by Jill Shalvis
She lay sprawled and gorgeous, a feast for his eyes. While he nibbled at her neck, his fingers found a velvety nipple that quickly responded to his touch. "Mmmm. You taste better than breakfast."
Her eyes closed again, her head fell back. Her breath came in little pants, quickening when he switched to her other breast. He took his time there, as well, and skimmed a hand down her belly and lower. Finding her deliciously hot, and so wet he moaned, he sank a finger into her. He played in and out of that slippery heat, his eyes crossing with lust when she clamped her legs around his hand, holding him to her.
"I'm not going anywhere," he promised, kissing her lips, her jaw, her ear. He took the sensitive lobe into his mouth and bit gently as his fingers danced over her.
She arched up into his palm, whimpering every time he withdrew. "Yeah," he whispered. "Feels good, doesn't it?"
"Dax?"
"I'm right here, Amber. Always."
Her eyes flew open again. "Dax?"
Hadn't they already established that? "Still me." He rose up on an elbow to study her. "Amber, are you awake?"
Again that slow blink. "I had this dream that we…" She licked her lips. "I guess it wasn't a dream."
She was adorable, he decided, slowly shaking his head. And most definitely not a morning person. "Not a dream."
She groaned.
"Regrets?"
"I don't feel comfortable with this type of a relationship."
"You felt comfortable enough during the night," he pointed out. "Three times, in fact."
She blushed and looked away. "Five," she muttered.
"Well then…" He grinned. "Why don't we go for an even dozen?" But when he leaned close with wicked intent, she put a hand to his chest.
He sighed and sat up. She had the entire sheet—who knew what had happened to the rest of the bedding—which left him stark naked, but he didn't care. "You still have a problem with us."
She darted him a glance. "When you say 'us' like that, it makes me nervous."
"Join the club."
"You don't look nervous, you look…" She paused, and in an unusually revealing gesture of vulnerability, she bit her lower lip. "You look hungry. As if you could eat me up for breakfast."
"In one bite."
"We're very different," she said softly. "I need time to think."
"No, you need time to control your emotions. To distance yourself from me. It really scares me how easily you can do that."
"And it scares me how much of me you see, how much you understand."
"Yeah, I understand you. Maybe someday you'll understand me back."
Eyes stricken, she opened her mouth, but Taylor chose that moment to cry out.
"She's my alarm clock," Amber said with a shaky laugh. She still held the sheet to her chin, and somehow managed to get out of the bed and keep herself covered. "She'll need to be changed and fed. I'm sorry, Dax."
It was beyond him how she could look as ravaged and luscious as she did, yet so prim and proper at the same time. The heady combination threatened his sanity. "I'm sorry, too."
* * *
Amber sat in the little café across the street from her office, contemplating her day. It could have been a better one.
Yesterday she'd lost a deal when a client had backed out of a sale at the last moment. Harried over that and the ensuing chaos, she'd forgotten to pick up her dry-cleaning, which had left her with nothing to wear but her now slightly too small red suit.
Despite the unseasonably warm weather, she'd been forced to keep the jacket on all day, which only emphasized her new cleavage. But at least it hid the indecently tight blouse and skirt.
The client she'd seen that morning had certainly appreciated her problem. It had taken most of their meeting to assure him she didn't combine business and pleasure.
In hopes of improving her mood, she sat with a bowl of frozen yogurt. At least she was finally cooling off. The pleasant buzz of people around lulled her. She took a huge bite filled with delicious strawberries and leaned back with a sigh as it melted down her parched throat.
"The way you eat that looks positively sinful."
Dax bent over her, his mouth close to her ear, so that the low, sexy timbre sent shivers racing down her spine. "Did you know you've got every male customer in this place hard as a rock, just from watching you enjoy that thing?"
"Where's Taylor?" she asked, pleased her voice sounded so steady. She wasn't about to let him know he'd made her bones dissolve.
"Mom's spoiling her for us."
Mom's spoiling her for us. So intimate. As if Amber herself was also a part of his family.
Dax helped himself to the seat next to her, leaned back and made himself at home. Faded denim snugged his long, powerful legs, though she had no idea why she noticed. His T-shirt invited her to Fear Nothing. "I take it you're off-duty."
He grinned. "Yep. I'm going to take Taylor for a picnic. Want to come?"
"You're taking a baby on a picnic? She'll eat the ants and get itchy from the grass and—"
"Amber." He laughed. "I want to take you on a picnic. I'm shamelessly using our daughter as an excuse."
"Oh." Another huge bite of frozen yogurt helped her stall, but she stopped when she realized Dax's gaze was riveted to her mouth. His body seemed tense, his muscles tight beneath his shirt. And oh Lord, she'd have to be totally naive to miss the bulge behind the button fly of his Levi's.
"Take some mercy on me, Amber," he said with a groan. "Either stop eating that thing as though you were in the throes of an orgasm or toss it. You're killing me."
"Hmm."
"Was that an apology?"
"I refuse to apologize because you can't keep your mind out of your pants." Gathering her briefcase, purse and yogurt—she wasn't about to give that up for him!—she rose. "I'm going back to work."
