Bad in Bed (19 page)

Marco rolled off her, breathing hard and then
giving a low rumble of laughter as he dropped his head to the pillow and closed
his eyes. “Shit. I can’t get my breath.”

At the look in Ethan’s eyes, Amber hiked
herself up so she could retrieve the duvet. She wrapped it around herself as
she looked at Ethan, shivering beneath his cold, hard glare.

“Don’t let me interrupt.” He threw the towel
he’d used to dry his hair, then pulled at the end of the towel at his waist. He
let it drop to the floor. Naked, he walked to a nearby chair and pulled on his
jeans.

Amber wasn’t sure what to do, what to say, but
thankfully Marco filled the silence. “Too late even if you wanted to,” he said
in answer to Ethan’s terse comment. “We started, and finished, without you.”

Watching Ethan zip his jeans, Amber sensed
something fundamental had changed between them. He had barely looked at her,
couldn’t meet her eyes. He didn’t glance back as he left the room.

Her face heated, strange since a chill had
settled around her heart. She had to try and talk to Ethan, but when she
scrambled from the bed, Marco’s hand shot out to restrain her. “Let me talk to
him.”

Amber sat on the edge of the bed as Marco
gathered his trousers, waiting until he had gone in search of Ethan before she
stood and went to the bathroom. Cold, she turned on the shower, and hoped that
the warmth would seep into her icy bones.

* * * *

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

Marco’s pitiful attempt at humor only served to
inflame Ethan’s ferocious mood as he stood brooding in the bar. He’d learned
from experience that when his temper bristled he was best keeping quiet. So he
said nothing.

Tuning in, Marco stuck a tumbler under the
whisky dispenser and handed the filled glass to Ethan. When Ethan slipped his
hands in his pockets, Marco placed the glass on counter. “Okay, you’re pissed.
I get that.”

Still Ethan said nothing.

“The silent type of pissed.” Marco leaned back
against the bar and folded his arms across his chest. “Must be serious.”

Ethan only narrowed his eyes.

“She’s worried you’re upset.”

At the mention of Amber, Ethan’s anger erupted.
“You had no fucking right.”

Marco raised his chin. “Not as if I haven’t
screwed her before. Shit. I’ve lost count how many times.”

“It’s different and you know it.” Ethan stepped
in front of Marco, stabbing his finger into Marco’s chest. “I call the shots,
you’re along for the ride. You had no right to take her without me there.”

“I don’t need my hand held. Neither does she.”

“You think you’re so damn clever. Well, I’ve
got news for you, my friend. This is over. It ends now.”

Marco raised his eyebrows. “Maybe we should see
what Amber has to say about that. I didn’t hear any complaints. What I did hear
was her moaning in my ear, begging me to make her come.”

Marco barely got the last few words out before
Ethan gripped the front of his shirt and hauled him up.

Ethan felt the inferno all the way from his
chest, along his shoulders, down his arm, until his free hand fisted and
vibrated with the need to make contact with Marco’s chin.

The two men stood nose to nose, breathing hard
and heavy as the tension blazed between them. As Ethan continued to stare into
his friend’s narrowed gaze, he wondered what the hell had happened. What the
hell he was doing. This whole set up had been of his own making and he’d
practically shoved Amber into Marco’s arms. He could hardly turn on the man for
doing what had been asked of him.

Ethan dragged in a few steadying breaths. When
his lungs had settled and the roaring between his ears had dulled, he released
Marco’s shirt. Stepping back, he shook his head. “Shit.”

“You can say that again.” Marco drew in a long
breath and let it out on a sigh. “That’s the first time I’ve thought you might
actually clock me.”

“Shit,” Ethan said again. “Don’t know what’s
wrong with me.”

Marco smoothed down his rumpled shirt. “It’s called
jealousy, my friend. Comes from falling in love with a woman and watching your
best friend bang her.”

