Mad About You (10 page)

“Stop there,” Cassy said. “Try not to say
um
and
ah.
They’re filler words. Speak as slowly as you like. Pause frequently to let your message sink in. If you get a brain freeze, stop talking, take a breath, and begin again. Likely she won’t even notice. Okay, go.”

He got halfway through his first page of notes with only a dozen or so
ums
and
ahs
before she stopped him again.

“I don’t understand. It’s too technical.”

“I can’t make it any simpler. The concepts require a basic amount of scientific knowledge of nanotechnology.”

“We don’t know how much background knowledge Lorraine has. For the purposes of this presentation, you should assume she has none.”

Cassy looked so earnest, so sweet. She wanted him to succeed so badly. He didn’t have a better friend in the world. But right now he wasn’t seeing her as a friend. She could cover up all she liked, but he couldn’t forget that beneath her dressing gown she wore a revealing nightie that tantalized with hints and glimpses of her soft, curving flesh.

He tried to dumb his presentation down. It wasn’t easy. He was used to talking about his research with people who knew all the jargon and who were well-versed in the concepts his ideas were based on, even if they weren’t familiar with his work in particular. Over the next hour, Cassy painstakingly stopped him and asked him to explain every word she didn’t understand and then translate it into layman’s language. When he reread the pitch, it sounded as if he were talking to a bunch of kindergarten kids.

“It’s too low-level,” he complained. “I don’t want to insult her.”

“Maybe you should focus more on the second half of your speech…how the Dreamcatcher will change people’s lives.” Cassy yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Once more from the top?”

“Forget it. We’re too tired. You’re ready to fall off your chair and I can hardly see straight, much less think.” Scott tossed his notes onto the table and stretched out his back. “I’m going to need some energy for mountain biking tomorrow, too.”

“I know!” Cassy said. “You could take Lorraine down a really gnarly trail so that she might crash and break her leg. While she’s in the hospital getting a cast put on, we would have more time to prepare.”

“Yeah, great idea. I love it when the ten-year-old in you comes out to play.” He tweaked her hair. “I remember when you dropped your book report in a mud puddle so the ink would run and Miss Thompson wouldn’t be able to read it and know how little work you did.”

“It worked, though, didn’t it? For a day, at least.” She grinned at him, looking exactly like that young girl who used to shock him with her irreverence for learning.

“I’ll never know how you even got to be an accountant.”

She flapped a hand. “Accounting is simple arithmetic. Easy peasy.”

“Right.” She might have been a slacker in high school, but her brain was a lot sharper than she admitted. She could have gone to Harvard, majored in mathematics, anything. Scott had no idea why she’d buried herself in Bellingham instead of finding a high-powered job on Wall Street. She always brushed the subject off if he raised it.

Silence fell. They both yawned. There was nothing more to say, no way to drag out the interval between work and turning back the covers.

“It’s late,” Scott said. “We should go to bed.”

“Right.” Cassy’s gaze drifted sideways to the bedroom and the piece of furniture in question. “We should be able to share that without touching. I won’t so much as get my baby toe near your shin.”

He sincerely hoped so or he wouldn’t be able to resist her. He hated that they were so awkward with each other. It was his fault. She’d come on to him and he’d rebuffed her, again. They’d been able to set that aside while they were working, but now she’d gone back to being prickly.

“Remember when we went camping on the Olympic Peninsula after we graduated from college?” he said. That had been one of their last close times together, before he’d gone off to Stanford to do a PhD. “Let’s light the fire and pretend we’re back there. The sound of the falls will double as the sound of the waves crashing on the beach.”

Cassy hesitated, giving him an odd look he couldn’t interpret. But she nodded and climbed into the high bed and sat up against the pillows.

Scott kneeled and struck a long match, touching it to the tinder beneath the carefully stacked logs. A yellow flame curled around the shaved wood and crackled into the splintered pine. He turned out the overhead lights, leaving only a table lamp to give the room a mellow glow and soft shadows. He slipped off his track pants, leaving his boxers and T-shirt on. Then he brought the champagne bucket and their glasses and got into bed. Three feet of mattress and decades of suppressed feelings separated them.

