This could work. He didn’t see how it wouldn’t. Adding mind-blowing sex to their already awesome relationship gave them both what they wanted. All the benefits of a relationship without the weight of their fears ruining it. He wouldn’t have to worry about hurting her because she didn’t want more than he could give, and she wouldn’t have to worry about him breaking her heart because, as she pointed out last night, she didn’t feel that way about him.
A twinge in his chest caused Dillon to frown and rub at the area. That shouldn’t bother him. Whenever another woman even mentioned having feelings for him, he instantly started to pull away. Must be an ego thing. Because there was no way he actually wanted Alyssa to be in love with him. That would ruin everything they had together. He might even lose her for good over it.
Pushing off with his shoulder, he stood rigid, his fists clenched at his sides. He imagined what life would be like without her living next door, without their weekly reality-TV nights, without getting to see her brilliant smile on a daily basis. A possessive pang reverberated in his bones and he knew right then he’d do whatever necessary to keep that from happening. Losing Alyssa was not an option. Ever.
He’d give them the rest of the weekend to explore this new facet of their friendship. Let it really sink in how great they are together. Then he’d propose the arrangement as something long-term when they got home.
As she stirred and opened her eyes, Dillon crossed the room to stand by the bed. “Your bath is ready, m’lady,” he said with a slight bow for fun.
“And just how am I supposed to focus on my bath when I have access to something as wonderful as that?”
He followed her pointed gaze to his semihard cock, which was now growing under her attention. She bit her lip and looked up at him through sleep-heavy eyes that told him she had anything but sleep in mind. He growled and cradled her in his arms to pick her up. “Look who woke up a wicked little minx,” he teased, walking back toward the bathroom. “Tell you what. I’ll let you wash mine if I can wash yours.”
“I agree to those terms.” Alyssa used her arms around his neck to pull herself up to whisper into his ear. “As long as ‘wash’ is code for ‘lick.’”
Dillon wanted to come back with a sexy retort, but he could only laugh. He was amazed at how she could still surprise him after eighteen years. Just another plus in the friends with benefits plan. Life was looking pretty damn perfect right about now.
…
“Thank God. I’m starving.” Dillon leaned back so their waitress, who looked like Katy Perry’s stunt double, could set their drinks and appetizer on the table. He and Alyssa had been walking the Strip and taking in the eclectic array of locals dressed as showgirls, fictional characters, and even cartoon characters they encountered along the way. But as soon as they passed the Sugar Factory in front of the Paris hotel, Dillon’s sweet tooth and grumbling stomach dragged Alyssa onto the patio for some lunch.
He squeezed the orange garnish into his tall glass of Blue Moon beer, then dropped it in and licked the sweet juice from his fingers. Looking up, he swore he’d caught Alyssa staring at him before she’d averted her eyes. Despite her sex-kitten persona in the bedroom, he noticed she reverted to straitlaced Aly as soon as they were out of it. He found it intriguing on a certain level. Was it because she wanted to keep their bedroom life separate from everyday life? If so, he could respect that. He could even understand it. But he didn’t like it. If he got the urge to kiss her senseless out in public, he wanted free rein to do so.
Which brought him to the other thing. The more she pretended nothing had changed, the more he wanted to prove to her they had. Her actions were like a red flag to his bull. A challenge he readily accepted.
She scoffed at him from across the small table. “You’re always starving. I swear your legs are hollow.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a healthy appetite.” He turned to their waitress as she tucked the tray under her arm. “Am I right, Cherry?”
Dillon only meant to gain a friendly ally for his defense, but the girl raked her gaze over him like he had the words Please objectify me tattooed on his forehead. Flashing her dimples and giving him a suggestive wink with fake eyelashes, she replied, “Not if that body is the result.”
Coming from the Colorado winter to temps in the fifties and sixties, he’d chosen jeans and a blue, short-sleeve polo he hadn’t even bothered to tuck in. Not exactly something he’d expect to be ogled in. Now he needed to do damage control.
