by Julia London
It was very disturbing to Eli to learn that his defenses against the female sucked. He had absolutely nothing to work with, not even a whimper of protest. In fact, all his pure male offense suddenly revved into overdrive, and he slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, angling his head so her plump little tongue could go wherever it wanted. His personal body throttle liked her tongue, too—it immediately sprang to attention, inching its way up to his belt line, hoping for a peek.
The sound Marnie made in the back of her throat woke up the rest of him, and he realized, as the knife he was holding clattered to the floor and he twirled Marnie around and pushed her up against the fridge, that he hadn’t felt all his parts come together in such teamwork in a long, long time. He was feeling them now, all right, in full glory, up and alert and ready for action.
His hands were roaming her body, caressing full breasts through silky fabric, then down to the taper of her trim waist, and the flare of her hips, the meaty bottom where his fingers dug into her flesh. Their tongues tangled in her mouth, and he felt the smooth veneer of her teeth, tasted the oak flavor of the wine she’d been drinking. His senses were filled with her scent—like roses, he thought, like a bed of fucking roses.
Eli pressed against her, and Marnie pressed back, undulating a little against his fly, rubbing Junior into a tizzy. Eli reached over and turned off the burner where the onions had gone past caramelizing to black bits, and forgot about them, forgot about the knife on the floor, forgot about arches and canyoning and everything but the feel of a beautiful woman in his arms. He was one step away from pulling the thin string of her dress and taking her right there, next to the salmon, when a thought suddenly swam up from the depths and gasped desperately for air.
He didn’t want to do this. He really liked Marnie, so he really did not want to date her or fuck her or otherwise get involved. He’d made that vow to himself, and he was not about to break it just because Junior wanted a piece of the action.
He suddenly lifted his head. As he was not the type of guy to end this sort of encounter, he really wasn’t very good at it. Marnie’s hand slid down his chest and dropped lifelessly to her side. Her head lolled back against the stainless fridge, and her copper hair was everywhere. Her eyes were closed, one leg was hiked up, and her lips were stretched into a very happy little smile.
That smile did not help him to bow out of this in the least. If anything, it pushed him over the edge. “Now who’s begging?” he growled.
Marnie opened her eyes. “Some things are worth begging for,” she said, and planted her lips on his again.
There was no going back. Junior took over his thinking, and the next thing Eli knew, he’d pulled that tiny little string and her dress slid down, so that her breasts were exposed and looking right at him. He grabbed her by the hips and lifted her up to the countertop and took one perfect breast in his mouth.
Marnie arched her back and thrust her breast into his mouth, and then her hands were in his hair, and she was making these deep little sounds that indicated she was having a good time, and rubbing her bare legs against him. Eli’s hands were running wild over her body, over her bare breasts, up her thighs, between her thighs. Marnie’s breath was coming harder, and she dropped her hands to his shoulders, then to his shirt front, and when Eli lifted his head from her slightly-better-than-perfect breasts, she caught him in a kiss and began to undo the front of his shirt.
Her hands slipped inside to his bare skin; her slender fingers slid over his nipples, then down his sides, her fingernails leaving an excruciatingly arousing trail across his skin. Eli deepened his kiss, caught her bottom lip between his teeth, and then suddenly let go, pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m not taking you canyoning with us. Got it?” he asked breathlessly.
“Got it,” she said, and slid her hand down his pants to feel one of the biggest hard-ons he’d ever had in his friggin’ life. “Do you have a condom?” she whispered.
Oh yeah, he had a condom, and fortunately for both parties involved, he was still in the habit of carrying one in his wallet. In a flurry of clothes and wine and slithery little dresses that made a pool on his kitchen floor, the two of them ended up naked in his kitchen, with Eli’s fingers sunk deep in the soft folds of her flesh, sliding deeper still. Marnie’s hands had found him, too, and now he was to the point of bursting.
