PosterBoyForAverage (10 page)

She arched up, the breath stolen from her lungs.

His tongue circled her outer lips, moved to the crux of her
thighs, gently brushed along her bare mound. He hovered near her clit—teasing
her with what she wanted—even as he continued to work her with his thick
fingers. “Just?” he chuckled.

“Just…just…”

“I’ll give you incentive.” He stopped torturing her, dragged
his flattened wet tongue over her now-throbbing clitoris and sucked as he
thrust his fingers deep.

Aubrey came, somehow speaking even as her body rode a warm,
sunshiny wave of pleasure, milking his fingers. “Just glad you were next to me.
It’s been days. And then…there you were. Here you are.”

“Yes, here I am,” he said softly. Mike pushed her to her
belly and she went easily enough. He shoved a pillow beneath her hips and
Aubrey complied. She felt warm and loose and perfectly happy having him place
her just so. Goose bumps raced along her spine as he parted her thighs just a
little, his hand traveling up her flank, her side, plunging into her hair. He
touched her everywhere, taking his time and then kissed the back of her neck so
she trembled.

Aubrey pushed back when she felt the soft stroke of the head
of his cock to her drenched slit. She bit her bottom lip and moved back to take
him. Mike grabbed her hips to steady her but his entry and retreat were fluid.
Whereas earlier it had been hot and teasing and somewhat fervent, this time it
was lazy and sweet.

He took her and he took his time doing it. Mike whispered
things in her ear, pressing his lips to the lobe. The heat of his breath, the
rumble of his words made her nipples rise up, hard and sensitive against the
pillow beneath her.

“I wanted you just like this. Under me.” He pressed his body
to her back, spread her arms wide and covered them with his. His hands trapped
her hands. His weight forced her down, squeezing the air out of her. Aubrey
thought that if she were to die in that moment it was a perfect way to go.

When the last of her air shivered out of her, he seemed to
sense it. Mike rocked back, slipped a hand beneath her to find and stroke her
clit. His rhythm stayed easy, as if they had all the time in the world.

“Right here, like this…” he whispered. “Under me, coming for
me.”

She did it. Just as easy as breathing. When he said that,
Aubrey came and it was perfect. Sweet and slow and warm. Like coming home.

“There’s my girl,” he said for the second time that night.

Aubrey couldn’t help but think of him saying they’d be a bad
idea. How complicated his life was—not to her, but he seemed to feel so. All
the barriers that could pop up. She swallowed hard around the lump that had
suddenly budded in her throat. She simply turned her head and leaned forward to
kiss his knuckles where they were clenched there in her bedding. Because he was
climaxing and the feel of him coming undone for her was too wonderful to miss
with worrying.

Aubrey turned and swatted with her arm. “What is that—”

“Ouch!”

She froze, realizing she wasn’t alone and that wasn’t her
alarm. “Shit, I’m sorr—”

But Mike was already sitting up, looking sleepy but frantic
and accepting the call. “Hello? Well, take him back if you have to. I’ll be
right th—”

He listened and then ran a hand through his hair. The
sunshine that splashed through her window showed her the tiny silver hairs she
found so sexy in his hair. Aubrey wanted to touch them but curled her fingers
against her thigh instead.

“Ang—Angela!”

She’d never heard him even sound mildly annoyed, let along
angry. Aubrey stood, found her robe and slipped past him. This was time for
them to be alone. She’d go make coffee.

Bruce was at the foot of the steps, tail wagging maniacally,
his toys strewn across the living room floor.

“Someone had a late-night party,” Aubrey laughed. She found
his collar and opened the sunroom for him to go outside.

The morning was cool and the leaves were bright.
Unbelievably so. Soon they’d be all over the ground. Maybe one more streak of
Indian summer though, Aubrey thought. They were sneaking up on Halloween but
almost always, Baltimore brought one more blush of summer before it let go for fall
to fully settle in.

When Bruce returned she followed him to the kitchen. He
always led the way in case she got lost on her way to his food bowl. Aubrey put
water on for coffee, filled Bruce’s bowls and watched him inhale his breakfast.

“Last night was amazing,” she confessed to her own personal
Batman. “But this morning makes me sad. I wish…you know.”

“That I wasn’t so fucked-up and tangled in drama?” Mike came
walking in, nothing on but jeans and a sheepish look.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to hear that.”

Mike hopped onto a barstool at the breakfast bar as she
poured the water into the French press. “It’s fine. Angela can just
be…challenging.”

