Attitude (10 page)

"I seduced—"

"You did. And while I loved every minute of it, a man knows that when a woman commandeers his brainless best friend, she's after control, which usually means she's afraid of losing it herself"—he watched her face—"with him."

"Dear goddess, I've just slept with Dr. Ruth."

He laughed, lifted her chin so their eyes could meet. "Admit it. You're scared."

She started to say something, he guessed a denial, then stopped and looked away for a minute before turning her gaze back to his. "All right, I'm scared. Okay?" She still looked defiant, but she also looked as if she might cry.

Cal's gut clenched. "I'm not in this bed to hurt you."

"Men." She shook her head, looked at him as if he were the village idiot. "You just don't get it, do you?"

"Get what? And drop the '
men
' thing, okay. You make us sound like a box of cheap panty hose."

"Not a bad analogy, considering they all run—sooner or later."

"Yeah? Well I'm not going anywhere. Not until you tell me why you're so determined not to ease up around me."

"I don't want to 'ease up' around you"—she stopped, looked away, then back at him—"because I do not want to fall for another guy who won't be bringing me flowers on our golden anniversary."

"Which takes us back to your virginity promise, aluminum suits, leather underwear, and crepe shoes."

"I never wore crepe shoes!" That denial out, she hesitated, scrunched up her brow. "I dressed like that because I didn't want to lead anybody on, attract the wrong kind of attention."

"Epic fail." He smiled at her discomfort. "You've been attracting my attention twenty-four-seven since you walked into Cinema Neo."

"And you've attracted mine." She puffed out a loud breath, and mirroring his position, sat up and leaned against the headboard. "Show me a pretty face, and I'm a goner."

Cal didn't much like the pretty face comment, but he let it go. He'd known his share of women who were out for the hunk-of-the-month award, but his gut told him Ginger wasn't one of them. He nudged her chin until she was looking at him. "Maybe not. Maybe you just recognize real potential when you see it."

She gave him a wicked smile. "Somehow I don't think we're talking about the same kind of potential, Beaumann. I'm talking roast beef Sundays, minivans, and report cards. I think you're thinking more along the lines of this." She ran her hand up his sheet-covered thigh and over a part of him that didn't think logically at the best of times, let alone while being stroked toward oblivion.

He gripped her hand, sucked in some air. "You're doing it again."

"What?"

"Taking control." He lifted her hand to his mouth, turned it and kissed her palm. "And proving my point, about your being scared of letting go with me."

She looked mulish. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that guys don't like talking after sex?"

He gave her a half smile and his breath faltered. "Unless they've had the best sex of their life and are imagining how deep, wet, and hot it's going to be the next time. When they make love." He reached for her. "Because that's what I'm going to do now, Ginger. I'm going to make love to you until you beg for more."

"Beg, huh?" She slanted him a disbelieving look.

"Beg," he promised.

When she came—just the tiniest bit reluctantly—into his arms, he kissed her until that snag in his throat grew to the size of a balloon, and the ache in his gut threatened to damn near unman him. God, what a beautiful mouth; what fantastically soft skin. Cal deepened the kiss, knew for certain he could be in serious trouble with this special woman, but couldn't make himself care. Because he had the dim thought she was exactly the kind of trouble he'd been looking for all his life.

He stretched her out beneath him, tossed the blanket aside, and started to kiss his way down to the begging zone. Ginger's studded navel had been his first surprise, but the tattoo he now discovered on her inner thigh brought his head up: a simulated postal sticker, black, red, and blue, stating boldly,
Fragile, Handle With Care.

When he touched it, traced it with his middle finger, he heard a raspy grumble from the headboard, "Don't laugh, Beaumann, or I'll have to kill you."

He smiled, bent his head, and licked the sticker. When he raised his head to look at her again, his smile slipped. Suddenly, Ginger Cameron was serious business.

He ran his hands between her thighs. Hot. Smooth... unyielding. He applied more pressure, and slipped one hand toward the slick curls at the apex of her thighs. He drew his finger lightly, pencil straight across her opening. "Let me see you, Ginger. Open for me." Another stroke, slower. His finger prowling for her hard tight nub.

Her sharp intake of air told him he'd found it, and she opened her legs. He looked up to see her eyes drift close, her tongue sneak out to moisten her lips.

Easy, Beaumann, take it slow and easy.

"I'm going to open you up, sweetheart. Spread you wide. Then I'm going to look at you. Just look." He parted her, dropped his gaze to her swollen, moist sex. Shades of peach and pink, glistening, ready. He was so hard, so tight, he was breakable. "You're incredible. All velvet and honey. Absolutely incredible."

He touched her clitoris, softly. Rolled it, gently.

Ginger fisted her hands in the sheets, arched up, and offered herself, offered heaven. He took it.

He covered her with his mouth, licked her with easy, expert strokes, lazily encircling her moist plump tip with the tip of his tongue. Then sucking it remorselessly.

She thrashed above his head, tearing the fitted sheet from its mooring. "Cal... I can't hold on. I shouldn't—"

"Yes, you should, lover. And you will." He wasn't sure if he said it aloud or just to himself. He only knew his control was washing away with every dewy drop Ginger gave him.

He pressed his thumb on her sensitized tip—and his aching, throbbing erection to her wildly rocking pelvis. When he found her rhythm, he went in on liquid silk, sank deep into her heat.

Ginger raked her nails across his back, dug them into his shoulders, while her vaginal walls clenched and unclenched along the length of him in a mind-bending internal massage. He used the last of his willpower to pull himself out, rest the head of his clamoring cock in the folds of her opening.

"You want this?" He nudged her clit, rubbed her seam. "You'll have to tell me."

