Going All In (17 page)

Shit, the first order of business was prying his fingers off her waist where he’d probably left deep imprints in her perfect skin. He hoped like hell she wouldn’t be sporting bruises tomorrow. Those would be difficult to explain to her friends.

When he thought he might be able to make his voice work and string together enough words to form a complete sentence, he said, “Hey, let me go clean up so I can return the favor.”

She stiffened and her eyes turned from soft and dreamy to hard and angry. “I didn’t do that because I was doing you a
favor
. It was something I wanted, and I don’t expect payback.”

He froze with his hand halfway to her face and tried to sort out why an innocent comment, something he’d probably said to… well, way too many women… hit Callie wrong.

He’d been nervous about coming inside for fear of things spiraling out of control—like they had—but she’d been so damned cute standing there with her lip stuck out and petulance pouring off her that his resolve had cracked. Then she turned into a sexy siren, luring him in with her bedroom eyes, and he couldn’t tell her no.

He didn’t have a clue where they were headed or what tomorrow or next week would bring, but he was positive of one thing: he wasn’t finished with tonight. She’d had her chance to play, and now he wanted a turn.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.” He brushed a hair away from her face and ran his thumb over her red and swollen lip. “C’mere.” He coaxed her closer with his own bedroom eyes and a slow, seductive smile. This time, his kiss was less about marking her and more about tempting her into wanting more.

He kept up the assault until the tension eased from her body and she melted against him. He still didn’t understand why his comment upset her, but he obviously needed a different approach. What better way to start than by getting naked? “Do you mind if I take a shower to clean up?”

“Not at all.” She jumped off his lap and reached out to help him up, then laughed and withdrew her hand. “I guess I better clean up too. C’mon, follow me. You can use the shower in my bathroom.”

Callie’s condo was sparsely decorated without any over-the-top amenities, except the master bath. He’d noticed it briefly when he’d been in her room earlier, but this was the first time he’d gotten a good, long look.

How in the hell did a woman who had to brown bag her lunch to save for a pair of shoes afford a place like this? The bathroom was huge, with a shower large enough to accommodate at least six people. Eight oiled brass showerheads jutted out from the dark tile walls, and it took him several minutes to figure out how to adjust the water flow to each head. “Shit, a guy needs a degree in engineering to operate this shower.”

She laughed and turned on the single sink faucet. “I’d lived here about six months before I realized I could turn them on and off. I usually stick with the main one, but if I’ve had a hard day at work, I turn them all on and call it a massage.”

The image of Callie standing in her shower, back arched, using her hands to sweep her hair off her face while water cascaded off her breasts and ass had him hardening again and even more determined to get her under the spray with him.

She seemed to enjoy his body and had admitted to watching him at work, so why not use what God gave him? He worked the flannel shirt off and tossed it to the side before slowly rolling his T-shirt up and over his head. While tossing it on top of the flannel shirt, he glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

Her bottom lip was snagged between her teeth and she worked it at the same frantic pace as she dried her hands. She seemed to be trying to keep her gaze diverted to give him privacy—which was funny considering what she just washed off her hands—but after a moment, she gave up the fight and openly stared.

If he were a peacock, his feathers would’ve been on full display. It was crazy how she could make him feel ten feet tall and bulletproof just by the way she looked at him or with a simple, whispered word.

He toed off his boots and slid them out of the way before bending over to remove his socks. He’d never survive as a male dancer, but he didn’t have to be good enough for tips; he just needed to be enticing enough to capture Callie’s attention and make her want a little more of what she’d already had. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his barely-hanging-onto-his-hips jeans and worked them over his growing erection, then down his thighs and calves and off his feet.

Allowing his eyes to fill with heat and all the desire he felt for Callie, he looked at her over his shoulder and stepped into the open shower. “I’d love to have you join me.” The smoky door was more aesthetics than function, so he left it open to give her a full view as he stepped under the spray, then grabbed the bar of soap and worked it into a lather.

The sexy siren who invited him in had turned into a shy kitten, but she didn’t leave the room. She kept a firm grip on her lip while her gaze captured every move he made. He ran a soapy hand over his shoulder blade, across his chest, and down to his stomach. Ensuring he kept her visually captive, he palmed his erection and stroked himself, slowly and deliberately, to remind her of the intimacy they’d just shared.

Her red, slick lip slipped free of her teeth as she parted her mouth, and she drew in a shuddering breath. He struggled to keep his heavy lids open and his gaze locked on hers as he used his free hand to cup his balls and continued to stroke himself, imagining her hands on him again. She shuffled her feet and played with the hem of his sweatshirt, but something kept her from stripping off the clothes and joining him.

And then it hit him. He was comfortable with his nudity, but Callie probably wasn’t. As long as he watched her, she’d never get the courage to strip and join him. Reiterating his desire to have her join him, he said, “I need someone to wash my back,” then let go of himself and turned to face the wall.

He pretended to lose himself to the relaxing spray pounding against his chest and sides, but as the soapsuds slid off his body and puddled at his feet, he concentrated on the sounds in the room. He listened as she moved around and tried to figure out if she would join him or leave him standing there alone.

The room went dark and he looked at the ceiling—like a dumbass who needed confirmation the lights had been cut off—but he didn’t turn around. God knows he wanted to, but he forced himself to stare at the decorative mosaic strip circling the shower wall, counting first the brown and then the white tiles, even after the scent of vanilla reached his nose and the first flickers of candlelight bounced off the wall.

