Only for You (23 page)

“We’re all young once. It’s not a crime. That’s what you told me once,” she said softly. His hard mouth tilted slightly. It felt like a band was constricting her chest, and she realized why. “You really loved her, didn’t you?”

“I
thought
I did, yeah. I was wrong. I barely knew her,” he finally said gruffly. Something about the stiff manner in which he said it made Gia suspect that not only had he never admitted it out loud, he had rarely allowed the truth even to himself. He inhaled slowly. Her clasp on his hand tightened. “Have you ever met her? In your work?” he asked after a tense silence.

“I met her briefly at a Screen Actors Guild luncheon last year,” she admitted, cringing inwardly when she thought of how awestruck she’d been upon meeting Zoe. She recalled all the idiotic praise that had come rushing out of her in the presence of her patient, forbearing idol.

“You must know how magnetic she is, then. She was every bit as potent at age twenty-three. I couldn’t resist her. Most men couldn’t, and she couldn’t resist the ones that could help her with her dreams of getting out of a little town in the middle of the desert and into the Hollywood limelight. I must have seemed a likely candidate in the absence of any better options. But I was off for a tour of duty in Iraq within eight weeks of our marriage. I couldn’t get her out of Barstow fast enough. Nor could I do it in the grand fashion she wanted. When a movie producer wandered into the bar where she worked one day, scouting out territory for a shoot, her fate was sealed. So was mine. She got out of Barstow the second the producer twitched his finger,” Seth explained flatly.

“She went with him?” Gia asked, dread settling in her stomach. “Even though she was married to you?”

“She not only went with him, she married him a few weeks after our divorce was finalized. If you look up her bio, the man who walked into that bar in Barstow is the one listed as her first husband and the man who gave her her first break in Hollywood. She’s on husband number three presently—according to her official bio, anyway.” He glanced at her face and must have noticed the compassion she was feeling for him. He turned over his wrist and grasped her hand. “Don’t look like that. It’s not some dramatic tragedy. I was a kid. It stung for a while, especially when I started seeing her movies. Luckily, I had a life of my own, and I lived it fully. I was halfway across the world. Time and distance taught me how naïve I’d been. It wasn’t an easy lesson to learn, but I learned it.”

“You learned it so well, you avoid all actresses,” Gia said hoarsely, staring blankly out the wall of windows.

“It wasn’t just because of Zoe that I have that attitude,” he said sharply. “I worked in the industry when I left the Army. I entered it knowing full well it was a world of grandeur, but illusion as well. I’ve learned how to navigate it, over the years.”

“You’ve learned how to
thrive
in it. But you keep yourself at a distance from many of the people in it,” Gia said, nodding her head. Finally, she understood. She didn’t like it, but she understood. Something struck her and she laughed bitterly. “Why couldn’t you have fallen in love and married some crackpot I could disregard? I mean . . .
Zoe Lindsay
. She’s such a class act. I thought she was, anyway,” Gia added, frowning. “The way she ran off on you was about as classless as it gets.”

“We were young,” Seth repeated tiredly.

“Were you faithful to her while you were married?”

“Yes,” Seth replied calmly.

Gia just arched her brows significantly.

He twitched his shoulder. “None of it matters now. I just . . . wanted to tell you.”

“I appreciate it. I do,” she repeated when he met her stare. “I know it wasn’t easy for you to talk about. I get that you never
do
talk about it.” He nodded and pulled her hand onto his thigh. Both of them stared at their hands as he idly stroked her wrist with long fingers for several seconds of silence.

“Do you guys ever see each other?” Gia asked suddenly.

“Rarely. We’re always polite when we do. Lindsay—Zoe, I mean—has made it clear she doesn’t want the press to know she was married to someone else when she ran off with her producer. Image and all,” he said, giving her a dry glance.

“Do you mind? Playing along with her story?” Gia asked cautiously. She really couldn’t get a bead on whether or not Seth was still torn up from a youthful infatuation with a Hollywood goddess or if he was truly cynically disinterested.

“No,” he said. “I don’t like to think of myself being so stupid. Colluding with her helps me not to have to think about it.”

“And you’re such a private person. I’m sure the last thing you’d want is to have your name linked with hers.” She sighed heavily. “I think you’re far too forgiving of her though. She sounds like a real bitch.”

“She’s ambitious. That’s one of the things you admire about her. Isn’t it?”

Her mouth fell open at his quiet question. So, he
had
heard her say Zoe Lindsay was her idol.

“I do. I
did
, I mean,” she amended. “Isn’t it possible to be ambitious and decent at the same time?”

“Maybe.”

