“Mmm,” Renae admitted. “And I think you would do well to listen to your own advice.” She gave her friend a wink.
“What’s that supposed to—”
“Tabby, I was waiting for you outside. I can’t believe…” Nina’s words trailed off when she spotted Renae and Tabitha sitting with their hands joined. “Oh. Hi, Renae.”
She said the words with all the friendliness a snake might give a field mouse.
Renae returned the greeting with a little more warmth then patted Tabitha’s hands before releasing them. “That’s what that means.”
“YOU SLEPT WITH HER.”
Colin’s words startled Will to the point that he missed his serve on point. When he tried to retrieve the bouncing tennis ball, he lost his grip on his racket.
“What?”
Colin pointed his own racket at him from across the court at the private club. Colin had insisted they play here, despite the perfectly good courts at Will’s condominium complex. “You know perfectly well what I’m saying. That belly-dancing lesbian that lives upstairs from you. You’ve slept with her, haven’t you?”
Will grimaced wondering if he was that transparent to everyone. Because if he was, then he was going to have one hell of a problem on his hands when Janet returned from California next weekend. “You couldn’t be further from the truth,” he lied, concentrating all his efforts on making a killer serve.
The ball went slightly out and he reached for another ball.
Colin squinted at him. “Come on, Will. The look on your face doesn’t come from taking things in hand.”
“So to speak.”
“So to speak.”
“And why wouldn’t it?” He served again, happy this time just to get in bounds.
Colin easily returned it. “Because you wouldn’t look like you’ve just been screwed within an inch of your life, that’s why. You wouldn’t be so relaxed, and grinning all the time. And I swore I heard you whistling when you walked up. Masturbation does not a whistler make.”
The sound of a racket being dropped. Will returned the volley and glanced at the next court, which was occupied by a couple of hot young women. One must have overheard Colin and had dropped her racket midreturn. The two women looked at each other and laughed.
“Oh, bravo, Colin,” Will said, putting some extra elbow into the next return and taking some satisfaction in Colin’s having to hustle to hit it. “I think I recognize one of those girls from the hospital. That’s all I need, for rumors like that one to start making the rounds. ‘Willing Will, who’s not afraid to take matters into his own hands.”’
Colin chuckled and didn’t even try to get the next volley Will fired over the net.
“Point, game and match.”
“Good.” Colin gathered the errant tennis balls then met Will at the net where they shook hands. “I don’t think I could have withstood another half-assed match. I think I liked you better when you were frustrated.”
Another round of giggles from the next court.
“Will you stop,” Will said under his breath. “Just think what Janet’s reaction would be if word of this circled back to her.”
Colin stared at him as they left the court. “You should be more concerned about what she’d think if she found out you banged your upstairs neighbor.” His eyes widened. “You didn’t sleep with both of them, did you?”
Will waved his hand. “No, no. Just the one.”
Colin moved a couple of steps ahead of him and prodded him in the chest with his covered racket. “Aha! I knew it.”
Will cringed, catching on to the mistake he’d made.
Colin moved to walk beside him. “So how was it?” he asked quietly.
“Do I enquire about what goes on between you and Lucky after the sun sets?”
“All the time.”
“And do you tell me?”
“Never.”
“Well, then.”
“Yes, but Lucky and I are a couple. You and…”
“Yes,” he confirmed, refusing to actually state Renae’s name.
“Your experience was a one-nighter. Strictly sex. It doesn’t count.”
“How do you rationalize that?”
Colin stared at him a little too closely. “Unless it wasn’t just about sex.”
They’d reached the parking lot and Will opened the back of his SUV and tossed his racket inside along with his gym bag. “Of course it was just about the sex, man. What, have you gone daft in the head?”
Colin had parked next to him and loaded his own equipment. “Well, then, that marks last night as sharing material.” He closed the back of his own SUV. “So how was it?”
Will stared at him long and hard, then grinned. “Great.”
“I knew it!”
“More than great—it was incredible. I mean, I don’t know if it’s because I’d gone without for so long, but we went at it for a good twenty hours straight. Well, I mean, with time-out for catnaps and showers and the like.”
Colin blinked at him, the humor wiped from his face. “Twenty hours?”
Will nodded, thinking he’d need a crowbar to pry the grin from his face. “Uh-huh. Twenty hours. And even then we stopped only because we ran out of bloody rubbers.”
Colin didn’t say anything.
And Will decided he didn’t like the thoughtful expression he wore. “What? Oh, for Christ’s sake, what are you thinking now?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m thinking last night might not have been about just sex.”
“Are you insane? Of course it was. Whatever else might it have been about?”
Colin continued staring at him for a long moment, then shook his head and walked toward the driver’s side of his SUV. “You forget, I’m a couples counselor.”
“Oh, God, here it comes.” Will wiped his face on a towel he’d taken from his bag then threw it back into the truck and closed the door. “I knew I’d regret covering for you back in med school.”
