Cross-Checked (13 page)

I stepped back into the ballroom, the flashing lights and loud music a jolt to my senses after the relatively quiet bathroom. But the song had slowed and with it so had the excited crowd. Couples swayed and shoulders brushed as the singer crooned a haunting love song about destined souls that sent a shiver up my spine.

I’d just placed my purse on the table when a thick forearm circled my waist. In a tight, snapping motion my bare back was pressed against a hot, concrete chest.

“I thought you’d slipped away,” drawled a deep voice in my ear, “without dancing with me.”

Breathlessly I turned within the circle of the viselike grip. Grinning down at me was Ramrod. His brown eyes twinkled and his mouth tipped in a confident grin.

“Why would I slip away?” I asked, placing my hands on his chest as he pulled me closer still.

“Perhaps you don’t like dancing.”

I tugged at my bottom lip with my teeth. “I like lots of things.” I glanced over at table eight. It was empty.
Oh god, he’s dancing with her.
No doubt all smoochy and lovey, gazing into each other’s eyes and wondering why they’d broken up. “One of the things I like best is dancing,” I said, forcing myself to smile up at Ramrod.

“Excellent.” He stepped toward the dance floor, tugging me with him.

I braced my heart and tilted my chin. Refused to look for them. Refused to search Brick out. He could see me. He could see me dancing with Ramrod, being held by the handsome captain of the team.

Once we were on the dance floor, Ramrod pulled me into his arms. He was taller than Brick and a little wider too. I felt tiny in his embrace and, despite my heels, my eye-line was only at his bow tie.

“You like this band?” I asked.

“Yeah, their tunes are real catchy.” He grinned, settling his hands on the bare flesh of my back. They were big and firm as they smoothed over my skin and dipped into the column of my spine until one sat in the hollow of my back and one between my shoulder blades. “I love your dress,” he said, bending his head to my ear.

I breathed in his hot scent, woodsy but at the same time sweet like berries, it reminded me of a walk through the woods in autumn. He pressed his body against mine as he guided me gently around the floor. From my chest to my knees, we were connected. His suit was of the finest material and silky soft on my exposed flesh.

He brushed his lips against my ear. His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “There’s no ring on your finger and there’s no man on your arm, Carly. So I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes by dancing with you, am I?”

I swallowed. “No, no toes and can we keep it that way? I think you’d break mine if you stood on them and I’m rather attached to my feet, can’t pedal so well without them.”

He gave a huff of amusement and pulled back to look at my face. “There must be someone.”

I was silent.

“Brick likes you,” he said. “I saw the way he looked at you at the photo shoot and the way you were together on the
Ray Lenon Show
. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you.”

I shrugged and curled my fingers into the shoulders of his tux jacket. Prayed that Ramrod hadn’t heard the rumors from New York about our adventures in The Waldorf. “He took me to lunch.”

“Just lunch?”

“Yes.”

“You expect me to believe that?” His brows rose.

“Why not?” Because it had been just lunch
that
time we were together. Well, lunch and a kiss that made me want to rip his clothes from his body with my bare teeth.

“Brick wouldn’t do
just
lunch. Not with a gorgeous woman like you.” His eyes narrowed and a teasing smile played on his lips. “I know how his filthy mind works.”

“Well, you’re just going to have to believe me on this one, Ramrod”

“Please, call me Rick. My friends, family and gorgeous women dancing in my arms usually call me by my real name.”

“Rick,” I said, looking him in the eye. “Brick took me to lunch and then dropped me back at my condo. Nothing more.” My heart thudded at the thought of Ramrod now mentioning the newspaper gossip. I would look such a fool.

But his face broke into a grin and his eyes sparkled naughtily. “Hey, it wouldn’t matter if it was more.” His hand sank from the dip in my back until it tucked beneath the material of my dress. His fingers brushed the first swell of my right buttock.

“What do you mean?” His touch made my skin hungry for more connection. Connection with a man. But it wasn’t this one. This wasn’t the man I wanted. Despite his obvious interest and his undeniable good looks, I craved another. “What do you mean it wouldn’t matter if it was more?” I asked again.

