by Jess Dee
Chapter Thirteen
“You sure you’re up to this?” Lexi paused just outside the restaurant.
He smiled. “I think I can handle it.”
She bit her lip, uncertain. “They’re gonna ask questions, you understand?” If she could’ve cancelled the dinner plans, she would have.
“We’ll answer them.”
She wasn’t convinced. “They’re persistent.” Damn persistent. Leona had insisted she come tonight.
He laughed out loud. “We’ll do fine.”
“You don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Well…okay then. I suppose.”
“Lexi, it’s dinner, not the Spanish Inquisition.”
It might as well have been. Lexi was a bundle of nerves. She hadn’t told Daniel about Adam. What would she have said? Oh, by the way, I accidentally slept with your friend a few weeks ago? She hadn’t told Leona either, for the same reason. Lee—
remember how I said I didn’t meet Mr. Riley at the conference? Well…actually…
There’d be a deluge of questions at dinner. How would she deal with them? Should she just come out with it and tell them all she’d fallen crazy, head-over-heels in love with him? Tell them that their spontaneous weekend away had been so incredible she had no choice? Tell them that Adam had bared his soul to her and she’d given him hers in return? Probably not. She’d probably need to tell Adam all of that first.
Maybe she’d just keep quiet and see where the conversation led.
“Come on then,” she said, resigned to her fate. “Let me introduce you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Daniel stood as they reached the table, and shook Adam’s hand. “Lex, AJ. Good to see you.” He looked at Lexi with a raised eyebrow before introducing Adam to Amy, Leona and her partner, Annie.
Amy smiled at him. “I remember you from our wedding. Is that where you and Lexi met?”
“No. We met in Melbourne, actually.”
“You did?” Leona shot Lexi a surprised look.
“Well, uh, we kind of bumped into each other there. I tripped and AJ caught me before I fell on my face. I just didn’t know he was the man I’d been looking for.”
Amy’s eyes danced. “All your life?”
“No.” She shot her sister-in-law the evil eye. “Just for the last six weeks.”
Amy bit her lips and tried unsuccessfully not to smile.
“Why were you looking for him?” Daniel asked.
“She wanted money,” Leona supplied helpfully.
“For what?” Annie asked.
“The sibling program.”
The four of them nodded in understanding.
“So,” Amy thought aloud. “You’d been looking for a man you’d never met before to ask him for money.”
“That sounds like my sister,” Daniel said. “She’s not shy, is she?”
Adam’s smile was unmistakable. She just knew he was picturing her naked on the trunk of his car, diddling herself. “No,” he agreed, “she’s not shy at all.”
Heat crept into her cheeks.
“I hope she asked nicely,” Leona said to Adam. “She’s been known to shoot her mouth off.”
“Yeah, I noticed that about her,” Adam said as he pulled a chair out for Lexi. “To her credit, she did ask nicely. Very nicely indeed.”
“Should I just leave the table so you can talk about me in private?” Lexi asked.
“No need,” Daniel assured her, “we can talk just as easily with you here.”
Lexi humphed and sat beside Amy.
“So, AJ, how did she convince you to give her the money?” Leona wanted to know.
Adam took the seat on Lexi’s other side. “Let’s just say she knew which strings to pull to get me to agree.” Under cover of the tablecloth, away from inquisitive eyes, he placed his hand on her thigh, reminding her of the strings they’d discussed in his office.
As if she needed reminding.
“Yeah, she’s good at that,” Daniel commiserated. “Talked me into doing the exhibition in about two minutes flat.”
“Hey, don’t complain,” Lexi warned Daniel as Adam massaged her just above the knee. “The exhibition was a great opportunity for your career.”
Daniel looked at Amy. “I’m not complaining. The exhibition was a great opportunity, period.” The two of them shared an intimate, sexy smile.
The same kind of smile that Lexi and Adam had shared at sunset in the mountains.
He was thinking of it, too. She knew because he squeezed her thigh gently and smiled at her.
