Second Opinion (11 page)

He ignored my denial. “Avery’s a handful, but she deserves happiness. And from everything V’s told me, you do, too.”

“Everyone does, man. But I’m not looking for something serious.”

Jesse laughed and glanced across the room at his gorgeous wife. “Neither was I. But we have no control over it.”

I looked at him and nodded. I got it. He was absolutely right.

“One more thing. V said she couldn’t take anything away from Quinn’s day, but the day’s over.”

I had a feeling I knew where he was headed. I raised my eyebrows at him.

“We’re expecting.”

I grinned. “Congrats, man.”

“Thank you. Only about six more months until we’re a family of four.”

“And you weren’t expecting it when she crashed into your life?”

“Fuck no. But I haven’t once looked back. I can’t imagine my life without her in it, and I don’t want to.”

“Two kids.”

He chuckled. “We had a night in a hotel last night, and we used it to sleep.”

I laughed. “You’ll need it.”

“No shit. But I’m telling you, man, there’s nothing like it.”

Veronica walked over to us, smiling at her husband before smiling at me.

“He told me,” I said, jerking my thumb toward Jesse.

She smacked his arm lightly. “I thought we were waiting.”

“You’re waiting. I want to tell everyone.” Jesse smiled down at his wife, and I couldn’t help but think about how close to my age and happy they were. Why couldn’t I have that? Why was I continually sabotaging myself?

Did I want kids? Did I want what Jesse and Veronica had?

I wasn’t sure.

But I was pretty sure.

“Don’t tell,” she grinned over at me.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” I said.

“Yours is safe with us, too,” Veronica winked at me.

Great. Our secret was already out and there wasn’t really anything to talk about.

Okay, our night of fantastic sex followed by that extraordinary shower blow job was
kind of
something to talk about. Not with other people, but maybe with each other.

Waitresses started bringing plates of food to the tables. Brunch was served, so I took a seat next to Jesse and Veronica. Avery slid into the chair directly across the table from me, a wicked gleam in those brown eyes I’d somehow started searching out in every room I entered over the past couple of months. I couldn’t help the grin aimed squarely at her.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Yes it is,” I grinned. Jesse quietly shook his head with a smile aimed down at the table as Veronica started giggling.

I rolled my eyes. “They know,” I mouthed to Avery, trying to be discreet even though our tablemates weren’t. It was a six-top, with Jesse in the middle, Veronica on one side, and me on the other. Paul and Dean claimed the final two chairs at our table, and I dug into the pancakes the waitress set in front of me. Avery poured coffee from the carafe into her cup before offering me some.

“I’d love some,” I said.

“Rough night?” she asked with a secret smile.

“Incredibly. I hardly slept at all.” I hadn’t meant the slip, but I was dying for some coffee.

She looked up at me with curiosity, obviously remembering our conversation when we first woke about how good I’d slept. I couldn’t very well admit to her I’d lost sleep because I’d been busy thinking about her all night.

I averted my eyes to my coffee, pouring in cream and sugar and stirring it like my life depended on it. I felt Avery’s eyes on me, but while I was trying not to be obvious, she didn’t seem to care.

And then I felt her foot bump mine under the table. It may have been an accident, or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she thought her foot was resting on the leg of the table, but it wasn’t. It was resting over mine.

I felt my dick harden.

It was her goddamn foot. Feet were disgusting. But hers resting on mine apparently caused all of the blood in my body to rush back down to one place.

This was getting stupid. This couldn’t be healthy.

Trying for a relationship with her might cause me fainting spells with the constant rushing of blood out of my brain.

Her foot nudged mine, and I glanced up at her. Her eyes were smiling, like we shared an inside joke. Over the course of the meal, our eyes met more times than I could count. We shared a secret, and even though Jesse and Veronica had some idea we had hooked up, they had no idea the strength of feelings we started the night before.

I wasn’t even sure if I understood it yet.

We watched Reed and Quinn open their gifts, and I wished Avery was sitting beside me. I wanted to toss a casual arm around her shoulders just to feel her next to me. Across the table felt like a mile.

If a buddy had told me he was having thoughts like that, I would immediately have called him a pussy. So I was by my own definition being a complete and total pussy, but I wasn’t sure how to stop it.