The sound of a sliding zipper slipped a few extra beats into his heart’s normal rhythm, and the steam building around his head might have come from his hot and heavy breathing. The second zipper had him clamping down on his jaw while he pressed a palm against the shower wall, locking himself in place while praying she wasn’t getting rid of her boots just to get more comfortable. The sound of rustling clothes cranked him a little tighter and the blessed sound of a third zipper, which had to be her jeans, had him palming himself again, and not solely for the purpose of keeping himself occupied so he wouldn’t turn around and ruin his plan.

A moment later, the sound of splashing water filled the air as she stepped in behind him and her hands brushed his back from shoulder to shoulder. “You’re so big.”

The softly spoken words didn’t have a sexual lilt to them, so rather than take them the way he wanted, he tried to hear them as she’d intended. He was taller than most men and he had good muscle mass to go with it. The high school football coach tried to convince him to play ball for the team, but Wade wasn’t interested. He enjoyed hunting and fishing and hanging out with his friends, and he didn’t want to be stuck at school every afternoon, practicing. He’d always considered his size a good thing, especially in his younger, rowdier days when fighting was fun and a way to pass the time when bored. But Callie’s soft-spoken comment had him rethinking things.

He swiveled his neck to see her, but he didn’t turn around. “Do I scare you, Callie?”

Her eyes played hopscotch, something he’d figured out she did when she didn’t want to give a completely honest answer. As she gnawed on a non-existent hangnail and thought over her answer, he was hyper-aware they were standing in the shower with nothing but steam and a few water droplets between them, but he refused to let his eyes to dip lower than her face.

After a moment, she said, “You used to. When you gave me evil glares and snarled at me.” She smiled shyly. “But not now, since I’ve gotten to know you.”

Taking advantage of the built-in tile bench that ran along the far end of the shower, he sat down to put distance between them and also reduce his size. He hadn’t planned on getting into this with her anytime soon—if ever—and certainly not when he had her butt naked, but he supposed they needed to address this at some point, so it might as well be here and now.

He let his head fall back against the wall and said, “I’m sorry for the way I treated you. As Kevin pointed out, I’ve been ass, and I am sorry. But”—he leaned forward and braced his forearms on his thighs—“my actions were in response to the way you treated me when we worked together last year on the Vanguard project.”

Her head slumped forward and her gaze fell to the floor.

“It seems both of us might be different than the other originally thought. You’re not at all the hard-ass bitch you came off as back then, so what’s the story?”

Her shoulder and one foot angled toward the door, but before she could bolt, he leaned forward and grabbed her hand and pulled her down onto his lap. “Talk to me, baby. I want to get this behind us…”
So we can move forward,
was on the tip of his tongue, but he bit down and cut off the words.

She crossed her arms over her chest, shielding herself from him, and said, “You were hurting, and Kevin told me to keep you busy.”

“What?” Only Kevin would come up with some fucked-up logic like,
He’s hurting so treat him like shit and maybe he’ll forget.
“That doesn’t make sense to me.”

She lifted her eyes a few times, but never quite made eye contact. “Apparently, you’d just gone through a bad breakup.”

A bad breakup. He supposed that was one way of putting it. Having his heart ripped from his chest and stomped on while also being humiliated was a little more accurate, but… You say po-tay-to; I say po-tah-to.

“So you decided to kick me while I was down and out?”

She gasped and horror filled her eyes as she grasped his face between her palms. “God, no!” She shook her head while vehemently denying the accusation. Mumbling mostly to herself, she said, “I knew I should’ve handled things my way rather than Kevin’s.” To him, she said, “Kevin wanted me to keep you busy, working you non-stop so you didn’t have time to think about anything. That’s a direct quote. The approach didn’t feel right to me, and several times I considered trying to talk to you, to ask you if you were all right and if there was anything I could do. But I didn’t know you, and Kevin did, so I deferred to his orders.” She shrugged. “I kept you hustling so you wouldn’t have time to think.” She smiled softly. “I know the problems were still there, waiting for you each night when you got off work. But you didn’t have time to dwell on them on my watch.”

He was completely flabbergasted. All this time he’d held a nasty grudge against Callie—which was easy since she reminded him so much of Miranda—and she’d only been following Kevin’s orders, who was trying to help him by working him like a damned dog.

He laughed at the absurdity. “I can’t decide if I should thank or throttle Kevin.” He dropped his gaze to hers and flashed his teeth while lacing his smile with wicked intent. “But I know exactly what to do to you.”

A
s Wade’s gaze swept over her body in an intimate caress, nervous excitement had Callie trembling, while dread settled like a lead weight in the pit of her stomach. She was cradled in his arms, sitting sideways across his lap, her middle section directly below his mouth. The deep-seated hunger filling his eyes as his tongue swept across his lower lip made his intentions clear. He didn’t have any long-held beliefs about oral sex being dirty or nasty. And he wouldn’t stop until his mouth claimed her.

Desperate for distance that would spare them both the awkward embarrassment of her persnickety, silly, stupid prudish attitude toward something that every other couple in the world probably enjoyed, she slid off his lap and bolted to the other end of the shower.

“Hey, where’re you going?” He grabbed for her arm, but her skin was slick from the water raining over them and she slipped free of his grasp.

She crossed her arms, trying to create a physical and emotional barrier, and paced the small space. She had a man in her shower—not a first, but not an everyday occurrence, either—and she needed to get grip before he lost patience and decided she wasn’t worth the time or effort.

“I’m sorry for scaring you again.”

His quiet apology halted her, and she spun to face him. His knuckles were pressed into the tile bench on either side of his hips, his legs bent as he prepared to stand.