Colin chuckled. “It’s just that in my professional opinion when a relationship is just about sex, any sexual encounters last no longer than a half hour—an hour max.”
Will pointed at him over the hood of his car. “Those are the key words. ‘In your experience.”’
“In my professional experience.”
Will scowled as he opened his car door. “Yeah, well, who asked for your opinion, professional or otherwise? I don’t recall doing it.”
He looked over to find Colin grinning at him. “Harry’s?” he asked.
Will was half tempted to tell him to bugger off. “Harry’s,” he said, then closed his door and started the engine, pointing his SUV in the direction of the sports bar a short distance away.
Not about sex.
What a ridiculous notion.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Renae was still smiling.
And still hadn’t gotten around to doing her laundry.
She closed and locked the condo door after herself then turned toward the stairs, trying to keep from making too much noise in her belly-dancer costume.
Well, at least she’d gotten some sleep. After Tabitha and Nina had gone out to the movies at around six last night, she’d curled up on her bed with the latest yummy Stephanie Plum offering and had immediately fallen asleep, not to awaken again until her alarm went off an hour ago at six.
She supposed her body had needed the rest considering the workout she’d given it at Will’s place Saturday night. But still, it had been a long time since she’d needed more than eight hours.
She began descending the stairs, her gaze automatically going to the door of 2B and a grin the size of Ohio took hold of her face. Just thinking about what she and Will had done…
Wow.
Of course, she had no intention of seeing him again. Well, aside from running into him in the hall. Their repeating what had happened was not in the cards.
A little voice asked her why.
And she answered. First, there was no way in the world they could pos
sibly better what had happened between them. That night…that night easily ranked up there with the best sex she’d ever had.
She gave a little shiver.
Second, there was the matter of Will’s girlfriend. There was no mistaking that he was seriously involved or else he wouldn’t have brought her up before they’d headed to his place. And if there was one thing Renae wasn’t interested in, it was becoming the other woman. She’d never been that stupid and certainly wasn’t about to start now, no matter how good the sex.
And the sex had been good, hadn’t it?
She rounded the staircase and began heading down the last leg toward the door, then stopped, much as she had two mornings ago.
There just entering through the door was Will, looking at her in the same stunned way she was looking at him.
“Um, hi,” she said, forcing herself to descend the remainder of the stairs and ignore the watery condition of her knees.
He didn’t immediately respond and she knew a moment of disappointment. Oh, don’t tell her this was going to turn into one of those awkward morning-afters. A twist on the pillow-shock syndrome, awkward morning-afters were worse, mostly because, when you suffered from PSS, neither of you cared what the other one thought—your mutual goal was only to get out the door quick.
But with AMA, one of the parties remembered the tryst favorably while the other ran as far as they could as fast as they could in the opposite direction.
“Um, hi, yourself,” Will finally said.
Renae made a face. Definitely AMA. And Will was the one doing the running.
All right. That was okay. She could deal with that. It wasn’t like she was looking to repeat what had happened between them the other night anyway.
She began to pass Will, trying to come up with something casual, light to say before diving for the door, when he finally lifted his gaze from the floor, skimmed her costume, then said with a grin that nearly made her cream herself, “What would you say if I requested a repeat of the other night…costume included?”
Renae suddenly had a hard time swallowing. “I’d ask you when and where.”
Will stared at her mouth. “How about here and now.”
Renae smiled. “Supplies?”
He held up a bag and shook it. “Replenished.”
“Then I’d say lead the way.”
6
SOMEWHERE IN THE BACK of Will’s mind he knew a moment of pause. A part of him that he didn’t want to give voice to understood that he shouldn’t be doing what he was doing. When he’d stopped at the pharmacy on the way home from the hospital that morning to stock up on condoms, he’d convinced himself that he’d been doing it because he and Janet might finally be knee deep in some sex when she returned from California at the end of the week.
But a wicked little voice told him he’d known what he’d been doing all along. That’s why he’d sped home, hoping he wouldn’t miss Renae when she left for work.
He unlocked his condo door and hustled her inside, liking the way the metal disks on her costume chimed with her every move. Liking the way she looked all soft and hot and sexy in the decadent clothes. And liking that he’d be getting her out of the garments as soon as humanly possible.
And if he doubted she felt the same, the thought was banished when she launched herself into his arms, metal disks and all, kissing him as hungrily as if he were breakfast and she hadn’t eaten for days.
The bare skin of her back was silky soft as he sought a release for the top, gave up then dove for the back of the waist.
She laughed and moved out of reach with a clang of disks. “Wait a sec. I have to call into the shop and let them know I’m going to be a little late.”
Will raised a brow. “A little?”
He took her hand and pressed it against his rock-hard arousal through the thin material of his scrubs. He watched her pupils grow large in her green eyes.
“Okay,” she said slowly, “a lot late.”
He reached out and dipped a fingertip inside the top of her bra cup. “Tell them you’ll be out the whole day.”
