Author: Christine Bell

It sure couldn’t hurt. Unless, of course, he was feeling exactly what she feared he was…

Nothing at all.

…

Owen stepped through the suite door and looked around the dim room for Lindy. She’d skipped out at dinner a few minutes early, saying she needed to make a call. Could she really have made her call and fallen asleep in the time it took him to say his goodbyes? He hoped not. Their time was growing short, and he found that he couldn’t get enough of her these past couple of days. He shoved back the sick feeling he got in the pit of his stomach whenever he thought of it, because at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. Once they left Colorado, there was no way it could continue. Sure, he could likely convince her otherwise, but Lindy deserved to be loved and he didn’t have any of that to give.

“Hey,” she called from the bedroom doorway. She had on a peach baby-doll nightgown he’d never seen before, and blast of need sizzled through him.

“You look delicious.” He crossed the room and stopped a few feet away for a closer inspection. “Absolutely delicious.” He reached out and traced the neckline with his finger, marveling at the softness of her skin. The pulse in her neck fluttered, and it sent a jolt straight to his groin. She was so responsive.

“I have a game for us to play,” she said, taking a step back into the candlelit bedroom.

“I will play any game you want,” he growled, following her. “Boss and secretary. Doctor and nurse. Or, if we want to take it into the twenty-first century, scientist and equally intelligent and highly respected scientist.”

She laughed, just as he’d hoped, and he tried not to examine why that put such a pep in his step. “None of those, although I wouldn’t rule it out.” She grabbed a deck of cards from the nightstand and thrust them toward him. “Sarabeth gave them to me, and it sounded fun.”

He didn’t bother to look. If there was a sex game, and this gorgeous woman wanted to play it with him, he certainly wasn’t about to argue.

“Let’s do it.”

She sat on the bed and prepared the cards while he slipped off his tie and stripped down to his T-shirt and boxers. He settled across from her, eyeing the neat piles stacked on a breakfast tray. The red stack of cards had the word Dare emblazoned on them, the blue, Truth. She leaned forward and handed him a die with three red sides and three blue. The fabric covering her br**sts dipped, and he found himself momentarily entranced by the valley between them.

“The rules are simple. Roll and pick a card.”

He took the die and blew on it playfully before tossing it. It skittered across the tray and landed on blue. He scowled at the cards. “I want a do over.”

“No way, pal.” She plucked up a card and cleared her throat. “What it the sexiest part of your opponent’s body?”

He took his time about it. There was so much to choose from. Her breasts. Her legs. That ass. “Your lips,” he said, locking his gaze on the part in question. She flushed with pleasure, wetting them nervously and he grinned.

“Your turn.”

She looked almost giddy as she rolled. “Blue,” she said and laughed when he groaned.

He picked a blue card and read. “If you could bottle one of your opponent’s personality traits, what would it be?”

She regarded him for second, and answered without hesitation. “Your loyalty.”

Her answer took him by surprise and he forgot to obsess over the mysterious red cards for a second. “Really?”

She nodded. “I think because you prize it so highly in others, you make sure to embody that trait yourself. What you’re doing here for Cara is remarkable. Most people would’ve handed her a check, maybe taken her out and gotten her drunk, and then went on with their own lives. Not you.”

Her eyes shined. For him. She looked so animated and beautiful, it hurt. He cleared his throat, looking away. “I appreciate that.”

She handed him the die. “You’re up.”

He rolled, suddenly wondering if this was the best idea. Things could get sticky if they kept landing on—

“Blue,” she said with a stiff sounding laugh. She took up the card and read. “Tell your opponent a secret that you’ve never told another soul.”

He sat there, debating how to handle this one. He cared about Lindy and clearly the game was important to her. But, shit, he did not want to do this. He steeled himself. “When I was nine, I broke the basket off Mary Callahan’s bike. I glued it on, and it fell off the next day. I never confessed.”

Lindy smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it. Whatever she’d been hoping for, it wasn’t that. Before he could call a halt to their game and suggest something less bloody awful, she rolled.

“Red,” she said, sending him a coy look under her lashes.

Thank God. He selected a card and read. “Pretend you’re at a swanky strip club and give your opponent a sexy striptease.” Jackpot. Surely that would break the weird tension between them and get a whole new kind of tension brewing.

He picked up the tray and set it on the nightstand, before propping up the pillows and settling back onto the bed.

“What kind of music would you like?” he asked. Her eyes were wide and she fidgeted with her wedding band. He wondered briefly if she’d back out, but she raised her chin and sent him a saucy grin.

“Big band, maybe?”

The vice that had gripped his chest loosened. He’d thought it was over. That she was going to try to push him somewhere he wasn’t going to go. But here she was, his take-no-prisoners Lindy. His for now, at least.

He picked up the stereo remote and flipped through until he found a classic R&B station. Strains of Otis Redding poured from the surround sound speakers.

She climbed off the edge of the bed and made her way around to his side. Her hips swayed as she moved, keeping sensual time with her steps. The girl had moves. She held his gaze and lifted an elegant hand to her neck, trailing it slowly, so slowly, down. Tracing her delicate collarbone, slipping into the gentle valley of her cleavage. She ran her thumb over her nipple, drawing it to a stiff peak. His breath caught in his throat.

