Two Week Seduction (9 page)

She moaned in hunger while he just stared. She wanted this. God, she
loved
this. “I can do anything to you,” he murmured.

She didn’t disagree, and her pussy clenched around his finger.

He groaned. “I can do anything.”

“Yes.”

One word that had his hips jerking in hunger.

“Alea—”

“Now.”

He couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t want to stop. But the anger in him—at her, at himself—would make him too rough. He kicked her legs wider and positioned himself. And then he waited.

And waited.

“Please,” she said.

He slammed home.

Chapter Nine

Alea felt everything in her fill with John. From the inside out, he split her open and poured himself in.

It wasn’t just once. He did it again and again. He took her from behind in the best captive play she’d ever had. Then he flipped her over and did it again. Never had she had a better night of rough and tumble sex.

The hottest time was when he finally stripped her out of her clothes. Her boots went last as he tongued every part of her. It was so hot she even forgave him for ripping up her favorite pair of sheets. And now it was morning and…oh wait…was it afternoon?

She lifted her head to peer at her bedside clock. 1:47 in the afternoon. She smirked. Well, she often slept in after a good workout. And boy had she burned the calories last night!

She snuggled deeper into her pillow and sighed happily as his scent seeped into her soul. She remembered collapsing at the edge of the bed last night. Hadn’t they curled up diagonally on her double bed because he was so freaking tall? And she’d been toasty warm snuggled up next to him without a sheet or blanket. And now she was straight on the bed, curled into her pillow, and covered with her blanket.

Shit.

She sat up in bed and looked around. Yup. All clean. No men’s clothes, no big clunky boots, and no John. Even her clothing was picked up off the floor and folded neatly in the corner. When was the last time she’d done that?

Never.

She sat listening. She heard the sounds of the world outside, a few cars and the steady patter of Jacksonville’s regular afternoon rain.

“John?” She slid out of bed and pulled on a robe. “John, you still here?”

She didn’t need the silence to tell her that he was gone. Probably long gone. She sighed and shuffled out to her kitchen. The coffeemaker was on and filled with hot coffee. That was nice of him. Sticking around would have been nicer.

She grabbed a mug and poured. Five minutes later, she was back in her bedroom as she took stock. Her clothes were folded and set to the side. Her torn sheet was gone. Not just wadded up in the garbage, but really gone. Probably taken outside to the trash while she lay snoozing alone. At least he couldn’t scrub the scent of him off her fitted sheet. Or her skin. That would linger for a while, she hoped. A long while.

Dropping into her desk chair, she spun it around so her feet could settle onto the handy ottoman while she watched the rain fall. There were a zillion things she needed to do. Groceries. Laundry. Papers to grade, emails to delete. The normal details of her life. And a big stack of envelopes to peruse. Law schools. So far, she’d been accepted to five, but she didn’t want to read the acceptance packages. That was too much to process.

So she leaned back in her chair and focused on the thornier problem of John. Her goal had been to find out if the man matched her memories. The answer was yes, but that wasn’t exactly a good thing. The sex had been amazing. Explosive, mind-blowing, beyond perfect. So in the chemistry department, the man far exceeded her teenage fantasies. And that was quite a feat, given her adolescent imagination.

But she also remembered him as being frustratingly noncommunicative in high school. They’d had conversations that never seemed to connect no matter how hard she tried. She’d tried to talk to him about cars—didn’t all guys like cars?—and he’d said that his bike had been stolen. It was all very masculine in that I-clearly-don’t-think-the-same-way-as-you-do way. But she’d been talking Ferraris and Porsches. The flashy stuff that all the guys talked about. Everyone, that is, except John, who couldn’t even afford a new bike and took the bus everywhere.

So maybe his answers weren’t all that bizarre. She’d just been too young to understand them. There was something else she noticed as she mulled over all their conversations. John took the long view. He was never going to have a Ferrari, so why even talk about it?

The idea that even as a teen, John had never had pie-in-the-sky dreams hurt on a deep level. How had he gotten so cynical so young? He and Sam had been best friends, and after they’d left, Alea had become friends with John’s mother. She knew that his mom paid the bills as an LPN. That his older sisters had escaped the house and never come back. And that his dad… Well, she remembered him as a colorful character always with a funny story about business deals gone awry. That was it.

