Her eyes slanted over to his door, and he wondered if she was thinking about how many women had seen the other side. Because now he was. And for some reason he didn’t want Ava to be one of the masses. This might be a one-night thing—which was pretty much his M.O. with women. Even when he was with the same woman a number of times, it was almost always a series of single nights, separated by other single nights with other women—but despite that time-frame similarity, this wasn’t the same.
Not even close.
He practically lived in Ava’s apartment. They cooked their meals together there, spent the free hours of their mornings and evenings together. Heck, he’d helped her pick out nearly every piece of furniture in the place. It was their space—more comfortable than any he’d ever been in—and he wondered if bringing something into it that went beyond the “friendly” it was built on would be a mistake. If it would somehow taint a space that meant almost as much to him as the woman he essentially shared it with.
Only then Ava was looking back at him, her smile burning away thoughts of anything but spending as many hours making that mouth his as she’d give him. “My bed seriously doesn’t see enough action. Upstairs?”
He swallowed past the lump that formed in his throat with that admission.
The sort of misplaced chest-thumping reaction at knowing he was going where not many had been before…he shouldn’t get off on that. It made him feel like a dog, but he was too far gone to stop. All he could do was catch her mouth with his and reach down until he had the backs of her thighs in his hold and he’d hoisted her up. Legs locked around his hips, Ava laughed, nuzzling into his neck past his shirt collar, running her teeth over his jaw as he took the stairs two at a time.
He came to a reluctant stop. “Your dress and—”
“Later.” Her legs tightened around him. “I need you.”
“You’re going to kill me,” he ground out, mentally repeating that, no, he could not set her back on the stairs and do her right there. No way.
Rubbing herself against him, she sighed, “Would it be such a bad way to go?”
Easy answer. “Hell no.”
At her door he set her down, let her lean against the wall as he held her wrists over her head and pressed a thigh between her legs, kissing her while he used his key to let them in. When the door opened, she backed inside, leading him by his tie past the overflowing built-in shelves he’d installed and giving him the sense for the first time in his life the accessory wasn’t worthless after all. She tugged him past the dining room table they’d refinished together and he thought about putting her on top of it. But as if sensing the direction of his thoughts, she shook her head, leading him the rest of the way.
Once they made it to her room, a space he’d visited a hundred times before—a space that didn’t see enough action—Ava’s touch turned hypnotic, the smooth stroke of her soft hands making him want to take it slow. Make it last. She slipped the tie from around his neck. Worked the buttons down his shirt and pushed it over his shoulders, then down his arms.
She gathered his T-shirt at his sides and pulled it over his head. Then, her eyes locked with his, carefully she undid his belt and slid her open palm over the front of his pants.
Fuuuck.
Her fingers curved around him and he watched her pupils go wide, her breath catch, and the pink tip of that wicked tongue wet the swell of her bottom lip.
Sam snapped.
Catching Ava by her knees, he tossed her back on the bed, following her down with a hard, plundering kiss, the weight of his body and roll of his hips. He wanted her to feel him, there. He wanted their bodies moving together, rocking in time, over and again.
Another minute and he’d have been naked. But the look on her face when she’d taken him in hand…
He’d never seen anything like it.
And now to have her beneath him, her knees sliding up his ribs, one high heel digging into his ass—
He swore, pulling back, a hairsbreadth from losing control. From jerking down his fly and slamming inside her. From going mindless. A place he never went. A place he didn’t trust.
Not even with Ava. Especially not with Ava.
She peered up at him, her hair a dark spill of gloss and shine around a face he knew better than his own. Her hand drifted to his cheek, up into the hair she seemed to love to pull, and then down his chest and stomach until she’d hooked her fingers into the still secure top of his pants. A flick and she had him undone.
“You know where the condoms are,” she murmured with barely a nod toward the nightstand he’d stocked himself. “Hurry.”
Chapter 6
Thighs sliding together in restless anticipation, Ava was 100 percent confident there was nothing sexier on the planet than Sam rolling on a condom. Those big workman’s hands she’d just had all over her, inside of her, were circled around his thick length, smoothing on the condom until it was unrolled to the very end.
And oh man, he was big. And ready. And climbing between her legs, which upon further consideration was actually the sexiest thing on the planet, with the latex-rolling thing a very close second.
“You sure about this, Ava?” he asked, those weathered blues intent on her eyes.
“No. I’ve changed my mind,” she answered deadpan, because it was Sam and she could. “I’m bored. Unimpressed.”
And that grin, okay, for real this time, that was the sexiest thing. Especially as it lowered to her breast and began rubbing back and forth across the small, sensitive mound.
“I think you’re a little liar, Ava.” His lips covered the tight bud of her nipple and he sucked, widened his kiss, and drew harder until the deep pull extended straight through to her center and she cried out, her hips rising up in need.
Snaking a hand between her legs, Sam cupped her there, rubbing slowly in time with the powerful draws of his mouth. He pressed his finger inside, stroking oversensitive nerves that had her gasping as shocks of pleasure lit through her body. Another finger pressed in and the decadent stretch made her ache for more. He added a third thick digit and Ava lost it. The pressure was too good, too much, and—how was this even possible?—already she was thundering toward the edge again. Her small hand covering Sam’s much larger one as he thrust in and out of her.