Quinn and Reed were going on a Caribbean cruise for their honeymoon. It was perfect timing with Quinn’s fall break from school, and their flight went out later that night. Reed gave me his room key so I could grab his tux, and then the two of them left after my parents guaranteed we would get their gifts home safely to their house.

I helped load the car, passing Avery a few times as she helped gather some of the decorations Quinn had brought. Once everything was loaded, I headed up to the bridal suite to get Reed’s tux.

I slipped the keycard into the slot and opened the door once I got the green light.

I’ll give you one guess as to who stood in the room, smoothing out Quinn’s wedding dress as she zipped up a bag to safely transport it.

Avery Peterson.

Her eyes met mine across the room, and I couldn’t help my smirk.

“I feel like they’re doing this to us on purpose,” I said.

She shrugged. “V was supposed to get the gown, but she wasn’t feeling well so I said I would do it.”

“I can take it back to my place if you don’t want to store it. I have to get Reed’s tux anyway.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, zipping the bag up carefully over the top of the dress.

“I don’t mind.” I glanced at the clock in the room. “We’ve only got five minutes until checkout.”

She sighed, and then she turned to face me. “Are we really doing this?”

“Doing what?” I asked, totally confused.

“Pretending like we didn’t have the world’s most mind-blowing sex last night? Pretending like everything’s normal?”

“Everything
is
normal, Avery.”

“You know what I mean.”

I sighed, too. I wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear. She was one of those rare women who I wasn’t able to read. Did she want the asshole? The nice guy? I presumed the asshole, but I kind of just wanted to be
me
with her.

Whoever that was.

“Look, Grant. I’m well aware of your reputation,” she said, taking a few steps toward me. I couldn’t help it. I took a few steps toward her, too. “And I’m sure you’ve heard a thing or two about me. I don’t want a relationship.” She looked up at me. We were a breath away from kissing. I cupped her neck with one hand. Her voice was breathy and soft as her hands came to a rest on my biceps. “I just want you to fuck me again like you did last night.”

I grabbed her closer to me as I lowered my mouth to hers. I wanted that, too. Fuck, it was all I wanted. I wanted to feel her body sliding against mine, slick from sweat and sex. I wanted to kiss her the way we were now, but without time constraints or limits. I wanted to hold her until she fell asleep. 

I wanted to lose sleep over her. Again.

“When can I see you again?” she asked, her voice raspy.

“Fuck it. I’ll leave Andrew’s at halftime. Where do you live?”

“Just down from Quinn’s old apartment. I’ll text the address.”

“I’ll be there around seven. Be naked.”

“Get there at the beginning of halftime if you want me naked. I don’t want to miss the second half of the game.”

I laughed and kissed her again before backing away. If we kept that shit up, we’d be late checking out and I’d have to pay for an extra day in the bridal suite.

I located the tux and Avery picked up the dress, and then I kissed her one more time, just a light peck that promised more.

The strangest feeling hit me as my eyes swept the room one last time. It felt like déjà vu, but in reverse. I felt like I was glimpsing my future before it happened.

Avery had a wedding dress draped over her arm. I was holding a tuxedo. We were leaving a bridal suite.

It all felt very strange. The immediate need to slow things the fuck down tugged at me even though I’d literally just made plans to see her again that night.

We took the elevator down together. It was harder to make out when she was cradling a dress in her arms and I was carrying Reed’s tux.

“Are you sure you don’t mind taking her dress?” she asked.

I shook my head. “It’s fine.”

The doors opened and we walked toward the front desk. I turned in Reed’s key and checked out of the room for the bride and groom, and then we set the clothes in my car that was already filled with wedding presents.

She left, heading toward her silver Mazda, and I sat on my bumper for a minute. Rachelle lanced through my mind again, but there was nothing abnormal about that. She was usually lurking around there somewhere.

My sudden feelings for Avery were different from what I felt for Rachelle.

Rachelle and I had developed slowly, but I credited her as the woman who taught me how to fuck.

We’d met my freshman year of college. She was a junior who’d just transferred into my speech class. Even though she was only two years older than me, she seemed so much more… worldly. I was immediately attracted to her, but she had been so focused on academic success that she hadn’t looked at me as anything more than a friend.