Pitiful. She ought to know more about the man she was sleeping with.

She was happily musing on ways to find out more when her cell phone rang. Actually, it was more of a muffled buzz, but it was insistent. Since she needed a second cup of coffee anyway, she pushed to her feet and decided to grab her phone on the way.

She found it on the counter and was disappointed to see it wasn’t John. She almost ignored it, but guilt made her answer anyway.

“Hello, Mom.”

“Finally! I’ve been calling all day!”

Alea leaned against the counter and closed her eyes. Maybe if she couldn’t see the world around her it would all go away. No such luck. Her mother kept talking.

“I was just about to drive over and make sure you were all right.”

No she wasn’t, but Alea didn’t argue. “How was bridge last night?” Her parents had a regular duplicate bridge group the first Friday of every month.

“That was last week, dear. Really.”

Was it? She peered at the school calendar on the wall. Oh yeah. Last week. “Sorry. I guess I haven’t had enough coffee yet.”

“Coffee at this hour? You need to get more rest, darling. You want to be at your peak when you go to law school.”

“I’ll try,” she answered as she went to the pot and poured herself another cup. The call was on familiar ground now. She could answer by rote. First it would be a question about law school, next about any man she might be dating, and then her mother would get to the real purpose of the call.

“So have you heard from any more schools?”

“Haven’t checked.”

“You haven’t checked! But—”

“Doing it now.” She walked over to her computer and thumbed it on. Meanwhile her mother rattled off all the good things about NYU. She loved going shopping in New York City, so she was all fired up about visiting while Alea went to school.

“No news,” Alea said as she scanned her email. “We’re just going to have to wait a little longer.” She didn’t bother checking the individual school websites. That would take too long and frankly, she wasn’t willing to face another choice. Five was already more than she could handle.

“Sam said you had a date last night.”

Just like clockwork, they were now on to boys. She didn’t mention John. Even Brad was iffy from her mother’s perspective. The man was applying to graduate programs in social work. Mom referred to those people as idealists who would have to pray their kids got scholarships.

“I did go out,” Alea answered honestly, thinking about her date with Brad, “but it didn’t really work out.”

“It’s just as well, dear. You’ll meet a better class of men in law school.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she answered, her mind returning to John. He seemed like a pretty good class of man, and she’d met him in high school.

“Well, are you ready for some really exciting news?” her mother said.

Ah. The true reason for the call. “Always, Mom.” Did she and Dad win the bridge tournament? Had Dad’s firm landed a big new client? She was almost breathless with curiosity…not.

“Candace passed the bar!”

Alea blinked. “Yeah, I know. She told me on Wednesday. And you told me on Thursday.”

“I know,” her mother said, her voice betraying a slight edge. “But we’re going to have a party for her!”

Oh crap. Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap. “How nice of you—”

“And I need you to help me plan it.”

Of course she did. Mom didn’t really understand that even though class ended by two, Alea was often tutoring or planning until dark. And that didn’t count the stuff she brought home on weekends.

“Mom, I’m kinda busy—”

“It won’t take that much time. And you’re not coaching volleyball right now.”

“Just fundraising for next year.”

“And the applications are all done. You’re just waiting to hear.”

“And going to interviews.” Or avoiding them, depending on how you looked at it.

“Didn’t you say you were going to Skype them?”

Oh right. She had said that.

“Come on, darling. It’ll be good practice for when you’re married and throwing parties for your husband.”

Her husband was going to throw his own damn parties.

“Plus, there’s always a senior partner somewhere who needs help with these things. I can’t tell you how useful it’s been for me to…” On and on it went. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. She was at eighteen minutes when Alea finally caved.

“Sure thing, Mom. Why don’t you email me your ideas?”

“I thought we could go out… Well, it’s too late for lunch now, isn’t it?”

Thank God for that.

“How about dinner? Your father misses you.”

Sure he did…not. He was too busy working. On the upside, she did like those country-club dinners. It’s not like she could afford steak on her own dime. “Okay. What time?”