“Sam, I’m going to—you’re making me—”
Then those probing fingers were gone, replaced by the blunt head of his cock firm against her opening. Pressing in thick and wide. Hard.
Oh God, big.
Different from his fingers, more intense. And the pressure as he filled her, stretched her everywhere at once. It was like nothing she’d known before. It left her gasping for breath, crying out as the pleasure built with each new inch. And then he was there. Seated deep inside.
Heaven.
“Christ, Ava,” Sam ground out above her, his features hard as he stared into her face. “You’re so tight. So good.”
“You—” she started, but the word was barely a breath. More than she could ask from a body that was, in that moment, wholly occupied by Sam’s presence within it.
Eyes still locked with hers, Sam slowly pulled back, withdrawing to nearly the head, and then steadily sank deep enough to push the breath from her lungs again.
Her lips parted soundlessly as the wet friction against her overtaxed nerves threatened to push her beyond the limit. Take her to a place she didn’t know.
Another wet retreat and penetrating shaft, and Ava’s hands were gripping Sam’s shoulders, her knees widening as far as she could push them. She wanted more. She wanted everything.
And when Sam took his next stroke, it was full length, giving her the hard nudge of his head at her womb followed by the firm kiss of his groin against the spread of her sex. Her body seized, clenching around him.
“You ready to come for me, Ava?” he asked, his voice a deep rumble she felt through all the places they touched.
Another clench, and Sam’s nostrils flared, the muscle at his jaw ticking.
She nodded, words completely beyond her.
And it must have been good enough for Sam, because he rocked his hips, somehow changing the point of penetration and catching her clit between their bodies in a way that had Ava’s world blowing apart. And then Sam was sliding in and out of her, catching that pleasure center of nerves with every stroke so her climax struck like a wrecking ball, crashing through her again and again, going on and on.
Sweat broke out across Sam’s brow, along his neck and shoulders. Taunting her as one bead after another rolled over muscles flexing with his every thrust. She couldn’t resist. Leaning up, she caught the drop rolling down the center of his chest, letting the salty essence explode on her tongue as Sam slammed into her body.
“Fuck, Ava, that’s so good.”
She licked again, swirling her tongue over his chest, savoring the taste of this man she’d fantasized about for too many years to count. And then Sam’s arm was behind her back, and he was pulling her up, still buried to the hilt as he sat back on his knees. They were upright, face-to-face, Sam’s strong hands firm on the sides of her ass. He lifted her over his shaft, giving gravity its head as she slid down, taking him deep and hard again and again—until she was there. Tumbling over the edge, with Sam’s roar following her down.
And then they were still, the only movement the rise and fall of their chests as, staring into each other’s eyes, they fought for their breath. Sam was still inside her, but it was over. And the pressure now building within her wasn’t from her womb. It was in her heart. The betraying organ threatening to burst with all the words she could never say, emotions she wasn’t supposed to have, and tears she could never let Sam see her shed.
Even now they were too close to the surface for the way Sam was searching her eyes. Which meant that as much as she wanted to stay like this with him for every second he gave her, she needed to sever the connection, and fast.
—
Sam was still sucking air and wondering if he was ever going to be able to move again, when Ava’s head dropped against his shoulder. For a second there he thought she wanted to be held. To cuddle for a while. And he’d been down with the idea, tightening his arms around her slim body. But before he could shift them down onto the bed, her hands came up in a half-slap against his chest and, leaning back with a satisfied sigh, she flashed him a saucy grin.
“Oh man, did I ever need that.”
His brows shot toward the ceiling as Ava bounced back on the bed, grabbing up the ratty flannel robe she kept hooked over the headboard. Slipping it on, her hot factor should have nose-dived down to levels of unsexy reserved for wandering vagrants, only that’s not the way it went. Her dark hair was mussed up, that crazy-soft mouth swollen from his kisses, and the oversized robe half hung off one shoulder. Add to that the split showing a near criminal stretch of thigh and the plunging vee where the panels crossed too low, and Sam was thinking he’d never look at that robe the same way again.
Or Ava.
No, scratch that. He’d seen a side of Ava she hadn’t shown him before. But after tonight—hell, after twenty minutes from now—he wouldn’t look at her any differently than he had before.
He wouldn’t let himself, because he owed it to the both of them not to.
“Yeah, Ava, me too.”
She rolled her eyes, giving him a look threatening to remind him of how many days it had been since he’d last hooked up. But he didn’t care. He meant it. After the way she’d wound him up at the mixer…he’d have been in bad shape without letting off some steam.
The fact that he got to do it with Ava—and that she looked utterly unfazed by what they’d done? Man, she was too good to be true.
“Care if I shower?” he asked, heading into her bathroom to get rid of the rubber.