Cassy hadn’t taken off her dressing gown and the collar bunched up beneath her ears, making her look like a ten-year-old again. “Are we going to tell ghost stories?”

This was better. He sank into the pillows, making himself more comfortable. The fire had caught and flames leaped high in the stone fireplace. “Have you heard the story of the monkey’s paw?”

“That old chestnut?” She groaned and laughed, just as he’d hoped she would, then wriggled in anticipation. “Tell it to me again.”

“Outside, the night was cold and wet,” he began in a creepy voice. “Inside the cottage, in front of the fire, Mr. and Mrs. White were cozy and warm.”

“Too warm,” Cassy said, fanning her flushed face.

“That’s not how it goes.”

“I mean,
I’m
too warm. Sorry, but I have to take this dressing gown off.” She slid off the bed and facing away from him, undid the tie belt on her blue silk dressing gown. “Don’t look.”

Naturally, he looked. What red-blooded man wouldn’t?

The dressing gown fell off her shoulders. The flickering fire lit her from behind, rendering her nightgown transparent. He could see everything, from the narrow dip of her waist, to the bloom of her hip, to the tender curve of a breast in half profile. His mouth dried. His cock, tamed and quiescent during the past couple of hours, jerked to life again, thick and hard and pulsing.
Jesus!
Why was he resisting making love to her? He was finding it difficult to remember.

Cassy climbed back into bed, one shoulder bared by the slipping, loose neckline of the negligee. Her hair had air-dried, and framed her oval face with soft waves. The flames from the crackling logs threw light and shadow across her face, putting a warm glow in her amber eyes. “That’s better.”

“Yes, better.” He swallowed. “Where was I?”

“Warm and cozy in front of the fire.” Her head on the pillow, she gazed at him. “If you had a monkey’s paw, what would you wish for?”

He studied her face in the flickering firelight, so dear and familiar, so sexy and sweet, for a long time. The balance of lust versus friendship had finally tipped. He was still afraid of what would happen to them, but right now, his desire for her was stronger than his concern about risking the status quo.

Very deliberately, he removed the ice bucket and set it on the floor. Then he pulled his T-shirt over his head. “Come here,” he growled. “I’ll show you.”

Chapter Six

Cassy pulled the comforter up to her neck and drew back a little, eyeing Scott warily. “A monkey paw wish always ends badly.”

Fair enough. He’d pushed her away, probably hurt her feelings as well as her pride. He would have to woo her.

“If it ends badly, so be it.” He inserted a finger inside the silky comforter and tugged it down a couple of inches. He was rewarded with a glimpse of smooth, tanned skin and the jut of her collarbone. “I can’t fight this attraction anymore.”

“So you are attracted to me?” She tried to sound neutral but he could hear the tiny thread of hope in her voice. God, he so did not want to hurt her.

“I always have been.” He owed her that and more. She’d been open with him, made herself vulnerable. “You’re hot. Searingly, habanero chili, take-your-head-off hot.”

“You’re such a bullshitter. But I’m flattered that I meet your high standards.” Even as she teased, she pulled up the covers again.

He edged closer and tucked a strand of wavy hair behind her ear. “I don’t know where you get this idea that I’m a ladies’ man. If I haven’t acted on my attraction, well, you know the reason.”

“Did you ever think that maybe we’re perfect for each other, that we could be lovers as well as friends?”

“You mean like ‘friends with benefits’?”

“I didn’t mean that exactly. I mean…” She floundered, unable or unwilling, to continue.

That was okay, because he suddenly understood how he felt. It came to him like a flash of blazing light. “No, you’re right, it’s not that crass. It’s more like…you’re awesome and you’re the most important person in my life, and this is an intense moment, and you’re the only one I can share it with, the only one I
want
to share it with, and connecting deeper through sex seems to be the way to do that.”

She was staring, her eyes inches away, looking as if she might cry.

