Princes of the Outback Bundle (17 page)

“It’s a long story, but—”

“Give me the short version.”

Yes, he was definitely annoyed. And for some reason Angie felt her own irritation diminish exponentially. With a soft, relenting sigh, she gave him the short version of her one organizational blunder. “I miscounted overnight guests and came up one bed short, so I’m sleeping on the sofa in your office. Your bathroom’s closest and will be least congested.”

He stared at her. The muscle in his jaw clenched and released again. “Have my bedroom. I’ll take the office.”

“Oh, no, you can’t do that.” Angie shook her head with some determination. “The sofa’s not that long.”

“By the time I get there, I’ll be ready to sleep anywhere.”

She saw that now, the tiredness in his eyes and posture. She heard the weariness in his voice, and both combined to steal the last of her irritation. “If you’re tired enough to sleep anywhere, why not your bed?”

“I told you—it’s yours.”

“It’s a big bed,” she said evenly. “Why don’t we just share it?”

G
ood going, Angie. You didn’t provide the fun, relaxing meet-with-friends that would change Tomas’s attitude to life and love and laughter. You didn’t get your slow dance in his arms. You didn’t even get close to a hand-in-hand walk to his bedroom. And—to end the night on a perfect note—you chased him from his bed.

For about the fiftieth time since she climbed into that bed, Angie rolled over and checked the bedside clock. Three o’clock. He couldn’t still be nightcapping with Alex, surely. She pictured his six-foot frame curled up and hellishly uncomfortable on the five-foot sofa and growled with frustration.

She
should be the one tossing and turning on the sofa, not in his king-size bed. That’s what she’d intended all along. Sure, she’d started the whole who-sleeps-where exchange in provocative fashion. But only because he’d grabbed such a quick hold of Alex’s convenient escape hatch.

Nightcap, Tomas? Does this mean I get out of answering Angie’s question about why I won’t dance with her? Oh, yeah, I’m there!

“Because you do want to touch me,” she murmured. “Why is that so damnably bad?”

With another prolonged growl, she covered her face with her hands and remembered the heat, the knowledge, the breathless pounding swell of certainty. And for a second she thought the growl continued, like a deep echo of the frustrated wanting that reverberated through her. But, no, it was voices in the hallway outside, and her whole body tensed in silent, hopeful wait.

The door opened, and in the slice of light from the hallway she saw his silhouette, tall and dark and hesitant. Should she feign sleep? Would that make up his mind?

“I’m not asleep,” she said, too wound-up to fake anything for long. “You can turn on the light if you want.”

He didn’t, but at least he came the rest of the way into the room and shut the door behind him. Angie closed her eyes briefly and murmured a quiet thank you. “I’d decided you must have crashed on the sofa, and I was lying here thinking—”

“Go to sleep, Angie.”

The mattress dipped as he sat on the far side of the bed, a long, long way from Angie. She rolled onto her side and propped herself up on one elbow. It took a second for her eyes to adjust, to find his outline in the dark, to identify the movements of his arms as he tugged off his tie. Unbuttoned his shirt. Stripped it off.

Angie swallowed. Cleared her throat. Tried to think of something to say, an excuse to be sitting here watching him undress. “I can’t go to sleep. Not until I’m sure you don’t think this is some kind of setup.”

“A setup?”

“A ploy to get into your bed.”

“Alex told me what happened with the Hanrahans bringing that extra couple.” He leaned over, she imagined to take off his shoes. “You don’t have to explain.”

“So we’re good with this—with sharing the bed?”

He’d gone still, the set of his shoulders tense and Angie thought he might have shaken his head. Just one small, disbelieving movement before he answered. “Yes, we’re good. Can we leave it?”

Not waiting for her answer, he stood abruptly, undid his trousers, kicked them off. Desire speared through Angie, a strong, sweet ache that came of knowing he stood so close in nothing but his underwear. Would he climb into bed now? Would she be able to stand to lie here, to not reach out and touch?

But he started to walk away and struck by momentary panic, she bolted upright. “Where are you going? I thought you were good with sharing.”

He stopped and his sigh sounded unnaturally heavy in the darkness. “I’m not that good with it, okay? I’m taking a shower and I could be a while, so just go to sleep.”

He was gone longer than Angie would classify as “a while,” but how could she sleep? Through the bathroom door she could hear the sounds of his shower, and when she shut her eyes she saw him in that split second before he closed the door. Illuminated by the bathroom light, in tall, tense, erect profile.