Seeing as Marco had got it spot on, Ethan
didn’t even try to deny it. Nor did he object when Marco stepped up beside him.

Ethan leaned back against the bar and folded
his arms across his chest. “It sucks.”

“Yeah.” Marco mirrored Ethan’s actions. “Big
time.”

As the last of the tension between them faded,
the two men slipped into an edgy silence.

* * * *

Since there were
no sounds coming from the bar, Amber wondered what had happened to the men. But
when she arrived at the doorway of the small lobby which connected the stairs
to the bar, she glimpsed the men leaning back against the counter, arms
crossed, deep in thought.

She stood there,
taking a moment to drink them in. Marco with his tanned skin and dark
Mediterranean good looks; Ethan, taller, more muscular with his short cropped
hair and deep blue eyes. The tension in those eyes had diminished a little,
making way for the contemplative look she was becoming more familiar with. It
should have settled her, but it didn’t.

“So you want to
call a halt.” Marco’s voice was so low Amber had to strain to hear. “
Mission
accomplished and
all.”

Mission
accomplished?
What did that mean?

Ethan ran his
hand over his short hair, then nodded. “It’s run its course. I can’t do it
anymore. So yeah, I want to call a halt.”

“When do you
plan on telling her?”

Ethan only
shrugged.

“Can’t say I
won’t miss our Saturday nights.” Marco’s grin earned him a narrow eyed stare
from Ethan. “But since your plan worked and you’ve accomplished what you set
out to do, I can’t argue. Christ, her lack of inhibitions is now so off the
scale, she won’t give those scars another thought. She can’t doubt her ability
in the sack.”

Amber stepped back against the wall, flattened
herself against it. Hot tears burned, but she concentrated on breathing when
her ribcage grew tight. How could Ethan have told Marco about her feelings? How
could he have told him about her insecurities with her appearance?

Was that why he’d set this up? So he could
prove to her that men besides him would find her attractive? God. He’d told
Marco everything. Everything.

And now he couldn’t do it anymore. Their
relationship had run its course. He wanted to finish it and was simply working
up the courage to tell her they were over.

She wanted to rush back upstairs, strip off
Ethan’s tee shirt, get dressed, and get out of there. But damned if she’d go
crawling away like some little wallflower and let him get away with it.

Before she knew what was happening, she stormed
into the bar, her head high and her chin angled into the air.

Both men straightened as she stomped toward
them. She stopped mere inches short of Ethan’s chest. “So is that what this is
about, Ethan? Another charity fuck? The two of you thought you could
cure
me or something?”

Ethan’s nostrils flared as he tried to grab her
arms. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Like hell.” She poked him in the chest,
wincing as her finger connected with hard muscle. “Was that your plan? You figured
you could make me less inhibited? Less conscious of being
disfigured
?”

The depth of her hurt, her humiliation, the
sense of betrayal, spilled out in hot angry bursts and she felt rather than
heard Marco move away. “You stay right where you are.” Her sharp command had
Marco freezing to the spot.

“Let me get this straight. This was to open me
up, was it?
 
I wasn’t good enough. I was
too frigid. You had to spice things up by bringing Marco into the mix? Despite
everything you’ve said to me, everything you’ve told me.”

“For God’s sake, it’s not like that.”

“So you said. But I’ll tell you how it looks to
me, shall I?” She took in a shaky breath that shuddered through her as the
anger lodged in her chest and squeezed. “I think you set out on a mission to cure
me,” she said punctuating the last words with quote marks formed by her fingers
in the air. “But you weren’t man enough to do it yourself. You needed
reinforcements.”

Ethan dragged his fingers through his hair.

“I trusted you. I told you things I’ve never
told anyone. Yet here you are, making a mockery over my stupid feelings. Well,
guess what, Ethan. You can go screw yourself.”

She turned so fast she almost stumbled into
Marco. “Amber, you’ve got this all wrong.”