“I don’t mean that to sound self-serving,” he said. “It’s only good if you feel the same and if you want that, too. That connection. That body/soul thing.”

Still she didn’t say anything, just swallowed.

“I’m not explaining it properly, am I? You probably think I’m full of shit, like you said.”

She shook her head. Either she was overcome with emotion or she’d had enough talking. He knew he had. He didn’t want to say anything more, didn’t want to be tempted to make promises he couldn’t keep.

He leaned in and kissed her, felt as much as heard her sigh as she opened her mouth to him. Heat swept through him as his searching tongue met hers in a sensuous but tender greeting. As warm and familiar as old friends, as exciting and strange as new lovers.

He reached under the comforter and put his arm around her waist, pulling her closer. This time she didn’t resist. Her foot slid up his calf until her knee brushed his thigh. Blood thrummed through his veins. His heart sounded in his ears like a beating drum. She scooted closer, a slender arm going around his neck. Closer still and her hips met his. His cock jerked with the contact and it was all he could do to resist pulling up her negligee and thrusting straight into her.

This was Cassy. He could hardly believe she was in his arms, in his bed. Most of his affairs followed a pattern: a few dates—or less—to establish mutual attraction and respect, then into bed. Usually, the sex was good and he liked the woman, but there wasn’t a huge emotional attachment. He had no previous experience that prepared him for making love to his best friend. Nothing, in fact, except decades of repressed fantasies.

It was hot in the room. Between the fire and their overactive hormones, they were generating an enormous amount of caloric warmth. He pushed back the comforter and the sight of her naked but for the thin negligee nearly undid him. Her nipples were erect and pressing against fabric so sheer he could see their rosy peaks. With a groan, he covered one with his mouth, gathering in as much as he could of her plump round breast and sucking hard. She gasped and writhed beneath his hands, which he’d clamped around her hips. How had he ever claimed to have self-control? She was driving him to distraction. Her flesh was round and soft, yet resilient. He wanted to bury himself in her, to burrow in so deep he never came out.

The negligee was wet where his mouth had been and now fully transparent and plastered to her breast. She glanced down at herself, then up at him, and the burning in her eyes sparked an inferno in his groin. Rising on her knees, she pushed her other breast into his mouth and ground her hips into his belly. He tongued her nipple, teasing it gently with his teeth. He slid his hand around the back of her thigh and under the negligee, encountering nothing but smooth bare skin.

Higher and higher, he stroked her silky inner thighs while he suckled her nipple. She moaned low in her throat and he moved his hand around to her butt, his fingers exploring and kneading the rounded flesh, sliding along her crack, and down to where her small patch of curls was moist. With no panties, nothing stopped him from freely exploring her warm, slippery folds. He took his game of thrust and retreat to new lengths, in and out with first two fingers, then three, while his thumb lightly circled her clitoris. Then he pushed her nightie up to her waist and lowered his head to put his tongue where his thumb had just been. He sucked gently and she sagged against him.

His cock was titanium-hard and pulsing with need. Cassy pulled her nightie over her head and tossed it aside. He let go of her for a moment to peel off his boxers. The room was silent but for the crackle of the flames in the grate and the soft rasp of their heavy breathing. With his eyes, he drank in her naked body, flushed and glowing in the firelight. Her hair was mussed, her mouth soft and her eyes languid.

When he could bear it no longer, he gently pushed her down on the bed and nudged his way between her legs until his cock was pushing on her soft belly. “You’re beautiful and you’re hot and I can’t believe we’ve never done this before.”

…

Cassy gazed up at him, at his broad chest tapering to narrow hips blocking out the firelight. His cock lay heavy and hot on her abdomen, jerking occasionally as if it had a life and a mind of its own. She ran her hands up his sleek flanks, reveling in his firm muscles and hot skin. She couldn’t believe she’d finally gotten Scott exactly where she wanted him, naked and rearing above her, poised to enter and take her. Her sex throbbed and the heat that had been building in her belly had spread to her limbs, leaving her weak with wanting and aching to feel him inside her.