she went to bed, she’d imagine him toothless with bugs crawling all over him. That way she might be able to turn him into an object of disgust.
Yeah, and if that worked, she’d try walking on water next.
Half an hour later, she was snuggled in bed, listening to the October rain tap on the window, concentrating on Colin, not the way he was, but the way she wanted to dream about him.
Big brown eyes—make those piggy, puffy red ones. His fabulous male scent—now eau de skunky hangover. His rare smile—brown and broken. His build—flabtastic. Plaid pants, platform shoes. Flowered shirt unbuttoned to his waist.
Gold chains …
She gave a huge yawn and nestled deeper under the covers, smiling faintly.
Long, greasy hair.
Another yawn. Take that, Colin …
Morning already? Couldn’t be. Somehow Demi was in her office suite without getting out of bed. Her waiting room, normally a cool, refreshing blue-green color, had been repainted violet with rainbows and pictures of clowns. She glanced at her watch, not the gold one she’d bought for herself, but pink glowing plastic with a picture of Barbie on it. Noon! Colin was about to show up.
A knock on the door. She tried to say, “Come in,” but couldn’t make a sound. The door opened. Colin! Except he was about four foot five, wearing a clown costume—white with huge red dots and yellow ruffles, floppy black shoes, giant red nose.
This must be her dream. Perfect.
Lie down, she told him without sound. I’ll work on you.
“Sure.” His voice emerged without problem, deep, resonant, very sexy. Oops, she’d forgotten to change that to an appropriately girlie squeak.
You can keep your clown suit on.
“No.” He moved his hands to the back of his suit.
She tried to say yes, but couldn’t make herself understood, and frowned at him instead, frantically gesturing that he should stop.
Wait, was he growing taller? He was, no! Taller than she was, up to his real height, just over six feet.
Bad clown, bad.
The silly suit melted off. Instead of proper clown underwear, he was wearing boxer briefs that molded to a decidedly not flabby body. The violet walls changed to trees, and suddenly Demi and Colin were lying in a meadow on a blanket, picnic basket nearby, holding glasses of champagne.
Uh-oh.
Then the champagne was gone and he was kissing her tenderly, his body warm and solid against the length of hers … which no longer had any clothes on it. And his briefs were gone, too.
Oh, no.
His mouth tasted hers languidly—upper lip, bottom lip, this corner, that. Then he pulled back and gazed at her from under his brows, causing her blood to race, her body to arch toward his.
Oh, yes.
He rolled over her, the width of his shoulders making her feel protected, surrounded. She felt him hard between her legs, opened hers wide to welcome him inside.
Then he was pushing into her, filling, stretching, setting her nerve endings on fire. She clasped him around the back, lifted her knees high and wide to bring him in deeper.
He said her name over and over, increasing the pressure and pace until she was gasping, reaching for her climax, reaching, reaching, feeling it start to grow, to burn through—
“Demi, I love you.”
Say what?
Demi Woke With a jerk, staring with wide eyes up at the ceiling, breath coming fast, body still hot with arousal. Instinctively, her hand went between her legs, and then she stopped herself.
No.
There was no way she could get herself off right now. Because if she did, she’d be imagining Colin making her completely crazy with lust, and when he showed up for real in—she blinked at the clock—six hours, there would be no way she could look him in the eye. And no way she could put her hands on his back and think of anything but the way she’d clasped that same back while he was hot and hard inside her.
Bad, bad clown.
COLIN WOKE WITH a jerk, staring with wide eyes up at his ceiling, breath coming fast.
A dream. Damn it all to hell. He’d been on the last leg of the Ironman World Championship triathlon in Hawaii. He’d already sailed through the two-point-four-mile swim, powered through the one-hundred-twelve-mile bike ride and was approaching the finish line after the twenty-six-mile marathon barely out of breath, legs still strong, in first place by a hundred feet.
What a high. What a feeling. His body ultrafit, lean and strong. All those hours, all those years of training, coming down to this one explosive sprint to victory that would make him world champion. Just him, on top of the field, the dense crowd at the finish line already cheering for him. Stephanie was there, too, long blond hair swept back in a ponytail, blue eyes glowing, beaming with pride. Her man was number one and she was crazy about him.
Then he’d woken up, not on a triumphant path to victory, but in bed, back muscles contorting in agony, pain shooting down his right leg.
From king of fitness to short-term disability after falling off his bike like a six-year-old just learning to ride.
They said he was done. They said his back was too messed up ever to be able to ride long hours bent over his handlebars. They said disc injuries like his could be controlled but not healed.
Bull. Maybe some people could hear “no” and accept it, but Colin wasn’t one of them. “No” just meant he’d have to work harder, train harder. Fine by him. He was no stranger to hard work.
But he shouldn’t have tried to get back to training so soon. Demi had been right, damn it. He’d left her in exasperation last summer, disgusted that an athlete of his caliber should be doing exercises a couch potato could do without effort. Infuriated by her insistence he’d have to cut his recovery expectations to a more “realistic” level. Frustrated that she didn’t understand why his level of fitness couldn’t be compromised, not now, not this year, not when he had so much to accomplish. So he’d left. Tried another therapist, then another, both of whom had babied him even worse than Demi had. Finally he’d decided he could manage his own damn recovery. Who knew his body better than he did?
Pain shot through him, and he tried like hell to breathe through it, not to tense into the spasms, which made them worse.
Yeah, guess what, managing his own recovery had been a bad idea. Everything sounded like a bad idea these days. Including going back to see Demi.
Because there was another reason he’d left her. By the last of—what was it, three, four appointments? maybe five?—he’d spent the entire session desperately trying to keep from having an erection. He had no idea what she did to him, but it was hell. Demi couldn’t hold a candle to his ex-girlfriend Stephanie’s fresh California-girl beauty. Demi was dark; he preferred blondes. And