He suddenly lifted her up; Marnie instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist, and he carried her like that to the living room, sat down on his red leather couch, and buried his face between her breasts again. “Marnie—” he started, but she stopped whatever he would say by filling his mouth with her breast. Her knees were on either side of him, and she slowly lifted herself up and started to slide down his cock.
“Oh God,” he groaned as she slid down on him. It had been a million years or more, it seemed. The feel of her body was making him insane, but Eli held on and began to move with her. He lifted his face, looked up at her…and saw something there he didn’t want to see, something deep in her eyes that lit a fire way down inside him, way down, in a place buried deep beneath all the baggage and years and locks he’d put on it to keep it from getting out. How she’d done it, he had no idea, but Marnie had a bead on him, and as she began to move faster, her bottom lip between her teeth, that spark in her eye seemed to grow brighter and brighter.
Eli suddenly moved and flipped them over, so that she was on her back on the red couch, and he on top of her. Marnie giggled and put her arms around him. Eli reached between them and stroked her as he began to push deeper into her. She stopped giggling then. Her head rolled to one side, her copper hair went everywhere and she let out a growl of pure pleasure as she came.
It was all the encouragement Eli needed—he was into her now, his arm around her waist holding her hips steady so he could reach as far inside her as he could get. And all the emotions he’d kept bottled up, all the desires he’d left unattended, all the fears he’d let his mind create began to bubble up, mixing into one amazing deadly bubble. With a growl of his own that would have put a lion to shame, the bubble burst and he came.
He was instantly reduced to a quivering mass of flesh—there was nothing left inside him. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against her shoulder; Marnie wrapped her arms around his head and sighed contentedly. They remained like that for a few moments until Marnie’s stomach began to growl, and she started to giggle again.
Eli carefully dislodged himself, and they cleaned themselves up, found their clothing scattered all over the kitchen, and dressed.
He noticed Marnie had a very rosy flush about her as she freshened their wineglasses, and she began to talk as he threw out the burned onions and tried again. He didn’t even mind the chatter as they made dinner together, for it was engaging chatter. They kept bumping into each other as they moved about the kitchen in their quest to prepare the meal, laughing and talking like a pair of old lovers.
They dined on his terrace overlooking the valley, on an old, low, and heavy wrought-iron table he’d picked up in Mexico. He had it between two padded chaise lounges, and on those nights he sat out here and ate frozen pizza, he found it to be the perfect height. They ate salmon and asparagus and watched the lights of LA twinkle below them.
“Did you plant all these?” Marnie asked.
He looked at the giant clay pots planted with bougainvilleas and topiary ficus trees. “Yep.”
“Dude,” she said, smiling at him over the rim of her wineglass. “You just keep surprising me. You’re not anything like the hard-ass I thought you were.” She looked up at the open porch covering, through which he’d strung little white lights amid the ivy vines. “It looks like stars.”
He glanced up. He’d never really thought of it that way, but they did sort of look like stars.
“This is like an oasis, isn’t it?” Marnie asked. “A very nice and quiet place where you go to get away from it all. I bet you spend a lot of time here, contemplating the universe and your navel, right?�
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That was pretty perceptive of her and made him feel a little uncomfortable, because he had spent a lot of time there, especially after the Trish disaster.
“So,” Marnie said, putting aside her plate and turning onto her side in the chaise to face him. “Did you come up with a prize?”
“A what?”
She laughed. “A prize. Remember? If Vince and Olivia were still together, you got your pick of prizes.”
“Ah,” he said, smiling. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
“I hope it’s something fun,” she said, drawing a circle on the arm of the chaise with her fingernail. “Something along the lines of what we did earlier would be nice.”
Eli chuckled. “Actually…it involves another woman.”
Marnie stopped making a little circle. She slowly lifted her gaze, and as the multitude of possibilities flashed before her eyes, they grew to the size of saucers. “Are you saying what I think you are saying?” she finally squeaked.
