Gamer Girl (26 page)

John grabbed
a chair. “Have a seat.”John examined her toes, then he checked her head and finally he said, “Why don’t you tell me what happened while I take a look.” Sarah gave him a blow-by-blow. “You got scratches?” John asked. Sarah let the robe slip off her shoulders and he examined and cleaned the scratches with antiseptic while she spoke. Then he said, “Anything lower?”

“No.”

He grinned. “And I was so hoping for a look at the famous tits.”

Her
eyebrow shot up. “Don’t make me hit you with my shoe!”

John laughed. “I
bet you put a bunch of holes in that guy with your spikes! Okay, serious now. Your toes are fine, the cut on your head is minor, and the scratches on your chest are minor as well. But if you started getting nauseated or seeing double—“

Sarah patted his cheek. “I’m a doctor’s daughter, John. I’ll watch for concussion, I promise.”

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back downstairs and dance with Nicole before my thumbs are painted florescent pink!”

“Bye
,” she told him.

Eamon walked out
into the hotel hallway with John. As soon as the door closed, he said, “Why did you think I had done something to hurt Sarah? I would never hurt her.”

“That’s not true, Eamon. You hurt her where it doesn’t show. It might be kinder if you punched her in the face and got it over with.” John pointed in the general direction of the parking lot. “
She went off on a mugger in the parking lot! She’s lost weight, she never smiles. You think the only way you can hurt someone is to hit them?” He shook his head. “Much as I hate to see her leave, it’s probably the best thing for her.”

“What’s it to you?” Eamon asked, suddenly jealous.

“Sarah’s my friend, she’s Nicole’s friend, and I love them both,” John explained. “I love Sarah because she is the sweetest most compassionate person I know. She saved my job. She convinced me that I was a fool if I didn’t jump at the chance to be with Nicole.” John looked at Eamon and shook his head, “But I tell you; if I didn’t love Nicole the way I do, you can be damned sure I’d be trying to convince Sarah that I was the better guy. And you should ask yourself why you give a damn.” John headed down the hall.

Eamon stood in the hotel hallway and thought about the events that had just taken place. When Eamon had returned to the table before Sarah’s big adventure, he’d observed her bolt like a frightened deer heading for cover. She’d been avoiding him all night and it had begun to piss him off. He kept looking toward the door but didn’t see her return to the ballroom.

“Eamon, what is Sarah so unhappy about?” His mother asked him.
“What happened?”

“How would I know, Mom?”

Catherine’s eyes flashed fire. “Don’t pull that crap, Eamon. I’m your mother.”

“I
t’s none of your business, Mom. Okay? Stay out of it.”

She
pointed toward the door. “You go check on her. That’s an order.”

He
knew that tone. “Right.” He rose to check on Sarah.

Before he made it out to the lobby,
Danielle found him. “Eamon, I’m going up to my room. Good night.”

Eamon
had given Danielle a friendly peck on her cheek and headed to the foyer but he couldn’t find Sarah. Acting on a hunch, he’d gone out the front door in time to see Sarah get grabbed by some thug. The walk was solid ice and the parking lot was almost as bad. When Sarah got pulled off her feet, Eamon put himself into a controlled skid to get to her.

“Leave her alone or I’ll kill you!” He’d yelled.

But as he got close, he saw that Sarah hadn’t been scared, she’d been furious, raging.

“…ASSHOLE!” she’d yelled, and then she’d turned on him.
He’d wanted to help her THEN; NOW he wanted to strangle her. John’s remark about Sarah’s taking on a mugger hit home. That was risky behavior for anyone.

Eamon opened the door and went back into the hotel room. Sarah had pulled a chair up near the floor to ceiling windows of the room. She was curled up in the chair,
knees to her chin, huddled tight in a bathrobe that was too big for her, curled in on herself as though she were wounded, trembling and biting at her lips.

He
brought another chair and sat down next to her. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

She
continued to look out the window. “You don’t want to know, Eamon.”

“Look, stay here tonight.”

Sarah faced him. “Shouldn’t you check that out with Danielle?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Sarah?”

“You came with Danielle. I figured you were sharing a room.”

“
You got that one wrong. Danielle is an old college friend as is her husband. He’s with JAG Corps overseas. I promised to check in on her, send her flowers. She goes with me to the opera because she likes the opera. A lot of women I date don’t. She has her own room Sarah.”

“
I’m shocked that you let anything as silly as a husband stop you. Though I do wish I had her room and she was dealing with you instead of me.” Sarah began to rub her neck with both hands, desperately trying to calm down.

“
Are you saying that I would sleep with my friend’s wife
?” he asked, his anger rising at the sarcastic tone of her voice.

