Rebound (7 page)

She had to concede to
Liz’s vast experience.

“Just wait,” Liz
said, “in three days I’ll be down there, and we’ll start stud
hunting for the perfect rebound fuck!”

The bathroom door
swung open, and a wet and naked Kevin stumbled out, with just a
towel wrapped around his hips. Susan hadn’t seen him shirtless in a
very long time. Gone was the skinny kid that used to flex his
stringy arms for her amusement. Tall, lean, broad shouldered, thick
slabs of muscle making his chest perfect, a ripped gut that
obviously he’d worked on tirelessly for about a million years--and
what a butt! Hard, round, and even through the towel Susan could
see dimples--and it had just the right amount of jiggle left in
it.

Kevin
disappeared into his room and Susan slowly closed her gaping mouth,
swallowing hard and trying to form a rational thought in her sex
crazed mind. But all she could think was,
find some super hot guy, and fuck the shit
out of him
.

“You there, Suze?”
Liz sounded worried.

“I gotta go.” Susan
stood and wobbled on her margarita steeped legs. “Got hunting to
do.” And she hung up Kevin’s cellphone.

* * * *

Kevin dried off and
stumbled around as he tried putting on a pair of sweats. He knew he
should sit down and pull them on, but in his intoxicated state he
couldn’t seem to make himself do what he should. He could’ve fallen
into bed naked. That would’ve been easiest, and was how he slept
most of the time. It was just, with the margaritas in his blood and
Susan’s scent still lingering on him--even after the shower--he
would find no rest if his private parts were left to rub freely
against the sheets.

And what if Susan
came in to sleep with him? Being naked, and getting hard
naked--those things would be hard to explain, and to hide.

When he did sit down
on the bed he dried his short cropped hair with the towel and
looked up. The room was tipping ever so slightly from left to
right. And there in the middle, standing in his doorway, was
Susan.

“Hey,” he said,
scratching his head and falling back on the mattress. “I’m so
drunk.”

“I can see that.”
Susan stood over him, her big green eyes instantly turning from
amused to smoldering.

For a moment Kevin
thought Susan was mad at him, but she crawled on the bed with him
and positioned herself on top of him, straddling his hips.

“Suze, what are you
doing?” Kevin shook his head.

Susan gently placed
each hand on Kevin’s chest. She made this humming noise as she
stroked his flesh.

Kevin’s body suddenly
sprung to life. His flesh tingled where her hands had touched him,
her scent soaking through his tequila besotted mind. His manhood
stirred and hardened with instant appreciation. Even the sight of
her, how intent she seemed, how much she seemed to want him--it was
too much to take in, too much to believe.

And exactly what he’d
always wanted.

But even with
hormones and alcohol running through his blood, fogging his mind
with lust and want, he remembered why they were together. Why he
was in paradise babysitting his best friend. A best friend that
only a couple days ago was to be married to the man of her dreams,
and now without any warning she was wordlessly trying to seduce
him?

It didn’t add up.

She leaned down,
hesitating for a moment before planting a hard, desperate kiss on
his lips.

That was it! She was
trying too hard. Kevin could feel it, how tense her entire body
was, how her hands were trembling a little, and her lips felt like
cool stone against his own.

All he could
think was
no, this
can’t be what she wants
.

Kevin gently pushed
Susan away, peeling her lips from his own and staring into her
shock widened eyes. The prettiest eyes in the world.

She tried to smile,
but it looked so false. And then she tried to lean down to kiss him
again. But he held her back, though he held her carefully, not
wanting to hurt her in the least bit.

“What’s wrong?” Kevin
finally said to Susan’s questioning glare. “What are you trying to
do?”

“Isn’t it obvious
what I’m trying to do?” She tried the smile again, this time
solicitous, but still tinged with desperation.

“Okay, then why right
now? What’s wrong?” Kevin’s gaze bore into Susan, demanding an
answer.

She made a little
face, and sighed. “Nothing’s wrong... Well, everything’s wrong! Of
course it’s all wrong!” She brought up her arms and disconnected
Kevin’s hands from her shoulders. “I’m supposed to be on my goddamn
honeymoon! I’m supposed to be here with my husband, happy and
married and dreaming about my future!”