“It’s a stressful thing,” Aubrey said, feeling like she was
talking out of her ass. What did she know about raising a family or the stress
of a sick child?

“It is. And she makes it more so. Chuck is prone to panic
attacks. Especially once he’s been in the hospital and they send him home.”

She pushed the press down, watching the coffee rise and
churn. It was so dark and smelled so good. Maybe it would make the morning a
little better. “He gets scared. Feels like something bad will happen if he’s
not at the hospital,” she said without thinking. That was something she did
know about. Panic attacks. She’d had them off and on for years.

Mike chuckled. “Exactly. You understand.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, reflexively.

He cocked his head as she passed off a mug to him and
indicated the cream and sugar already set on the table. “Why do you keep saying
that?”

She shrugged, ducking her head to avoid his gaze. Then, for
some reason, a very vivid memory of him pinning her down, fucking her, filled
her mind’s eye and the mild heat in her cheeks turned to an inferno. “I don’t
know. It’s none of my business, I guess. I feel…intrusive.”

“I’m in your house,” he said.

“And it still doesn’t give me a right to comment on your
life.” Aubrey pulled her robe tighter and forced herself to sit on the other
stool. She didn’t want to sit though, she wanted to pace. He had her feeling all
kinds of fucked-up things. Worry, excitement, fear, concern…arousal. She was
one big raw nerve ending.

He took her hand. “See why I’m a big mess to have in your
life?”

“So are you taking that choice from me? The having-you-in-my-life
part?” she asked. Before he could answer, Aubrey jumped up and found the loaf
of bread. She loaded the toaster. She could tell he was waiting. Waiting for
her to sit.

She didn’t want to sit.

Instead, she found the butter and the jelly, all the while
running through an idea she’d had for the cover to the Checkered Horse novel
Light
for Dominic
. Of course, her mind kept wanting to put Mike—her handsome Mike,
standing in the sun—in the hero’s position on the cover.

“Are you going to flutter about until I come tie you to the
chair?”

She snorted, surprising herself. “Oh that would be
interesting. What would you do when you had me tied to the chair?”

When she turned to face him finally, her stomach dropped.
His eyes were darker blue, storm-cloud blue-gray, and his jaw was taut. Between
her thighs she grew wet and welcoming. Best to try to act as if she wasn’t.

“I can think of a lot of things, Aubrey.”

The way he said it, the steel in his voice, went right
through the center of her. She sighed audibly before she could stop herself.

“Isn’t this where you tell me you’re bad news? No good for
me? I could do better? And all that alpha-male movie-hero bullshit?” she
snapped. She was only mildly surprised that she was getting pissed off.

Mike stood, grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the bar.

“The toast,” she said.

“Fuck the toast.”

His word choice surprised her. He wasn’t much of a cusser.
Probably a result of having children. “But it’s—”

“What’s important right now is you. And me.”

That shut her up. Wasn’t it too soon for there to be a “you
and me” between them? And yet it didn’t feel too soon. In fact it felt long
overdue, if she were honest. Their chemistry was volatile, the draw to him
undeniable.

Aubrey forced herself to sit still and look at him. Even
though under that gaze of his, she felt naked down to the core of herself.

“I am bad news. I am no good for you.” He grinned at her.
“You have a good life, Aubrey. You have life by the balls. You have your own
business, your own way of doing things, your own seamless life.”

Bruce trotted in, drawn by Mike’s soothing voice. Mike
glanced down and chuckled softly. “You even have your own superhero.”

Aubrey’s eyes prickled. “But?”

“But nothing. I’m not telling you anything. I’m not taking
any choice from you. I’m just saying, think about it before you jump in with
both feet when it comes to me. I’d hate to mess this all up. I can stand being
a booty call.”

Her mouth popped open. The look on her face was enough to
make him laugh outright. “What? You’ve never had a booty call?” Mike teased.

“Yes, I mean, well…yes! But you weren’t. I was concerned.
And…” She let her words trail off. She wasn’t willing to emotionally skewer
herself by saying she’d missed him. “And I…you’re nice.”