“
Oh, I’m sorry. No you would never hurt a
friend
that way. God forbid you betray a
friend
. Damn it, I’m trying to keep my promise not to be a drama queen. But it’s getting hard to do that.” Sarah bit her lip and shook her head slowly then looked at him. “Do you mind if I take a shower?”

He
ignored her request. “Who I sleep with….”

“
Isn’t my business, I know. Believe me; I’m thrilled to know I’ll never have to send out another gift to some one night stand of yours.” Sarah began to rock a little, staring out into the night as all the feeling she’d pushed down began to rise.

“So?”

“So, I suggest you leave me the hell alone and let me take a shower,” She retorted, rising from the chair and walking toward the bathroom.

“No, tell me w
hat’s wrong with you tonight. You avoid me; you pull that crazy stunt in the parking lot…”

Sarah turned around and
marched up to him. “Look at me! I’m a bright, articulate, educated attractive woman. I am not some skank that you picked up in a club. I am not some gamer groupie who goes to conventions to chalk up another guy from my favorite game company. I am a serious woman and I deserved to be treated with serious respect. Instead, you played me with that nice guy act, and you played me again with that offer you knew I couldn’t refuse. I didn’t deserve that, Eamon. I didn’t try to play you. Why did you do that to me? Weren’t bimbos a challenge any more? Was I just the next level in the game? ”

“It wasn’t like that—” Eamon began.

“Don’t! Don’t try to bullshit me! I am so pissed at you…I hoped to make a graceful exit and hold my head up high when I walked away. Instead I ran. I don’t even have my dignity left. So when that SOB in the parking lot tried to steal my purse….It was you I was hitting. I wanted to smash your face in.”

He
started to touch her, but Sarah jerked away. “Don’t!” She stood up, throwing her hands in the air. “I concede! I give up! Whatever the game is that you’re playing, you’re still the champion. Because I love you Eamon…” Sarah’s voice broke, “… I love you so much that I slept with you knowing that I was nothing more to you than a…a piece of ass. So you can write me off as just another stupid bitch you managed to game and congratulate yourself on how well you took me down.
Now let me take my god damn shower
!” she shrieked.

“Be my guest,”
Eamon told her quietly.

Moving past him,
she walked into the shower and scrubbed until her hair was clean and her skin was red.

“Sarah?” He
called through the door but when she ignored him he came through anyway with some clothes.

Sarah turned h
er back to him and looked over her shoulder through the steamed glass. “What?” she snapped.

“Here’s a shirt and some sweat pants.” Eamon dropped them on the counter and left the room.

Sarah came out of the bathroom wearing his t-shirt and panties. While she’d been showering, Eamon had ditched the tux and was walking around barefoot in jeans and a wife beater. She threw his sweatpants at him saying, “Thanks but these are too big,” as she gathered up her things. Glancing out the window, she saw that the parking lot was full of cars. Her phone call to the front desk confirmed that people without power had come to spend the night and there were no vacancies. Cursing softly to herself she faced Eamon again. “Is that offer of your couch still open?”

“Sit down, Sarah.”
Sarah shot him a rebellious look and continued gathering her things. “Please. Please sit down,” When she continued working Eamon asked again. “Please?” Slowly, she curled into the chair by the window. He pulled up an ottoman and sat directly in front of her eye to eye and so close she could feel the heat emanating from his body. “You’re wrong. You are so wrong about this,” Eamon looked directly into her eyes willing her to understand. “One day more than a year ago, I look at a table in a restaurant, and there’s a sweet, sexy woman who reads constantly and knows music. I beg an introduction, and I take her out and discover that in addition to being smart, she’s got scruples and a keen sense of humor and damn, she can dance! From the beginning, I wanted to give you whatever you needed to feel safe with me because I knew you were more, much more than a date. But then the shit went down and I got mad when you almost cost me Rainwhite. I decided to take advantage of you and use you to deflect any hostility that arose from the takeover. Yeah, I was going to use you but not the way you thought.” Eamon dropped his head. “I was pissed and I reacted.”

“I understood that, Eamon. I could understand why you’d be angry. But what I didn’t understand was all the mixed signals.”

Eamon saw Sarah’s expression close again. He got up and paced back and forth in front of her. “You walk in that first day of work dressed like an advertisement for
Anime R Us
. It felt like a declaration of war. So I threw you into the deep end of a charity event, and you became Grace Kelly.” Sarah was listening to him now, so he sat back in front of her and leaned forward. “I take you to a convention and you morphed into the perfect gopher and took an embarrassing situation and turned it into a freaking triumph. You brush a crumb from my face and light a fire under me that has never gone out! You pull together a team and move an idea forward that makes me a pile of money. I kept waiting for you to screw something up, but you never did.”