It wasn’t until my sophomore year, in fact, that we started dating. She’d become a close friend. We confided in each other, and while she’d gone on a few dates here and there, she never got into a relationship. So I played the field, hoping someday she’d see what was right in front of her.

The day I confessed my feelings was the day she admitted she’d always felt something more than friendship for me, too. We’d gotten too close as friends, though, and she’d been scared to ruin that with a relationship. We made love that night, and it marked the first time I’d ever actually “made love” to a woman. I’d fucked around a lot, but with her, it was different. I was gentle because I was in love with her and probably had been since the moment I had first seen her across the classroom. I wanted her to know how I felt, so I took things slowly and showed her through the way I kissed her, the way I held her, the way I touched her.

She was still the only woman I’d ever “made love” to. I never considered calling it that with any other woman because I hadn’t loved any of the others before or since her.

But it wasn’t all gentleness with her.

She was disciplined and controlled, and that extended to the bedroom. She told me what she wanted and how to pleasure her, and it became my goal to do just that.

Making her happy was all I thought about. And that’s what fucked me in the end. I was an idiot for believing her happiness came first, and that’s why I’d put my own happiness first ever since.

Even still, I will always credit her with the precise training that led to my sexual prowess.

My dad exited the front lobby of the hotel and caught me staring off into space.

“What’s up, kid?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “Nothing. Fun night last night. Just paying for it this morning,” I said, faking a hangover so I didn’t have to explain I was lost in thought about a girl I’d once loved so much I thought I’d be spending my life with her.

“I hear that. Did you see how drunk Robby got?” he asked, referring to his brother.

I chuckled, pretending I had. The truth was I’d been so focused on finding Avery in the crowd, I hadn’t noticed much else going on around me.

“You got plans today?”

I nodded. “Heading to Andrew’s to watch the game tonight.”

“Think Brady’ll win?”

“Against those assholes from New York? Piece of cake.” I grinned even as I realized I’d quoted Avery.

Quoting a girl in a conversation about football. Something was very wrong with me.

CHAPTER 9

It was the middle of the second quarter, and I’d spent the entire game thinking about Avery. I was so caught up in my own head, in fact, I didn’t really even know who was winning. I had a hundred bucks on this game, but I didn’t care if I won or lost.

All I cared about was getting to her place before halftime ended.

“Dude, I gotta take off,” I said to Andrew during a commercial break.

He glanced over at me. “Girl?”

I nodded. “You know it.”

“Worth missing the second half of this game?”

I shrugged. “We’ll see.” I didn’t want to get into it with him. I didn’t want to tell him I was going to watch the second half of the game with Avery and her perfect afterglow in my own afterglow-ing arms.

He chuckled, and I let myself out. I whistled as I headed to my car, and my phone buzzed in my pocket with a text just as I started the engine. I checked it before shifting into reverse.

Checking it may have been a mistake because I was forced to drive with a fucking hard-on.

It was from Avery, and it was a picture of the clothes she had been wearing earlier, complete with her bra and panties, thrown haphazardly on the floor. There was a message accompanying the picture.

Halftime starts in about five minutes. I’m ready. Are you?

I was now that I’d seen her text.

Jesus, the things this girl did and said. She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before.

Most of the women I’d been with had allowed me to call the shots. I enjoyed knowing a woman would do what I told her to do. I was disciplined, mostly as a direct result of allowing myself to fall for Rachelle only to have my heart shattered by her more than once. I didn’t allow myself the chance to feel emotions for women because I knew it would only end one way. I couldn’t let that happen again.

Unfortunately, Rachelle’s actions also led me to have major trust issues. This wasn’t just with women, either. I didn’t really trust anybody with the exception of myself and my family. And now my family included Reed, who I also trusted explicitly.

My thoughts of Rachelle on my way to Avery’s confused the hell out of me. As soon as I noticed I was starting to feel something for Avery, thoughts of Rachelle came along and attempted to put a quick end to it.

I pulled into Avery’s parking lot. The buildings in her apartment complex were clearly marked even at night, and I found myself knocking on her door a few minutes later.

The door opened just a crack, and I saw her eyes peeking through that crack. I grinned, knowing she was stark naked on the other side of that door, and the door opened a little wider.

