he couldn’t think rationally. He couldn’t think at all…beyond the fact that he had to have her. He swept his arm across the desk behind her, knocking her papers and a cup to the floor. Ceramic cracked and broke, but he didn’t care. He cared about nothing but her. Always her.
His hands shook as he fumbled with his zipper, pulling his pants down. And he took her. She was ready for him, wet and hot as he thrust inside her.
Her nails sank into his shoulders then scraped down his back, as she shifted and arched against him. He lowered his head and caught first one rose-hued nipple then the other in his mouth, laving it with his tongue.
Her fingers tangled in his hair as she pressed his head to her breast. He reached between their bodies, sliding his fingers through her golden curls until he found the nub of her femininity. He pressed and stroked the pad of his thumb back and forth across it until she came, screaming against his lips as he kissed her deeply. His tongue slid in and out of her mouth, matching his rhythm as he moved in and out of her body. Her muscles clutched at him, holding him inside her.
And he came. He broke the rules of her little game—as he screamed her name. He couldn’t pretend that they were strangers. He could only pretend that they could actually be together…even though he knew they had no future.
Paige pulled her spaghetti straps back up her shoulders, making certain her dress wasn’t on backward. The back dipped as low as the bodice. Warm lips brushed the bare skin between her shoulder blades. Shivering despite the heat racing through her, she leaned away and protested, “Only the first drink was on the house.”
“Miss Kitty never kicked Marshal Dillon out of bed,” Ben protested, then groaned as he flopped back down on the couch in her office.
The supple burgundy leather shifted beneath him, nearly knocking Paige from where she perched on the edge, trying not to touch him again so that she would be strong enough to resist temptation. She smiled at his reference to the old western series about the female bar owner and the lawman. Late at night, after making love, they’d often watched reruns of the series.
“You’re not Marshal Dillon,” she told her ex-husband, who was actually a renowned cardiologist. But tonight, Dr. Benjamin Davison had been just a stranger in a bar. For these trysts, they usually pretended to be strangers. Unfortunately, they really weren’t pretending despite having been married for ten years.
“And you’re not Miss Kitty, Paige.” He wedged his elbow behind his head, his dark eyes studying her. “This is crazy, you know….”
“Sleeping with you in my office? Yes, this is crazy,” she agreed. But the craziness had everything to do with the fact that she’d never been able to resist him. She picked up his sweater from the floor and tossed it onto his chest, trying to conceal the wide expanse of hair-dusted muscles from her view.
To further steel her resolve, she stood up and padded barefoot across the hardwood floor to her desk. She needed some distance between them—even though moving out and divorcing him hadn’t given her nearly enough distance. Every time they’d run into each other in the four years since the divorce, they’d wound up in each other’s arms. Her hands shook as she picked up the papers and files he’d swept to the floor.
“It is crazy,” he agreed—a little too heartily for her pride. “I didn’t come here for this….” He stood up and stretched, muscles rippling in his arms, chest and wash-board lean stomach.
Paige bit her bottom lip to hold in a lustful sigh; it wasn’t fair. At forty-three, he was supposed to have a potbelly and love handles; he wasn’t supposed to be as lean as he’d been in his twenties and thirties. She held in another sigh, a mingled one of relief and disappointment as he pulled on his pants and dragged his sweater over his head. His hair, the soft mixture of rich, dark chocolate and glittery silver, was mussed from the cashmere.
“So you came here for that free drink,” she quipped, refusing to let him get to her again. Still. She had worked so hard to get him out of her heart; she couldn’t let him back in. Because he had never let her in…
“I came here to talk to you,” he said, “just talk.”
She tensed, holding back the hope that threatened to rush over her. She could not allow herself to believe that he was really willing to share with her. During their marriage, he had shared very little of himself with her. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I want to know what the hell you’re doing,” he said, lifting a hand to gesture around the office. “I want to know why you quit the law practice and bought this club. What’s going on with you?”
Despite having tamped down the hope, her heart constricted with regret. “You don’t want to talk, Ben. You want me to talk.”
“I want to understand you.”
We don’t always get what we want. She couldn’t speak the words aloud, not without her voice cracking with pain. She’d wanted to understand him, too, so badly, but he’d never given her the chance.
“Why?” she asked. “Why now?”
“You’re not acting like you.”
And divorcing him, no matter how much she’d loved him, had been? And making love with him every time they had seen each other since?
“No, I’m not,” she admitted, but he was the one who caused her to act out of character. Falling for him at all had been out of character; she’d known better than to risk her heart on anyone.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, dragging a hand over his hair, settling it back into place. “Why would you give up a career you love, that you lived for, for this?”
She’d lived for him, not her job. But she hadn’t given up practicing law; the law practice had given up on her. Pride choked her, so that she couldn’t admit she’d been fired. Finally she found her voice and injected a sassy edge, “Why not?”
“You don’t belong here….”
She shivered in reaction to those chilling words. Was Ben’s the voice she’d been hearing? “That’s not fair,” she murmured. He’d already messed with her heart; she couldn’t have him messing with her head, too.
“You’re cold,” he observed, closing the distance between them with two strides. But he didn’t touch her; he just stood close, so close that the silk of her dress brushed against his pants, the skirt swirling around his legs, binding them together. But even though there was so much binding them together, so much more kept them apart.
So many secrets. His. She had no idea what he kept from her; she just knew that he kept something. But more than secrets had caused their breakup—the loss and pain that they hadn’t been able to share.
“Tell me why you would do this,” he urged. “You have to know it’s a mistake.”
If so, it wasn’t the first one she’d ever made.
“I don’t—”
“You know nothing about running any club,” he said, “let alone one like this.”
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