You don’t need anything but to research your netsuke, gather some cash, say a brief hello to your folks and hightail it back to...where? London? Canada? South America?

  You need to be free, on the road, responsible to no one but yourself.

  Rowan sent Seb one more look—was that snoring she heard? Really?—and half banged, half slammed his bedroom door closed.

  Tangling with him had been fun physically, but mentally—huh! A toxic spill...

  * * *

  His brain, when blood finally reached it, was red-lining, Seb decided as the door banged shut behind Rowan and his eyes flew open. He was doing exactly what she’d said: intellectualising, categorising, analysing. He didn’t understand what had happened earlier—that tsunami of want and need and pure animal instinct. He was a rational and stable guy. He didn’t get caught up in the moment or swept away by passion.

  He needed to understand why it had happened tonight with Ro. He had to understand. Because if he could comprehend it then he would regain control of the situation. It was his modus operandi—the way he approached and dealt with life, with his problems. When his mum had left he’d expected her home within a month, then three, then six. The only way for him to deal with the slow-dawning reality that he and Callie had been essentially abandoned by the person who was supposed to love them most had been to rationalise it, to find a plausible—though mostly improbable—explanation.

  She was ill and couldn’t come home. She’d been kidnapped by Colombian drug lords and/or an alien space ship. She was an international spy.

  He’d think it through, dissect the problem, and in that way he could subdue the bubbling, unpredictable mess emotions generated.

  He didn’t cope well with unpredictable and messy emotions.

  And Rowan was five-foot-four of unpredictable and messy.

  And why on earth did he feel ticked because Rowan didn’t want to spend the rest of the night in his bed? Didn’t want to be held? Her reaction should have him slipping off to sleep guilt-free, with a satisfied body and a huge smile on his face. Instead he was lying here like a freaking moron wanting...what? He cursed. Was he actually considering wading into messy and unpredictable?

  Was that what had sent his brain into hyper-drive?

  It couldn’t possibly be, he decided. You don’t do emotional and you don’t do connections, Butt-face. And, really, if he decided that was something he suddenly wanted—through alien possession or a punch to his head—why would he choose a world-wanderer who couldn’t stay in one place for more than a heartbeat? Choose a connection with someone who, when the thrill of those first couple of weeks wore off and the excitement of great sex started to fade away, would be on the first plane...

  Oh, wait...he was going to lend her the money to do that anyway!

  Seb stood up and walked back into the bathroom, gripped the edge of the counter. It shouldn’t be this way, he thought. He should be glad that she’d walked out through that door and left him alone—instead of feeling as if he wanted to go to her, pull her back to his bed, fall asleep and wake her up by making love to her again. Again...why was he wondering whether they could connect on some sort of intellectual level as well as they did in the sack?

  It didn’t matter... Bottom line, he shouldn’t be thinking about her this way. She’d been a good way to spend the night—an exceptional way to spend the night.

  His junk twitched and pulsed at the memory of her...under him, over him...her hair brushing his chest, her warmth enclosing him like a warm, wet perfect glove...

  Oh, hell, now he was never going to get to sleep with those thoughts rattling around in his head.

  Seb walked back into his room and saw the shadows of his computers sitting in the far corner of his room.

  Okay, well...he might as well give his big brain some work to do.

  * * *

  The following evening Seb stood just outside his front door and watched as Rowan, standing in front of the antique mirror in the hallway, tugged at the short white T-shirt that showed an inch of her waist above black low-slung jeans. Good grief, she looked hot!

  They hadn’t seen each other since their awkward goodbye last night and, thanks to having to jump on the super-early flight to Durban this morning, he hadn’t had a moment to touch base with her.

  He’d thought that the meeting in Durban would be a morning affair, but he’d run into some serious challenges—his clients had been more paranoid than normal and had required a lot of reassurance that their precious information was safe in his hands—and the entire day had been a nightmare, with suits peering over his shoulder, checking and rechecking his progress.

  Blerch.

  And Rowan hadn’t reached out to make contact. Then again, neither had he... Should he have? He didn’t have the faintest clue—mostly because women always chased him. It was what they did. They normally followed up with a BBM, an SMS, a hello-how-are-you-doing e-mail. But Rowan? Nothing.

  He was equally intrigued and annoyed...and didn’t that make him sound like an egotistical jerk? He’d thought about calling to check up on her but he hadn’t been sure what to say.

  He hadn’t slept much and he rubbed his eyes with his thumbs. Why was he still so wigged out about the way the evening had panned out? Maybe it was because Rowan had blown every perception he’d had about women and sex out of the window.

  He’d thought that most women needed some kind of emotional connection to have sex—that they needed to talk before and after. Rowan hadn’t required before-sex cajoling or after-sex reassurance and she’d approached the whole experience like a guy would. Like he did.

  It was a blessing in disguise that she hadn’t needed him to talk, because thanks to that damned peach and the see-through wrap his tongue wouldn’t have been able to form the words.

  She was keeping him at an emotional distance, they’d had sex and practically no conversation—which he normally considered the ideal relationship—and it bugged the crap out of him.

  Could he say hypocritical and bastard and then put them together in a sentence?

  Rowan jumped as he stepped into the hall. Dropp
ing his laptop and briefcase onto the old yellow wood table, he pulled off his wire-rimmed glasses, tossed them down and raised his eyebrows at Rowan. ‘Going somewhere?’

  To keep from tugging her shirt down, Rowan shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and rocked on her heels. ‘Hi. You’re...back.’

  ‘It is Friday night,’ Seb pointed out. And it was his house.

  ‘I thought you might have plans—like a date,’ Rowan said to his back as he disappeared down the passage.

  He was back in under a minute, a bottle of beer in his hand. A date? He’d slept with her last night and she had him already trawling for another woman?

  He didn’t know whether to be ticked or flattered that she thought him to be such a player. Seb thought for a moment; nah, he was definitely POed.

  ‘My plans? Nothing more strenuous than a burger, a beer and an early night. It’s the Fish and Fern tomorrow.’

  Rowan wrinkled her nose. ‘The what?’

  Seb gave her a long look before emptying his pockets, placing his mobile, keys and a thin wallet on the table. ‘The triathlon race. The one on the fridge. Swimming, running, biking?’

  ‘Oh, right. What time do you think you’ll be home?’

  Seb shrugged. ‘Eight-ish, I suppose. There’s a barbecue after the prize-giving and I’ll probably stay for that. Problem?’

  ‘No.’

  Rowan tugged the shirt down but it sprang up her tummy with all the obstinacy of stretched cotton. He clocked her tousled but elaborate hairdo, the subtle make-up, the bangles at her wrist and the beaded earrings. She looked as if she was going on a date... Was that why she’d asked him whether he had plans? Because she did?

  Hell, no. That wasn’t happening.

  ‘So, what are you up to tonight? That’s one heck of an outfit, by the way.’

  Rowan responded to the thinly disguised annoyance in his tone by raising her chin. ‘What’s wrong with my outfit?’

  ‘Tight low-rise jeans, short top, fixed hair. Wherever you’re going, you are going to get hit on all night.’ The beer was not doing the trick of relaxing him; Rowan changing and staying at home would.