“I doubt it,” he said, laughing at her conclusion. “I like females, but I do better with only one at a time. But I need your help. I’ve got a friend who needs some new clothes for school.”
“For school?” she echoed. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Thirty-eight. And my friend is twelve.”
Marnie opened her mouth. And there it stayed, gaping open, as she tried to figure that one out.
“So that’s what I want for my prize,” he said, enjoying himself. “I want you to help me shop for a twelve-year-old.”
Marnie closed her mouth, and for the first time since he’d met her, she was speechless.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Two days later, Marnie decided that Eli McCain was either a big jerk or the most mysterious tall, dark, and handsome type she’d ever run across in her thirty-four years on this earth. She just wasn’t sure which.
She had thought, after the awesome, unexpected little tryst between them, that they had passed to a new phase of their relationship, that they had gone from merely working together to something decidedly friendlier. She had convinced herself it was okay to date him, that a little gig like this didn’t necessarily have to have the same rules as a real job, and it was perfectly all right to dip her pen in the company ink.
Since that fabulous night at his house, when she’d left him standing on his front porch leaning up against the split-beam post, one leg crossed over the other, his arms folded over his chest, watching her walk away with that quiet, sexy smile of his, she’d thought of nothing else but him.
And she hadn’t heard a peep.
He had not called her.
What planet was this guy on, anyway? Hell yes, she’d assumed he’d call her! After all, they’d done it, and it had been fantastic, and she really believed that if two people did it and liked it, then it was the guy’s place to call, even if it had been her idea to do what they did.
But Eli didn’t call.
She told herself he was busy, and she made herself busy, too, making sure the chairs and linens would be shipped on time to Durango, Colorado, and that Holland had thirty thousand white roses and that there were two hundred Baccarat crystal bowls in LA.
But when Eli still had not called, Marnie was a little pissed. She figured he at least owed her a phone call to see how the plans were going, but nooo, Hollywood Hotshot couldn’t be bothered. He was too busy being an important stunt guy for the movies to actually pick up a phone.
She was so baffled and pissed that she even ran it past Olivia when they went to interview Rhys St. Paul, the chef Olivia wanted.
“Let me ask you something,” she’d said in the back of Olivia’s limo. “If you sleep with a guy, and it’s great, and there is the usual, ‘hey, talk to you soon’…whose responsibility is it to call?”
“Are you kidding?” Olivia asked, blinking her big blue eyes in shock. “His.”
Exactly.
So when Eli did deign to pick up the phone on the third day, Marnie tried not to act breathless and relieved and giddy, and tried to be very cool and laid-back about the whole thing, Hollywood style. “Oh, hey, Eli,” she said, as if she had to recall who he was. “What’s up?”
“Hi, Marnie. I was going to ask the same of you.”
“Oh nothing,” she said, as she made big black circles on a piece of paper. “Just working the wedding.”
“Anything I need to know about?”
“No,” she said, perhaps a little too sharply. “Well…Olivia and I hired the chef. He’s going to do the wedding and the cake. You remember, you were concerned about the cake budget,” she said, stabbing her pencil on the paper with the words cake and budget.
“I remember. So this is a good thing, right?”
“It’s all good,” Marnie said, sneering into the phone.
“Great. So you ready to help me out with that shopping?”
And that was how she wound up at Fred Segal, shopping for outrageously expensive clothes for a twelve-year-old. She picked up a pair of jeans and held them up.
“How much?” Eli asked.
“Five-fifty. Pretty pricey for a kid who will probably grow out of them in a couple months.”
“Nah,” he said. “Give them to me.”
Marnie lifted a brow in surprise and handed him the jeans to add to the mountain of skimpy tees and skirts and jeans and sandals and anything else a twelve-year-old girl might conceivably want in her lifetime.
