“Chocolate. Bitter and dark.” There was humor in his eyes. “I must have selected the wrong bottle.” His brow wrinkled. “Silly me.”
He hadn’t forgotten!
That he’d remembered, taken the trouble to arrange something she’d said she liked was suddenly, overwhelmingly significant.
Avery helped herself to a cherry. “Definitely tastes better out here under blue skies. Sweet and juicy, all it needs is the chocolate.”
His eyes darkened. “Very tasty.”
“You haven’t even tasted it yet.”
“I don’t even need the chocolate.” He leaned forward and placed his lips against hers. His tongue swept across her lip. Slowly. Sensuously. Tasting the sweet juice of the cherry she’d eaten.
Her heart jolted, and began to race.
“Now I have,” he whispered against her lips.
Avery pulled back. She had a feeling she was going to regret this later. For heaven’s sake, he didn’t even trust her. “Guy, where is this going?”
“All the way.” His eyes were intense.
That wasn’t what she’d meant. But she let it pass as he drew picked up the rug and drew her into the shadowy hollow under the willow. The rasp of his breath as she arched her back was enough for now, Avery told herself. When he was ready he would tell her why he shied away from intimacy.
It was up to her to convince him there was nothing to fear.
She put her arms around him and pulled him close. “Make love to me, Guy.” Love not sex. Out here, feeling so close to Guy, she needed to make herself believe it was more than only sex. Even if she was deluding herself.
He didn’t protest.
Instead he dropped his head and swirled his tongue through the valley between her br**sts. Avery moaned. Her head tipped back, and the next moment she felt the stroke of his tongue against the arch of her throat. She shuddered.
“Let’s get this wet suit off.” His voice was hoarse.
That gave her pause. “What if someone comes?”
“Oh, someone will come, all right,” he growled.
Avery gave a shuddering laugh. “Don’t joke.”
“No joke.” The eyes that burned into hers were scorching hot. “I promise.”
For a moment her natural caution reared its head. Then passion took over. Under the canopy of the willow they were out of sight. Avery pushed all worries about interruptions, about tomorrow…next week, out of her head. Guy filled her vision, her world.
Lifting her hands she rested them on his shoulders. His skin was sleek and smooth under her touch, his muscles firm. She gloried in the warm hardness of him. He felt so vital, so alive.
“I’ll hold you to that promise,” she murmured as her hands traveled down and stopped at the barrier formed by the waistband of his board shorts. Languorously she tugged the laces undone. Slipping her hands inside the waistband she pushed them over his h*ps and down his legs.
By the time the wet bathing suit landed on the ground, he was hard and quivering. Avery sank down onto her knees, and heard him gasp as her mouth closed on him.
Seconds later he was tumbling her onto the rug, spreading her thighs. Touching her…stroking her with hands that shook. Until her body started to sing. Just when she feared she could take no more he slipped between her thighs and sank into her, filling her until she could think of nothing. Except Guy.
Avery arched her back and gave a breathy moan of pleasure.
He lifted his head. “Okay?”
She nodded. “Oh, yes.”
His lips curved. “I’m glad—for me, too.”
She wanted to say that it could be even better. If he could only relax his guard, let her into his heart, and learn to trust her.
But she knew that if she voiced the intense thoughts his smile would vanish, he’d withdraw. Because the reality was that Guy didn’t want a lasting relationship. Now was all that mattered to him. She was a fool to want more with a man who didn’t even trust her.
So she bit her lip instead, closed her eyes, and focused on the connection they had.
Then he started to move and she forgot everything. Except the pure blinding silver pleasure of the moment.
Afterward they sat out on the sunny river bank and ate dessert.
The cherries and rich chocolate dipping sauce might as well have been stale bread and cold broth for all Guy cared. It tasted bland. Prosaic. It was Avery that he hungered for, her skin, her lips that he craved. Not food.
He couldn’t take his eyes of her. She’d pulled a tank top on with the lime bikini bottoms. She looked so breathtakingly colorful, so alive. And she’d been so passionate, so giving…everything a man could ever desire.
Yet one part of him still hung back, knowing that she would never be what she promised.
There’d be other men. And in the end she would leave again. He had to steel himself. He couldn’t afford not to keep a part of himself carefully in reserve.
“Guy—” she hesitated “—we need to talk.”
“Let’s enjoy the sunshine.”
She fell silent. Then, “There’s something I need to tell you.”
No.
Whatever it was he didn’t want to hear. “I don’t need confessions.” It came out more harshly than he’d intended.
He felt her grow stiff in his arms and he suppressed a sigh. Why couldn’t she just be satisfied with what they had? With the joy of the moment? Why did women always have to complicate everything?