She twisted, gyrated, swiveled, and shook. The whole time, he was enthralled. No strip club in the world ever had it so good. She turned away and bent low, peering at him from the V between her thighs. Laying her palms on her ass cheeks, she gave a squeeze just like he wanted so badly to do. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he tugged at the neck of his T-shirt.

She turned back to face him and reached for the hem of her nightie. “You ready, Irish?” she whispered.

“Hell, yes.” His body was jacked and primed to blow. He didn’t take his eyes off her as she tugged the silk up to reveal her stomach and those beautiful breasts. She tossed the nightgown aside and moved to crawl on top of him.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” he rasped.

She paused, and he slipped a finger under the elastic of her panties. “Boy, you’re greedy, aren’t you?”

He didn’t answer with words, opting instead to close his fist around the scrap of satin and doing what he’d wanted to do earlier that week. They snapped off in his hands and she gasped. He didn’t wait for her to catch her breath. He spanned her waist and dragged her on top of him. Her body molded instantly to his, her soft parts lining up with his hard ones, her slick center pressing against his swollen shaft. Thank God she was as turned on as he was. He wanted her now, hard and dirty.

“Umm,” she moaned, bending to pepper his jaw and neck with sucking kisses, wriggling her hips to get closer, to take him into her heat.

“Condom,” he groaned.

“I’m on the Pill, if you want to—”

“Oh, f**k yeah, I want to.” The fact that she trusted that he would never endanger her sent a primal sense of pride coursing through him.

He rolled her onto her back in one fluid motion, spreading her knees with his. He slipped a hand between them to ready her, but she shoved it aside.

“Inside me. Now,” she said, wrapping her fingers around his length, working him against the sensitive knot between her thighs.

He reared back and thrust forward. He groaned her name, sinking, unfettered, deep into that tight, gripping channel. She arched against him and held him close.

The second she released him he moved, sliding into her decadent heat and retreating, the sensual drag of tender flesh obliterating what remained of his composure. He pounded into her, his hips moving like pistons driving them to the brink.

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” she chanted, her head tossing back and forth on the pillow. The storm broke and she let out a wail, her body sucking at his, pulling him over with her. His whole body quaked and he followed her over the edge.

He slumped forward, burying his face in the sweet skin of her neck. “Amazing,” he whispered.

He probably should’ve kept that to himself, but it was the truth. He rolled to his side, pulling her with him. Nestling her into the crook of his arm, he wondered how he was going to go back to his regularly scheduled life.

A life without any amazing in it at all.

…

Lindy stirred as a chill passed over her. She burrowed deeper into the warmth of Owen’s shoulder and listened to his even breath. Damn, she would miss this. The game had almost been a major failure, but she’d pulled it out in the end. Maybe he hadn’t told her he loved her, but she could see it in his eyes. If only they had more time. Time so he could realize what she already knew.

The emotion welled up inside her and couldn’t be contained. “I love you,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his collarbone. “I love you so much.”

Owen stiffened and his breath halted. She froze, afraid to speak in case she was wrong. Maybe he was just shifting in his sleep. But his muscles tensed more with each passing second, as if he couldn’t wait to move. She swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat. “Y-you’re awake?”

“I am.” His tone was clipped, and he tugged his arm from beneath her head to sit up, pulling away from her. Her stomach clenched. The disappointment was crushing even though she’d known this moment would come. She’d hoped for a little longer, but she’d brought it to a premature end with her careless words. The fat lady was warming up, and there was nothing Lindy could do to stop her. She’d never known such helplessness.

“Lindy,” he said, but paused when she shot to her feet.

He could ruin what they had if he chose, but she wasn’t about to listen to some lecture about how he was right for doing it. “I know you don’t want to hear it. I thought you were asleep, but really, it doesn’t change anything.”

“Dammit, Lindy, it changes everything. Everything.”

She searched his stormy face and wished to God his eyes would clear. That he’d stop looking at her as if he’d never seen her before. “No. Said or unsaid, I love you just the same, and I’m not sorry.” Her voice trembled but she held her ground.

“I am.”

The two words cut through her, hard and deep, and she couldn’t keep the sob from breaking free. “Please, don’t say that.”

He shot to his feet and faced her, arms crossed over his chest. “Don’t lay the blame for this at my feet. I never asked for your love. Do you know, my mother’s face lit up like an asteroid shooting through the sky every time my old man walked into a room? And when he walked out for the last time, it killed her.”

His jaw was tight, his eyes cold. Two pieces of flint, stark against his skin. He spoke in a monotone, his voice giving away no sign of his inner turmoil. But she knew this man now and knew his pain as well as if it were her own. Her anger drained away in one fell swoop, and hot tears filled her eyes. She blinked hard to ward them off.

“It was a slow process. Took a few years. Hundreds of days filled with debilitating depression, insomnia because every time she fell asleep she dreamed he was back. And every time she woke, she had to relive it all over again. I was there trying to pick up the pieces. Makes you grow up fast…see things clearly. Eventually, her body broke down, little by little, and one day she was gone. I was fifteen.” He shook his head, the finality in his tone like a knife to her heart. “I’ll never let someone have that kind of power over me.”