Her eyes bright with sex, opened to bore into his. "I want you, Cal." She arched high and shuddered, a shudder he felt to his bones—and every nerve ending in his hammering cock. "But if I have to tell you that, maybe you should go back and take Sex 101." She rocked up, caught the first steeled inch of him, then more.

Halfway in, his brain went hollow, and his world shrunk to the bridge of hard hot flesh joining him to Ginger.

Her body was boiling, steaming quicksand pulling him in, sucking him, nursing on him. He lifted himself, grabbed her buttocks, and buried himself to where her muscle and sinew stopped him.

"Oh, Cal..." She thrust her pelvis up, hard against him, but his looming release deafened him. He strained to hold back. Wait.

Pay attention...

Wait.

She moaned, long and low, and convulsed around him—her insides tightening, even her juices eddying inward. Every restraint gave way and Cal exploded, his aching throbbing body depleting itself, exhausting itself in tandem with hers.

A synchronous orgasm.
A damned miracle.

If the universe had torn itself apart in that same second, it would have come in a far second.

* * *

Ginger forced her eyelids to open, then quickly sealed them shut again. She should have closed the blinds; the sunrise, all perky and promising, was more than she could handle without a cup of coffee in her shaking hand. Maybe a jolt of caffeine would quiet her wild mix of morning-after emotion, an unruly, riotous crowd of fear, satisfaction, anticipation, and unbridled delight. Unfortunately, fear stood the tallest. Not that she'd admit to it, of course.

Last night...

She turned to see Cal's dark head burrowed deep into her pillow, and her heart swelled to her throat. She looked into the sun streaming in her window, decided to blame the light for the misty bit of tears gathering in her eyes. She took a deep breath and reached to gently smooth his tousled hair, careful not to wake him.

Something grabbed her heart and squeezed. It felt suspiciously like love. Cal was right, she did lead with her heart.
She was such a sap.

She looked again at the darkly handsome man in her bed and stopped breathing. Oh, she'd fallen all right. Too late for denials. And from where she sat—or lay as the case may be—there was nothing to do but strap on a parachute. Because she wasn't about to swear off Cal Beaumann.

Maybe this was it, maybe she and Cal...

No!

There'd be no wishful thinking. No plans for the future. She was going to do what the guys did, live in the sexual moment and enjoy it.

And, as the High Goddess of single, searching females everywhere knew, Cal could supply plenty of enjoyment.

Because when he stopped talking about sex and actually got down to the doing of it, he was a giant among men. She smiled, stretched in satisfaction. She briefly considered waking him, but decided he'd earned his sleep—and a pot of fresh coffee to wake up to. But she couldn't resist leaning over to feather kiss his ear before carefully turning back the covers and getting out of the bed.

She threw on a short purple velour robe and stood looking down at him a moment longer, sighed, and headed for the shower.

She was rinsing her hair when he stepped into the steam-filled bathroom and opened the shower door. His dark hair was rumpled and spiked, his face dark with a night's growth of beard. He was fully, magnificently, erect. "Hell," he said. "You're even more beautiful in the morning."

She touched his stubbled jaw. "I'd like to say the same, Beaumann, but..." She smiled. She wasn't about to tell him he looked like every woman's dream, because she figured he'd probably heard it a million times. And she definitely didn't plan on telling him he took her breath away. What she might do was show him.

He laughed. "You abandoned me in a strange bed," he accused, his eyes raking over the whole of her wet, naked body.

She pushed her tangled hair from her face. "That the first time a woman's done that?"

He appeared to consider that, then smiled. "Damn. I think it was."

"Then you'd best get in here, so I can show you how sorry I am." She reached for him and pulled him under the hot streaming water.

He took her in his arms, kissed her thoroughly, then lifted his face to the rushing water. Now as wet as she was, he shook his head, and water flew from his thick sodden hair. He pushed her back against the shower stall, looked down at her. "This 'showing me you're sorry.' Will it take long?"

"That depends"—she ran a hand from his chest to his morning erection and grasped him in her hand—"how long you can hold on to this." Ginger loved holding him, caressing him, feeling his shudder, sensing his open pleasure at her slightest touch. This morning she planned to do more than touch.

She heard him suck in a breath and his hand wrapped around hers. "Not long if you keep up that kind of pressure."

"And if the pressure builds?" She sank to her knees, let her hands glide up his strong calves to his thighs—to his lean buttocks. His skin quivered at her touch. She wanted to taste him, as he'd tasted her. She circled his testicles with her fingertips, weighed them in her palms before pressing her face against his erect penis.

He cursed, tensed, and put his hands on her head. "You're going to kill me, you know that."

"I'm going to try." She ran her tongue up his rigid length and his grip tightened in her sodden hair. When she took him in her mouth, he rolled his hips, bucked. Again she slipped her hands to his butt, the back of his thighs. It was like stroking polished oak.

She took him in her mouth, savored a drop of him, before he pulled her to his feet and into his arms. "Another time, baby, or I'm afraid I'll give you more than you bargained for."

She was going to argue that would be okay with her, when he slid his hand to cup her mound, trail a finger along the folds of her opening. The perfect distraction.

He kissed her mouth softly, and she heard the ragged edges of his breathing. He entered her with his finger, played while whispering, "You're wet. All slippery and damp." He slid his finger out, in again. She gasped. He looked into her eyes, smiled. "Think we'll break our necks if we do some shower gymnastics?"

She met his gaze, licked her lips, and tried to ignore what he was doing between her legs. "I'm willing to chance it if you are."

"Back up, then, and press your beautiful ass against the glass, sweetheart, and we'll see who starts to hurt first."

"Ass against the glass? Good thing you used the adjective, Beaumann." She did as she was told, and he nudged her legs apart.

He splayed his own muscular legs, braced himself, and lifted her to take her buttocks in his hands.