The Three-Week Arrangement (Chase Brothers) (12 page)

Rue laughed. “She kind of does.”

He snorted. “I’m absolutely not telling him you said that. The last thing he needs is encouragement.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “Just in case I need something to hold against you.”

“Is that what women do? Plot ahead?” The skepticism in his tone did nothing to bury the warmth.

She stood, grinning. “That’s kind of a cynical
way of looking at it, but since I’m not looking to impress you, I’ll admit my memory works.”

He looked at her for a long moment before his gaze dropped to her lips, where it again lingered. “Mine does, too.”

Well, that did it. She barely heard the door buzzer over the crash of her heart, but it was more than that. It was need. Excruciating need. She’d fallen for him. Hard. And she
was just going to have to pretend she hadn’t figured that out, because while she’d been saying she had to leave and that was that, she
could
stay. But even if she gave up her dream of travel photography, at least for a while, he’d made it clear he couldn’t—wouldn’t—be hers. It was the temporary nature of their relationship that had him feeling safe enough to let go. Nothing more—she was sure of
it.

She mentally batted down an internal protest against the injustice of it all, realizing too late that he’d collected the pizza and paid the tip—something she’d fully intended to handle.
Maybe next time.
But if she had any sense of self-preservation, there wouldn’t be a next time. There’d be the gala in a few days, and then one way or another, she’d be on a plane. As soon as she shot
the calendar—the one she was suddenly grateful he’d refused to do.

He cracked open a beer and handed her a plate. “Do you do coffee with your pizza?”

“Actually,” she said, nodding toward the beer, “Can I have one of those?” She wasn’t the biggest fan of beer, but even she had to admit it went better with pizza than iced coffee did. Besides, she had ice cream to take care of the flavor
fix. And while one drink wouldn’t do much to ease the knot she had in her stomach, she’d feel a little better for trying.

Without hesitation, he handed her the one he’d just opened and grabbed another one from the fridge. “Table or sofa?”

She glanced at the plate in her hand. “Honestly, I usually just sit on the sofa and eat right over the box lid.”

“Then let’s do it.” He took
the plate and put it back in the cabinet, then grabbed the box and followed her to the sofa.

She took a spot on one end—neutral territory—and he sat right next to her and flipped open the box. “I don’t normally eat over someone else’s box lid,” she admitted.

“I’m not worried about it.”

“I kind of am,” she said, eyeballing the pizza. The oversized thin slices were loaded with
toppings. She could fold the slice in half and still lose half of what it contained. “I don’t want to contaminate your leftovers.”

“I think we’re past that point,” he said easily.

“Are we?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she wanted to cram them back. Asking him for any kind of assessment of what they were was the exact opposite of what she wanted, and for that matter, dropping
pizza toppings all over his leftovers might have been the best possible move. Anything to rein in this undefined thing between them that neither of them wanted, although she had a very good, very bad feeling that it wasn’t the thing she had to worry about.

It was the aftermath.

It was Tuesday. The gala was Friday. She’d get through it. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut and
eat her pizza—easier said than done, considering the physical impossibility of doing so—and not think about that kiss. Or those eyes. Or how it felt to be held by him, a thousand feet in open air, in a world that was almost exclusively theirs.

Yeah, this wasn’t working.

But it was going to have to. And it did, for a few blissful moments they spent tearing through the pizza. Ethan didn’t
say anything until he’d polished off his fourth enormous slice. She shot a sideways glance at his abs and hated him for the fact they could exist if he always ate like that. Then her gaze crept upward, against her will, and hitched to his.

“Do you think she’ll be happy here with me?” he asked.

She needed a minute to realize he was talking about the dog. “Are you kidding? She’ll love
it. She spent a lot of time alone at the shelter, and now she has your whole family. What’s not to love?”

“Don’t get me started,” he said under his breath.

She didn’t know what he was talking about. As far as she was concerned, there wasn’t
enough
wrong with him. Life had dealt him a devastating blow, but he wasn’t bitter. He may have closed himself off for a little while, but who
wouldn’t? Besides, underneath all those guarded walls, he was thoughtful enough to stock her coffee and give a home to a dog who probably wouldn’t have found one with anyone else. She didn’t know what he could mean, at least not from a negative standpoint “But it’s better now, right?”