He looked in at the girly space, happy to see she was still using the organizer he’d gotten her last year for all her loofahs, salts, gels, and bath crap in general. Only when his eyes landed on the shower flower thing, suddenly he wasn’t thinking about getting cleaned up at all. He was thinking about getting dirty again. With Ava. With the shower flower and as many of her suddenly potential-filled bath-time accessories as he could figure out how to bring to the party.
“Shower downstairs,” she chimed in from the bedroom, sounded half distracted and totally uninterested. “I’ll shower up here and we’ll meet on the couch in twenty.”
The couch. Where they kicked back and watched movies until Ava got too tired and booted him out. Only now he wasn’t thinking about plugging in some flick like they’d talked about earlier. He was thinking about Ava bent over the arm of the sofa, her sweet ass raised as she looked back at him with eyes begging for—
“Bring snacks,” she added, snapping her fingers. “Good ones.”
Snacks.
Right.
Sam did away with the condom and washed up, laughing as he shook his head.
She was perfect.
—
God, she was an idiot. Ava closed the door behind Sam, slumping down with her back against the solid panels until she was sitting on the floor hugging her knees.
She’d been here before. Looking at the clock, giving herself five minutes to cry her heart out before she got it together and put on the face she never let anyone see past. The face that didn’t care about which Barbie doll Sam picked up after Homecoming in high school, or whom he’d scored with under the bleachers. Or that when it had been just the two of them talking late into the night with the star-swept sky above and a college life he wouldn’t share with her on the other side of dawn, after staring into her eyes for what seemed like an eternity, he’d pulled her into a hug and told her he was going to miss her like hell.
Tonight she shouldn’t even need the five minutes. After all, she’d gotten something the girl she’d been in high school would have traded her soul for. In one night, she’d tasted Sam’s kiss, learned his touch, and heard her own name breaking over his lips as he found his release.
Seriously, what more could she ask for? Well, aside from the obvious, of course—all the rest of his nights and the piece of his heart that didn’t beat for her. But she’d already accepted those things would never be hers. She’d made peace with it.
So why were the tears flowing one after the next as five minutes became four? Four became three. Three became two. Two became one, and—well, her time was up and she needed to jump in the shower, so the why of it didn’t matter anymore tonight.
She had to show Sam that nothing had changed. That she was every bit as good with putting what they’d done behind her as he was.
Wiping at her eyes with the backs of her wrists, she pushed to her feet, straightened her shoulders, and texted Sam to make sure he grabbed what was left of her panties and dress from the hall downstairs.
—
From his apartment downstairs, Sam laughed at the text and glanced at the dress he’d set aside to drop at the cleaners for Ava tomorrow before returning his attention to the scraps of midnight lace still in his hand. Jesus, he couldn’t believe what she’d let him do.
But that was Ava.
From the day he met her, she’d been giving him all the things he’d known better than to want. And more than that, she’d made him feel like it was okay for him to have them.
She’d changed his life.
She’d saved his life.
If he hadn’t stopped walking that first day, twenty years ago—Christ, even now it was tough to think about, but it was there.
His hands stuffed in the pockets of jeans an inch too short for him.
One nervous look over his shoulder after another.
He’d made it past the bridge to the sidewalk that started there, and when he’d looked back before hitting the bend, the dirt path on the other side was still empty behind him. He couldn’t hear his old man bellowing over the sound of the river, but he wasn’t sure his ears were really working right so he’d kept checking. Only then his sneaker caught on a pavement crack, reminding him
to keep his eyes on where he was going. Not to keep looking back like there was something he was afraid of. Like there was something he might be trying to get away from. Like there was something someone else might want to give a closer look. Because his mom wasn’t back yet, so he couldn’t let that happen.
Up ahead, that Meyers kid from the grade above him was sitting with his back against the big maple in their front yard. His little sister was standing in front of him, her dark brown pigtails swinging as she kicked the sole of his shoe. Arms crossed, her face was all screwed up like she’d sucked on a lemon or something. Like she wanted her brother’s attention and he wasn’t even looking up from his video game.
“Ford…Ford…Forrrrd. Ford, Ford, FordFordFordFord, Ford!”
“Knock it off, Ava.”
“Mom said you have to play with me. She said no more stupid video games.”
“Mom doesn’t say ‘stupid.’ ”
“I want to play hide-and-seek. Put your Game Gear down.”
“Go hide. I’ll find you.”
Her face lit up and she started to run, only then she must have thought twice because she was storming back to the big tree.
“You aren’t counting,” she gasped, her fists balling straight down at her sides as she stomped her foot. “That’s a new game!”
The girl’s—Ava’s—lips started to quiver. Her face getting all splotchy red like she was about to start to wail. And worse, her eyes started filling with tears. Only then she looked up and must have seen him, because she wasn’t ready to cry anymore. “Hey, I know you. You’re Sam Farrow. You’re in second grade with Mrs. Glass. I’m in first with Miss Peters. Where’d you come from? Where’re your parents? We’re going to play hide-and-seek—you want to play?”
Sam looked around the neat yard and house. The cars on the street. The clean windows and the cut grass. The trash cans up against the side of the house and the man he figured was probably their dad way down at the end of the driveway leaning over a few beams of wood, while a pretty lady who was probably their mom laughed with him.