Mr. Virile and the Girl Next Door (6 page)

Dear Mr. Virile and The Girl Next Door,

I’m writing to both of you because I need all the advice I can get. Is there such a thing as love at first sight?

Signed,

Goner

Dear Goner,

No.

Sincerely,

Mr. Virile.

Dear Goner,

No.

Yours,

Girl Next Door

Chapter Six

Dates four and five were tame even by Holly’s standards. She’d worried that Dane might have already fallen out of lust when she received a sweet, yet chaste, kiss at her door after the concert in the park. But then he’d called her two hours later and they’d talked for another two hours. Something they had been doing a lot of lately. Date five had been a charity benefit. He’d been attentive, charming, and went out of his way to put her in the limelight when any journalists had asked them about their upcoming books—but he hadn’t accepted her offer of coming in for a drink. He did, however, leave her with a kiss that curled her toes before he walked away whistling.

And when he got home, he played online chess with her until two a.m.

Their PR plan was working. People were talking about them, her blog hits went up, and all her friends were bugging her for the real scoop. It didn’t matter how many times she told people they were just friends, it seemed to inflame the curiosity more. Everyone wanted to know if they were sleeping together, and if they weren’t, how long before they would be?

She sort of wondered the same thing herself.

She was mulling over last night’s perplexing kiss over a mug of fair-trade organic coffee when someone knocked on her door. She looked down at her jammies decorated with sheep and shrugged. Not her best look but maybe it was a package delivery. She loved packages. She hadn’t ordered anything, but she still got excited at the possibility.

The peephole provided her with mixed emotions. On her stoop was the not the UPS man, but Dane, his dog, and a box of doughnuts. Her belly tingled, but, crap, what was he doing here? Why hadn’t he called first? Why didn’t she wear sexy lingerie to bed every night? And why did she care what he thought of her sleeping attire?

Frustrated, Holly threw open the door. “Our next date is Friday night.”

His masculine energy overwhelmed her and all he was doing was standing on the other side of her threshold. Even as he smirked at her attire, she fought the urge to climb him like a set of monkey bars on her personal playground. His t-shirt molded to his chest tightly, tempting her to remember the rush of heat that followed when his bare skin had brushed against hers in his basement. His hair was still damp from the shower, and she could smell his evergreen soap. And maple, which must have been the doughnuts.

He ignored her comment about Friday. “Nice sheep. Can I come in?”

She stood aside and bid him in with an exaggerated gesture. After closing the door, she scratched Boss behind the ears while Dane set the box on the coffee table. “Did we have plans that I’m not aware of?”

She’d barely gotten out the words before he’d turned and scooped her into an embrace and a kiss that stole her breath. He kissed her like a desperate man, a man so far gone that he pulled from her things she hadn’t meant to give him. Hadn’t meant to feel. He wrapped her into a reckless kiss, ramping up her confusion and throwing her into her own desperate place where kisses both soothed her and plunged her further into the abyss.

She didn’t want to feel this much. She couldn’t afford to want him. She felt little pieces of her heart cracking off as he chiseled away at her with his hungry kiss. His mouth demanded so much from her as his tongue twirled and caressed her into submission. Her fingers, with minds of their own, furrowed beneath his shirt, up over the taut muscles of his abdomen until finding the thick patch of hair covering the hard muscles of his chest.

His hands roamed her back, stopping to squeeze her ass and grind her pelvis into his. She loved the way he felt against her, all hard and full of purpose. His hands came back up to her head and he kept them there as he pulled back to look into her eyes. His own were wild and dark and exciting. “What the hell are you doing to me?”

“Doing to you?” she croaked.

“I swear to God, I came by for a civilized breakfast. Your goddamned pajamas turned me on. What the hell? They have sheep. And you have little bits of mascara under your eyes. I don’t understand what is going on, why I can’t get within ten feet of you and I’m as hard as stone. Why the sight of you sleep-rumpled in cartoon pajamas makes me want to drag you to bed. Why I can’t stop thinking about what you feel like under my hands.”