“So where is this friend of yours, anyway?” Marnie asked suspiciously. “Why isn’t she here?” He’d told her the girl was the daughter of a friend and that he was helping out, but she was beginning to wonder about that. Friends didn’t help out with clothes like these.
“Because she lives in Escondido, and it’s too far to drive between soccer games.”
“Escondido. How do you know a kid in Escondido? Did you come up from Texas that way?” she asked, picturing him riding through New Mexico and Arizona and California on horseback, his saddlebags stuffed full, his bandana around his nose, his clothes stained and dirty. The image gave her an unexpected little shiver of delight.
“Very funny,” he said. “No, nothing like that. Her father was one of our stunt guys. He died a few years ago.”
“Oh.” She shut up. For a moment, anyway. “How did he die?”
Holding up the jeans to inspect them, Eli looked at her from the corner of his eye. “A stunt.”
“Geez, I didn’t know people died doing stunts.”
“They don’t, usually. Not unless someone is careless.”
“Ah, I see,” she said. “The guy was careless and killed himself, and you feel sorry for his daughter.”
“That’s close,” Eli said. “Except I was the one who was careless and the guy died. And I do feel bad for his daughter. I guess this ought to do it,” he said, looking at the pile of clothing he held.
She could not have possibly felt smaller if she’d been an ant. “Eli, I’m sorry.”
“No need,” he said, and walked to the front of the store to pay for the mountain of clothes he was holding.
After he’d paid for the clothes, Eli drove her home. When he pulled in her drive, he got out and came around to her side of the truck and opened the door. Marnie slid out, leaned against the arm of the open truck door, and looked up at Eli.
“Thanks,” he said. “I really appreciate the help. I would have been lost trying to do it on my own.”
That was putting it mildly. “No problem—I love to shop,” Marnie said.
“I got that impression,” he said with a grin. “So…thanks, Marnie.” He moved so that she could step away from the truck.
But Marnie didn’t move. Marnie’s mouth operated solo again. It was a fact that tact and timing had never been her strong suit. “Eli…are you ever going to call me?” she suddenly blurted.
The question obviously surprised him. “I called you today, remember?”
“I know…but I mean…you know, to like…” Okay, what did she mean? Not get marr
ied, hell no. Date? Maybe…the jury was still out on even that, wasn’t it? What about a drink? It didn’t even have to be alcohol—just coffee? At least some acknowledgement she existed?
“Like…what?” he prodded her.
“I’m starting to think you don’t like me,” she said, and instantly despised her immature self.
Eli smiled. His gaze drifted down to the tips of her newly pedicured toes. “You’re dead wrong about that. I happen to like you a whole lot.”
She brightened instantly. “You do?”
“Of course I do. Would I ask you to shop for Isabella if I didn’t like you?”
No, he wouldn’t have done that, she supposed. But that left her with the worst possibility. “Well, then…maybe you didn’t like my, ah…company the other night.”
Eli blinked. Then he laughed and tenderly touched her cheek. “Girl, I’d be gay if I didn’t like your company. Are you nuts? It was fantastic.”
“Okay,” she said, feeling enormously relieved. “All right, then. I just thought…you know, that we might get together for a drink, something like that.”
Eli nodded thoughtfully. Blew out his cheeks. Looked at the ground. Then up again. “You know what? We’ll do just that…when I get back from Florida.”
“Florida?”
“There’s a hurricane moving toward Florida. We’re going to jet down and do some kite surfing while the winds are up. I’ll be gone for about a week.”
“You are going to kite surf on hurricane winds?” she repeated, just to make sure she’d heard him correctly.
He nodded, as if that were a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
“Oh,” she said, feeling very confused and very stupid about kite surfing. “Florida.”
“Hey,” he said, and put his palm against her cheek, making her look up. “The minute I get back I’ll give you a call. We’ll have that drink.”
He looked very sincere, she thought, but something somewhere nudged her consciousness. Something said that a drink was not very comfortable for him. Something said that he was trying very hard to be nice.