“Were you at the exhibition, AJ?” Annie asked.
“I was. But not for long.”
“Long enough to buy a few photos,” Daniel said.
Amy leaned in close and without disrupting the conversation, said softly to Lexi, “He’s hot.”
“I know.” Hot with a capital H.
“I watched the two of you at the wedding.”
“You did? Why?”
“You were arguing.”
“You noticed that?”
“Sparks flew all over the place, Lex. It was hard not to notice.”
Shit. So much for trying to be discreet.
“From where I stood, I figured the argument would end one of two ways. You were either gonna kill him or sleep with him.” Amy grinned. “My money was on the latter.”
“Your money?”
“Yeah. Dan and I discussed it on honeymoon. We took a bet.”
“You took a bet,” she repeated, a little stunned. Her brother and sister-in-law had not only discussed her and Adam, they’d taken a bet about them.
Daniel leaned over his wife and whispered, “I bet you’d kill him. I had ten bucks riding on it.”
Lexi shook her head in wonder. “You had nothing better to do on your honeymoon than make wagers on my sex life?”
Daniel grinned. “Oh, we found a minute or two to do other things.”
“Hey what are you being so secretive about over there?” Leona asked.
“Amy and Daniel were just telling me how they…struggled to find anything constructive to do on their honeymoon,” Lexi answered.
“Oh yeah,” Annie said with a laugh, “there’s a real dilemma for you.”
“Where did you go?” Adam asked as he brushed his hand along Lexi’s thigh.
“Hayman Island,” Daniel answered Lexi couldn’t suppress the delicious shiver that danced across her leg.
“I believe it’s beautiful there,” Adam said.
“Paradise,” Amy agreed.
Paradise was right under the table.
“Do you have any pictures?” Adam dragged his thumb dangerously close to the juncture of her legs.
“Not one,” Daniel said. “Amy wouldn’t let me bring my camera.”
Good grief, he wasn’t going to touch her here, in public, was he?
“Hey,” Amy said, “if you’d brought it along I wouldn’t have seen you the entire time. I had to protect my…interests.”
Lexi breathed a sigh of relief—or regret, she wasn’t entirely sure—as Adam’s hand slid back to her knee.
“Trust me,” Daniel told Amy, “I only ever had your best interests at heart.”
Leona whistled. “I just bet you did.”
As everyone laughed, Amy leaned in close again and whispered to Lexi, “So, did I win?”
“Wouldn’t you love to know,” Lexi whispered back. If Amy pushed the tablecloth aside right now, she’d have her answer. She swallowed a low moan as Adam tickled her inner thigh.
“I know already. You’ve got the look of a woman who’s been good and truly—”
“Oy. That’s enough,” Lexi cut her off with a snort. The only reason she had that look was because Adam’s hand was sending thrills racing through her belly. “What are you being so nosy for anyway?”
“Call it payback.” Amy smiled sweetly.
“For what?”
“Attacking Daniel with a cricket bat.”
&n
bsp; “What?” Lexi shrieked.
Conversation around the table ceased. Even Adam’s hand stilled.
“You attacked Daniel with your cricket bat. Remember?”
“Well, bloody hell. I did no such…oh…” Lexi’s voice trailed off. Oh. Whoops. How could she deny it?
“You did what?” Adam asked, shocked.
“Beat up my husband,” Amy supplied helpfully.
“You weren’t married,” Lexi argued.
“Yet,” Daniel added.
“What do you mean ‘yet’? If I hadn’t…hadn’t told Amy I’d attacked you, you still wouldn’t be married.”
“My point exactly,” Amy said with a self-satisfied smile. “You butt in. I butt in.”
“Butt in? You needed me. Hell, someone had to knock a bit of sense into you.”
“So you hit Daniel with a cricket bat?” Adam asked, sounding mildly dazed.
“No,” Lexi denied. Christ, at this rate he’d wind up thinking she was an axe murderer or something. “I didn’t. I just, um, kind of told Amy I did.”