Was that why he said he would be a while? Did he need to take care of that hardness? Did he mean to cure it with a cold-water blast or ease it with a warm, soapy hand?

Heat washed through her, heat and a dangerously allur
ing temptation. What would he do if she walked into the bathroom and into the relentless wet pounding of that shower? Would he welcome her initiative, her hand, her body?

Hot and restless, she kicked the sheet from her body but the still bedroom air felt no less sultry. Even her silky little nightdress felt too much against her overheated skin. She sat up. Stared at the door. Started to peel the straps from her arms.

I don’t like surprises.

Life was so much easier as an impulsive, straight-forward, do-what-comes-naturally gal. Before he filled her mind with doubts and insecurities and cause for caution. She hated diffidence. She loathed this whole game of patience. She despised hiding her feelings, her wants, her heart’s desire.

“Aargh.” Arms and legs akimbo, she flung herself back onto the bed, kicked the sheet further away, pummeled the pillow. And about a second after she jammed her eyes shut, she heard the blessed silence of a shut-down shower. Probably she took a number of breaths in the ensuing minute or two. That seemed likely since she didn’t pass out from oxygen deprivation. But Angie didn’t remember doing anything other than lying in heart-thumping stillness.

Waiting.

He came out of the bathroom naked, but not to the bed. After he walked out of her line of vision she heard the soft shush of a drawer rolling open, and she wondered what he was pulling on. The fitted briefs he wore so well. Sleep-shorts. Full body armor.

Too tense for amusement at that last image, she closed her eyes and smoothed her nightdress down over her body. He didn’t like surprises. And despite the eyes shut and his silent barefoot approach, she knew exactly when he arrived at the bed. She knew he stood looking down at her.

“It’s okay,” she said, a husky sliver of sound in the dark. “I won’t bite.”

Ah, but she did. The heat of her voice. The shimmer of her nightdress. The line of her legs against his pale sheets. They all bit great ravaging holes in Tomas’s willpower, in everything he’d convinced himself to avoid in that shower. And while he stood there with all his blood and willpower and logic racing south, she stretched out her arm and ran a hand across the sheet.

“See…I can’t even reach your side.”

Apparently that was a demonstration of his safety. Laughable, really, given the perilous snarling state of his body. She might as well have reached over and ran that hand over his butt. He sat that part of his anatomy down on the edge of the mattress and considered the alternatives. Sheet or no sheet? Tent or no tent?

“Did the shower help?” she asked.

And this time he did laugh, a caustic, rough-edged sound that had little to do with amusement and a lot to do with the timing of her question. “Not my immediate problem, no.” However, he was very, very clean.

“Hot or cold?”

What? He swung his legs onto the bed, kept them bent, pulled up the sheet hip-high.

“The unhelpful shower,” she persisted. “Was it hot or cold?”

He rolled his head a little on the pillow, enjoying the cool imprint of his wet hair. It was the only hint of coolness in his burning body. “Do you really expect me to answer that?”

“It would stop me wondering.”

Yeah, well, maybe it would. And just maybe it would shock her into silence. “I tried both. Neither worked.”

“Does it usually?” Her silence had lasted all of ten seconds. And she didn’t sound very shocked…just curious. “The cold method, I mean. I’m well aware that the, um, hot alternative does its job.”

“You know this from experience?”

“More from reading than firsthand.” She huffed out a little sound of amusement. “No pun intended.”

“None taken.”

He heard her move, a silky frisson of movement as she turned or shifted positions. And, hell, he could feel her watching him. Intently. Which didn’t exactly help the problem they were discussing.

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

Shee-sus. “If you want to know how I get off, why don’t you just ask instead of beating around the bush.”

“Interesting phrasing,” she said after the briefest pause. “But that wasn’t really my question. I asked if cold showers help.”

“Sometimes. Other times, you need a release.”

She didn’t say anything for a long while, so long that he thought he’d finally satisfied her curiosity. Long enough that he turned his head on the pillow to check. He wished he hadn’t. She lay on her side, closer to the middle of the bed than he would have liked, just watching him with a quiet intensity that grabbed him in more places than under the carefully draped sheet.

“Is that satisfying?”

He made a strangled sound, part disbelief, part laughter. “Jeez, Angie. Can’t you just read about this in a magazine?”

“I’m asking
you,
Tomas. I want to know if there’s a difference between that kind of release and making love with a woman.”