“You are,” she whispered fiercely.

He squeezed her hand. She lifted her face. He watched her with a sober focus. Her heart seemed to spasm in her chest. She held her breath when he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. “I’m not as close to the fire as you are,” he said against her mouth. “And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, you have the power to catch hold and burn brighter than even a Zoe Lindsay.”

A sense of helplessness went through her.

“Don’t worry,” Seth said firmly, dropping a kiss on her brow and then her cheek. He stood suddenly. She watched him in bemusement as he went and pushed the button to electronically lower the blinds.

“Why shouldn’t I worry?” she asked when he turned and headed back to the bed.

“Because those things are all thousands of miles away from us,” he said as he lay down on the bed next to her. “It won’t do any good for us to worry about them now. Let’s take a little nap.” His arms came around her. She gaped at him, but instinctively rolled over at his urging. He scooted behind her, his front to her back, spooning her.

“You want to take a
nap
?” she asked incredulously.

“Sure. Why not? We’re on vacation.”

Her chest felt very full, her throat achy. It seemed like such an unsurpassable breach had opened between them. He couldn’t trust what she was. She would never sacrifice her career goals, not that Seth was asking her to.

But nothing felt more tangible and more real in that moment than his embrace. How could she think he was so far away from her, when he was right here?

He began to stroke her hair, as if he sensed her unease and attempted to soothe it. His heat began to resonate into her. She wasn’t sure how it happened, but the knot in her chest slowly began to unwind. Her eyelids grew heavy as he caressed her shoulder and upper arm. Her flesh melted against his solid length.

“But nothing has been solved,” she said, resisting letting go. She wasn’t used to leaving things hovering in midair. She was a problem solver.

“Nothing is going to be solved in a day,” he rumbled from behind her. “You can’t force it. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Right now, relax,” he said before he kissed her ear and she shivered in pleasure.

It wasn’t as if she entirely agreed with him. But his deep, rough voice always reassured her . . . compelled her, the truth be told. She curled up closer to him, and succumbed to sleep.

When she opened her eyes later, the room was filled with slanting slivers of gold-red light and deep shadow. Evening was falling. Seth didn’t move from behind her, but somehow she sensed he was awake. Maybe it was the tension in his body.

“If I don’t watch it, I’m going to get used to falling asleep in the middle of the day,” she said in a hushed voice, just in case she was wrong about him being awake.

“It’s good for you. You need the rest,” he said, sliding his hand down the side of her body, cupping her curves lightly. She went still in awareness as he rubbed her hip in a small circular motion.

“It’s good for you too. You work just as hard as I do. Harder, no doubt, being the owner of your own company.”

He flexed his hips slightly, and her eyes sprang wide. No wonder she’d sensed tension in him. He must have awakened from his nap aroused. He buried his nose between her shoulder and neck and grazed his lips across her skin.

“Yeah. Hard,” he muttered near her ear, and she heard the thread of amusement in his gravelly voice. She burst into soft laughter, and he pressed his smile to her neck. “That’s nice,” he said, kissing her throat. “Can we go back to being not so serious?”

“Can you do that so easily?” she wondered.

“Maybe I want to stop thinking about what might not work between us and focus on what
does
.”

“Sex, you mean?”

His lips lingered on her pulse. “Yeah.” He lifted his head, but she felt his warm breath brush her neck. “But not just that.”

“What else?” she asked, glad his lips weren’t on her skin at the moment, lest he feel the leap in her pulse.

“Just being with you.”

She clamped her eyelids shut as emotion rushed her. He’d said it so concisely. She loved being with him too. His absence would hurt. She didn’t want to think about that now.

She turned partially onto her back, opening her eyes to study the shadowed angles and planes of his face. “You’re right.” She laughed to ease the tightness in her throat. “‘Not so serious’—is that what you said? What do you have in mind that’s nice and frivolous?”

His gaze traveled over her face, neck and chest. “Did I say ‘not so serious’?” he mused. “Wrong word usage. Completely,” he added, lifting his hand to her shirt. He began to unfasten the buttons, his patience and somber purpose making it hard for her to catch a full breath. He stopped at her ribs and deliberately moved back the plackets of the shirt, exposing her breasts. His nostrils flared slightly as he stared down at her. Her sex seemed to flex inward. She suddenly felt empty because he wasn’t fused with her.

“If this isn’t serious, I don’t know what is,” he growled softly.

His hand cupped her right breast. His head lowered. She sighed at the sweetness of the sensation of his warm, suckling mouth and pressing tongue on her nipple. They shifted in unison, seeking each other out like an invisible cord that joined them had just been drawn tight. She flexed her hip against his cock. He ground against her. He groaned low in his throat, the vibration resounding into her breasts, thrilling her.