“What for?”
“He made me do it.” She pointed at Daniel, who sat grinning at all of them.
Adam looked at Daniel. “You did?”
“Didn’t have a choice really,” Daniel said.
“Why not?”
“Because I wasn’t interested in him,” Amy said.
“So Lexi had to beat Daniel up to get you to like him?”
“Pretty much,” Daniel said.
“It was all a cleverly master-minded plan,” Amy explained. “Daniel thought I took his friendship for granted. He wanted to shake me up a bit, get me to see I couldn’t live without him.”
“Which you can’t,” Daniel added.
“He got Lexi to phone and tell me he’d…um…accidentally been attacked. Needless to say, I nearly passed out from shock and had to race right over to see if he was okay.”
“Yeah, and to nurse me back to health.”
“And the rest, as they say, is history.” Amy smiled.
“So you’re saying you couldn’t have gotten together without Lexi’s help?” Adam asked.
“Or Leona’s,” Amy added.
“Leona?”
“Yeah,” Leona said. “Danno thought a little jealousy was a good thing, so he and Lexi cooked up some story about me wanting to jump his bones. Thought it would make Amy jealous of me.”
“It did,” Daniel interjected with a triumphant smile.
“Yeah. Until I found out the truth.”
“That the only bones Leona wants to jump…” Adam’s eyes rested on Annie.
“Are mine,” Annie said with a grin.
“I didn’t find out that little tidbit until much later,” Amy said.
“I had to tell her the truth eventually,” Daniel said.
“Actually,” Annie said with a mysterious smile, “you weren’t the one who told Amy about us.”
“What?” Daniel looked stunned.
Amy studied her nails.
“She found out quite independently of you,” Leona added.
“She did?” Lexi demanded. She hadn’t known that.
“Yes. She read it in our case file,” Annie said.
“What file?” Lexi asked.
“The one at her clinic,” Annie answered.
“What clinic?” Adam asked.
“Amy’s a fertility counselor,” Lexi told him. “She works at the IVF clinic here in the Eastern Suburbs.” It suddenly hit her. She gaped at Leona. “You’re not?”
It was Leona and Annie’s turn to smile intimately. “We are.”
No wonder Leona had insisted on dinner tonight.
“You are what?” Daniel asked them, and then turned to Amy. “And why didn’t you tell me you knew about Leona and Annie all along?”
Amy shrugged. “Patient confidentiality.”
“Patient confid… Oh my God.” It was Daniel’s turn to gape.
“We’re going to be parents,” Leona said with a twinkle in her eye. “Annie’s pregnant.”
The table erupted in chaos.
They were well into their main course before the oohing and aahing died down and Lexi noticed that Adam was more subdued than he’d been at the beginning of the evening. It was her turn to place her hand on his leg.
“You okay?” she asked softly.
“Fine,” he answered.
“You’re very quiet.”
“Don’t have much to say.”
Of course he didn’t. His thoughts were on Timmy. “The baby talk getting to you?”
He was saved from having to answer by a waiter clearing their plates away.
“We don’t have to stay, you know?” Lexi said.
“Dessert’s on its way.”
“We can get it to go.”
“It’s a special evening. We can’t leave yet.”
“You sure you’re up to this?”
“Positive.”
“You’re a nice man, AJ Riley.”
“Adam,” he corrected.
“You’re a nice man, Adam.”
A few minutes later, Lexi paused with her spoon mid-air. Adam’s gaze burned her.
The heat in his eyes made her breath catch.
“Is it good?” he asked, motioning to the spoon. The crème brûlée hung suspended between them.
“Very,” she answered. All she could think was how much better it would taste eaten off his naked stomach. With a shaky hand, she put the spoon in her mouth.
He watched her, his pupils dilating. “Looks delicious.” His voice was low and a little hoarse.
The creamy custard slid down her throat, sweet and smooth and satisfying. “It is.”
“You have…” he touched her lower lip, “…a drop, just here.” He wiped it off and then brought his finger to his mouth.