“Come to the house at five. We’ll talk first, then go to dinner afterward.”

Her mother knew her so well. If it was just dinner, Alea could avoid all the planning. But this way she had to work first before she got the prime rib reward.

“See you then, Mom.” She clicked the phone shut and glared at the display. So much for her hoped-for weekend of hot sex with John. Now she was party planning with her mother.

With a disgruntled sigh, she headed for the shower.

…

John kicked back on a leather couch that probably cost a month’s pay, but he tried not to think about that. Instead, he focused on blowing up Sam’s video game tank. The TV put out the steady thwunk of artillery rounds while Sam cursed and tried to spin. Of course, tanks don’t spin, not even video ones, so a second later, his friend’s tank exploded with a satisfying ka-boom.

“Motherfu—” Sam cut off his words, did a quick scan of the room for his mother (gone, thank God), then finished his curse.

John laughed, feeling like he was eighteen again and sitting in his best friend’s basement. He
was
sitting in his best friend’s basement/game room, but it was Sam’s parents’ house. Sam’s home was in Vegas near Nellis AFB.

John drained his beer before starting the required taunting. “You pilots. Can’t drive anything under Mach 2.”

“Anything under Mach 2 isn’t worth driving.”

“I keep telling you, a quick jack is no fun for anyone.” He was just revving up into his better insults when they heard a woman’s voice.

“Sam? You downstairs?”

Mrs. Heling. Damn. Out of reflex, he smoothed down his hair and tried to hide the holes in his jeans, temporarily forgetting that it had been a decade since he’d slouched here in ratty clothing. Right now, he was in jeans, but they weren’t torn. He just had grease stains from trying to tune up his mother’s VW.

“We’re down here, Mom,” called Sam.

John set aside the remote. “I should go.”

“Nah, hang around. We’ll play some real games. And there’s more beer in the fridge.” He gestured to the wet bar on the sidewall.

His mother’s snake-skinned pumps appeared at the top of the stairs. “Did you get your work done, dear?”

“My work was avoiding another stuffy meal at the club, Mom. So yes, I accomplished that just fine.”

“Liar,” rang another voice. Alea. “You were avoiding party planning.”

“That, too,” Sam quipped.

Then she was there. A step behind her mother and looking like a carbon copy although mildly less expensive. Black pumps instead of snake skin. Pencil skirt instead of the flowing fifties style her mother favored. Dark gray jacket over a light gray silk blouse. The only color on her body was the red of her lipstick and that shock of hair that always made him go hard. Jesus, he was hard in Mrs. Heling’s basement. And not for the first time. He could have gone a lifetime without revisiting this particular humiliation.

“Why John! Look at you,” Mrs. Heling cried. “I haven’t seen you in ages. You’re all grown up now.”

He leaped up into a crisp stance, barely keeping himself from saluting. “Good evening ma’am. I just came by to see Sam for a moment. I’ll be going.”

“Be careful going home. You live in a terrible part of town,” the woman said before she looked at her son. “Did you get some dinner? I ordered a rib eye for you, Sam. It’s on the kitchen counter.”

Sam leaped off the couch. “Mom, you are the best woman in the world.”

“I’ll help you heat it up. You can make it too tough in the microwave.”

John grabbed his jacket and motorcycle helmet. It was the one thing he’d bought for himself with his first paychecks—a simple, easy to maintain Kawasaki. “Thanks for the beer, Sam.”

Sam paused halfway up the steps. There was a clog of people there now. Mrs. Heling already starting to climb back up, Alea frozen in the middle, and John trying to maneuver around Sam’s sister. “Hey, Alea’s here. You should just ask her.”

John winced. He was trying to do this without talking to Alea, which was a shitty thing to do. But if he knew what he wanted to say to her, he wouldn’t have ducked and run this morning.

“Ask me what?”

“It’s nothing—” John said, but Sam was already answering.

“He called me asking what your dish pattern is. Like I remember that shit.”

Alea turned to him with a startled expression. “My dish pattern?”

“For the two platters I broke. I was going to replace them but—”