A Second Chance at Forever (12 page)

As her mind quickly followed his, a delicious shiver rocketed down her spine. She ought to end this phone call, make up some excuse, but instead she found herself telling him, “In my room.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.” The word left her mouth breathy and way too honest. His provocative tone pulled all rational thought from her brain.

She should end this now.

“Are you on the bed?”

Desire slid through her, settling between her thighs, making her achy and needy in the span of a single, thundering heartbeat. She drew in a shuddering breath. “Should I be?”

“Do you want to be?”

His question was silent and unspoken, but there all the same. Did she want him the way he wanted her?

She gripped the arm of the chair with her free hand, sank back into the seat and closed her eyes. She should tell him no and remove the unbearable temptation rising between them, but it was a lie. The words refused to leave her mouth.

“I want you here.” She wanted to feel the warmth of his skin against hers, his hands on her. He hadn’t even touched her, couldn’t touch her, but she burned for him. Only Alex could put out the flames he’d stoked within her.

He made a sound at the back of his throat, of pleasure, of torment. “Me too. You have no idea. Close your eyes. I’m right beside you.”

****

Angela lay on her bed twenty minutes later, naked and panting, trying to catch her breath as she listened to Alex’s harsh, ragged breathing on the other end of the line. She stared at the textured ceiling in disbelief. She had
not
just done that.

What in the world had gotten into her? She didn’t do those sorts of things. Geeky Angela Lewis did not have phone sex. God help her it had been an experience she wouldn’t soon forget. The energy between them had been intense. They’d fed on each other, the way a gentle breeze stokes a flame. It had made for an explosive experience that had taken her breath away. Literally.

“Is it always like that, Alex?” she whispered.

“I wouldn’t know, sweetheart,” he said, every bit as breathless as she was.

That caught her attention. He’d always seemed so…experienced. “You’ve never done that before either?”

He let out a quiet laugh. “No. You’re a first for me in quite a lot of ways, Ang.”

That was the terrifying part. Their experience had also been the most intimate of her life, because she
wasn’t
playing Candy. She’d just been Angela, had shared pieces of herself with him she never had with anyone else before. Certainly not David.

She’d felt so safe with Alex. Lost in the intensity rocking between them, she’d come back to the room forgetting for a moment he wasn’t there with her. That sense of safety had settled around her. Warm and reassuring, it had allowed her to relax.

All of which had warning bells blaring red alert in her head. He was the first man since David who made her feel…vulnerable. No man had ever made her yearn for his touch the way Alex did.

The thought of getting involved again scared her to death. Getting involved with a man whose heart was, by his own admission, unavailable, was unwise at best. She knew better.

All of which left her floundering. Part of her wanted to run straight into his arms. A larger part screamed at her to run in the opposite direction. Angela found herself caught somewhere in the middle.

She squeezed her eyes shut as panic rose up around her, lodging in her throat. She should not have allowed that to go so far.

“I have to go,” she said, the words tumbling from her mouth on a voice she couldn’t seem to keep from trembling.

“Okay. Are you all right?” A mixture of concern and confusion etched his voice.

“I…I don’t know. Oh God I don’t know.” She rocked her head from side to side, the words leaving her mouth on a bare whisper. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, Alex.” She paused, then quietly admitted, “You scare the hell out of me.”

“You’re the first, you know,” he whispered. “The first woman I’ve been with since…”

Her stomach twisted. Somehow, his admission only made it worse. The man made her long for things she shouldn’t, like curling up against his body as they slept. She missed having someone beside her at night, falling asleep warm and safe. That Alex wasn’t there after what they’d shared felt wrong. The emotion stuck in her chest, left her caught in the middle of things she knew better than to want.

“I’d never hurt you, Ang. You know that, don’t you?”

She wanted to deny it, to tell him she didn't, in fact, know that, except the words refused to leave her mouth. She couldn’t lie to him. It wasn’t in her to hurt him just because she was scared.

