Chapter Six
Owen felt the pressure against his chest. Even in sleep he knew it was good. He snuggled closer to the intoxicating, warm scent. Soft hair brushed against his nose and his eyes popped open. He found Callie’s head nestled in the crook of his arm, his cheek resting on the top of her head, her sweet-smelling hair just below his nose.
The gray light of dawn filtered through his floor-to-ceiling windows. The busy city’s racket lessened at night, so the volume of the traffic noise below made him think it was about six a.m.
He’d had so much fun with her last night. It was a mixture of camaraderie and sexual need all rolled up into one achingly tempting package. She was truly a one-of-a-kind woman. Somewhere between his confession about his childhood and the easygoing nature of Callie, he’d lost something—the barrier that kept his emotions in check. He wasn’t sure he could replace it now that Callie had gotten a foothold.
He frowned, remembering that she had said she’d been on a date with a doctor. He wondered if she planned to see the guy again. He was stunned at the intensity of the anger and loss he felt just thinking about another man wooing Callie. Owen wasn’t usually a jealous man. It had been live and let live, but this time he felt differently. He felt differently about Callie.
He had to cringe when he thought about his past, with the parade of beautiful women in and out of his life. The club had given him the prestige he’d sought, given him the image he needed to fuel his reckless abandon, and provided plenty of women more than willing to fulfill his superficial and physical needs.
But somewhere between his great aunt’s death and meeting Callie, something had shifted in him. Where he once reveled in the Scoop’s “Woman of the Week” column about him, he now wished that they would move on to gossip about someone else.
Callie was a real, giving person. That’s why last night he’d been hypersensitive to the sexual chemistry they shared. He didn’t want her to think she was some kind of conquest, but he wanted the woman bad. His morning hard-on was inconvenient and only made matters that much worse. She shifted against him, and he could tell by her breathing that she was awake.
“Looks like we fell asleep. Would you like some breakfast?”
She stirred and her head fell back against his shoulder. “Even in sleep, I can’t seem to keep away from you.”
He smiled. His heart hurt, twisting with all the emotion trapped inside. He wanted to kiss her so badly, but knew that wasn’t a good idea.
“Breakfast, like you’ll run down to the bagel place kind of breakfast?” she asked.
He laughed softly. “You don’t think I could cook a few lousy eggs and fry some bacon?”
“Wow. That sounds good. I’m usually a cold cereal kinda gal.”
Callie moved away from him, and he just enjoyed watching her yawn and stretch, seeing the way her hair tumbled around her face, and the drowsy cast to her just-opened-eyes.
“I think I’ll pass.” She sat up, then looked over at Jack and groaned. “I don’t think he’ll want to budge. He looks so comfortable.”
The two dogs were wrapped around each other in sleep, Jill’s softly rounded belly triggering another wave of panic for Owen. No matter who told him that dogs have an easy time with birth, he worried about losing Jill. It was a tie to his great aunt and…dammit, he loved that dog. He didn’t know when it happened, but it had. She had been a comfort on his bad days and a joy on his good ones. Now that he was agility training her as Callie suggested, it was even better. Callie had been right. Jill had an aptitude for it. She was picking up the basics pretty quickly.
“Why don’t you leave him here? Bring me his leash, and I’ll walk him when I walk Jill. You can let them have the day together. I’ll be taking Jill to the dog park later, too.”
“Are you sure?”
“Contrary to the evidence from yesterday, he is a very well-behaved dog. I don’t think he’ll give me any trouble. It’s not like he can get her pregnant again.” He thought about that for a second. “Can he?”
Callie laughed softly, the sound drifted through him like soft rain. “No. He can’t.” She looked over at Jack, smiled softly, and walked over to pat him. He raised his head slightly, thumped his tail, then went back to sleep. “The trainer in me just wants to take control and make him obey. It’s a definite no-no, but this one small occasion shouldn’t hurt. Okay. I’ll drop his leash by. Thanks for looking after him today. I’ll be home about four.”
“No date tonight?” He hadn’t meant for that to come out and he certainly hadn’t meant to sound so…peevish.