Kevin groaned as she
hit him in the chest with her fist. Susan looked horrified as soon
as she did it, tears welling up in her eyes, but not spilling down
her face. She kept them reined in, blinking them away.

She peered into
Kevin’s eyes with a blank stare. “And I’m supposed to be having
ridiculous amounts of sex.”

Kevin gulped. He felt
his face flush, not knowing how to take her apparent decision to
have that missed-out-on sex with him. He shook his head and closed
his eyes to the need that burned in her eyes. “But why me, and why
now when we’re both drunk.”

“Because I need to
get this over with.” Susan’s voice was sharp and brittle, and it
made Kevin open his eyes with a start. The look on her face had
changed again. This time the desperation was tinged with fear, and
pain.

“What do you need to
get over with?” She was confusing him entirely.

“The pain!” She
sobbed, covering her mouth, trying to hold back what was pushing to
escape her lips. She breathed deep for a few moments and let her
hand fall from her lips. “If I can do this, then I can make the
pain go away.”

“Do what? If you can
do what?”

She shook her head,
and she leaned down and kissed him again. This time was more
urgent, yet less cold and desperate. This time, Kevin felt the heat
rising in both of them, could feel himself losing his willpower,
could feel the way their bodies seemed to connect even with their
clothes on.

But he could also
taste the tears on her lips, and hear the rasp of muffled sobs in
her breathing.

He wasn’t doing this.
He may have been dreaming about this very scenario every night
since he’d met Susan, but he’d be damned if it was going to be like
this. Not a drunken one-night stand, not after all these years, not
with all she meant to him. They would regret it in the morning.
They would never be the same.

What if he lost
her?

He would not let
himself do it. And he wouldn’t let her do it either. Kevin tore his
face away, breaking their lip-lock. He rolled off the bed, picked
her up and staggered into the hallway with her clutched to his
chest, her arms restrained under his own. Susan giggled as he
stumbled, still drunk, and tried to negotiate the turn into her
room. But her giggling stopped short when he dropped her on the bed
like a sack of potatoes.

When the mattress
stopped bouncing, Susan looked up at him.

“If you remember any
of this in the morning, then we’ll talk.”

“But--”

“Until then, stay in
your own room!” He pointed his finger at Susan and felt the hurt
and anger rip through his voice. “Never like this,” he muttered as
he stomped barefoot out of Susan’s room, slamming the door behind
him.

Chapter 5

When Denton Crane
called with Mark’s exact whereabouts Liz’s plane had just landed in
Colorado. “Perfect timing, Mr. Crane. Where is he?”

Technically, she had
lied to Kevin. Though she’d needed some more time to prepare for
the showing, she had no intention of attending it. Curtis Browning
was a highly regarded artist, and he trusted Liz with showing and
auctioning his work, but they simply despised each other. But as a
token of good faith Liz had left her assistant, the young and
obscenely sexy Lance, in her place. And though Lance would hardly
let himself be compromised by anyone, let alone some trite old art
luminary, he did have a preternatural charm about him.

By the time Lance was
done with Curtis, he wouldn’t know what had hit him.

This left Liz with
plenty of time to hunt down cheating, dick-head Mark, which was
exactly what she was doing two hours later as she entered the bar
area of the Pine Mountain Lodge in Aspen, Colorado. She stopped at
the periphery, finding the best angle to scope out the room. A few
beats later she caught sight of her prey, leaning against the bar
with a snifter of cognac in one hand, his other hand energetically
pawing at the spandex-clad ass of the easily recognizable
red-haired Shauna.

Liz sauntered
forward, keeping her eyes latched onto Mark’s smiling, drooling
mug. The gathered crowd of vacationing attorneys and doctors and
their surgically enhanced snow bunnies magically parted as Liz cut
a swath through their number in a straight line to her
objective.