“Yes,” she whispered. He wouldn’t, she
knew
that. At least not intentionally. That was what made Alex so dangerous. She wrapped her free arm around herself. “I have to go.”

“All right.” He hesitated, as if he had more he wanted to say, then released a heavy breath. “Good night, Angela.”

The quiet tenderness in his voice had her closing eyes. She could almost hear him whispering to her in the dark as she drifted to sleep in his arms…

“’Night.” She punched the END button, set her cell phone down beside her, and released a pent up breath. She was in trouble. She was in very big trouble.

Chapter Nine

Alex sank onto the porch step with a sigh. It was a quarter after one in the morning. The high heat that had ruled the day when he’d stepped off the plane this evening had melded into cool night. Except for the soft breeze blowing through the trees, the neighborhood around him was still and quiet, so different from the constant hum of Manhattan traffic that he found it vaguely unsettling. Only the chirping of the night bugs filled the air.

He had no idea what the hell he was doing here. He’d flown out on to Vegas on a whim, a need—to see Angela. Three days had passed since he’d last spoken to her. Three long days for him to mull over the conversation and wonder if he ought to regret it, because he couldn’t stop hearing the panic in her voice. The abrupt way she’d ended the phone call.

He hadn’t intended for the conversation to go quite that far, but the fact that it had only left him hungrier than he’d already been. For her. She soothed the ever present ache in his chest. When he was with her, when he talked to her, hell, sometimes when he simply thought about her, the pain became bearable.

Being with her reminded him he’d been living in a shell. Hollow and empty.

Oh, he was doing okay in the grand scheme of things. He went on about his life. Got up every morning. Had breakfast. Went to work. His life moved along as it should, simple and uncomplicated.

But neither did it have any joy. The sun didn’t shine for him. It hadn’t for a long time. Life for Alex had become a testament to shades of gray. Angela…was like watching the sun rise for the first time. She made him want. Want more than this bleak existence. She’d brought life back into his world. He wasn’t sure he was ready to dive into a relationship with both eyes closed. Wasn’t sure he should even be here. Angela deserved a future he didn’t know if he could give. She deserved someone who could love her in return. What if he wasn’t that man?

All he did know was that he needed to see her like he needed to draw his next breath. He could think of a million reasons why he shouldn’t be here, but none of them seemed to matter.

Except Angela was avoiding him. She had yet to return his calls. Not hearing from her drove him crazy. While a part of him knew he ought to give her time, a larger part needed to know.

So here he was. Sitting on her front step at one in the morning, because he couldn’t sleep until he spoke to her. The question was, would she be happy to see him?

****

Angela froze at the end of the walkway as she spotted the figure on the front porch. With the light against his back, the darkness of the night hid his face in shadows, but she’d know that figure anywhere. She’d spent an entire night familiarizing herself with every inch of him. She was fairly certain she could recognize him with her eyes closed.

Alex. He sat on the top step of the front porch, elbows braced on his knees, like he’d been there a while.

Her stomach tumbled, a mix of happy butterflies and nerves. God, did he know how often she’d thought about him? How she yearned to see him, to look into those eyes and see the passion, all for her? How it tormented her to know she couldn’t deny how she felt about him?

Steeling herself for the contact, she closed the distance between them. He rose to his feet and met her at the bottom of the stairs. For a long moment, neither said anything. She couldn’t see his eyes in the dark, but his gaze called to her like a song. The memory of the last time they’d spoken, the intimacy they’d shared, hung in the air between them.

He stroked his fingers over the skin of her arm, his touch light and hesitant, as if he hadn’t been able to help himself. “Why do I get the feeling you’re avoiding me?”

She drew her brows together in confusion. “You flew all the way out here for that?”

“You haven’t been answering my calls.” He shrugged, as if it were the simplest answer in the world.

