Nothing But Trouble (30 page)

So why was he such a chicken shit?

Why did three little words scare him more
than anything else?

He stood from the bed and dug a pair of clean
boxers from the dresser drawer. After pulling them on he turned to
face her.

And man, was she a sight. A sight that always
stole his breath and tilted the ground beneath his feat. Flaming
red hair, a wild mass and tumbling around her shoulders, framing
her stunning face. The dark bed sheet barely covering her generous
breasts, which were the perfect shade of creamy and had little
raspberry-colored nipples that tasted like sweet heaven.

"Stop looking at me like that."

The strain in her voice pulled him from his
inappropriate thoughts.

"Like what?"
Don't play dumb,
asshole
.

She tilted the wine glass to her full lips
and sucked down another sip. Then she set the glass aside and stood
from the bed. His fingers itched to wrap themselves around her
curves, but her jerky movements told him she feeling anything but
cuddly.

"You know exactly like what." One corner of
her underwear barely peaked out from under his bed. Rebecca yanked
them off the floor and stepped into them. "It's a look you've
perfected over the past fifteen years."

Playing dumb never worked with her.

Regret tugged at him as she shimmied her
petite derriere into those skimpy bottoms. He had to force his eyes
to remain on her face and not ogle those breasts which were hanging
free.

When she turned to face him, her brows were
pulled down low over her green eyes. "When I'm around you, I always
feel like I'm playing a game that I don't know the rules to." She
walked around him and picked up his jeans off the floor. After
scanning the ground, she dropped them, then looked under the bed.
"I mean, one day you ignore me and the next we end up like this."
She accented the last statement with a gesture between the two of
them. Her breasts swayed when she yanked the comforter off the
floor, then tossed it onto the bed. "Where the hell is my bra?
Didn't you take it off in here?"

She was irritable as hell and looking to take
it out on him. With a heavy sigh, he retrieved one of his shirts
off the floor and handed it over to her.

The look she shot him was anything but
grateful, but she accepted the shirt anyway and slid her arms into
the sleeves.

Now probably wasn't the best time to tell her
that seeing her in his shirt turned him the hell on. Not in the
mood she was in. Flattery coming from him would only turn her
cheeks even redder than they already were.

"Your bra's in the living room," he informed
her as he sank to the edge of the bed and tried to gather his
thoughts.

He'd known for the past several weeks this
discussion was coming. Rebecca was smart as a whip and had too much
self-respect to fall into the same trap all his other girlfriends
fell into. Hell, they weren't even girlfriends. One and two-night
stands, and Rebecca was better than that.

It was the moment of truth. The moment when
she was going to call him on his bullshit and start demanding an
explanation.

He braced his hands on his knees and watched
the woman who'd stolen his heart years ago. The light from the full
moon streamed in through the window, highlighted her high cheek
bones, glanced off her trim thighs, and caught the triangle of
flesh in the open vee of the shirt. No woman took his breath away
like she did. No woman made his heart split open at the sight of
her.

His gaze moved over her face as she took a
hair tie off her wrist and piled her curls on top of her head. If
her hair down was hot, then pulled back in a sloppy knot, with
little wispy strands skimming her cheeks was the sexiest thing he'd
ever seen. Her beautifully slender neck was exposed, tempting him
to place his lips there just so he could hear her gasp.

"I can't keep doing this same dance with
you," she said. "I like to think we're friends, but how many
friends do you know get along better in bed than they do out of
it?"

None. And R.J. didn't make it a habit of
forming a friendship with a woman he'd slept with. "You know as
well as I do we've never been friends," he told her as she gazed
down at him.

Yeah, she knew. He wasn't the only who was
well aware they couldn't maintain any kind of platonic
relationship. Thinking they could was only a smoke screen, and a
thin one at that.

"Besides, I don't want to be your friend."
His voice came out harsher than he intended.

"Then what do you want?" she whispered.
"Because I can't keep going on like this." She turned from him,
paced to the other side of the room and crossed her arms over her
chest. "How many times can we sleep together and still tell
ourselves there isn't more going on? Because you know there
is."

Yeah, he knew. And hearing her say the words
for him wasn't any easier. He'd never been the sort of person who
had a hard time telling things like they were. But with Rebecca…
Hell, she made him tongue-tied. His thoughts became a jumbled mess
of shit that he couldn't make sense of.

The woman scared him. "What do you want?" he
countered, even though he already knew what her answer would
be.

"I want
you.
"

Simply stated, which was what he'd asked
for.

"And not the R.J. who climbed out of my
window nine years ago and pretended like that night never
happened."

One side of his mouth kicked up. "You didn't
exactly ask me to stay, remember?"

She uncrossed her arms and came toward him.
"I'm not saying I'm not blameless, but at least I'm honest. So I'm
going to ask you again: what do you want? Because if this is all
there is, then we need to go our separate ways right now."

He snagged her hand and tugged her toward
him. She came willingly, brushing her supple inner thighs along the
outsides of his legs. The contact shot erotic fire directly to his
groin. He shifted in an attempt to ward off the hard on he felt
coming.

"What am I to you, R.J.?" she asked in a low
whisper, while threading her hands through his hair. Her touch was
sweet and gentle, everything he wasn't.

His eyes dropped closed as her fingers worked
magic on his skull, scraping over his scalp to the ends of his
hair.

When he was with her, she made everything
better. She chased away his demons and made him feel like he was
worth a damn. As though he was more than the object of women's
fantasies who could bring them to orgasm with his hands. The fact
that she believed in him that much was reason enough to love
her.

"You're special," he whispered. Then cleared
his throat past the lump forming. "You're special to me, Rebecca."
He wrapped his arms around her, ran his hands up the backs of her
thighs until they came to the softness of her round bottom. "You
always have been."