Holly’s hand automatically came up to wipe the mascara away and he attacked her again, pulling her to the couch and knocking the doughnuts off the table. He didn’t even yell at his dog when Boss went for the pastries. He just kept drugging her as he fed her kiss after kiss, his big hands tunneling through her hair, holding her in place.

She wanted him. Bad. Every nerve in her body was attached to her core, zinging pleasure like electrical currents. Her skin felt tight and she wanted to climb out of it and into him.

No. This wasn’t right. She needed to stop this. Any minute now.

When his hand went to the buttons of her pajamas, Holly finally heeded the warning buzz in her head and placed her hands on his chest and pushed firmly. His face registered displeasure at stopping there, but stop he did, letting her up into a sitting position while he bent and hung his head between his knees and caught his breath. Or tried to.

She held gaping material together with one hand. “I don’t understand what is going on here.”

Dane groaned a sound of pure male frustration. “I’m like one of my worst clients, anymore. I used to be really good at this you know. You screwed me up somehow.”

“I screwed you up?” Holly repeated. “You don’t make any sense. I’m still not even sure why you decided to go along with this idea to begin with. Or why you run hot and cold with me. It’s been almost two weeks since your basement.”

“I’ve been trying to do this right. You said no sex until the seventh date, so I pulled back. I’ve actually sort of enjoyed slowing it down, except for the fact that when I’m not with you, all I can think about is when I’ll see you again. And that I’ve got the bluest balls in the county. But, really, I’ve been trying to relish the journey not just the destination. But it’s hard, literally. And I had the bright idea that if I popped by this morning I could call it date number six and I could seduce the hell out of you Friday night.” He tilted his head to look at her. “I can’t explain why the sight of you in the doorway made me crazy. I only know that I haven’t been this bad off since I was sixteen with a Princess Leia in a bikini poster on my wall.”

“Wait, you’re trying to game the system? I said
at least
seven dates, Dane. There is no guarantee that you will ever get lucky, much less on date seven.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Darlin’, you and I both know where this is headed. It will be my bed or yours, unless we don’t make it to a bed first. In which case, it will be my bed or yours
after
and again.”

She didn’t like his macho, egotistical confidence. Except that he was right, which she disliked even more. “Whatever, this doesn’t count as a date.”

“There’s romance and food,” he said, pointing to Boss inhaling what looked like a maple bars. “What else do you want, woman?”

She leveled a look at him but realized he was kidding. He looked at odds with himself. Self-deprecating wasn’t really his style, but it was more than that. He really looked confused and miserable. Was there a chance he really was having
feelings
about her?

She glanced back at Boss licking his chops. “Well, I do like doughnuts.”

“They were maple bacon bars, too. Boss, you’re a bastard.”

Holly couldn’t help it. The ridiculous situation finally caught up with her and she laughed. It was more the manic laugh of someone about to lose their shit, but it was laughter. Dane joined her and Boss stared at them, confused and full.

“Should I be worried about your reaction to sheep?” she asked, getting up to pour coffee.

“I can’t help it. They’re sexy as hell.”

She brought him back a mug and he frowned.

“What now?” she asked.

“You know how I take my coffee,” he accused.

“And that upsets you because…?”

“Because, why would you even pay attention to how I take my coffee? We aren’t in a relationship, Holly. This is all pretend.” He slammed the mug down, sloshing coffee over the top. “I have to go.”

She couldn’t do much more than blink at him. She had no idea what she’d done wrong. “Dane?”

“Shit.” He stood, raking his hands through his hair.

“What are you so afraid of? I mean, I know what I’m afraid of, but what’s your deal? I don’t have any designs on you, if that’s what you think. I’m not picking out China patterns. We’ve had coffee several times and I’ve seen you put sugar and cream into your cup. Not a big deal.”

Dane paced. Then stopped. Then paced some more, his big body out of place in her small feminine space. When he finally stopped again, in front of her, he asked, “What are
you
afraid of?”