But he sensed this was important to her. That she needed to get whatever it was she wanted to talk about off her chest. Guy told himself he could take whatever it was. Hell, he’d already gotten over her fling with Jeff, hadn’t he? He could get over whatever else she was about to reveal, too.
It wasn’t as if he were emotionally invested in her.
They were lovers, not soul mates—he’d always scorned the very idea of those.
“Tell me,” he said with a touch of weariness.
“Maybe now isn’t a good time.”
Typical. Guy stifled a burst of impatience. “Don’t go all feminine on me. You can’t start something then pull back.”
“You’re not making this easy.”
He suppressed the urge to groan. They made fantastic love. All he wanted was to spend the afternoon lazing in the sunshine with Avery beside him. She had to go wreck the mood with her urge to make a confession he had no desire to hear. And she said he wasn’t making it easy?
She drew a deep breath. “It’s about that night with Jeff.”
Heaven help him…this he most definitely did not want to hear about.
She must’ve read the reluctance on his face, because she said hurriedly, “That night, you need to know—”
“No. I don’t need to know anything about that night,” he interrupted. “It’s over. Forgotten.”
If he told himself that often enough he might start to believe it.
“It’s not over,” she said stubbornly. “It hangs between us all the time.”
“Nothing hangs between us, as you put it.”
Guy wanted to end this discussion. He hated the thought of her with Jeff, responding to his friend with the same glorious abandon she’d just responded to him with. He didn’t even want to think about it, much less do a postmortem on the distasteful topic. Nothing would take away the pain of Jeff telling him what a wildcat she’d been in bed.
“Of course it does. I implied I’d slept with Jeff, when I hadn’t.”
He went still. She wanted him to believe she’d lied? “Why would you do such a thing?”
How the hell was he supposed to believe this when she’d just admitted to lying to him once already?
She glanced away. “Surely that’s obvious?”
“Nothing is obvious.” He rolled away from her and, propping his arms behind his head, gazed up through the bent branches of the willow to the fragmented pieces of bright blue sky beyond. He refused to feel relief…or hope. Jeff had told him she’d seduced him, and Avery had confirmed that. Now she was changing her story. The chances that Jeff had lied, too, were too remote to even consider. “Why don’t you spell it out?”
“I was angry with you.”
“With me?” Guy turned his head and stared at her incredulously. “What did I do?”
“You put your business ahead of me—just like you always do.”
“Hold on a minute. Do you know how I worried about you? Waiting for you at Baratin—and you never arrived.”
For a moment Avery caught a glimpse into the depths of hell. Her fury evaporated. That night in the spa he’d told her that he’d asked Jeff to arrange a cab for her and to let her know. Instead Jeff had decided to collect her himself. And she’d run. So why had Guy worried? “But Jeff told you I seduced him. Why should you worry about me?”
“He told me over two hours later. I came back to my apartment to see if by any chance you were there—even though you weren’t answering your cell phone or the apartment phone—only to find a devastated Jeff.”
“I left my cell phone behind on the sideboard in my hurry to escape.”
“It wasn’t in the apartment.”
Avery searched for a logical explanation. “Then Jeff must’ve taken it.”
“Every explanation you offer comes back to blaming Jeff.”
Avery let the accusation go. “When did he tell you about the supposed seduction?”
“When I found him drunk as a skunk in my apartment. He was torn up with guilt for sleeping with my girlfriend.”
“Who seduced him,” she said with a snap of her teeth. Jeff had been very clever.
Guy’s gaze bored into her. “He begged my forgiveness.”
Another brilliant touch. “After he’d convinced you it wasn’t the first time I’d tempted him.” Oh, she could see how Jeff had played it. “He manipulated you.”
He’d manipulated her, too. She’d never even paused to call Guy and check his story out. She’d been too outraged and hurt. So she’d simply cut her losses and run. Exactly as Jeff had probably intended.
Guy had deserved more.
Guy was shaking his head. “I don’t think so. He was crying—it really cut him up. He blamed himself. He was even making statements that sounded dangerously suicidal.” More manipulation.
Yet how could she place all the blame on Guy for being taken in? She’d believed Jeff, too. Had it given her a convenient excuse to run? Deep in her heart she’d known that she and Guy would never last…he wasn’t looking for a wife, a family. He’d told her, too often, how happy he was with his life just the way it was.
Taking in the shadows under his eyes, Avery decided he didn’t look terribly happy now.
He looked strained…and tired.
She’d been so angry on the night of her birthday because he’d put work before her. She needed to try to get that frustration across to him.
“You told Jeff to get me a cab so I could meet you at Baratin.” Even now it annoyed her that he hadn’t bothered to leave his precious business and pick her up for their date. “At the time I thought you’d forgotten all about my birthday. Until Jeff arrived and told me you’d sent him to pick me up because you were too busy—”