He took her face in his hand and kissed her. His lips were
soft, tentative, warmed by coffee. “I think you’re nice too. I like you very
much, Aubrey. Enough to tell you to run,” he said, smiling. It wasn’t a happy
smile. It was a wry, somewhat sad smile. “Run fast and run far but don’t get
tangled up with me. My life is a knot of stuff. Sons I adore, one who’s ill, an
ex who wants to be friends one day, doesn’t want me in her life the next, but
always wants me to fix everything when bad shit happens. Which, given Chuck’s
issues, is often. I work on roofs, for God’s sake!”

“So?”

He shrugged. “So nothing. It is what it is but you—”

“Deserve more?” she asked.

He ran a hand through his already mussed hair. “Well, you
do.”

“That’s your opinion.”

“It is my opinion.”

“You have a very low opinion of yourself.” It hurt her heart
that that was how he viewed himself.

“I’m just stating the facts.”

“You’re also an up-and-coming model,” she said, taking his
hand. She squeezed it. She wanted to take him back to bed, make him see himself
the way she saw him. Make him forget all the stress and worry. But she saw the
way he kept glancing at the clock. He had to be somewhere. Probably with his
son.

What she said made him laugh harder. “Jesus, Aubrey. I’m
anything but. You took pity on me and I let you. I’m an average guy with an
average face.”

She stood abruptly. “I did not take fucking pity on you,
Mike Sykes. I saw something in you. And for your information, the publisher saw
it too when I brought my usual stack of men for her to look at. I don’t take
pity. I take my job seriously. I take my work seriously.”

He looked startled and then sorry. “Aubrey, I—”

“It’s fine. You might as well get ready. I assume you need
to be somewhere.” She turned her back to him, effectively dismissing him. It
was something she was aware she did—Bradlee had called her on it often enough.
But so what? Wasn’t he dismissing her? Her draw to him. Wasn’t he turning his
back on what they might have a shot at?

Yes, he was.

* * * * *

“Come to dinner,” Bradlee said.

Aubrey curled the old-fashioned phone cord around her
fingers and her hand the way she had as a teen. When the blood trapped in her
fingers turned them pink, she flicked her hand and watched it unwind.

“I can’t. I’m working. And I don’t think I’d be very good
company tonight.” She glanced at the laptop on her dining room table. She’d
brought it downstairs, not wanting to work in the bedroom. It still had the
scent of them. The vibe of them together. And if she shut her eyes, her close
proximity to where they’d spent the night together filled her head with clear,
colorful but unwanted images.

On her computer screen was a cover, half-done, that had been
half-done all day.
Light for Dominic
was a disaster and she knew why. It
was because she kept trying to wedge a picture of every other model at her
disposal into the hero pic instead of using Mike. Who it had been in her mind,
all along.

“Hello?”

“Yes?” Aubrey said, snapping out of her daydream.

“I said your niece would absolutely love to see you. And I
would because my husband is still away and next to him, you are my best friend
in the whole world.”

Aubrey caught the hint of sadness in her sister’s voice.
“What time?” she asked, letting it go.

“Six?”

Aubrey glanced at the clock. That gave her two hours to take
a shower and get there. But whom was she trying to impress?

“And what are you feeding me?” Aubrey tried not to laugh.

“Oh Christ, now you’re just being a brat.” Her sister
giggled. Which was a good sound to hear, given a moment ago she’d sounded
somewhat down. “That sausage lasagna you love.”

“I’ll be there!” Aubrey said, brightening. “I’ll bring a
bottle of Moscato to go with it.”

“Isn’t pasta supposed to be red?” Bradlee asked.

“Who knows? I can never keep that stuff straight. I’m in the
mood for Moscato. You? I can get something else.”

“Hell no. I love Moscato. I’m in. I’m in for a good two or
three glasses.”

Aubrey laughed. “Then I’d better get the big bottle.” She
heard Laura calling something out in the background. “What did she say?”

“Not to forget to tell you that she made dirt for dessert.”

“Um…yay?”

Bradlee chuckled. “It’s a dessert. With cookies and whipped
topping. Just don’t worry. You’ll love it.”

“I’m sure I will,” Aubrey said. “I have to go shower.”

“One last thing,” Bradlee said.

“What’s that?”

“Once she goes to do her homework you can tell me all about
it.”

“All about what?”

“All about your night with Mr. Roofer.”

“I—how the hell did you know?” Aubrey sighed.

“Sisters know things. We haff vays,” Bradlee said in a
horrible accent she could only assume was to be an interrogator impression.

“Yeah, yeah. If I drink enough wine I might think about it.”

“Good. I’ll make sure you drink enough wine. Because I want
to know. Everything.”