“Does this make more sense?” he asked, threading his fingers through my hair and running a thumb across my top lip.
Heat flared wherever he touched, and sparks ignited in my chest. Technically, nothing about this fling, if you could call it that, made sense. How could he have this much effect on me already? How was everything so instantaneous and intense with him?
There was no rhyme or reason to it.
“I can’t make sense of anything when you do that,” I confessed. “But it’s a sexy kind of nonsense.”
The doors slid open at the eighteenth floor, and we made it to the room without disgracing ourselves. As if making up for the slow elevator, the lock clicked on the first pass with the keycard.
We pushed inside, and the door had barely closed when John pinned me against it.
There was no other word for it. No other feeling like it.
For as long as I’d wanted him, I hadn’t been fully prepared for the kind of lover he’d turned out to be.
It was no surprise that he turned me inside out with pleasure. I had feelings for him, and feelings do that to a woman.
But I hadn’t expected him to be so . . . dominant.
And I’d never have guessed that I’d like it so much when he gripped my wrists, pushed my arms against the door, and pressed his deliciously hard body against mine. I was caged in and I didn’t fight it, which was the complete opposite of Mindy during the day.
But Mindy at night liked being overpowered.
Loved it when he set to work stripping me.
Thrilled at the determination in his eyes and the rough murmur of praise.
So sexy.
So gorgeous.
Those weren’t words I thought about myself. I wasn’t decorative; I was the tough one. My body wasn’t there to look at; it was a tool.
But John disarmed me. I didn’t have to be tough. He seemed to like it when I was soft, when I gave in, when I let him have his way with me.
And his way amped up the electric charge between us.
Soon, he had me down to my bra and panties, and he let go of my wrists to make quick work of the buttons on his shirt.
I unzipped his jeans, freed him from his boxers, and stroked his length, feeling powerful in a whole new, sexy way when I touched him, when he gave in, groaning and thrusting into my hand until he muttered, “That’s enough.”
Then he rolled on a condom, hiked my thigh up to his hip, and wrapped my leg around his waist as he sank into me.
He let out a shuddery breath, and I gasped at that delicious moment when he was fully seated in me, holding there as I adjusted to him.
With one hand on my hip, he lifted my arms in the other, stretched them over my head, and fucked me like that against the door.
This was why hotel rooms in Vegas were dark and dimly lit.
For hotel sex.
For commanding men to take you against the door, to pound into you, to make you feel.
And with John, I was feeling so damn much.
Feeling as though he was marking me, claiming me in a way that was far more than physical.
“You,” he murmured.
That was all.
But he poured everything into that one word, somehow making it convey everything that he wanted.
He wanted me.
I wanted him.
That was enough just for a while, to drown out the tick-tick-tick of the countdown to the end.
12
John
Saturday afternoon, I was doing laundry to distract myself from the thought of Mindy back at her condo, boxing up what she wanted to store and marking what she wanted to move, when I got a text.
David: Going for a spin. You up for it?
I abandoned the laundry without regret.
John: Hell, yes. Usual place?
David: See you in thirty?
John: See you then.
Our usual place had a running path wide enough that I could jog alongside his wheelchair and not worry too much that a bicyclist would take me out.
Oh, they still tried—like that speed demon who came within inches of clipping me—but at least there was room to dodge.
“Watch it!” I warned, with a flashback to my days in a patrol car. The guy on the bike raised a peace sign without looking back.
Not breaking the rhythm of his gloved hands on the wheels, David said, “Kids these days, right?” He didn’t bother to keep the laughter out of his voice.
I shot him a skeptical side-eye as I kept pace beside him. “Guy was fifty, at least.”
He gave a quick laugh. “I’m talking attitude, not age.”
David and I had been friends since our school days, since before the drive-by shooting that paralyzed his legs. His experience—violent crime coming to our neighborhood, David’s life forever altered—was one of the reasons I’d gone into law enforcement.
“Ready for the last push?” I asked.
“Don’t choke on my dust, Winston.”
We saved our breath for the effort. David once observed that this stretch was where he had to have the right running partner. It had to be someone comfortable with not talking, and who kept the pace when society’s conditioning said to slow down for the man in the wheelchair.
At the same point as always, we slowed to cooldown speed, finally stopping at a bench by the exit to the parking lot and stretching while our muscles were still warm.
“So, how long are Lucy and the kids out of town?” I asked. His wife and daughters had gone with his in-laws to the West Coast.
“They’ll be back tomorrow night.” He stretched his right arm across his body, then his left. “It’s weird having a Saturday with no soccer games or chores to be done at home.”
“I refuse to believe Lucy didn’t leave you a list.”
“Okay, then, a Saturday without my beloved wife making sure I got my part of the chores done.”
David’s wife was a good one. She reminded me a little of Mindy—practical, straightforward, took no shit. And for a moment, a pang tugged under my ribs. A kick from some part of me that said, Pay attention. You want some of what he’s having.
A list of chores? If it came from Mindy, yes.
Someone I missed when she went out of town.
Someone who returned to me.
But Mindy was going away, and I couldn’t imagine sharing a list of chores with anyone else.
“Anyway, I’m already tired of pizza delivery,” David said. “You want to grab dinner tonight?”
I had plans with Mindy—a plan to grab all the time I could while she was here. David and I hadn’t hung out in far too long, but he’d still be there after she’d left.
“Hot date, huh?” Then he leaned forward in his chair to peer at my face and said, “Aha! You do.”
“Well, I have a date to play mini-golf. I don’t know about hot, since the only things swinging will be putters.”
“Mini-golf,” he echoed, liked I’d shattered his illusions about my sexy bachelor life.
I shrugged. “Mindy loves it. It’s kind of her thing, so I’m taking her to play then to grab drinks afterward at one of her favorite bars.”
“Wait up.” He held up a hand. “This is Mindy? Mindy from kickboxing? Mindy-who-pops-up-in-conversation-suspiciously-often Mindy?