“So modest and innocent,” I said as she hid behind the door. She slammed the door and stood before me, a naked temptress. “So unlike you.”

“Why are you wearing so many clothes?” she demanded, and I laughed as I pulled my t-shirt over my head.

“Better?”

She nodded. “Getting closer. Hurry up. The game will be back on in ten minutes.”

“What if I want to take longer than ten minutes?”

“You won’t. You’ll get off in three strokes.”

“Awfully confident.” I kicked off my shoes and pulled off my socks.

“I warmed myself up,” she murmured, running her fingertips across my abdominal muscles.

“Did you now?” I unbuckled my belt.

“It’s nice and wet.”

“What is?” I unbuttoned my jeans and lowered them.

“My pussy.”

“Prove it.” I stepped out of my jeans and boxers, and we were on equal ground in the clothing department. My erection pointed straight up at my chin. I was rock hard for this woman.

She dropped two fingers down and then pulled them out and held them toward me. They glistened with her arousal, and she was right. I was never going to last because just watching her do that was almost enough to make me come.

I pulled her fingers to my mouth, allowing the tip of my tongue to stroke them as I caught the appetizing taste that was Avery.

Her eyes closed, and a soft moan escaped her lips as I sucked on her fingers.

“Back up against the door,” I instructed, dropping her hand. She did it, and frankly I was surprised. She didn’t seem like the type to take direction well, yet she was.

I secured my condom before I moved into her orbit.

I tapped her leg, and she automatically lifted it and hooked it around my hips, pulling me closer to her.

I lowered my mouth to hers and brought my hand up to her breast.

God, her breasts were fucking perfect. Everything about her was fucking perfect.

I couldn’t help the way I kissed her. I ravaged her mouth. Destroyed it. Our tongues battered as our lips bruised. Teeth clashed as our mouths slammed together in a violent collision. I kissed her like I was a dying man and this would be my last meal. I kissed her like I was a hungry man taken to a buffet of all of the best food in the world.

I kissed her like I felt something for her. Something serious.

And no part of her held anything back as she returned my kiss with just as much enthusiasm.

For two people who didn’t want something serious, that kiss…

Fuck it.

That kiss was serious.

My hands moved across the planes of her body as if they had a mind of their own. They grabbed and caressed, clutched and fondled, gripped and rubbed as hers did the same to me.

I slid my dick into her, and she wrapped her other leg around my waist as I thrust into her, fucking her against her front door.

There was nothing soft and gentle about the moans emanating from her. We grunted together as she held on around my arms and I held on under her ass, a sheen of sweat building between our bodies as we writhed together in passion.

“Fuck me harder,” she yelled.

I drove my hips upward, and she screamed out my name. And fuck it all, that’s what did it for me.

I grunted out my release as I came powerfully. I shuddered into her, and then I felt her entire body tense under me before she squeezed the shit out of my arms and came while I held her against me.

I watched her with rapt attention as she fell apart in my arms. The second she was done, she breathed a soft sigh and I heard a whisper of my name pass her lips.

Jesus.

She was fucking perfect, and I found myself becoming addicted to her scent, her lips, those fucking brown eyes.

I pulled out of her and set her down. Neither of us moved for a moment. Our eyes locked and I grinned at her. She smiled back, and then I moved in closer to her, pinning her to the door with my body. I kissed her again, that same kiss we’d shared moments before I fucked her, and even though we’d both shattered into staggering orgasms, our kiss was just as intense as it had been before the sex. It was fueled with need and want. Nothing changed despite the fact that we were both sated, because the satisfaction would only be temporary before we’d need each other again, before we clawed our way back into each other’s bodies.

She finally slowed the kiss.

“Game’s coming back on,” she hinted. I grinned. She really might have been the perfect woman. She wasn’t one to put on pretenses. She got what she wanted; that much was clear.

What
exactly
she wanted, however, remained to be seen.

I headed to the restroom to take care of the condom, and then I joined her on the couch. She was still naked. Who the hell was I to make her sit naked and alone on her couch while she watched the game?

Just as I’d imagined earlier, we made out during the commercials and stopped while we watched the game. She was hilarious to watch a game with. She understood the game, she knew the players, and she wasn’t an asshole like Andrew was. She made the calls before the refs, but not in an annoying way. She cheered (loudly) for her team and hurled insults at the television when the other team scored. She was as enthusiastic watching the game as she was in pretty much every other aspect of life I’d witnessed.

