Ladies Man

  “I’m right next to your room.” He smiles, gesturing behind me to his room, peeking at me through the cracked door. Tempting me to go in and see where the T-Rex spends his nights.

  I just nod.

  He looks me up and down, his eyes burning a path from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. He clears his throat. “Well, uh, I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

  He exits the room quickly. Too quickly. I couldn’t ask him where his office was.

  Come on, Regina, you don’t need to know that.

  I shake my head, take off my shoes, and lie down on the bed.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later I’m still in the guestroom bed.

  Except I can’t sleep.

  I get up. I don’t know where exactly I’m going, but I don’t really care.

  I wander out of the room, my bare feet and red nails peeking at me under the material of my silky nightgown. I navigate my way through the house and his office is empty. I then head back and stand at the door next to mine and tap lightly. It’s partly open, so I peer inside.

  Every sharp angle and smooth curve of his face is beautifully outlined in the dark. His blue eyes practically glow.

  His feet are bare. He’s only in jeans and a soft white T-shirt. Hair rumpled.

  The way he sits at the edge of the bed with those massive shoulders hunched tell me he’s tired.

  I peer around his room. An old picture sits on the nightstand. He takes it and puts it facedown, then stares at the back of the frame, his jaw working.

  “Who is she?”

  He startles at the sound of my voice then softly says, “My wife.”

  * * *

  “She’s your Lisa? The woman you loved?”

  “She was the nicest human being I’ve ever known.”

  “Now you like the dicks like me?” I try to joke.

  He just looks at me, and his eyes flood with tenderness, but most of all, I especially like that I manage to make his dimple peek with a light smile.

  I laugh. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.” I sit down next to him. “What happened?”

  “She died seven years ago.”

  I sense he wants to be alone. He’s a wall, impenetrable as steel. I move to get up. He leans and whispers something in my ear. “Stay.” He sounds intense. His facial expression matches the intensity of his voice.

  I can barely stand the chiseled angles in his face. He is a man, human, and in so many ways he’s just like me. You were dealt a bad hand and you stopped playing the game. What if we got dealt a new game…would he play for it?

  I’m struck with the realization that he loved her, and unlike my situation with Paul, because she was taken early, she will always be the object of his love.

  His raw, primal, male love.

  A pain blossoms in my chest and I’m afraid that it’s jealousy that I’m feeling. I don’t know why, because I sure don’t expect anything from him of that sort. “You see her in every woman, don’t you?”

  He laughs, then scrapes a hand over his beard. “That’s right.”

  I hold his hand. It feels natural to, like a friend move in a moment like this. But there’s fire streaking up my arm as his hand encloses mine completely and he holds me firmly in his grip. “Tell me about her.”

  “She used to say the oddest things. She’d notice things nobody else did. Always see the good in people.” He looks in the distance, his eyes gaining a rebellious glint. “I never was good enough for her.” He eyes me. “Just like I’m not good enough for you.”

  His eyes start dancing like a bad boy’s, and I love the playful sensuality in his lips—like he doesn’t take anything too seriously. Except maybe this moment with me right now. Because there, right under the playful sensuality, is a heat I’ve never seen shine quite so brightly. A heat that looks like the churning, burning, boiling need inside me now.

  He drags a hand over his face. “She was my girlfriend when she was diagnosed. Leukemia. A rare form, PCL. The prognosis was two years, and even now, treatment is still experimental. I married her because I didn’t want her to feel alone. She got sick while still a teenager. I was barely eighteen too. We were just kids.”

  “God, I’m sorry. So what did you do?”

  “Everything. Chemo, radiation, stem cell transplant. They kept her in a glass box. To prevent infection. It was like being in a nightmare, and there was no waking up. She never came out of that box. I felt complete helplessness just watching her, not touching her, not kissing her, watching her fight all alone. She never complained, she was always smiling…you get dealt this shit hand, the least you can do is say FUCK YOU.”