"Amber. Come on, wait up—"
When she kept going, she heard him swear behind her, heard the scrape of his chair as he came to his feet.
She moved faster.
They didn't speak as she practically ran across the street and into her building, but when she entered her office and tried to shut the door behind her, she was stymied by a one-hundred-and-eighty pound block wall.
Half in, half out, with the door nearly cutting off his nose, he grinned down at her. "You're nuts about me, I can tell."
She groaned and backed away from the door. "I'm only letting you in because I can't stand the sight of blood. That, and my secretary, Nancy, is watching." She plopped into her chair and glared at him.
He shut the door behind him, then set a lean hip on the corner of her desk. "Let me see," he said, reaching for her spoon. "If it's as good as it looks … hmmm." His tongue darted out to catch a drop. "Oh yeah. It is."
So rattled by the sight of his wet tongue sliding over his own lips, Amber lost every thought in her head. Her hands loosened with the loss of blood flow to her brain, and the small bit of frozen yogurt still left in the cup spilled out … right down the front of her jacket.
Dax was there in a flash, laughing, slipping her jacket off her shoulders.
"No, don't," she gasped, gripping the edges of her jacket, pressing it to her too-tight blouse. "I want it on—"
"Hurry," he urged, tugging the jacket from her shoulders, leaving her exposed in nothing but the blouse she didn't want anyone to see. "Before it gets on your—" Abruptly, Dax stopped talking.
Stopped breathing.
He couldn't help himself, she was incredible. Yes, he'd already seen her, seen everything. He'd touched and licked and kissed every inch of her, but that didn't stop his heart from constricting and certain other parts of his anatomy from standing at attention at the sight of her straining against the tight confines of her white silk blouse.
"I wanted that on," she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.
He hardly heard her, could hardly think, but he had to touch.
Her face remained cool, impassive as he slid his fingers over her,
but at the base of her neck, her pulse drummed wildly, giving her away.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, watching her nipples harden, pressing for freedom against the fabric. "But you're so beautiful, you stun me."
"We agreed we're too different for this," Amber said, not quite steadily, tightening her arms in front of her.
All it did was emphasize her glorious body, and the breasts she seemed embarrassed of. "No, you agreed."
She gave him a hot look.
It was filled with such frustration, he had to smile. "Okay, we agreed that you think you need space in order to protect your emotions from me."
"I don't think it, I know it."
And so did he. Dammit, so did he. "I shouldn't have come." He shoved his fingers through his hair and backed away.
"I'm sorry."
"For which?" At the door, he spun around. "For driving me crazy, or for driving me crazy slowly?"
That comment had anger flashing in her eyes. "I'm sorry you're upset that you're not getting your way."
"What's my way? Do you even know?"
"You want to have a … a fling."
That stopped him cold and he stalked back toward her. "Why don't you just marry me, dammit, and settle once and for all what I really want."
* * *
Chapter 11
« ^ »
Amber gawked at him and, in truth, Dax couldn't blame her. He was shocked, too. After that first time when he'd so foolishly asked her to marry him, he'd vowed not to think about it again.
But he knew now how he felt about being a father to Taylor. He wanted to do it right. Part-time wasn't right, not in his opinion.
He also knew how he felt about Amber, knew it was permanent, not some passing phase.
He knew this, just as he knew he'd been using her resistance to fuel his own, using it to mask his own fear of commitment.
But that was cowardly. The deep emotions he had for Amber were here to stay, and he would face them.
He had to convince her to do the same.
"Did you just…" She gazed at him helplessly, her head going back in forth in an automatic denial that had his jaw so tight he could barely breathe. "Did you…"
"Yes. For the second time. And I have to tell you, that frightened, trapped-doe look is not quite the response I was hoping for."
The look disappeared instantly as she veiled her thoughts from him.
"I told you before," she said slowly. "It's unnecessary. Nothing's changed."
"That's not an answer," he said grimly. "An answer would be 'yes, I'll make your wildest fantasies come true,' or 'no, let me rip out your heart.'"
"You're being impossible."
"Yes," he snapped. "We've already established that I'm wildly emotional, temperamental and overly sensitive. That I can't control any of that. I'm also, apparently, impossible. But I want to marry you. I want to be a family. So answer the damn question."
He couldn't have handled this any worse, and he knew it. Thanks to his own stupidity, he'd backed her into a corner with no way out. But he wouldn't withdraw the question, not when he'd put his pride on the line.
In control now, Amber didn't even blink.
"It's that tough, huh?"
"It's not as though we've had the most conventional of relationships," she told him in a tone that said she expected him to be reasonable.
He wasn't in the mood for reasonable. "Of course this relationship hasn't been normal, not from the very beginning! We met under extraordinary circumstances, for God's sake, and we've been through things other people haven't." He lifted his hands helplessly. "Nothing's been the same since that earthquake, and nothing's been the same since I met you." Dropping his hands, he shook his head. "I held you when I thought we were going to die, Amber, and yes, that was a long time ago, and yes, now everything's different I see things differently, I feel differently." He reached for her, touched her pale face. "I have never regretted what happened. You have to know, you and Taylor are the best things that ever happened to me."