Her own lips parted as he licked off the cream. Christ, he was right. The dessert looked delicious.
Their eyes caught and locked and the rest of the room disappeared.
—
He clamped his hand over hers, stopping her from opening the door. “If you don’t want me to stay the night, tell me now,” Adam growled in her ear. “Because once I step foot in your unit, you are mine.” This wasn’t like him. Usually he didn’t need anyone.
Since the weekend, since he’d spilled his guts to her, he seemed to need her more than ever.
“You’re going to Hong Kong tomorrow, Adam. Of course I want you to stay the night.”
Damn it, he didn’t want to go overseas. Not now. But perhaps it was better; perhaps he needed to put a little distance between them—before he did something really dumb, like fall for her.
“Besides.” She smiled at him, flashing her sexy dimples. “I got the dessert to go after all.” She let them into the apartment.
“A single helping wasn’t enough?” He could probably force a spoon or two down—after he’d had his way with her.
“Let’s just say…” she paused and her eyes flickered to his groin, “…I wasn’t overly fond of the way it was served.”
His pulse jolted to a jerky gallop. “What, you didn’t like the plates?”
“The plates were fine,” she said. Her lips looked luscious, inviting. “I just thought the crème brûlée would taste better if I licked it off you.”
The blood in his veins emptied into his groin. He was hooked. The more he saw of her, the more he wanted her. Was it the fact that she was whole, healthy? That she’d been through shit and she’d dealt with it, come out a better person for it? Unlike him?
Or was it the fact that she was hot and as turned on by him as he was by her? What had compelled him to confide in her about Timmy? How come he didn’t regret it? He’d wanted her to know. Wanted her to share his pain.
He hadn’t wanted to share his pain in a long time.
She was too far away; he pulled her to him, taking her mouth in a hot, steamy kiss.
He tasted the sugary sweetness of the dessert on her tongue and the erotic
promise of sex on her lips.
She was more than welcome to lick the dessert off him. Hell, she could suck it, bite it, nibble it or just plain eat until she’d had her fill. He tugged her shirt over her shoulders and made short work of her bra. She could eat whatever the hell she liked off him. After that, he was going to make love to her. He was going to bury himself deep in her tight, wet center and fuck her. Just like he had yesterday and the day before that. Just like he intended to do as soon as he got back from this business trip.
“Christ, you’re beautiful,” he rasped as he stripped off her low-cut pants and left her standing in nothing but a white, lacy thong. He shed his shirt without conscious thought.
His hands were on his zipper when she said, “Wait. Let me do it.”
Another dart of desire speared through him as she placed her hand where his had been a moment before and caressed him. She didn’t need to touch him. Just being with her was the biggest aphrodisiac of all.
The rasping movement of the zipper drove him damn near insane and he was ready for dessert long before she’d knelt down and drawn his jeans over his hips. He kicked off his shoes and the pants followed.
“Adam,” she murmured before touching her lips to his abdomen.
His stomach muscles clenched involuntarily under her lips and she moaned. Her warm breath caressed his belly button and then floated lower until faint puffs of air whispered over his cock. It twitched and grew, straining against his undies.
This was more than just sex. Whatever was transpiring between them was real and it scared the crap out of him. If it were anyone else, he’d hit the road.
Nothing could keep him away from Lexi.
Over the weekend, she hadn’t just given him physical release. He’d expressed and experienced emotions he hadn’t acknowledged in years. He’d shared Timmy with her.
He’d given her his son.
Lexi inched the confining material over his bulging member, freeing him. He could almost feel her mouth closing around him, taking his whole length in. He wanted those hot lips wrapped around him, sucking him dry.
“Follow me,” she said and stood.
“Where are we going?” He could hardly walk in this state.
“Not far.” She pointed to one of the armchairs in the lounge room. “Food tastes so much better when you’re sitting, don’t you think?”
She was in the mood to play. His own mood lightened even as his need intensified.