He lifted his head and kissed her damp, erect nipple. Her fingers threaded into his hair at the tender, erotic gesture.

“You have the most beautiful breasts in existence.”

“I suppose that means a lot.” She gasped when he rolled the sensitive tip against his lips. “Since as you so unkindly reminded me in the car, you’ve seen your fair share of breasts before.” He took her back into his mouth and sucked firmly. Her hips jerked, her clit twanging with pleasure as he rolled his warm tongue over the crest, then sucked again. Her fingers clutched his hair.

“That
was
unkind,” he agreed a moment later, massaging her breast in his hand while he ran his lips against the inner swell of flesh. He was always so single-minded in his actions, so pure in his greed. She loved it. “Let me make it up to you,” he said next to her skin before he again plucked at her nipple.

“You’re doing a pretty good job of it,” she admitted, highly distracted by what he was doing.

“In the hot tub.”

Her eyes opened. “There’s a hot tub?”

Much to her disappointment, he lifted his head. She saw the gleam in his eyes, in his otherwise shadowed face. “Yeah. It’s outside, on the hill. John has walls built around it, but it’s open to the sky.”

“You’re not going to worry about some horny hunters or paparazzi hikers sneaking up on us?” she teased him.

He shook his head without hesitation.

“Are you becoming a little more trusting?” she asked.

“With that security perimeter, we’ll be alerted if anyone approaches.”

She smiled. “Of course. I should have known you were as suspicious as ever. John certainly is diligent about protecting Jennifer.”

He planted a firm, too-short kiss on her mouth. “He’s smart enough to protect what’s important,” he said before he sat up, pulling her along with him.

Seth punched in a code on a keyboard next to a door in the kitchen. They walked up a flight of stairs and stepped into a chilly autumn night. The hot-tub area was spacious, enclosed by wooden walls that matched the timber of the log home. Above them, the night sky was filled with more stars than Gia had ever seen in her life. The outdoor area featured not only loungers and a bubbling, steaming, spacious tub, but also two outdoor showers and a wide polished bench that looked like it might open for storage. It was lit by ambient outdoor lamps. Her eyebrows shot up in speculative interest when she noticed that the far wall was adorned with three mirrored panels, each about three foot in width and nearly spanning the height of the ten-foot-tall wooden wall. Seth noticed where she was looking. His small smile made excitement spike through her.

“John has the wall heated, so the mirrors don’t steam.”

He set the two large towels he’d retrieved from the bathroom a moment ago on the bench and immediately began to strip. She blinked, distracted by the sight of his flexing, taut abdomen muscles, hard chest and bulging arm muscles as he whipped off his shirt and tossed it aside.

“So John and Jennifer have a thing for mirrors?” she said as she kicked off the flip-flops she’d donned to walk outside.

“That would be my guess,” he replied dryly as he attacked his button fly. Gia quickly used the elastic band she’d wrapped around her wrist to tie back her long hair into a haphazard bun/pony tail.

“But isn’t that a bit . . . unusual?” she asked, unbuttoning her jeans, her gaze following Seth’s progress with a tight focus as he jerked down his pants and boxer briefs at once. She caught a glimpse of his cock and long, strong, hair-sprinkled thighs before he bent to pull the garments over his feet. He wasn’t as erect as he’d felt in bed a few minutes ago, but he was still long and firm and quite an eyeful. She moved her feet restlessly. The slate stone floor was very chilly.

“I don’t see anything unusual about it,” Seth said, tossing his jeans and underwear on the bench. “I thought you liked them too.”

“But . . . didn’t you say John was blind?” she asked awkwardly, discombobulated by his casual reference to a topic she’d never admitted to anyone but him. She shimmied out of her jeans.

“Yeah,” Seth said. He grabbed the folded towels and sauntered naked across the terrace and set the towels close to the tub. She watched him as he lowered into the pool, regretting when his strong legs, muscular ass and cut torso were submerged in the bubbling water, depriving her of the awesome sight. He sat on the circular bench and looked at her with his eyebrows raised in droll expectancy.

She hastened to draw her jeans and underwear off her legs.

“Leave the shirt on,” he called.

“What?” she asked, confused by his request.

“Yeah,” he said thickly, his gaze between her thighs making her feel like she was in the steaming water already. Except for her feet, that is, which were quickly turning to blocks of ice. “Leave it.”