She frowned. She felt…small. And exposed in her ridiculous pajamas with bits of mascara under her eyes. She needed to be in a great dress with stiletto heels and full war paint make-up on for this kind of conversation. “I asked you first.”

His eyes narrowed to slits and the muscles of his jaw clenched so hard she could see the tic. “I can’t do this with you. I don’t know how.”

“Do what?”

“
This
.” He answered with emphasis to make up for the fact that his answer made no sense.

“This?”

“This relationship. I don’t know how to navigate this relationship. And I don’t want to.”

Ouch. “Well, you’re in luck. We don’t have a relationship. We have a sham. We have five dates and something close to friendship, but not quite. You don’t have to panic. I don’t want to be involved with you any more than you want to be with me.” So why did it hurt to hear him say it?

“We have something more than that,” he said, palming her shoulders.

Holly’s vision swam. “We do?”

Did they?

Dane nodded, squeezing her like he was afraid she was going to disappear. She hadn’t dared to hope, but couldn’t deny that she’d wanted him to feel something for her. There were so many reasons why they shouldn’t be compatible, but nobody else had ever made her feel so alive, so sexy, and so willing to disregard everything she knew about men and take a chance on the impossible.

“We have sexual chemistry,” he answered.

Sexual Chemistry.

That time, the chisel punched a hole right in her heart. It was her own fault. She’d known better than to let him matter. He was right. They had sexual chemistry. And that was all they had.

Something broke inside. What? Did she really think that the girl next door was going to bring Mr. Virile to his knees? Did she believe that her small town values could somehow sway the urban legend to settle down and paint the picket fence with her? Is that what she even wanted?

She needed to take her own advice or maybe stop giving it all together. What did she know about relationships? Holly’s last relationship had seemed healthy enough until she realized that she’d never felt sparks on her tongue when she’d kissed her almost-fiancé.

Only with Dane.

Well, hell, who was she to argue with science? If all she was going to get out of this was hot, sexual chemistry, maybe it was time to warm up the Bunsen burner.

She gave a fleeting thought to changing into something more seductive, but remembered his reaction to the sheep and let that worry go. The one that held on a little more stubbornly was doubt that she could please him. Logically, she could argue, he’d been viscerally attracted to her since day one. But logic didn’t always apply when a girl was stepping out of her comfort zone. Nobody had ever made her feel as hot for sweaty sex as Dane continued to do. What if she simply wasn’t enough woman for him? She accepted the fact that he would never love her, but damned if she was going to let him out of this house without remembering her forever.

“What is going on in that head of yours?” he asked, and she realized he’d been waiting for a response for some time.

She moved her hands to the waistband of his button-fly jeans, but didn’t drop her gaze. She tugged the top button free. “What do you mean?”

Dane swallowed. “I saw a bunch of emotions pass over your face. One after the other.” He broke eye contact first and looked down at her busy hands. “What’s going on here?”

“The girl next door is in the mood to break a rule or two. Wanna come along?” Her hands slid from his fly to his back, and she smoothed over the tightening muscles.

“I thought you were mad at me.”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

“What kind of rules are we talking about here? Rules like waiting for seven dates?”

“That’s one…” Holly stood on tiptoe and bit his earlobe gently after she whispered, “But maybe not the only rule I’m ready to break…”

She brought her hands to his chest under his t-shirt again, stroking the soft, short hair. Enjoying the way his heart rate sped up under her palms.

“Holly—”

She grazed a nipple with her fingernail and he trembled. Good.

God his skin was so hot.

“Holly—”

“Dane, shut up and kiss me.”

He gripped her hips, tugging her to him as he dipped his tongue into her mouth. Against her stomach, she felt him swell, lengthening and hardening in preparation to break any rule she asked him to. Good for that, too. Female satisfaction was a heady thing, and she let it mingle with the passion flooding her veins as she reached into his now-open jeans for her prize.