“It’s different.” He pushed the pizza box to the coffee table, then glanced at the dog and got up instead
and put it in the fridge. “I’ll learn.”

“I have a feeling you’ll figure everything out just fine.”

“I did manage to figure one thing out.”

“Which was?”

He walked back to the sofa and held out his hand. She expected at that point he’d pull her to her feet, but not into his arms. “That gala is in three days, and it’s been a long damn time since I’ve been forced to dance with
anyone.”

“No one is forcing you now,” she said lightly. Although by that point, she wasn’t above begging. Being in his arms was an experience she hadn’t been prepared for in the balloon, and despite the fact that she’d done nothing since but crave the deep, shuddering impact of full-body contact, it wasn’t the kind of thing for which a person
could
prepare. Especially not her. She didn’t
do electricity. She’d sooner jump out of a plane than touch a nine-volt battery to her tongue. Or at least that
had
been the case. Because Ethan’s kind of electricity was addictive—the kind of stimulation any woman would crave. But she wasn’t any woman.

She was the woman he’d kissed.

“I want to dance with you,” he said, either impervious to or ignoring the fact that she stared, probably
all moon-eyed and ridiculous. “Besides, if I don’t keep you busy, you know Boyd will want to. And you can pretty much guarantee that between your social status—”

“My parents’ social status,” she corrected. “Which has nothing to do with me.”

“Okay, between your DNA, and the people who can’t stop gaping at the fact that I have a date, I’d rather not spend the night tromping all over
your feet.”

“So you want to…dance? Here?”

“Trust me,” he said ruefully. “This is not anything that needs to happen in public. Not yet.”

“There’s no music.”

He leaned over and picked up the remote, then pointed it at the TV and turned it on, programming it to a music channel. “Any other excuses? Because I’m pretty sure you asked me to jump out of a plane, and when I refused,
you took me to New Jersey and put me in a balloon. Between that and your aspirations of flinging yourself to the ends of the earth, I figured dancing would be about as exciting as slowing down for a yellow light.”

“Technically
you
took
me
to New Jersey,” she muttered. “And then you kissed me.”

He was already pulling her back into his arms, but at her words he froze. “I won’t apologize
for that. Not specifically. But if I crossed a line—”

“Your line. Not mine.”

“I don’t…” The objection had come immediately, but it didn’t last.

“You do.” Whatever it was, he did. He had to, or she’d drown.

“You’re leaving,” he said softly. “The lines are there, and they’re nonnegotiable. Neither of us has to worry about falling…not when there’s nowhere to go.”

He
said the words so matter-of-factly, like he hadn’t made her world turn and spin and dip and twist off its axis. It didn’t matter that he was denying anything between them, because within that denial lived an admittance.

She hadn’t imagined this thing between them.

She was too dazed to resist when he pulled her close, not that she would have. Nope, that ship had long sailed, and by
her estimate, it was headed straight for an iceberg…as if an iceberg stood a chance against the utter hotness that was Ethan Chase.

She barely heard the music, even though it was one of her favorite songs. She was too intoxicated by the sweet torture of his body as he held her. There was no way that kind of distance—or lack thereof—was mandatory for a public event. Hell, it wasn’t even
appropriate
for public. But it was so wholly, sweetly him. He really did pour his heart into everything he did, and she hoped one day he’d find a way to move on. He deserved that happiness more than anyone she knew.

Even if it would never be hers. Maybe especially so.

And he didn’t step on her feet. Not once.

“You clearly haven’t forgotten a thing,” she said, looking up at him.

“Actually, I’ve never gotten through a single dance without some sort of assault to a foot.”

“Maybe you just needed a break.”

“Maybe I just needed the right dance partner.”