She looked at him with a startled expression. “No, not tonight.”
“If that doctor had any sense, he’d set up a second date.”
Callie looked both amused and crestfallen. He knew he should say something about them dating, but he couldn’t get the words past his barriers. It was better this way. She wanted commitment, and he just couldn’t let his guard down.
“I’ll leave you my key, too. Just in case you want to drop Jack off.”
“All right.”
First Owen took the dogs for a walk and laughed at the amount of attention they received. The Great Danes were so huge that just walking with two made him secretly feel like he was a giant among men.
Celeste came by late morning to discuss the inventory and restocking of the club.
“We are low on vodka, so I prepared a purchase order to restock,” she said, leaning over him. She had found many occasions recently to brush against him or touch him. Nothing had ever been overt, but he knew when a woman was coming on to him.
For the first time in his life, he was ambivalent. When she stood in his path and put her arms around him, he was surprised.
“I got tired of waiting,” she said softly before she kissed him. He let her, mostly because he wanted to compare the experience with how Callie made him feel. And there was no comparison. Where he completely lost himself in Callie, Celeste, for all her beauty, barely made a ripple.
“I’ll get all this taken care of,” she said with a secret smile. “I’ll see you tonight.”
She left, and he knew that he would have to tell her tonight that he wasn’t interested. His emotions were a chaotic, raging mess. He would have to sort them out before he made any promises to Callie.
In the late afternoon, he heard some banging in Callie’s loft. He looked at his watch and saw that it was only three-thirty, and she wasn’t due home till four. He sat up straighter, wondering if the thief Callie had told him about could be in her apartment right this second. He left the dogs at his place and used Callie’s key to let himself quietly into her loft. The banging was coming from her bedroom. He approached the closet door cautiously, until he heard Callie’s voice swearing.
“Callie?”
There was a squeak and she came tumbling down on top of him, along with a rain of purses.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed, as he barely managed to catch her before they fell to the floor together.
“Why did you sneak up on me like that?” she demanded, pushing up on her arms and planting her hands flat against his chest so that she could look him in the face. Her face was flushed and her eyes were stormy. He’d never seen her like this before and wondered if she’d had a bad day at work.
The act of moving her torso away from him only pushed her hips into his. He gritted his teeth at the pressure on his groin. The woman was driving him completely insane, and he was about ready to beg her. “I thought you were the thief,” he said, trying to keep his voice conciliatory.
“If that’s the case, you should have called the police,” she snapped. Her hips jerked around in her anger, and he couldn’t stop his immediate biological reaction.
“I wanted to make sure,” he said. “Why are you home early? You said four.”
“Are you my keeper?” Her brow arched and she took on that dog trainer voice. He wasn’t a canine, but he was smart enough to realize she meant business.
“Why are you so
surly?”
Mild accusation glimmered in her gaze. “For your information, I was looking for my Judith Leiber clutch. It’s vintage, and I think it might have been stolen by the thief.”
“Is that why you’re in the closet?”
“Yes, and I’m home early because it’s your fault.”
“My fault? Why?” He was immediately concerned about what he could have done to upset her. He preferred his smiling, funny, Callie to this angry, aggravated woman.
“I want you,” she said breathlessly, leaning forward, grabbing the front of his shirt and tugging. His body, sensitized already by her gyrating hips, sprang to life, desire sizzling along every nerve ending.
His erection grew and she felt it. He saw the reaction on her face, in her eyes before she closed them. He shook with the promise of all that pent-up passion just waiting to be unleashed. “I couldn’t think clearly today, because all I could freaking think about was you.” Her hands kneaded his chest. “Waking up in your arms was an unbelievably tempting way to start my day. But I’ve sworn off men like you,” she said, her voice strained. “I promised myself I wouldn’t do it.”
“And, now you want to break that promise,” he murmured huskily.
“God, yes.” When she opened her eyes they were dark and fervent with desire.
His patience snapped so completely he groaned with the need he’d trapped inside, the barrier he’d erected not only coming down, but he feared he was irrevocably changed. And her eyes widened in surprise when he flipped her onto her back amongst the debris from the closet.