“Of course it’s better with a woman.”

“With any woman? Like one you pick up in a bar or something?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Angie was so involved in her side of the conversation, in choosing her careful words to keep him talking, sharing, giving, that his answer took a moment to sink in. She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I haven’t slept with a lot of women.”

“I didn’t think that you had, actually.”

“My inexperience showed?”

“No.” Surprised by his question—by its tone—she lifted up on her elbow, better to see his face. “Why on earth would you say that?”

“Two, okay? You and Brooke. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“I…” God, what could she say? Angie wet her dry mouth but that didn’t help when she had no words.

“Have I finally managed to shock you?”

Not shocked, she realized as the impact of his honesty took hold, but blown away that he’d told her. “It doesn’t surprise me,” she said slowly. “Knowing the kind of man you are… No, I’m not shocked.”

“You don’t know me, Angie.”

“I’ve known you most of my life, Tomas. I know what matters to you. I know that you never looked at another woman once you met Brooke. I know this whole deal with me and the baby has been incredibly difficult because you still love her—and because you could never treat sex casually.”

She could feel his tension radiating across the space that separated them in the big bed, could sense the barriers going up, but Angie couldn’t stop. He’d shared something incredibly personal, and she wanted—no,
needed
—to do the same.

“If your inexperience showed, then I wouldn’t have noticed. Every time I slept with you, every time you came to my bed and every time you came in my body, was completely amazing. Completely.”

There. She’d said it. And as much as the words, she heard the resonance of her heartfelt passion filling the heavy silence of afterward, perhaps because her heart and her body were so jam-packed with love and need and wanting that she could no longer contain it all.

“Do you know yet?” he asked.

Instantly, with absolute certainty, she knew what he meant. Her heart bumped hard against her ribs and she felt its beat low in her body, deep in her womb. “I don’t have my period yet, but that doesn’t mean anything necessarily. Not yet.”

“When?”

“Maybe tomorrow, although…”

When her voice trailed off he turned his head sharply, his eyes piercingly intense in the dark. “Although?”

“I don’t feel PMSy, either.” She laughed, a soft nervous bubble of sound, because he’d forced her to think about the forbidden. Every thought and connection she’d disallowed herself these past few days. “No chocolate cravings. No bloated tummy. I feel…”

She pressed the palm of one hand against her stomach, and felt an overpowering surge of emotion, part awe, part excitement, part nerves. Was she pregnant? Was there a minute speck of life already dividing and growing beneath her hand?

“How do you feel?” he asked, his voice low and gruff.

How did she feel? As if she hovered on the brink of something momentous. As if the night and their tenuous connection rested on her answer and his response. Her heart
thudded so hard she felt constricted and breathless, and the arm holding her weight suddenly wobbled and wavered.

Before it collapsed her gracelessly, she sank down onto the bed and rolled onto her back. And she could find only one word to sum up that crushing wave of emotion. “Terrified.”

“Of having the baby?”

“I’m more terrified that I’m overreacting and overreading these tiny little signs.”

Slowly she turned her head and saw his eyes slide down her body. Everywhere they touched she felt an acute need, a cry from deep in her heart, and when they came to rest on her stomach, she could take no more.

“I’m more terrified,” she said huskily, reaching for his hand and drawing it to her, “that there is no baby here.” She pressed his hand against the curve of her belly. “I’m afraid that if I’m not pregnant I will leave here next week and that will be it. Over between us.”

She stroked her fingers between his, linking them, letting him know with her eyes and the arch of her body how much she craved his touch. “One more night,” she whispered. “One more time.”

“That won’t help anything, Angie.” Their gazes locked in a clash of heat and resistance, as he dragged his hand free and back to his side of the bed.

Angie followed. Slowly, inexorably, she peeled the sheet from his body and she touched him with only her fingertips, a teasing stroke as soft as he was hard. Breath held, she waited, knowing the night’s outcome hovered on the brink of this second.

He didn’t move. He didn’t turn. He didn’t run. And when she pressed her palm against him, when she molded her fingers to his thick heat, his whole body shuddered in response.

“I can help you with what the shower couldn’t,” she whispered. “Let me.”

His eyes burned into hers as she leaned in to kiss his mouth, and when their tongues came together in a slow, wet slide of heat the last threads of his resistance gave. She saw the flames leap, felt them spark and take hold in her body. She kissed him and caressed him until their breathing grew ragged and then she slid down his body, kissing him in a dozen quick places as she went.