  “She wasn’t alone, you were there. And maybe she chose to fight, stayed positive for your sake.”

  “Oh I know that’s what she did. So it was all a lie. Every day she would say she felt good when I could see her withering away.” He laughs. “She died in that glass box, my little virgin wife.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I left the city shortly after. It hurts to care that much for one person. She was so damn sweet, she didn’t deserve it. And when they’re no longer by your side, you’re fucked. It takes so much to build yourself back up. I promised myself I’d never, ever go through that again.”

  “I can see how that would make it hard to connect with a woman that way.”

  “Impossible.”

  We sit in silence for a moment. I really don’t want to impose on any time of reflection that he might need, so I move to leave. But Tahoe has lightning-fast lacrosse player hands, and he quickly snatches my wrist and squeezes. “Hey. Stay.”

  I look into his eyes with a growing heaviness in my chest.

  There are fears in your life that neither you nor any man on this Earth can spare you from. Fears so deeply entrenched, there is no corner in your soul to hide, no way of escaping them. They grab you, own you, squeeze the life out of you, until you wake up sweating in the middle of the night, in tears, and you’re frantic to touch the ground beneath you because you still feel like you’re falling…and falling…a never-ending drop. Until a painfully hard surface breaks your fall.

  That hard surface, for me, is Tahoe Roth.

  But for the first time in my life, the need to comfort a man is far greater than any need I have for self-preservation. So I stay and entwine my fingers through his, setting my forehead against his as we close our eyes.

  He whispers in my ear, dark with guilt, as if he’s confessing his worst offense ever, “I picture you in my bed.” He cups my face in one big palm and looks into my eyes.

  “I’m here,” I whisper.

  He laughs darkly and kisses my cheek. “That’s not what I meant.”

  SPOONING

  I’m being spooned when I wake up. I do a mental inventory and realize I’m in a soft bed next to something hard and that I’m in a pair of huge, thick arms and the one draped around my waist weighs about a ton.

  I exhale and keep doing inventory.

  Okay, so I’m still dressed.

  And he’s bare-chested and with his jeans unbuttoned.

  Which is kind of a big deal because I can feel…everything.

  The kind of body that deserves to be in an underwear ad, and the kind of male…anatomy worthy of, well, porn.

  I need to get out of here, but I’m afraid to move.

  If I move, he could wake up. And I’ll have to stare him in the eye, and everything will be so awkward because…well, what now?

  Exhaling, I take his wrist within my fingers, and it’s so thick I can only curl my fingers around halfway. I’m not breathing as I try to lift his arm off my body. He grunts and shifts his arm downward again, to grab my hip and spoon me even more.

  And he’s…hard.

  Fuck me. But I guess…he wants to do just that.

  I’m in bed with him, and I’m trapped. There’s no escape. I should probably stay here, turn around, and get one lick down those perfect abs. Get one taste of the very cock that—in all hon
esty—will probably bruise me. He is fucking big and he is fucking hot. How would it be to have him giving it to me hard?

  I’m getting wet.

  Why did I even spend the night?

  I start when I feel him shift me around. With those incredible blue eyes staring straight at me.

  I hold my breath, and he raises his hand and curls his palm around my cheek.

  I close my eyes, dreading that he will touch me anywhere else and that I won’t have the strength to make him stop.

  Instead, the bed squeaks as he shifts his weight halfway on top of me, and he says in my ear, “I don’t see her in you.” I squeeze my eyes tighter shut as he goes on, his voice dark and almost threatening. “It’s been too many women this past year and in all of them I see you.”

  He holds my face and the silence stretches, and I will myself to open my eyes to see blue, just blue, crackling and so alive—and so angry.

  “You’re mad that I took her memory away? Keep her. Keep her memory alive if that’s what makes you happy.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  He brushes his thumb over my lipstick.

  I let him. “If there’s anyone in this world who will understand you not being willing to go through that again, it’s me.”