He watched her swallow with some difficulty. “The whole day?” A slow, sultry smile spread across her lips. “You really are looking to repeat the other night, then.”
He nodded. “And then some.”
RENAE’S FINGERS trembled so badly it took three attempts for her to extract her cell phone from her purse. Will had worked her right breast up and out of the top of the costume and was even now pressing his tongue against her distended nipple.
She suppressed a moan and gave him a slight shove. “Give me a minute.”
He made a show of looking at his watch. “I’ll give you twenty seconds.”
Renae pressed the button on her cell for her phone book and received the message that there were no entries.
She stared at the color display, pressed the phone book button again with the same result.
That’s odd. She had no fewer than fifty entries in there, the one for the shop the most important.
Will began to advance on her and she backed away, laughing. “You’d better behave or I won’t give you a show.”
“A show?”
She wondered if all Brits were as sexily handsome as Will was. If they were, she’d have to arrange a visit to London posthaste. “Uh-uh.”
She shut off the wireless phone, then powered it back up, only to receive the same message that there were no entries in her phone book.
That was strange….
Will pulled off his green scrub top, revealing every inch of his honed and toned arms and stomach. Renae’s mouth watered and for the life of her she couldn’t recall the number for the shop.
Finally she was able to enter it, and then she was shutting off the cell and bunching her fingers in Will’s hair. He was down on his knees in front of her, his face buried against her bare stomach.
“I love these belly ring things,” he said, dipping the tip of his tongue inside her navel then through the thin ring that bore a red stone.
A shiver washed over Renae’s body, the air-conditioning vent above her partially to blame.
Will’s hot and wet attentions more to blame.
“Do you want me to give you a private demonstration or not?” she whispered.
“Hmm. Definitely yes.”
“Do you have music?”
He blinked at her as if she’d asked him if he had lobster in the fridge.
“Something Greek would be nice. Or Middle Eastern.”
Will seemed cemented to the spot on his knees in front of her.
It was all Renae could do not to pull down the tight, elastic waist of the costume bottoms and let him continue what he was doing.
A light seemed to brighten his eyes. “Sting.”
Renae frowned. The pop singer Sting was not exactly what she had in mind when it came to belly-dancing music. But Will was already in front of his stereo console, searching through an extensive collection of CDs then feeding one into the player.
Immediately the sound of Middle Eastern music filled the condo, along with the voice of an Arabic singer.
“Desert Rose by Sting,” Will elaborated.
While it wasn’t the exact belly-dancing beat she’d been looking for, she determined that she could make it work. Hell, at this point, with Will looking at her like he wanted to swallow her whole, she probably could have shaken her hips to Barbra Streisand, and Will and she would have been satisfied.
Shaking out her arms, she stretched them in front of her. Then she joined her index fingers and lifted her hands above her head. She found the stretch helped loosen up her muscles and get her into the mood. She slowly swung her left hip forward and began a tiny gyration, the disks sewn into the costume clinking.
She watched Will’s eyes darken as she caught her rhythm. Slow at first. Concentrating on one hip, then the next. Rippling her stomach in a way that made it impossible for him to look anywhere but there. She shimmied her shoulders, threading her hands out in open
invitation even as she gently threw her head back. She drew on the experience that teaching the classes had given her but which she seldom got to use in its intended way. Heat curled deep in her belly, making her hot. Too hot.
She leveled the tilt of her head, looking at him from under the fringe of her lashes as she increased the rhythm of her suggestive movements, making the disks clink faster.
“Fuck me.”
Renae nearly burst out laughing. She knew the expletive was the British equivalent of “shit” or “what the hell,” not meant to be taken literally. But she wasn’t so sure if that’s the meaning Will had intended as he practically dove at her. He pinned her to the overstuffed cushions of his sofa in a tangle of limbs and noisy disks.
“Wait,” she whispered breathlessly after fighting to keep up with his kisses and batting his hands away from her costume. “Do you know how much this thing cost? Ginger would kill me if I ruined it.”
“I’ll buy you ten.”
She laughed and bit his bottom lip.
“Ow. What did you go and do that for?”
“Give me a minute.”
“Another one? But I just gave you one.”
“You gave me twenty seconds.”
He reluctantly pulled back. “Fine. I’ll give you the other forty. But only if you promise not to take them all.”
Renae got up and got out of the costume as quickly as she could. Before she could finish draping the top over a nearby chair, Will was tackling her back to the sofa. She caught herself on all fours just as he positioned himself behind her.
She thought about making a crack about his impatience for all of a nanosecond, but found she didn’t have the time to voice anything as his hands curved around her waist then dove for her sex. She gasped as he parted her flesh with one hand, then skillfully stroked her bared feminine folds with the fingers of his other one.
“Oh, you’re good,” she whispered, every inch of her shivering in instant response to his attentions.
“You have no idea.”
Wicked Pleasures Page 5