“True enough.” She pushed past him and anger
propelled her up the stairs. “I got it desperately wrong.”

In the bedroom, she slammed the door and
searched the room for her clothes. All she found was her thong. Realizing that
the rest of her clothes were somewhere down in the bar where the evening had
started, she took a few fortifying breaths and pushed down her feelings as she
pulled open the door.

Ethan stood outside. “Amber…”

She stormed past him, flew down the stairs,
ignoring Marco’s attempts to reason with her, and scrambled around the floor of
the bar looking for her clothes. Her breathing lurched painfully as she pulled
on her skirt, then pulled off Ethan’s tee shirt.

“Amber, calm down. Let’s talk about this.”

“Don’t you tell me to calm down.” She almost
spat it out between clenched teeth as she threw Ethan’s tee shirt at his chest.
She moved away from him as he came toward her and scrambled into her top,
before searching for her shoes.

“You’re not leaving.”

“Watch me.” She pushed her feet into her
sandals, then grabbed her bag and stormed to the door. Knowing it would be
locked, she spun around and glared at Marco who still hovered behind the bar.
“Open this bloody door. Now!”

Marco glanced at Ethan and tossed him the key.
Without a word, Marco left the bar and went back upstairs.

Amber crossed her arms over her chest as she
waited for Ethan to unlock the door. She glared at him across the dark space
and watched as he shrugged into his tee shirt. The tension in his face made a
mockery of the easy way he tossed the keys in the palm of his hand as he came
across to her.

“Five minutes,” he said, holding her gaze as he
moved to stand in front of her. “If you still want to leave, I’ll unlock the
door.”

She glared up at him. “Oh, I’ll want to leave.”

Slowly, he pushed the keys into his trouser pocket.
“The last thing I wanted was to hurt you in any way. It seemed when I told you
about the woman Marco and I shared, that you were in some kind of awe about it.
You acted as if it happened to other women, but not to you. As if you were not
worthy of two men wanting you at the same time. This thing with Marco? I
thought it might make you realize how damn beautiful you are. How amazingly
sexy and giving and desirable.”

“But first you had to warn him that I was less
than perfect?”

He frowned a little. “Stop using your accident
as a fucking excuse.”

She felt her mouth drop open. “I beg your
pardon.”

“It’s getting old, Amber. This continual need
you seem to have to shove it in everyone’s face that you know you’re not
perfect. That you have to make sure everyone hears it from your lips before
they can find out for themselves. Well, newsflash, green eyes, nobody’s
perfect.” He stabbed his finger at her. “Marco? His dick’s crooked, but then
you already know that. Me? I’ve got a busted nose courtesy of a playground
incident when I was ten, and one shoulder higher than the other due to a
shattered rotator cuff a few years back.”

Amber glanced at his shoulder and noticed for
the first time that, yes, one of his shoulders was higher than the other.
“That’s not the same thing and you know it. Even if it was, I wouldn’t go
around telling everyone about it.”

“I didn’t tell Marco.”

“Really?” Her sarcasm dripped into the silence.
“What? He’s psychic?”

“All I said was that your ex did a number on
you. I didn’t give specifics.”

“Did a number on me? By going off with another
man because the sight of me had driven him off women forever?”

“For God’s sake. Marco’s got eyes. He saw the
way you covered yourself. Doesn’t take a math genius to do the sums.” He shook
his head. “Didn’t matter to Marco any more than it mattered to me. Any more
than it would matter to any man with blood in his veins.”

Exasperation shone in his eyes and a little of
Amber’s anger dissipated. “I don’t know anything anymore.” She let out a long
sigh and felt her shoulders slump. “My head hurts from thinking about it.” Not
to mention her heart.

Ethan stepped toward her, his hands reaching
for hers, but she sidestepped. He’d told Marco he couldn’t do it anymore, which
meant he was tired of them, of her. As far as he was concerned, he’d cured her
of her concern over her scars and his work was done.