She came up behind
Mark, tossed back her hair and shot her prettiest smile at the
red-headed cocktail waitress. Shauna smiled back, and as if Liz had
commanded her to with just the power off her mind, she tapped the
still blathering Mark on the forearm and pointed behind him.

He swung around, his
face alight with happiness, his cheeks flushed like a Campbell’s
Soup Kid--until his alcohol-hazed mind caught up with his radically
changed reality. But by then, it was too late. Liz had smiled
beautifully, had said his name as if she were greeting a long lost
best friend, and grabbed him by the shoulders, using his own bulk
as leverage, and planted her knee in his groin with a sharp, Tae Bo
perfected motion. Immediately Mark’s face turned purple and his
body curled up in the fetal position on the high gloss hardwood
floor of the bar, where he unceremoniously heaved up his lunch and
all the pretentiously overpriced cognac.

Liz waltzed
uncontested from the resort, stepped into the taxi that awaited her
at the curb, and drove off to the airport again for a quick trip
home before she headed down to Cancun. She smiled with satisfaction
as she replayed her triumph in her head, over and over and over
again.

* * * *

Susan never realized
how many irritating, if not downright painfully loud sounds
surrounded her, especially when she woke up. Usually those sounds
just melted together to form a complex, though ignorable, mixture.
As with most people, Susan was so used to these sounds that she
needed to employ the use of an alarm clock.

Happily, paradise had
no screeching, ear splitting alarm clocks.

But what paradise did
have was a multitude of sounds that, as hungover as Susan was, left
her in excruciating pain and begging the gods to kill her.

Susan had woken
with the sound of the surf in her ears, which created a dull ache
in her head and made her stomach lurch. The wind blowing through
the palm trees, the
swoosh
causing painful
tingles to climb up her spine to the back of her neck, made her
shudder. And worst of all--wind chimes.

Wind chimes are
supposed to be relaxing and peaceful, but with Susan’s hangover,
they were clanging, deafening train wrecks, and no matter how she
covered her head with the pillow, she couldn’t escape them.

Hell
is probably polluted with wind chimes!

Susan scrambled out
of bed and staggered to the door of her room, passing into the
living room with the blanket still wrapped around her. She
collapsed on the couch beside Kevin, and fell against him, holding
her ears.

“Turn on the TV!” she
moaned.

Kevin grabbed the
remote and the large screen, flat panel TV blinked to life.

“Turn it up!” Susan
pleaded.

Kevin complied and
Susan leaned into him more, relaxing as the easily ignored racket
of the television eradicated the deathly cacophony of the tropical
paradise. Susan couldn’t remember the last time she’d been
hungover. Probably after one of Liz’s art shows. Liz always had
great after parties, where the wine and champagne flowed into the
wee hours of the night. But whatever headaches those parties had
caused were nothing compared to the throbbing, searing pain that
now bloomed inside Susan’s skull.

“Take me now, Lord,”
Susan cried as she pulled Kevin’s brawny arm around her head, like
a pillow, to quell paradise’s racket. She was ready.

She could feel
Kevin’s ribs shake as he laughed. She was just about to retaliate
by jabbing him in his stomach when she felt something smooth and
cold press against her forehead. She opened her eyes and looked up.
Kevin was holding a glass of liquid to her head. Pulling it back,
she saw it was a sickly burnt orange color, and there were flecks
of black, and chunks of red and green in there.

Kevin took his arm
back, leaving her vulnerable to the enemy sounds. “Remember my
hangover remedy from college?”

At that moment, Susan
found remembering her own name to be taxing, so going back to the
good old days took some thinking--it felt like a brick wall was
between her and her recollections. But finally the memory of the
orange concoction came back to her.

“You made it after
the Omega Pi party, beginning of senior year.”

“And every time we
got blitzed after that, which was a lot.”

Susan shook her head,
wrinkling her nose. “Yeah, and I remember it tastes freaking
awful.”

“Awful or not, it
works like a charm.”

Susan conceded that.
Even though it looked like swill from the bottom of a dumpster,
smelled like burnt rubber and tasted like vomit, the stuff worked.
Now Susan just had to weigh all that was bad about it against
having the hangover from hell all day.