“I was just doing my job,” Sarah said, trying to understand why this bothered him.
“I wanted you to be proud of me.”

“
And I was, Sarah. I kept throwing you into the deep end, and you kept swimming. My college friends adored you, Andrea adopted you, and Martin and John defended you. I take you home and my mother teaches you how to make pie crust, my brothers and sisters think you’re the bomb.” Eamon took her face in his hands. “And then…then you take me to your bed, screw my brains out and tell me it never happened and that it didn’t mean anything.” His stomach tightened as he remembered and he clenched his jaw to clamp down on the emotions that rose. “And while I was still trying to wrap my head around that, you almost die on me. You thought I was in control? I felt like I was in a flat-spin going down in flames. I got you pregnant. I was responsible for hurting you, and I didn’t like that feeling.” Eamon met her eyes again and Sarah saw the hurt there. “Sarah, why did you throw my offer of help back in my face? I just wanted you to stop hurting.”

Sarah was calmer now. She was
wounded and upset, but she wasn’t angry. He sounded as confused as she was. “Because I misunderstood what was happening. It felt like those “bye-bye babe” gifts you always made me send to the women you wanted to leave. It felt like a bauble to keep me appeased while you walked away.”

Eamon took her hands and held them in his. “Swear to God, Sarah,
it wasn’t that. The day you almost died was the worst day of my life. All I wanted to do was help you heal.”

“So what does it mean, Eamon? I love you. I can’t just work in your office and be your protégé
and look on while you screw half of Kansas City. Do you know how much it hurt to send those gifts and know what they meant? I’m not capable of that any longer,” Sarah explained.

Eamon pulled Sarah out of the chair, sat down and pulled her onto his lap. He want
ed to hold her. “I know what you want Sarah, and I can’t…believe me, I want….” Eamon was at a loss for words, so he just stroked her still damp hair behind her ear.

“I know.
There is something about what you feel for me that terrifies you. You can’t be obligated to anyone. I understood that in Chicago, when you got so angry at me.” Sarah put her head on his shoulder. “Let’s not worry about that right now. Just hold me.”

“Sarah…
I can’t just hold you and I don’t want…I don’t want to take advantage of you, but…”

Sarah
loved him so much. He wanted to be a gentleman; she could hear it in his voice, but she wanted to be with him one last time. “Then let me take advantage of you. Make long, passionate love to me, right now. I want to feel you inside me once more.”

Eamon hesitated.

Sarah thought she understood. “There’s no chance of a baby. My period’s due.”

“I
t isn’t that. I have protection. I just don’t want to hurt you again. I don’t like hurting you.”

“
Then don’t hurt me, just make love to me, Eamon.” Sarah kissed him and Eamon kissed her back.

“Sarah,” he said
against her lips before sliding his tongue into her mouth so that their tongue could dance.

Sarah
sighed in delight and ran her hands over Eamon’s body, unbuttoning the fly of his jeans to go exploring with her hand. Scooping her up in his arms, he carried her to the bedroom, kissing her neck and shoulder as he walked. He put her down on the bed and then stripped off his jeans and undershirt as Sarah removed her things. Eamon joined her on the bed and began kissing her body, her belly, and her flanks. He parted her thighs and ran his tongue gently over her labia. She tasted like a fine wine, one flavor overlaid on another and another as he buried his tongue inside her and savored the tang of her juices. He circled her clit with his lips and kissed her there before plunging his tongue into her again. She was wet, and the taste of her arousal was an aphrodisiac, making him more excited. Her hands fluttered around him, aimless, seeking. When he found her clit once more, she spread her fingers out on the bed, palm down as she pushed against his mouth and made soft mewing sounds.

Eamon
couldn’t wait any longer. He tore open the foil and then moved in between her legs. Sarah’s eyes, dark with desire met his. She reached and took hold of him, caressing him with her fingers as she guided him. “Eamon,” she whispered, “oh, Eamon.”

Eamon entered her slowly
, as slowly as he could manage until he was completely sheathed insider her. He turned his head so that he could see her face and meet her eyes as he began to move back and forth. He wanted to see her; he wanted to watch Sarah as they made love. She matched his rhythm, her gaze solely on him; eyes alight with love and growing pleasure. Eamon kissed her briefly and rocked deeper insider her. She began to make little sweet sounds in her throat that became louder as she grew more aroused. Eamon backed off, sitting on his knees, her body impaled on him as he reached for her nipples and began to gently twist and pull while at the same time he flowed in and out of her sweet sheath.