“All right. Whatever. I didn’t realize it was so cold out here,” she muttered, hurrying across the deck and shivering. “Oh, that feels
good
,” she mumbled earnestly when her icy feet hit the hot water. She settled on the lower bench next to Seth, sighing with pleasure. Water bubbled energetically around her chest. It felt divine. She saw her smile through the rising steam in the reflection of the mirrors, reminding her of their topic.

“If John is blind, why would he think mirrors are important?”

“Maybe they’re for Jennifer,” Seth said.

Gia considered and nodded.

“Maybe he likes Jennifer to tell him what she’s seeing.”

Her eyebrows went up in prurient interest. “How would you know something like that? Locker-room talk between guys?”

Seth shook his head. “No. Just something John joked about once when we were together. He mentioned porn for the blind.” He noticed her dubious expression. “It’s basically people describing other people having sex. It’s on the Internet.”

Her mouth fell open in amazement. She glanced at the mirrors again, assessing. She could see her and Seth’s reflection quite well, despite the curling steam. “Oh, I see,” she said slowly.

He laughed quietly and knelt in front of her in the water. “Do you?” he asked amusedly, a god-awful sexy smile lingering on his firm lips. He was usually so somber, intimidating even. To see him laugh and smile and joke with her was a potent aphrodisiac. She could get used to a playful Seth. Of course, she was kind of partial to a stern Seth, as well . . . given the right situation.

He put his hands on her waist and lifted her body to the upper bench. The water sloshed around her, the waterline lowering to her ribs. She glanced down and saw that the wet cotton shirt was plastered to her breasts. The night air was cool. Her nipples were clearly defined against the clinging wet cloth of the shirt.

“Lecher,” she joked softly.

His grin widened. She’d hastily buttoned up the shirt earlier when they’d gotten up from bed to come outside. Seth cupped her breasts in both hands and shaped her to his palms, examining her with salacious intent. She whimpered softly when he ran his thumbs over the beading nipples, outlining their circumference, rubbing the distended tips. “You didn’t think I was done playing with you, did you? I was just getting started.”

His inspection of her breasts in his hands had her steaming more than the hot water. When he leaned down and inserted just the tip of one between his pursing lips, then gently scraped his straight front teeth front over the cloth-covered tip, she squirmed in arousal on the hard bench. He kissed the crest through the wet fabric, and she saw his smile.

“Hold still,” he murmured, backing away slightly. His gaze on her was smoky as he began to unbutton her shirt. When he’d finished, he pulled on the end of the plackets, exposing and bracketing her bare breasts. He tied off a snug knot beneath the bottom curves, and then reached into the pocket he’d formed and lifted the globes of flesh higher over the cloth. Gia glanced down in amazement. The taut fabric pulled tight, lifting and emphasizing her thrusting breasts. They were shiny with moisture from the steam. It looked very . . . naughty.

He glanced at her and smiled. He’d highlighted her in just the way he wanted.

“I can practically see the canary feathers hanging out of your mouth,” she murmured.

“Don’t blame me for thinking you’re beautiful.”

He leaned down and sucked a nipple into his mouth with hot, unapologetic greed. Air soughed out of her lungs. Arousal shot through her, hot enough for her to feel, even in the steaming pool of water. He was a little more ruthless than usual with her, drawing on her with a firm suck that had her eyes crossing. After a thigh-clamping moment for Gia, he lifted his head and lifted her breast with his hand, inspecting her nipple closely. It had grown rosy, the tip defined and stiff. His mouth shaped into a snarl before he bent and gave the other nipple the same treatment, seemingly utterly focused on his task.

“Seth,” she muttered after a minute, her fingers tangled in his steam-dampened hair. She couldn’t take this anymore. He lifted his head after a moment, her nipple popping from his sucking mouth with a lewd sound.

“Tell me what you see,” he demanded.

Her gaze drifted over to the mirrors. She saw his dark head hovering close to her flushed, damp breasts. He’d made the nipples look large and vividly pink with his attentions, the contrast stark in comparison with the surrounding pale, curving flesh. And the shirt . . .

“You made me look like some kind of X-rated Daisy Duke,” she muttered.

He chuckled and slowly kissed the nipple nearest to the mirrors. “You can do better than that,” he chastised her for the description. He began to slide his pursed lips up and down over the erect crest, using the tip of his tongue to flick the center nubbin. Her clit pinched tight. She moaned and clasped his head to her as frissons of excitement and pleasure coursed through her. “I like how different you look than me,” she said, her gaze now locked to the erotic image of his mouth and hand on her breast.

“Hmmm?”
he asked, sounding both interested and preoccupied, as he used his hands to plump her breasts together and continued to suck her nipple in and out between her lips.