In a word, she was hot.

I loved every second of watching football with her.

I never wanted to watch Andrew’s eighty-five inch projection screen again. I wanted to sit with a naked Avery and her much smaller flat screen and grope during commercials like a fucking teenager.

I took her one more time when the game was over right there on her couch, pulling her on top of me as her tits bounced around in front of me. Afterward, she headed to the restroom and I put my clothes back on. I felt her earrings and bracelet in my jeans pocket, but part of me wanted to hold onto those just a little while longer. I wasn’t sure why, but I wanted the insurance that meant I had a reason to see her again.

“You aren’t staying?” she asked, glancing up at me with those warm brown eyes of hers when she came back out wearing just a t-shirt.

I thought about it as I eyed her. She somehow managed to make a goddamn t-shirt look hot.

Staying meant expectations. I didn’t want to lead her to something that wasn’t there, to something that couldn’t be more than what we’d just done.

Yet something unfamiliar inside of me clawed at my thoughts. Something made me realize I wasn’t creating expectations or leading her on because staying with her meant we’d be together. And to be honest, that idea just didn’t sound so bad to me.

But it was too soon. If I stayed the night now, she’d expect it every time. I didn’t want to play games, necessarily. But there was always the concern if I held her in my arms through the night like I’d done the night before, I’d end up exhausted from a lack of sleep. I’d find myself falling for her when my mind specifically told me I still wasn’t ready for love.

So I took the coward’s way out.

I shook my head. “Not tonight, Ave.”

She shrugged, trying unsuccessfully to mask her disappointment. I saw it flash across that gorgeous face before she hid it.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, not bothering to make up some feeble excuse when the truth was that I was terrified I was already in deeper than I wanted to be.

* * *

“He’s on the fucking schedule,” I said, trying to exercise the control I knew was somewhere in me.

“Well I don’t know where the fuck he is,” Lucas yelled at me.

Yelling was getting us nowhere.

It was definitely a Monday. “I’ll call him again,” I said, knowing even as I said it I wouldn’t. Sometimes Lucas was a giant pain in my ass.

I slammed my phone down on the desk, causing Kristy, my secretary, to jump as she stood in the doorway of my office.

It wasn’t my fault when one of the trades didn’t show up on time. Part of Lucas’s job as job site superintendent was short-term scheduling. Part of my job as a project manager was long-term scheduling. I’d done my part; the rest was up to him.

While our jobs required us to work together fluidly, the guy just rubbed me the wrong way.

“You okay, Mr. Carpenter?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “I’m just tired.”

The truth was I was fucking exhausted, and as long as I was placing blame that morning, I blamed the hell out of Avery.

The night before, I stared up at the ceiling as I thought about her. All night long.

Her big brown eyes.

The way her hair seemed to float around her shoulders when she moved.

The curve of her breasts.

Jesus.

I wished I’d just stayed with her. At least then I’d have some sense behind my blame. This way was stupid. I was blaming her for something that clearly wasn’t even her fault, but I was crabby from two nights of lost sleep and a shitty day at work. It just felt like no one around me was keeping up their end of the deal.

My phone dinged with a text, and I ignored it while I studied a printout of the next week’s schedule. There was something wrong with the schedule, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Lucas’s text could surely wait.

My phone dinged again two minutes later, and a third time two minutes after that. Sometimes I really thought I should turn off the repeat notifications on my phone.

I grabbed my phone with anger, opening the screen without looking as I started drafting my reply in my mind.

Imagine my shock when I found the text wasn’t from Lucas at all, but from a gorgeous blonde who wouldn’t get the fuck out of my head.

Had fun this weekend. –A

That was it.

No big show. No drama. Just a short little fragment that summed up our forty-eight hours together.

The forty-eight hours that were fucking with my mind and telling me it was time to move on from the mistakes of the past.

For maybe the first time ever, I pushed away my thoughts of Rachelle and allowed my thoughts to linger on another woman.

It was liberating.

And that liberation told me maybe I had actually, finally moved on from Rachelle. It had taken four years, but it was time. I needed to let go of the past and start looking toward the next phase of my life.