  “Do you really? Why are you driving me crazy then? Why do I need more women, more often? Why can’t I get you out of my skin?”

  “You feel you’re being unfaithful if you slept with me because it wouldn’t be her.”

  A mad muscle plays angrily in the back of his jaw.

  “Oh wow.” I blink. “You just never know someone, do you? A ladies’ man like you, faithful to one girl.”

  We hear noise downstairs in the kitchen.

  “I better go. I don’t want them to assume that we…” I push at his chest and then hurry to go change. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” I say in a rush, and then stand at the door. “Tahoe.” I attempt a smile but it trembles on my face. “You were always honest that you couldn’t give me what I wanted but still…thank you for telling me.”

  * * *

  “Tahoe’s out with Dad,” Livvy says from the breakfast table when I finally go downstairs, after heading to my bedroom to shower and change.

  I join her for a meal of eggs and hash browns.

  “I’m surprised he brought you here, you know?” she chattily says. “We’re all surprised. Lisa died on the day of my parents’ anniversary. It made the whole thing a little bitter for him, to celebrate a day when you mourn too.”

  “I didn’t know she died today,” I say, setting my fork down.

  I’m suddenly not hungry anymore.

  Livvy’s expression saddens, then she claps in forced cheer. “Well. My mother’s thrilled you’re here. She wants him to have good, better memories. It was so hard to watch him. So frustrating. He doesn’t like being helpless and has never allowed himself an inch of vulnerability ever since.” She eyes me somberly. “He likes you. And I mean, likes you likes you.”

  She smirks, and it’s so adorable, because she smirks almost like he does.

  “He looked at Lisa tenderly, as if she were something he needed to protect. He looks at you like a man does a woman he really cares about.”

  I try to dismiss her words, but I’m scared because my mind actually clings to them with the kind of fervor only the truly hopeless do.

  Can Tahoe’s wounds really heal for him to love someone again? Can he ever even let himself feel something for me?

  I’m quietly wondering when his dad comes into the house and tells me Tahoe’s waiting outside to take me for a ride.

  Excited by the prospect, I wash my plate quickly as Livvy ushers me out, then I head outside and into a huge barn. I take in the sight of half a dozen horses in the stalls, and I am especially intrigued when I spot a mechanical bull right in the center of the horse stables, amidst a set of mats surrounded by hay.

  I take in the bull and the tall man swiping it clean with a blue cloth. Seeing him, there’s a frisson of warmth running through my body.

  “You have a bull in your backyard?”

  “’Course. Nothing like riding a pissed-off bull.” He pets the seat meaningfully while a grin flirts across his lips. He quirks his left brow. “Try it, Regina?”

  “You try it,” I dare.

  He laughs. “I’ve tried it a million times.”

  He mounts the bull, grabs the pommel, and the bull starts thrashing. He rides it for a minute, all his muscles flexing, and then he clicks it off, dismounts, and grabs me by the waist to prop me up. “Now you.”

  “Oh god.” I’m so nervous I could vomit.

  “Come on.” He pats my butt and holds me by the waist, then curls my fingers on the pommel. “Just hang on for as long as you can.”

  “Tahoe,” I groan. “Only you.”

  “That’s right. Live a little.” He steps back with a smirk, his blue eyes dancing merrily as he turns it on. The bull begins slowly.

  “Oh wow. Okay. I can do this.” I hold on with both hands and then it starts thrashing wildly and there’s no possible way that I can hang on. I fly, fall on the mat, and laugh from the exhilaration. I’m still laughing on the mat when he throws himself next to me and we both stare at the rafters.

  “Quite a rush, hmm?” He traces his fingers over my throat as he looks down at me, and my laughter fades.

  I’m breathing fast from the bull but I’m fully aware that my heart is pounding due to something else. Something close, and dangerous, and not mine to…well, ah, ride.

  Flustered by his nearness, I push up to my hands and then to my feet and watch Tahoe quietly head over to the stables to saddle up two horses.