“Can you keep a secret?” he whispered, his hot breath flooding my ear.

“Sure.”

“When he was with Mae, one night we all drank too much. Vipers had just wiped the floor with the Gamblers and she’d just gone Platinum. We were all on a total high in a Vegas hotel.”

“What are you saying?”

He gave a decidedly carnal smile as his cheeky finger dipped into the cleft of my bare butt cheeks. “We all got it on together in the bedroom. She was a very happy lady that night, I can tell you. And we were two very obliging guys.”

My mouth opened but no words came out.

His eyes twinkled. “A threesome, Carly. You ever done a threesome?” His head dropped until his lips hovered just a millimeter away from mine. “You ever had two guys at the same time loving you, adoring you, exploring you?”

My heart pounded and my body weakened with a mixture of jealousy and excitement. Mae had gone to bed with Brick and Ramrod at the same time. How greedy could a girl get? I’d be happy, more than happy, I’d be in heaven with just Brick. An answer formed in my mouth, an answer that would have been no. I’d never indulged in a threesome. I’d done many things with Tim but not that.

Suddenly a shadow loomed beside us.

I looked up.

“This song’s over,” Brick said, glowering out of his one good eye at Ramrod.

Chapter Seven

Ramrod lifted his face from mine, looked at Brick and smirked. “No, it’s not.”

“It is for you. Take a hike.” Brick jabbed his thumb over his shoulder.

“You gonna make me, rookie?” Rick’s body tensed against mine as a pulse of male belligerence shot through the air.

“I haven’t been a rookie for years and you know it. Now piss off.” Brick took a step closer.

Ramrod huffed. He didn’t release me.

I gulped as my mind tried to figure out what was going on. Why wasn’t Brick dancing with Mae? And who did he think he was after not calling me all week suddenly barging over here like he wanted to cross-check my dance partner.

“I’m dancing with Rick,” I said and curled my hands over Ramrod’s shoulders.

“Rick?” Brick looked from me to Ramrod. “Since when did anyone call you Rick?”

“It’s a privilege only beautiful, single women get,” Ramrod said, staring at Brick with a decidedly amused glint in his eye.

Brick’s whole face tensed even further, if that was possible. His jaw tightened and his lips pressed together. “I won’t tell you again,” he said through gritted teeth. “And then I make you,
Rick
.”

Ramrod lifted his hands from me and held them palms up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay.” His face cracked into a grin. “We wouldn’t want to make a scene now, would we? Show ourselves up for being a bunch of hooligans. Especially not when the soccer team are here and well on their way to being completely plastered. They can have the title for being the most uncouth sportsmen for a change.” He stepped back and gave me a wink. “Just lunch, eh? Like I believe you now, Carly.”

He melted into the sea of couples.

“What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” Brick snapped as his broad arms encased me and tugged me close. His head stooped to mine and he became my entire world. It was as if there was a magnetic force between us and until we touched the force was a constant tug I was battling.

“I’m not playing at anything,” I said, trying to hide the fact that being in his arms was like coming home. “And who do you think you are, waltzing over here and grabbing me away from a sweet guy I’m getting to know?”

“About as sweet as fucking battery acid,” Brick snarled as his hot hands spread out on my naked back.

I felt the calluses on the pads of his palms from where he gripped his hockey stick. A shiver went up my spine, a delicious shiver that just hadn’t hit me when Ramrod touched me. “I’m entitled to dance with other men. You don’t own me,” I said in as firm a voice as I could muster.

“I know I don’t own you.” He frowned. “I never said I did.”

“Well, actions speak louder than words.” I tilted my chin and pushed my hands against his chest. Tried to step away.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He tightened his hold and pulled me closer still.

“Mae.”

“Mae?”

“Yes, Mae, Mae French. The beautiful, award-winning country singer you dated for a whole year and who you brought here tonight.”

His brows lifted and his poor swollen eye stretched.

“Now let me go so you can get back to her,” I said. “She’s probably wondering where you’ve got to.” That had to be the hardest thing I’d ever said in my life. The words practically sliced my tongue as they grated out.
Why couldn’t I just tell him I loved him? Why had I let this get so complicated?