Idiot
. Wisely, she didn’t say the word out loud, but damn it all to hell. She took a step back, slipping from his arms. Gulping for air. “Look, while I absolutely love that you’re getting the hang of
this
woman in vicinity
thing, you’re killing me. You’re making me ache in spots I didn’t know I had, and you’re setting fires I don’t know how to put out.” He opened his mouth, but she cut him off before he could speak. “And trust me when I say I’m really enjoying it, but you don’t want pity, Ethan, so I’m not giving it to you. I’m not going to stand here and fall apart for the greater good, because
when the week is up, I’m going to have to find a way to pull myself together and get on a plane and leave all this behind.”

“Rue—”

“I know we had an arrangement,” she ranted, “but this isn’t Broadway. We don’t throw down our scripts at the end of the week and just walk away. At least not me, because I—”

He silenced her. He silenced the hell out of her with a kiss that went way
past sweet and had them heading straight to the bedroom.

Literally.

And then he shut the door.

Chapter Ten

Holy. Shit.

She’d been in his bedroom before, and on his bed, and with need tearing through her. But not like this. The click of the door latch seemed to echo forever, and in the silence that followed, strains of music found her, but they sounded a million miles away.

He didn’t say a word. Just cradled the back of her head with one hand and rested the other
against the small of her back, and he kissed her so deeply, so thoroughly that he had to have been holding her up. Her knees were useless, and gravity had ceased to exist. The earth could have folded beneath them, and she wouldn’t know anything but the exquisite torture and taste of him. He was impossibly hard. Impossibly gentle. Not
possibly
real. But there was no denying anything about him,
from the deep, tender kisses to the quiet sigh of her name on his lips.

Her
name.

He walked her backward to the bed, never breaking the kiss as he lowered her to the mattress and crawled down after her, nestling between her thighs, leaving her caught between the thick bedding and utter ecstasy.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” she managed.

“It’s been a while,”
he said softly, his lips tickling hers and setting off a shower of sparks that would have the fire alarms wailing any minute now. “But I’m confident I’ll figure it out.”

Not what she meant. She had no question that he’d figure
that
part out. Before she could correct him, he kissed her again, and the
very
splendid pressure of him, rock hard between her thighs, obliterated rational thought.

Almost.

Because this was just too important—too
big
—to get wrong.

“Are you sure you
want
to do this?” Maybe she shouldn’t have questioned him—she was definitely treading into
crazy woman
territory now—but despite the obvious temporary nature of this thing they were doing, she didn’t want him to see her as a mistake.

He stilled the motion of his hands, one caught in her hair
and the other on her hip, and all of a sudden she could
see
this spectacle they made. Two train wrecks—one who couldn’t stop running and one who couldn’t let go. Only he had let go enough to bring her to his bed, and she’d stopped running enough to realize that, for once, there was nowhere else she wanted to be.

“I want this,” he said, his voice deliciously husky. “I’d like to promise you
it’s a good idea, but I can’t do that. I can’t say anything about tomorrow or what’s going to happen to me when you get on that plane, but I do know that in this moment, you’re a gift. And I don’t want to watch you fly away from me without having this memory. Assuming I don’t embarrass myself or send you screaming into the night, that is.”

“I think you can count on me screaming,” she said,
then laughed at the face he made. “And I think you can rest assured that when that plane is taking off, for the first time in my life, I’ll be thinking about what I left behind.” She hesitated. “You know it’s just a night, right?”

He grinned. “You do know it’s an
entire
night?”

At which point she was ruined. Fully clothed and wrecked. Or so she thought, until the next sweet, tender
kiss deepened, and she couldn’t be sure if it was Ethan devouring her or her own pounding need. And even that didn’t compare to the slide of his hand along her side. Because then he wasn’t just kissing her, he was holding her.

Almost shyly, she touched his shoulders, marveling at their strength. He was so solid. Not a broken man, but a man wholly consumed. As her fingertips skimmed his muscle,
he leaned to lightly kiss her hand.

And then he stopped.

“I am an idiot,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this, but I don’t have any protection. I can run to the store.”

As if she’d let him get away. No chance of that—not when he had her spinning so hard she could only hold on for the ride. “No need. Check my purse.”

He gave her an odd look.

“It’s in the
other room.”