  I watch the play of his muscles under his shirt with an ache. He’s such a physical man. A very physical man who’s never been able to love anyone he’s cared about physically.

  “Get over here,” he says, oblivious to my thoughts.

  “I don’t know how to even get on that.”

  “I’ll help you.” He grabs me by the waist and ushers me forward, then cups my butt.

  “Tahoe! Not by the butt!”

  I squirm restlessly to keep him from lifting me. His magnetism is becoming more and more impossible to resist and his hands on me feel too good, too male, too his.

  “There’s not a butt so luscious anywhere but here,” he teases me, and palms it then squeezes gently, and he turns me around and draws my front to the flat plane of muscles that is him.

  We were laughing. But the smile fades from his face the instant our eyes lock and we both seem to register our position. My breasts heave against his chest, my butt is in his hands, and then he scents my neck a little as he buries his face inside my hair.

  I tilt my head and grip a handful of his T-shirt.

  It’s as if he can’t help himself. I can’t either. When he lifts his head, his eyes are lightning, thunder, and blue, blue rain. He looks at me as if I’m the most forbidden, most succulent thing he will ever take a bite of.

  I look at him, slowly, cautiously, nervously tipping my head upward.

  When he sees that, he slides his arm slowly around my waist to draw me tighter to him.

  “Come here,” he says, his voice dark as he leans his head.

  His breath is so close I can feel it on my face. His eyes look so dark, they’re almost navy blue when he gazes into mine. He cradles my cheek in his hand.

  He holds my face utterly still as he leans in.

  And he gets closer,

  And his nose brushes lightly over mine,

  And his breath blends with my breath,

  And his lips whisper over mine.

  All this time I’ve been staring at him, motionless. Then his eyes start to close, and his lashes are gorgeous, and he smells like pine and hay…

  And his lips close firmly over mine.

  Softly but so possessively, I gasp as my whole body arches up to the kiss. His tongue flicks softly—opening me.

  A thousand emotions and sensations rippl
e through me.

  I’m still scared.

  I still know this won’t amount to anything.

  I now know he may possibly never, ever come to love me.

  But all the longing, all the nights, all the days, all the nudges, all the baits, all the teases, all the arguments, the games, the holidays, the chocolates, everything simmers to the surface until I feel like I’m going to explode into a million tiny, horny little pieces.

  I grab his hair—hard.

  A violent groan leaves his chest as he parts my mouth wider and wider. He tightens his arms around me and lifts me up against his chest almost aggressively. He squeezes me tightly but lovingly, and nibbles my lower lip, saying, “God, this mouth belongs to me, this mouth was made for me.”

  His hot little bite is a soft prick on my lower lip, firm enough to feel, but soft enough to feel like being bitten all over.

  He groans again and his tongue smooths over the sting of the bite and I groan for him, moan for him, grab his hair tighter, hold him close, my heart beating a thousand beats in one single heartbeat.

  When he finally eases back, he stares into my face as if searching for something he needs to see, something he’s craving for, would die for, that’s how intense his eyes are, how rabidly they look at me.

  “I’m still on Earth?” I whisper.

  His lips curl briefly, his lids heavy, eyes dilated and still fiercely searching.

  “Yeah?” he asks in a voice coarsened with desire, rubbing the knuckle of his index finger over my bruised mouth.

  “Yeah.” I laugh.

  He gives an impatient nod to the horse, and when he grabs my waist to lift me, he stops and inhales a deep breath. He smiles against my temple, and I smile to myself. I haven’t seen his dimple in a while, and this time I can actually feel it against my skin.

  Sometimes we use the people close to us as crutches, to keep from facing reality, or to keep from doing the hard work. We think they can do it for us or shield us from the truth. Sometimes we use our pain as a crutch too, to keep from putting ourselves out there again. I can no longer deny that between me and Trent, there always stood a six-foot-plus blond Tyrannosaurus rex, and I hadn’t realized until now that nothing could have kept me from falling in love with him.