Don’t Deny Me: Part Two (2 page)

“Hey. I’m Alice, and you’re—”

“Mick McManus.”

She lifted her glass of wine toward him. “Jay brought you.”

“Um … yeah. He mentioned you, said you were friends since college?”

Alice turned to rest her elbows on the railing, cocking one leg so the hem of her green dress hitched a little higher on her thigh. “Yep. And you guys work together sometimes.”

“Yeah.”

Mick drank some beer. Alice drank some wine. Neither of them said much of anything. Just drank and looked at each other until he wondered if maybe he had spilled sauce on his shirt during dinner or something.

“So,” she said, “are you always this much of a scintillating conversationalist, or is it just me?”

Incredibly, Mick laughed. Grumpy, out of place and out of sorts, lack-of-sleep mood and all, to anyone else his reaction would’ve been a scowl. But not to her.

“Sorry,” he said through a chortle. “I’m in a bad mood.”

Alice burst into laughter, too. “Are you?”

“Yeah.” He laughed a little harder, not sure what was so funny about it other than it felt so freaking good to laugh with her that he didn’t want to stop.

She was that kind of girl, he thought, watching her tip her head back in peals of bright and shining giggles that completely charmed him. The kind that made you never want to stop. At that thought, he took a couple of steps closer.

She noticed. Eyes gleaming. Her tongue dipped to touch the center of her bottom lip for a second or so, long enough to catch his attention but not keep it from going back to her eyes. Not blue, though he’d have thought so. Gray, pale gray with a dark ring around the iris. Maybe it was the light. It didn’t matter, really. He was caught in them.

“So,” she said in a low voice. She hadn’t moved. One hand still curled loosely around a wineglass that was now almost empty.

Mick smiled. “So.”

They stared again for a moment or so until her chin lifted. She took a long, slow sip of wine, finishing the glass. He watched her throat work as she swallowed, and his own went dry.

“You could get me another drink,” Alice told him. “If you wanted to.”

Yeah. He wanted to. “White?”

“Yeah. I’ll come in with you. It’s a little chilly out here.” She handed him her empty glass and rubbed at her arms with a little shiver but a smile that heated him up. She brushed past him in a way that only a jackass would have thought was accidental. A glance over her shoulder had his eyes making those little hearts like in the cartoons.

He followed her inside.

They weren’t alone in there, which wasn’t as nice as it had been out there on the deck, but his mood had improved immensely. Mick put his empty bottle in the bin and poured Alice a fresh glass of wine. Her fingers brushed his when she took it. Her eyes—and they were indeed pale gray, as he’d guessed, held his. She smiled and sipped, and there was nobody else in the room. Not for him.

Somehow after that the inside jokes didn’t bother him. Not that he felt like he had to be the life of the party or anything—it was enough to sit next to Alice on the couch and feel the heat of her hip on his, the occasional brush of her shoulder. The drift of her fingers on his knee every so often when she reached to put down or pick up her glass. The group had moved conversation to a rowdy game of bullshit, so cards were flying and people were shouting and laughing. It was easy enough to let her touch him like it was an accident, though every now and then the way her gaze snagged his convinced him that it was anything but.

The hours crept past midnight before he knew it. At nearly one in the morning, someone new arrived to a chorus of friendly catcalls and admonishments—Paul, his name was. Jay had invited him the same way he’d invited Mick. Or not quite the same, Mick thought as he watched Jay embrace the other man. They didn’t kiss or anything, but there was more to that greeting than casual friendship.

Alice saw it, too, and she murmured, “Finally.”

Mick looked at her. She shrugged, the two of them still sitting on the couch while everyone else had moved to take empty plates and glasses to the kitchen, or to say hello to Paul. It would be obvious in a few seconds that she ought to move away from him now that there was more room on the couch, but for the moment, they still pressed thigh to thigh. She half turned toward him with a small smile.

“It’s late,” Alice said. “Probably bedtime, huh?”

If it was an invitation, he lacked just enough confidence to act on it. She squeezed his shoulder as she got up, but it could’ve been meaningless. Mick watched her say hello to Paul and get a kiss and hug from Jay, he watched her say good night without looking his way or sending any other signals, and when she’d disappeared down the hallway, he finally found the incentive to get off the couch himself.