He shook his head. “I think it’s a given that most men don’t really understand women, though I have made the effort. But you…”
She looked up at him, and the defenselessness in her eyes demolished the flimsy wall he had shored up. The barrier he’d had left over from his childhood, the one his aunt Tilly had tried to gently coax down, fell with a thud as she touched his face, tracing her fingertips over his lips, his cheeks, his forehead.
“There’s no need to figure me out, Owen, like some kind of equation. There’s no math required. Just go with your gut.”
“That’s the problem,” he said. “With you, everything is all jumbled up. Even the math parts.”
Her face softened and her fingers paused in their exploration. “What are you worried about? I know what I’m getting myself into.”
It wasn’t the question that gave him pause. It was the immediate answer that came to mind. Did he know what he was getting himself into, or was it already too late? His head told him he didn’t know her. His heart called him a liar.
“You are just so sweet. I just—”
“Don’t want to get involved with your plain Jane neighbor? The owner of the dog who got your dog pregnant?”
“There is nothing plain Jane about you. Nothing. You cloud my judgment.”
“It’s a bit too late”—she nudged her hips against the solid length of him—“for second guessing.”
He groaned at the move, and it took every scrap of will he had not to drive his hips into hers. He dropped his chin and swore under his breath. “I don’t know what the hell to think anymore. You’re driving me crazy.”
She cupped his jaw and brought his face up with the soft cadence of her voice until he met her gaze. “Good. It’s nice to have a kindred soul here in Crazyland.”
He smiled a little at that. He couldn’t help it. “My thinking needs to be a bit more focused if you want a way out of this.”
“And here I thought getting us both naked was a good idea. It could be a great way to diminish all this sexual chemistry standing in the way of our…clear thinking.”
“You think this”—he risked bumping the length of his erection between her thighs, catching his breath when she gasped, went a little more supple against him—“is all going to miraculously disappear, is that it?”
“Okay, so my thinking isn’t all that clear right now,” she managed with an intake of breath as he pushed against her again. “It was just a theory.”
He pushed her head to one side with his chin, dropped his mouth to the spot below her ear. “Do you honestly think one time will clear things up?” He placed a hot, wet kiss on the side of her neck, then gently sank his teeth into her flesh, making her gasp and his body jerk. “Or do you think it will only make me want you naked and underneath me as often as possible?”
“I—I can’t think.” She dug her fingers into his shoulders and moved her head, allowing him better access to the responsive underside of her chin. “I just don’t think ignoring it is going to make it go away.” She sighed when he began to drop kisses along the underside of her jaw.
“No, probably not. But it complicates things, Callie. I’m not good with complications.”
She was silent for a moment, then said. “I get that.”
He paused and pressed his forehead against her cheek. His body was one big hard-on at the moment, but his heart… She had a way of tangling that up without even trying. “Do you?” he asked carefully.
“We have our own paths. We’re adults. We’re not kids anymore, with fantasy dreams and unrealistic expectations…” She paused, he waited. “I won’t lie. I wanted you from the moment I saw you.”
He lifted his head then, looked her directly in the eyes. “Callie—”
“I know what I’m asking for.”
Trouble with a capital T, was all he could think and it affected both of them.
“Maybe even that is more than I can give.”
“Maybe. But I think it’ll be enough for me. For now.”
They’d denied each other more than once. He’d like to believe he was tough enough to do the correct thing every single time, no matter how demanding. But he was aware that he wasn’t perfect. And he also knew he wouldn’t be perfect with her.
“I wanted you then, too,” he told her, which made her eyes darken with need, her body soften even more in anticipation of him, and what was left of his resolve disintegrated.
He wanted to evoke that look in her eyes again and again. He wanted it when he was inside of her, when he taking her up, when he pushed her over. He wanted to be the only one who saw that look, ever, and it was that vicious, outrageous surge of possessiveness that almost gave him back the distance he so desperately needed.
“I want you. You want me. It’s simple,” she said.
“Yeah, he said, his voice now rough with need, with impatience, and not a little uneasiness. “Yeah, completely simple.”