The heat of guilt crept up her neck and into her cheeks. She lowered her gaze to the ground. What in the world should she tell him? That she hadn’t called simply because she’d wanted to so badly that she picked up the phone every night and sat staring at his number? That she couldn’t stop thinking about the last time she’d spoken to him? That she craved the sound of his voice and yearned for nothing more right now than to press her body along his, just to feel his solidness against her, to feel his arms close around her?

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I…I didn’t know what to say to you.”

He took the last step forward, slipped his hands onto her hips, and tugged her against him. He leaned his forehead against hers. “Don’t shut me out, Ang,” he whispered.

The powerful press of his body had her breath halting in her lungs. It felt so right to be in his arms. He was so warm, his embrace such a safe place to be. Yet at the same time, being there terrified her. What if she fell in love with him and he decided to walk away? The vows they’d said to each other hadn’t stopped David from walking away.

She’d be left to pick up the pieces all over again.

The longing in Alex’s voice called to her all the same. She lifted her gaze to his and shook her head in misery. “I don’t know if I can do this, Alex. I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“Neither do I.” One hand reached up, his fingers gliding over her skin as he tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Ask me if I’m ready to fall in love again. Ask me if the thought doesn’t scare the hell out of me.”

“But how can you…” Words failed her. She lowered her gaze to his chest.

“Honestly, three months ago, I would have told you this was exactly what I didn’t want. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea where this is going. I’m not sure I even want to think about it. All I know…is that I want you. I want to see where that takes me.”

Cupping her cheeks in his warm hands, he tipped her face up to his and pressed his lips to hers. He kissed her gently, softly, giving her room to object, to push him away. Not that she could.

“Tell me you don’t want me,” he whispered against her lips as he kissed her, again and again, in a series of small sips and tastes that left her trembling. “I’ll turn around and walk away.”

But she couldn’t. The words refused to leave her mouth. His heady kisses pulled all reasoning from her mind. A soft moan escaped her. Her arms wound around his neck of their own accord. Losing herself in the taste of his mouth, Angela clung to him as they carefully maneuvered the stairs. Kissing and touching, hands roaming over each other, they fumbled their way across the porch.

They made it as far as the swing. When his legs hit the edge, Alex sank down onto the wooden bench. He braced his thighs to hold it steady and pulled her down with him. She pressed into him, clinging to him as his mouth devoured hers.

Somewhere in the midst of it, his mouth moved, velvet lips trailing across her shoulder. He scraped his teeth lightly over her flesh, sent shivers racing down her spine. She shifted to straddle his thighs.

His hands slid up her legs and into her shorts, his warm palms curving around her bare bottom as he pulled her tight against him. His arousal throbbed against her aching center. Her groan mingled with his in the quiet night air.

“God I wish you were wearing a skirt,” he whispered against her skin, “I could slip into you, make love to you right here, nothing between us, just you and me, your body hot around me…”

He continued to whisper against her skin, telling her in explicit detail what he wanted. Somewhere in the background she became aware of the quiet hum of a car’s engine as it moved down the street behind her.

Reality returned like a bolt of lightning, jarring and intense. Angela tore her mouth from his, pulled back to stare at him as an avalanche of emotion collapsed on top of her. Her heart hammered. Her breathing came quick and shallow. Oh, God, what was she doing? She was making out on the front porch of her mother’s house like a horny teenager. Had she actually been wearing a skirt, she had no doubt he’d be inside her already.

Granted it was late and nobody in this neighborhood was likely up this time of night, but the soft glow of the porch light made them visible to anyone who cared to look.

Like icy fingers on warm skin, panic slithered down her spine and settled hard and cold in her stomach. She was doing it again, getting so lost in him everything else ceased to exist. She couldn’t seem to help herself. He had only to look at her, stroke his hand over her skin, and her body melted to his whim.

She should know better than this. Her relationship with David had started the same way, all hot, heavy, and needy. Yet at the same time, some part of her insisted that Alex was different, told her he would never hurt her that way.

Struggling to drag air into her oxygen-starved lungs and more confused than she knew what to do with, she slid off his lap and backed away. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let it go that far.”