He left, and when he came back he’d taken the concept of bedroom eyes to the next level. His gaze smoldered, setting fire to all those places she’d just laid into him about. And she didn’t figure there’d be any chance of putting them out tonight. If anything, they’d burn brighter and hotter and more out of control. She knew just from kissing him that he wasn’t the kind of man
you could experience and forget.

He tossed a couple of packets on the bed. Then he straddled her and pulled her to a sitting position and stripped her of her shirt, then managed to unhook her bra on the first try.

“You’re good,” she whispered. Words she barely heard over the raging of her heart.

“No,” he said, kissing her. “Lucky. Damn lucky you locked your keys in your car.”

“That was a stroke of amazing luck, but I bet you’re just full of amazing strokes.” As she spoke, she unbuttoned his pants. Before she could get too involved, he eased out of her reach. But he didn’t go far. He leaned in from a new angle—one that kept her from his zipper—and gently kissed her breast, but not the part begging for him. Instead of giving her any of that sweet relief, his lips
touched everywhere else. Driving her crazy. She abandoned her attempts to get to him in favor of threading her fingers through his hair, desperately trying to guide him to touch. Or better yet,
suck
. The thought of his mouth closing over her was almost enough to send her over the edge, and considering he was barely touching her, that would be a record first.

“Ethan, could you
please
—”

She lost her ability to speak when he blew on one nipple, simultaneously circling the other with a fingertip. “I’m beginning to think,” he said, his lips barely grazing her tight flesh while she squirmed, “that you might like it rough.”

Her semi-coherent thoughts didn’t manage to form words.

“Or maybe you just like it deep,” he said. “Solid. Full. Un. Mis. Take. Able.”

He
punctuated each word by touching his lips to her poor, tortured breast. He didn’t take her in his mouth—no, that would be too merciful.

“I definitely like it deep,” she said. God, if she could only
breathe
. “And I like it hard. And I want it sweet. And I want it rough. I want to know every side of you, so—”

He sucked her into his mouth then, and the pleasure was so blisteringly harsh
that it was almost pain. The only thing she managed was to hold on to him while his tongue laid claim to the best sex she’d ever had.

Only. His. Tongue.

His tongue and one nipple.

She was so screwed.

“I want you,” she managed. “Right now.”

He didn’t argue, thank God. He just released his hold on her—hell, she hadn’t thought
that
through—and stripped. Despite the selfish
need clawing at her, she couldn’t help but gawk at his body, all hard and strong and, well,
hard
.

She didn’t wait for him to undress her. No sane woman could. He managed to finish what she started, tossing her clothes aside, a slow, easy smile more than she could take.

“Seriously,
now
.”

He sheathed himself and climbed over her, kissing her sweetly, thoroughly, until he’d touched
every part of her. But definitely not distracting her from the blissful moment he parted her thighs and buried himself inside of her.

Niceties at this point were not needed. He was thick and full, and she’d
never
experienced such fulfillment. The pressure was exquisite. Complete. And it only built, because instead of slamming into her, he pistoned deep, shifting somehow to change the angle
and managing to own her with it. That part was usually frantic. Flailing. But Ethan was in control. She had no idea
how
, considering she was spinning at a blistering pace despite his slow, driving one, but she managed to hold on. Or she thought she had. Orgasm built so deep from within her that she hadn’t seen it coming until the swell crested, and its thundering power dragged her under, and still
he was there, kissing her so sweetly, loving her so thoroughly that for the first time, she didn’t fall.

There was no falling.

And if she ever caught her breath and came to her senses, she’d probably realize there was no loving.

But in those first moments, it didn’t matter. Because he didn’t leave her. He held her.

“I hope you felt that,” she murmured.

He pushed her
hair away from her face. “Do you really think I didn’t?”

“You’re still conscious, aren’t you?”

He laughed weakly. “Trust me, I’m perfectly capable of rolling over and going to sleep, especially if you’ll stay with me. But I’m not going to stop until you beg.”

“I’m going to be doing a lot of begging,” she said. “But I won’t be begging you to stop.”

“That’s a promise,” he
whispered, “I hope like hell you’ll keep.”