“There, you see? I’ll start worrying when I look down and can’t see my feet. Besides,” he said, pointing a finger at Alyssa, “you’re the one who cooks gourmet dinners for me every night, so that makes you my enabler, sweetheart.”
Whether it was the emphasized pet name or the insinuation that he and Alyssa lived together, Cherry dropped the flirtatious act as Dillon had hoped and resorted to proper server behavior, albeit with a look of disappointment. “I’ll be back with your meals as soon as they’re ready.”
Alyssa thanked her in way of dismissal, then watched as Cherry sashayed her way through the patio tables back to the main dining area. The darts Alyssa shot at their waitress’s back made a tiny grain of hope swell in his chest. Alyssa might actually be jealous of another woman’s attention.
If that was the case, then maybe she was starting to feel just as possessive of him as he was of her. Relief flowed through him. He wasn’t the only one experiencing strong emotions. A fact that would be to his benefit when he proposed that this last much longer than a single weekend.
“I still can’t believe you beat that Texan,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. “The way he talked, you’d think he invented Texas Hold’em, and yet you took him for everything he had in under an hour.”
“Correction: everything he had at the table.” She dragged a chip through the warm spinach-and-artichoke dip while trying to hold back her smile. “As a real estate mogul, I’m sure the fifteen-hundred-dollar loss didn’t put much of a dent in his coffers.”
“Still, the look on his face when you beat him was priceless. I’ve never seen anyone so tan go so completely white before.”
At last the smile broke free. “He did look rather peckish when I pulled the stacks of chips to me, didn’t he?”
She popped the corn chip into her mouth and let out an appreciative moan for her favorite appetizer. It was perfectly innocent. It shouldn’t remind him of the sounds he’d brought out in her less than six hours before with his hands, his mouth, and his cock in the bathtub. Sounds that had made him totally crazy and hard as hell. Sounds that were starting to make his jeans damn uncomfortable as he sat in public to enjoy a meal with her, but wanted nothing more than to make her his meal, public or not.
Giving himself a mental shake, he raised his beer and took several long draws. With any luck the alcohol would take the edge off until he could get her back to their room. Then all bets would be off.
Speaking of bets… Dillon chuckled, remembering how they spent their morning. After breakfast at the hotel’s buffet, they’d walked around the casino for a while. When they found a room running Texas Hold’em games that started on the hour, he suggested they play. She balked at first, but he eventually convinced her. One-hundred-dollars ante each and they’d only play until they were out. No pressure, just fun.
Except a few hands in, Dillon realized that Alyssa was a fucking card shark. He’d never seen a woman with a poker face like hers. The way she acted, she could have been at a high-class dinner party or interview with the president. Nothing but polite civility utterly lacking any hints of emotion. No one at the table—including him—could read her.
She, on the other hand, read everyone else like their skulls were transparent, allowing her to know their every thought and every move. She was so dead-on, it was almost creepy.
“So when’d you become such a ruthless opponent in poker anyway?” he asked. “Last I checked, you’d never played cards. You always just sat next to me and wa
tched or did your own thing whenever I played at parties.”
“I don’t. That was my first time actually playing. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to play.”
“Yet another advantage of having a brilliant mind?”
She shrugged, took a sip of her iced tea, then kept her focus on the napkin she was tearing into strips. “Or having a professional gambler as a father.”
“What?” The chip in his fingers froze halfway to his mouth. “I thought your dad was a traveling salesman.”
“Admitting to people your dad makes his money as a criminal gambler isn’t the sort of thing you tell people.” Finally she peered up at him, her eyes imploring him to understand. “Not even your best friend.”
Damn. Alyssa had always been sensitive about the topic of her parents and in her position, he probably would have kept everyone on a need-to-know basis, too. But it stung a little to realize she hadn’t viewed him as separate from “everyone.”
He dropped the chip onto the small plate, his appetite all but forgotten. “So all those times he was gone for months at a time?”