She turned away and scrubbed at the yogurt stain with a napkin. Though the stain didn't come off, she slipped the jacket back on anyway. Buttoning it, her back to him, she softly said, "You scare me."
"Does it help to know you scare me, too?"
"Actually, 'scare' isn't a strong enough word," she clarified. "Terrify works better."
He came up behind her, torturing himself with the feel of her spine and curved bottom against his chest and groin.
At the contact, her fingers fumbled on her buttons.
Reaching around her, he brushed her hands away and took over the task. "It's not like you to be so fidgety."
"I'm nervous. Marriage proposals do that to me."
Surrounding her as he was, he could hear her every breath, could smell her sweet, sexy scent. Felt her small tremors. Wildly protective emotions rose in him, powerful and suddenly certain. "Amber…" His arms folded around her. His mouth found its way to her ear and was heading toward her jaw when she straightened.
"I'm having enough trouble keeping my thoughts together," she said shakily, facing him, pressing her hands to her heart. "If I let you kiss me now, I don't know what will happen."
"Really?" That pleased him. "What could happen?"
"You know very well what."
"I want to hear you say it."
She rolled her eyes. "You know all you have to do is look at me and my thoughts scatter. I certainly can't concentrate when you put your mouth on me. I can hardly breathe."
His smile spread a bit. "Maybe you concentrate too much."
"Yes, well, it's a bad habit of mine."
"Are you ever going to answer the question?"
She drew a deep breath. "I know it's rude, but I need some air."
"You need to think."
"Yes."
Well-versed in this particular play, he followed her out, but she was stopped by Nancy at the front desk and handed a stack of messages that made her sigh.
Dax watched while she flipped through them with quick impatience. And saw her, really saw her—the weary eyes, the slight bruises beneath them, the tension in her body. She was truly exhausted.
Nancy added a pile of files that needed immediate attention. On top of that, she placed a virtual mountain of correspondence, all of which required review and a signature.
It had to be at least a week's worth of work.
Amber took everything stoically, she even managed a smile for her employee, but Dax saw right through her.
"Put it in your office and let's go," he said quietly.
Nancy held up a finger before Amber could move.
"The Garrisons. They want to see that property again."
"Terrific," Amber muttered.
"Today."
"They've seen it five times this week."
"I know. But they want to see it again and they want to see it with you."
Amber drew in a slow, purposeful breath, and Dax wondered how it was that only he saw her growing exhaustion. He knew how hard she worked, knew how much time Taylor demanded, and added it all up.
It equaled a breakdown for Amber.
"Call them then," she said wearily. "Tell them I'll pick them up at—"
"Tell them they can see the damn property by themselves," Dax interjected. He took the stack of work from Amber's arms. "You've done enough today. You're taking off."
Both Amber and Nancy stared at him.
"Ms. Riggs is leaving for the day," he announced for anyone listening. "She won't be back until morning."
"I will most definitely be back today," Amber said, her eyes on Dax. "I just need some air."
"You're going to get your air." Dax smiled his most charming smile. "But you won't be back today." Taking her hand in a grip of steel, he tugged her from the office.
"Dax … would you stop!" Her heels clicked noisily as she raced along beside him. "I have important business to attend to."
"You most certainly do," he assured her, ruthlessly tugging
her along. "We were in the middle of something."
"I know, but I can't just leave, not now—"
"Your air," he reminded her. "You needed to get out so fast you couldn't answer my question. Remember?"
Her lips tightened, but she remained silent until they exited the building.
It was a glorious Southern California day. The sky was a deep, brilliant blue and scattered across it were little puffs of white clouds.
A picture-perfect scene.
Now if only the woman next to him could slow down enough to enjoy it.
Instead, she spun on her heels away from him and started walking.
Dax spared a moment to admire her stride. "I'm coming with you," he called.
"Like I could stop you."
He moved to keep up with her. She was pale, but never faltered. The slight wind tossed her hair, played with the hem of her skirt. Dax avoided thinking by concentrating on traffic. He avoided touching Amber by keeping his hands in his pockets.
Three blocks later, they came to a park. All green and woodsy, it had a series of trails and welcoming benches. A perfect place to ask a woman—for the third time—to marry him.
A perfect place for his future to be decided.
They were hidden from the street by trees. The sounds of birds singing drowned out any traffic they might have heard. They were alone, isolated, surrounded by beauty.
"Well," he said after a moment.
"Well."
They stared at each other stupidly, and Dax wondered if she could possibly be as attracted, as confused, as totally, irreversibly in love as he was.
Then he saw the unmistakable signs—red-rimmed eyes and damp lashes.
Dammit.
"I've thought about … you know," she said, her voice a bit ragged.
"You mean about spending the rest of your life with me?" he asked gently. "Is that why you're crying?"
She looked away. "It's been hard being a single parent. No family support, few friends. Both are my fault, but it's fact." Then she turned back to him. "Having you in my life, taking responsibility for helping with Taylor, it's been a real gift."
"But?"
"But I can't accept your offer. It's generous, kind and almost overwhelmingly irresistible, but as I told you before, I can't do it."