His face creased into a smile.

“What?” I frowned, shoved again but still went nowhere. “What the hell was is so amusing?” My heart was breaking and he thought it was funny.

“Carly.”

“I mean it, Brick. I’m not interested. If you’re back with her then there’s nothing between us.”

“Carly, listen. I’m not back with her. What you’re saying is all wrong.”

“What?” I stilled.
Wrong?

His face fell serious. “Sure, we’re friends, she’s a great lady. But there’s nothing romantic going on between us. Hasn’t been for a long time.”

“But” My mind whirred, trying to process what he had just said.
There was nothing romantic between them?

“Look over your shoulder.” He spun us ninety degrees and I gripped him all the tighter. “Look who she’s dancing with and look
how
she’s dancing with him.”

Through the flashing lights and past several other couples, I spotted Mae. She was pressed up against Wolf. She had her head tucked neatly into his neck with her eyes closed. Her palms were spread out on his shoulder blades as if she couldn’t touch enough surface area of him at once.

“But, I don’t understand, I thought…—”

“You thought wrong. If you’d just asked you could have saved a lot of nonsense going on in that pretty little head of yours.”

“I tried. You didn’t return my calls,” I said with a frown.

We stared at each other. I could see just a hint of his pupil between the swollen lids on his right eye. His mouth was stern, his brows pulled low. Eventually he sighed and said, “I didn’t call back because I was mad at you.”

“Why?”
What did he have to be mad about?

“You left when I was asleep.”

“I untied you.”

“Yeah, sure, one arm.”

“You looked content enough.”

“Hell, yeah, but I’d told you I wasn’t finished, that I would be good to go again in ten minutes.”

“I was tired. I wanted to go to bed.”

His head dipped so his lips were by my ear. “So you should have fucking slept with me and we could have picked up in the morning where we’d left off. Because I had every intention of returning the favor. Jesus, you were so hot, so…predatory, and quite honestly it was a huge turn-on.” He lowered his mouth to my bare shoulder and his breath washed over me, hot and soft. “I wanted you, Carly,” his tone turned gentler. “So I went along with your game. But I never agreed to waking up alone, trussed up and covered in damn lipstick.”

I slid my hands up his lapels and rested them on either side of his thick neck.

He looked into my face. His voice deepened and his eyes softened. “I wanted to do what we’d talked about on the phone. I wanted to feel you naked beneath me, writhing in pleasure as I made you come, over and over, until you could take no more. And then I would have given you more anyway. Made you squirm and squeal so you knew that I was the only one who’d ever make you so hot, so alive.”

I already knew that. He didn’t have to tell me or prove it. I felt his pulse beat above his stiff white collar. It was as if we were the only people in the room. I could barely even hear the music anymore. “I’m sorry,” I said, desperately wanting to take away the hurt in his face. I pushed up and pressed my lips to his.

For a second his lips were rigid. As if he wasn’t going to give. Then he kissed me back, softly, sweetly, and my heart dissolved into a puddle of longing. I pressed against him harder, pulled his face to mine and probed his mouth with my tongue. He let out a rumble of approval and flattened his palm into the base of my dress, squeezing me up against his rapidly hardening cock.

It was as though a ten-ton weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Mae wasn’t back with Brick. She’d been at the game to watch Wolf. She was here with Wolf. Brick wasn’t in love with her. He wanted me. He wanted to make me come over and over and then make me take more. My whole body leaned heavily into his. I just needed a moment to revel in that wonderful new bit of information. Bask in it like I would a ray of sunshine on a rainy day.

His fingers tickled down my neck, over my shoulder and smoothed into the channel of my back. “Carly,” he murmured into my ear. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Against his chest I nodded. The music had picked up, something fast and pounding, “strawberries and screams” seemed to be the predominant lyric. People bounced around us. Arms waved in the air.

Brick kept an arm tight around my waist and steered me past Mary and Philip. They were gyrating their pelvises against one another as though they were naked. Mary’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes held the look of a woman planning on cramming ten years of fun into one hedonistic night.

* * * * *