“Traveling with his partner to different casinos or underground tournaments. Sometimes hiding from people he owed money to until he could win enough to pay them off. Then he’d show up at our door whenever his luck ran out, and he’d stay just long enough to make promises he’d never keep and convince my mom to give him more money from her trust fund my grandma left her.” She swirled her straw around in her iced tea and stared at the ice cubes as they clinked against the glass.
“Whenever he came home, Mom and I almost fooled ourselves into believing we were a normal family. My parents were happy to see each other; my dad always brought Mom and me presents. He spent time with me, teaching me how to read people or count cards and stack the deck. We’d go to dinner, and I’d watch them laugh and smile and I’d think…maybe this time it’ll last. Maybe this time things will be different.”
But it never was. She didn’t say the words aloud, but they hovered over her like a dark cloud threatening to drench her in its bad memories.
“Hey,” he said, reaching across and taking her hand in his steady grip. “Let’s not take any trips down memory lane today, okay? Let’s stay focused on the here and now.” She took a deep breath and nodded with a wan smile. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Chapter Seven
It was called a Lollipop Passion Goblet and for a damn good reason.
When Dillon disappeared during their appetizer course, he’d returned with an alcoholic concoction of pineapple, melon, and coconut flavors. It tasted like heaven in the tropics but looked like the genius brainchild of a third grader’s imagination.
A glass goblet the size of a small fishbowl held neon-green liquid and literally “smoked,” courtesy of a chunk of dry ice. The thick layer of white sat on top of the drink, a ghostly version of whipped cream that bubbled over the edge like a witch’s cauldron. Topping it all off was a playful garnish of a unicorn lollipop, the rainbow kind that swirled up a long stick and could always be found in old-fashioned candy shops. It was stuck into the drink upside down with two candy necklaces wrapped around the handle.
Absolute. Perfection.
Alyssa took another long sip from her straw and felt the last of her tension slip away. It was hard to remain serious with a candy choker around her neck and another double wrapped on her right wrist. The edges of her mouth tipped up in a lazy smile as she swirled the ice around with the sucker and let her thoughts spill freely like the smoke from her drink.
Though she wasn’t even buzzed, the alcohol had helped lift the melancholy mood she’d been headed toward after discussing her father. It also aided in taking the edge off the underlying anxiety she’d felt since waking up next to her best friend after he’d thoroughly fucked her for several hours the night before and again that morning.
Wow, Aly, crass much? Apparently the liquor had also loosened her internal vernacular. Or maybe it was the multiple mind-blowing orgasms. Either way, she couldn’t think of a different phrase that did it any justice, much less one that was more polite. There hadn’t been anything polite about what they’d done on her bed. And in her bathroom. And bent over the desk…
“Aly.”
Her eyes flicked up to his as she dragged her thoughts, kicking and screaming, back to the present. “Hmm?”
Dillon placed his forearms on the table and leaned in so the nearby customers couldn’t hear his gruff question. “Is it your intention to make me and every other man around us jealous of that sucker?”
Alyssa froze, horrified to realize that she’d been working the long shaft of candy in and out of her mouth, unwittingly mimicking the base images filling her head. She had two choices: admit she’d had no idea what she was doing and then pretend like it never happened, or ride this new wave of sexual exploration and see what she was truly capable of.
Slowly, she pulled the sucker from her mouth, then licked her lips as she mirrored his pose. “On the contrary,” she said with a challenging arch in her brow. “I know how sensitive men can be when it comes to size. I’m merely trying to make it smaller so you don’t feel inadequate in comparison.”
For a brief moment, Dillon appeared stunned speechless and she wondered if her joke was a tad below the belt. Pun intended. Shit. Maybe Dillon was self-conscious—needlessly, she might add—about what he had going on down there.
Then, as if something snapped into place for him, he laughed and sat back in his chair, considering her carefully. Too carefully. With his elbows on the armrests and his fingers steepled and pressing against his soft lips. His piercing gaze made her feel naked and vulnerable and not a little antsy.