In his basement room, Mick fell asleep thinking of Alice’s laughter, but he fell asleep alone.

* * *

A full day at the lake, followed by dinner and a bonfire, with s’mores, campfire songs, and hilarity … it would’ve been enough to send anyone off into slumberland. Yet Alice hummed with the unreleased tension of the hours and hours of not-quite flirting she and Mick had been doing since last night on the deck. It was making her crazy.

She hadn’t meant anything the night before, heading outside where he’d been brooding with a beer. She’d only meant to get some air and say hi to Jay’s friend. Okay, so the new guy was easy on the eyes, nothing wrong with that, right? But it wasn’t the thick dark hair falling over those crystalline eyes or the quirk of his smile or the broad shoulders or amazing forearms that had gotten her so tangled up inside. At least it wasn’t
only
those things. It had been the simple way he made sure she always had a fresh drink. The almost sly way he’d let his eyes slip to hers when someone told a joke, as though he’d been waiting for her reaction alone, as though nobody else’s mattered.

She’d been snared.

No other way to describe it. The question was, would she do something about it? Watching him now from across the fire, Alice thought she would.

She’d never been the kind of girl to sit back and let the world come to her. She went after scholarships and relationships and whatever else she wanted, usually with a practiced determination and practicality that had served her well enough through the years. Sure, she’d been disappointed in her pursuits a few times, but that was part of going after what you wanted—you had to be prepared to lose.

Somehow, Alice didn’t think she was going to lose. Not with the way Mick’s gaze kept slipping back to capture hers, no matter where she stood, or how he made sure to somehow be wherever she was. Not in an obvious way, nothing anyone else might see, because while Mick was pursuing Alice, she was making it extremely easy for him to do it.

When the fire had burned to coals and there were more yawns than laughs going around the circle, Alice gathered up as much trash as she could and paused next to Mick. “Hey. Help me carry this up to the house?”

Jay and Paul had both disappeared an hour before. Bernie and Cookie were snuggled together, and Tanya had fallen asleep in a lawn chair. Alice, with Mick a step or two behind, carried the garbage to the oversized can at the base of the deck steps and dumped it in. It was darker up here, the light from the fire an orange haze at the bottom of the garden and the house itself lit only dimly from a few lights in the living room. Under the deck, sliding glass doors led into the finished basement … and the room where Mick was sleeping.

“Wanna play some pool?” Alice asked.

Mick laughed softly. “Are you any good?”

“Terrible. But that’s what makes it so much fun.”

There was a beat or two of silence, in which she was sure he’d reach for her. He had to, didn’t he? After eye fucking her all night long, surely he’d move a little closer. Lean in. Put his hands on her hips.

Instead, Mick backed away. “Sure. I’ll play.”

Alice followed him inside, calculating how many steps between the sliding doors and the hallway to his bedroom. Imagining herself stripping out of her dress and letting it fall to the floor, walking in just her bra and panties to his room with no more than a glance over her shoulder and a crook of her finger. He’d follow, she was sure of that. Yet something stopped her. … Anticipation was delicious, after all.

“You can rack,” she told him, and went to the glass-front fridge Bernie had salvaged from a convenience store being remodeled. “You want a soda?”

“I’ll be up all night.” Mick grinned.

Alice smiled back and lifted her brow. “And?”

“Sure. I’ll have one.” Mick grabbed two cues from the wall rack and handed her one, taking the can of cola from her. “You want stripes or solids?”

“Stripes.” Alice took a drink and set the can down, then put some chalk on her cue. She was truly terrible at pool, that part hadn’t been a lie. But bending over the table and shaking her ass to keep him distracted?
That
she was good at.

They played for about five minutes before the sound of shouts from upstairs made her pause. Mick hadn’t heard them; he was in the middle of a joke when she held up her hand to hush him. To give him credit, he did at once, looking concerned.

“You okay?”

“I heard something.” She went to the bottom of the front staircase, head tilted to listen. “I thought it sounded like Jay.”

Mick put his cue down and stood beside her. “I don’t hear anything.”