Her eyelids fluttered closed when his touch
traveled to her waist and farther up her torso. Only when he came
to the tender underside of her breasts did he stop, allowing
himself to graze the bottom swell of her boobs with his thumb.

"Special enough for you to stick around?" she
wanted to know. The slight hitch in her voice told him that no
matter how upset she was with him, she would succumb to his touch
every time.

"Special enough for me to try." He cupped her
cool cheek with his palm and stared up into her eyes. "You deserve
so much better than me."

"Why don't you let me decide what I deserve?"
she countered. A small smile pulled at the corners of her full
mouth. "And what makes you so sure I'm too good for you? Have I
ever done anything to make you feel that way?"

"It's not you," he responded absently while
brushing his thumb across her lower lip.

"Then what?" Her voice was breathless from
his touch. He flattened his palms against the column of her neck,
ran it south until he could tease the cleavage just peeking above
the top button of his shirt.

"My father was a heartless, cheating son of a
bitch who constantly hurt my mother." In the past, thoughts of his
father always created a fiery pit on the bottom of his stomach.
Even though the man was hardly worth sparing a thought for. But
being with Rebecca took the resentment and pain away, as though
with her by his side he could conquer all of his demons.

"Courtney told me." Her breath hitched when
he found one of her nipples and pinched. "We were talking about you
the other night," she said with a smile.

"I hope it was about how huge my package
is."

"No."

"Hmm." He undid the bottom two buttons of the
shirt and placed a light kiss on her belly. "Then was it about how
you scratch the shit out of my back when you come?"

"You would like that, wouldn't you?" Her
teeth sank into her lower lip when he unfastened another button.
"We didn't talk about sex. Although she does know about us."

"Because you told her?"

"No, she figured it out on her own." She
paused while he removed the last button, then slid the shirt over
her shoulders where it fell to the floor. "Would you care if I had
told her?"

He molded his hands over her breasts and
tested their weight. "No. I never said anything to anyone because I
figured you didn't want me to. Was I wrong?" he asked with one brow
lifted.

"No," she replied with a sigh.

"We're getting off subject here. What did you
and my sister talk about?"

She stood, helpless, in front of him while he
played with her breasts, pushing them together and burying his face
in their plumpness. "How am I supposed to think straight when you
touch me like that?"

"Try really hard."

"But you're distracting me."

"I know," he said with a wicked smile.

"You're shameless."

"I know that too."

The look she gave him could have scorched his
clothes off, if he'd had any on. With a heavy sigh, he lowered his
head to her stomach. "You're going to make me talk about this,
aren't you?"

"Yes." She ran her hands over his hair. "And
you're the one who wanted to talk about it."

He placed a kiss on her belly button. "No, I
just asked what Courtney told you."

"Yeah, I know. And yes you need to talk about
it."

Damn woman was going to yank this from him
like pulling a rotten tooth. He lay back on the bed and stared at
the ceiling. "Doesn't the fact that I never talk about my father
mean that maybe I don't like talking about him?"

"I know why you don't talk about him." The
bed dipped beneath Rebecca's weight when she crawled up next to
him. "But you need to. And I want to hear it from you, not your
sister."

He glanced at her out of the corner of his
eye, and disappointment tightened his muscles when those glorious
breasts disappeared beneath his shirt. Of course three times in one
night was a lot, even for him. That last release of his was more
than enough to get him through the next day. Or at least the
morning.

This was not how he envisioned the night
going.

Talking about his father.

Son of a bitch.

"Is your father still alive?" Rebecca asked
in a soft voice.

"Last I heard," he answered with as little
emotion as he could. It wasn't hard, considering he felt nothing
for the man. From what he understood, his old man contacted
Courtney about once a year. The only reason she ever took the calls
was so she could use the opportunity to make the man feel like
shit. Nick Devlin knew better than to call R.J. The last time they
saw each other, R.J. had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with
his father.

"Courtney talked to him about eight months
ago," he continued. "He's in Southern California somewhere."

"Does your animosity toward her father have
something to do with your brother's death?" she wanted to know.

R.J. folded one arm behind his head and used
the other arm to maintain contact with Rebecca. The skin on her
thigh was cool beneath his hand.

"Partly. Although things were unraveling
before Trent died." He slanted her a look. The moonlight poured in
from the windows and cast her face in a creamy glow. "Did I mention
he was a cheating bastard?"

"Yes. Courtney said something along those
same lines too."

"She was being kind." Had it been this
difficult to talk about before? R.J. forged on, trying to ignore
the sour feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Courtney's unusually
soft when it comes to our dad. I think she keeps waiting for him to
beg our forgiveness."

"And you don't think he will?"

A snort popped out. "Hell, no. The man
doesn't know the meaning of the word."

"Does he ever get in touch with your
mother?"

"He's not that stupid. He knows I'd hunt him
down and kill him if he ever tried to speak to my mother."

Rebecca placed a hand on his shoulder. Her
touch was reassuring and was just enough to beat back the horrible
memories he'd suppressed for so long. "Your mom is very lucky to
have someone like you looking out for her."

Yeah, he was a real prince. All those nights
when he would find any excuse to sleep at a friend's house while
his mom and dad fought. Leaving Courtney and a sick Trent there to
deal with what he wasn't strong enough to handle. Only when his
father was out of the picture did R.J. had the balls to stand up to
the old man.

Too many years, he'd put of a façade of being
a cocky badass who'd been left unaffected by his father's callous
actions. The truth was Nick Devlin's infidelity had left a gaping
hole in R.J. as well as their entire family.

"I didn't do nearly enough." He cleared his
throat when his voice came out rough. "I was the oldest. I should
have done more to shelter Courtney and Trent."

Rebecca narrowed her eyes at her. "You were a
kid. What could you have done?"