Her hubris now gone, she started to fidget in her seat and feign interest in the woman trying to hold her menu at arm’s length so she could read the fine print sans reading glasses. Alyssa guessed the time to be somewhere around twelve thirty as the sun had barely shifted the world’s shadows from dead center to slightly askew.
“I think it’s time we head back to the hotel,” he said. “Why don’t you grab us a taxi around the corner, and I’ll get the bill.”
Happy to have something to do other than squirm under the sudden sexual tension, Alyssa dropped the phallic candy into what was left of her drink and scraped her chair back. But before she had the chance to rise, Dillon was at her ear. “Bring the sucker.”
And then he was gone, walking away from her as though he hadn’t just implied a dozen dirty possibilities with three innocuous words.
With a hand that trembled more than she’d ever admit, she retrieved the sucker and went to grab them a cab from the front entrance of the Paris hotel.
Five minutes later, she sat in the backseat, pressed against Dillon’s side with his arm around her shoulders. If this had been a couple of days ago, she would have relaxed into him and even rested her head against him in comfortable companionship.
But now everything had changed. Especially him. His demeanor was no longer casual, but deliberate. Every move he made had a purpose, a part in whatever plan he’d concocted in that gorgeous head of his. And not knowing what it was nearly drove her mad.
He sat in the middle with her to his left. Sitting directly behind the driver hid the way Dillon’s fingers caressed the side of her breast. It would hide a lot of things if he so wished. Staring straight ahead, he gave the impression that nothing out of the ordinary was going on. All things considered, not much was.
How quickly that changed.
The driver took a call with his Bluetooth and started an animated conversation in another language. Dillon must have figured the guy had enough to focus on with the phone call and navigating the insanity that was the Las Vegas Strip traffic to notice much of anything happening behind him.
Grasping her right hand, he licked a few pieces of candy on the underside of her wrist, tonguing the sugary rounds and her pulse point beneath. The tingle of desire chased up her arm in goose bumps and spread over her chest,
tightening her nipples.
He emitted a soft groan, placed her hand on the hard bulge in his jeans, and bent to whisper in her ear. “You make me so fucking hard, Aly. I love watching you react to the things I say and do to you. Already your nipples are straining against your clothes, aching for my mouth. Am I right?”
She nodded, almost imperceptibly, but underlined it with a firm stroke down his erection. She felt a hiss of breath on her neck, followed by the vibrations from a devious chuckle. “So, the little minx wants to come out and play, does she?”
Shit, what the hell did he mean by that? “What? No, I—”
Her explanation was cut off by the jolting stop of their cab as their driver laid on the horn and swore at a car that pulled out in front of them. Distracted by the commotion, Alyssa didn’t see Dillon move his hand to the juncture at her legs. But when he pushed his hand between her thighs, her hips bucked in response, and it was all she could do to choke back her moan. He stroked over the seam in her jeans, bisecting her sex with her panties that were fast growing wet from desire.
Her eyes drifted closed. “Oh, God,” she rasped, her throat suddenly as arid as the desert.
“My thought exactly when I saw you sucking on that candy.” His head dipped lower and lapped at the candy necklace around the base of her throat. His fingers worked her over in a slow and sensual manner that matched the way he licked and suckled at the candy and her neck. “Show me again, Aly.”
Show him… Her eyes flew open. He couldn’t mean what she thought.
“Put the sucker in that hot little mouth of yours. Show me what you’d do if it were me.”
Okay, he did mean what she thought. But he couldn’t be serious. Despite the cabbie being mostly preoccupied with his caller and the traffic, he still glanced in the rearview mirror every so often. He might not be able to see her hard nipples or Dillon’s hand doing wicked things between her legs, but everything above her shoulders was perfectly visible. The thought of following Dillon’s instructions while making eye contact with their driver was an awkward one.