She didn’t either, now, just the huff of their breathing. The heat of him brushed her bare arm. When she turned her face, his mouth was there. The kiss felt like an accident, or at least like something they could pretend wasn’t on purpose. His lips urged hers to open. He pushed her back against the wall, his hands on her hips.

Everything else was forgotten then. The pool game, Jay’s shout, the late hour. Alice wound her arms around Mick’s neck. She opened for him, hips tilting forward. He slipped a hand beneath the back of her knee so he could press against her center. She let out a long sigh against his lips.

“I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” he murmured. “God, Alice, you taste so good.”

She pushed her fingers into the thickness of his hair, tugging. “Less talking. More kissing.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He laughed and went back to the job of kissing her.

They kissed for a long time. No urgency. Lips and tongues moving. Teeth clashing every so often. He nibbled at her jaw and throat, pausing when she arched and shivered to do it again, a little harder that time. His hands moved over her body, no place terribly intimate, just belly and hips and sides, until she couldn’t stand it any longer and took his hand to cup her breast.

“Ah,” Mick said into her ear. “Okay, then.”

From upstairs came the shuffle of feet in the kitchen, but nobody came downstairs. The lights went out, casting the stairwell into dimness. Mick turned them both so he sat on the lower steps, Alice straddling his lap. He rocked her against him. His hands roamed her back, digging in just hard enough to make her moan into his open mouth.

It had been some long months since the last time Alice had kissed anyone, and then it had been nothing like this. Mick’s mouth and hands on her, his kissing, were all magic. She didn’t want any of it to end, not even to take him to the bedroom, strip him down, and fuck him until neither of them could walk.

Alice wanted to kiss Mick forever.

He shifted beneath her. The press of his cock hit her just right through the barrier of his soft khaki shorts and her dress, tangled around her thighs. She let out another low moan, swallowed by his mouth. His hand came up to fist in her hair, his fingers digging gently into the base of her skull and tugging her head back so he could get at her throat. The top slopes of her breasts revealed by the dress’s scoop neck. A little lower, his nibbling lips found her erect nipples, hard enough to poke through her bra and the dress.

“Yes,” Alice whispered. “That.”

With a low chuckle, Mick pulled her neckline down to gain further access to her bare flesh. Her bandeau bra, lightweight nylon, slipped easily down. For a second, just a second, Alice hesitated. She arched into the slide of his tongue along her skin, the tug of his lips on her nipples, but common sense, her stupid brain, did tell her to slow down. Before she could pull away, though, he did.

Mick kissed her mouth as he let her neckline return to its original place. Then he buried his face against her neck, holding her close. They sat that way in silence, breathing in unison. Under the press of her lips on his neck, Alice felt the beat of Mick’s heart slowing in time with her own.

She waited to feel rejected—she’d been half naked, her tits in his mouth, after all. He hadn’t even tried to get his fingers in her panties, not that she was sure she’d have let him. But all Alice felt just then with Mick’s arms around her was a strange sense of contentment.

She lost track of the time they sat there, just that it was long enough for her to need to stretch. They moved at the same time, disengaging. Uncoupling. She stood and shook her foot, which had started to fall asleep. Mick got up, one hand on the stair railing, and cracked his neck.

“It’s late,” Alice said.

Mick smiled. “Yeah.”

He reached for her, and she stepped back into his arms. Her head fit neatly under his chin, something she wasn’t expecting. His hand ran down her back, pausing just above her ass, and though she totally would not have minded had he taken a little squeeze, Mick stopped there. Alice discovered she liked that even better.

“Good night, Alice,” he said into her ear.

She let her lips brush along his cheek as she stepped away from him to climb the stairs, looking back over her shoulder. “Good night, Mick.”

* * *

Good night, Alice.

Good night, Mick.

It had become their ritual. Each logged into their laptops and tucked into bed for an instant message conversation that always meant to be a few minutes or so but almost always lasted for hours. Sometimes they talked on the phone, too, but the distance between them and expensive cell phone minutes meant IM was easier. On the rare nights they didn’t manage to connect for even a quick chat, without that
Good night,
Mick found it hard to fall asleep.