Mystery Date (Harlequin Blaze) (16 page)

Steadying himself, he walked over to her. She sat so straight, hands on her lap, long legs pressed together. The blindfold covered her eyes.

He couldn’t help it—there was something more going on now, a link of sorts that her candid admission about her sister had planted in him. She wasn’t just a woman to have sex with.

But that was what she had to be if Adam was going to come out of this unscathed.

Before he touched her, he powered up the computer pad, then put it on an antique table, propping it against the wall.

“Tell me what’s happening, Callum,” she said. “I’m getting nervous.”

“Isn’t that half the fun?”

She laughed a little. “I suppose it is. My heart’s going a hundred miles per hour, like it wants to pop out of me. It makes me want to do things that I...”

Taking a deep breath, she scooted forward ever so slightly to the edge of the mattress.

And when she reached toward him, he knew what she had in mind.

“You’re always the one bringing me pleasure,” she whispered. “Can I...?”

Without thinking, he stepped forward, close enough so that she must’ve felt him standing just inches from her hand.

Biting her lip, she blindly searched for him until she touched his thigh.

He stifled a groan. Even a soft touch like that made him die for her. And when she traced her hand back, over his hip, down his thigh, as if mapping him, he fisted his own hands.

“Muscles,” she said. “I knew you’d have muscles everywhere.”

She skimmed her fingers upward, to his waist, his belly, scooting forward another inch on the bed so she could reach his chest.

“Oh. Callum. Are you for real?”

Sometimes he wasn’t sure. “What do you want to do next, Leigh? Tell me.”

As she tilted her face up to him, he didn’t have to see her eyes to know. Her hand said everything as she coasted it down his stomach, his belly, to his cock.

He almost blasted apart as she made contact. Blood punched him, pushing his growing erection against his zipper.

“Now who’s ready?” she asked teasingly. “And who’ll be even readier when I’m through with him?”

He closed his eyes as if she’d put her own blindfold on
him.
It was almost the truth, too, because as she undid the button at the top of his fly, then unzipped him, his sight scrambled. All he was aware of was her fingers, gently taking him out of his pants, running down his length, killing him slowly.

She held him with one hand, using her other to coax a finger under his shaft. His fingernails dug into his palms.

“Everyone else has seen your face,” she said, “but I get to know a whole different part of you. How well do you want me to get acquainted, Callum?”

He’d created a monster. “As well as you want.”

She laughed softly as she circled her thumb over his tip. Moisture was dewing him there, and he didn’t know how much more he could take.

And when she pressed her lips to his tip, he almost came right there, right then. The only thing saving him was the willpower he’d exercised all these years.

But she tested even that when she took him into her mouth, swirling her tongue around him, drawing back and sucking, then starting all over again.

That was when his mind went completely blank, and all he was aware of was cupping the back of her head, feeling her go back and forth, bathing him, building such a head of steam inside him that he gritted his jaw, fighting it some more. Fighting her.

Yet she didn’t fight fair. She touched his sac with the tips of her fingers, and he was a goner, coming into her mouth, holding back curses and moans until he was spent.

As he floated back to reality, the room was filled with their ragged breathing, and he unwound his fingers from her hair, stroking her, feeling closer to her than he had with anyone in years.

Feeling the guilt of that.

He had to regain his footing with her, and he knew just how to do it.

Gathering all his strength—he wasn’t going to let her know that the lining of his belly was shaking—he pulled away, grabbing a tissue and getting himself back together before zipping himself back inside his pants.

Then he accessed the tablet. “Your turn,” he said.

As the film of them in the hot tub began playing, the sounds of seduction overtook everything else: his voice telling her that she made him crazy, the gurgle of water in the whirlpool, then the restless whimpers she made as he began to run the sponge over her.

He went to the other side of the bed, taking off his shirt on the way, letting it slump to the floor. When he got onto the mattress, it dipped with his weight, but she kept looking in the direction of that tablet, although she couldn’t see it.

“Do you want to watch?” he asked as he came up behind her.

He saw her shiver, rubbing her hands over her arms. “Yes.”

Gently, he reached in front of her, lifting up the blindfold slightly, just enough to give her an eyeful of the film. He’d focused the digital camera’s lens on her, and all you could see of him were hands, arms covered with a water-steeped white shirt. He was cupping her breast from behind, making her nipple come to hardness.

Inspired, he did the same now, sliding his hand to her negligee-covered breast and palming it while his other hand held up the blindfold. He used his thumb to stimulate her, although she’d already been there when he’d started.

“You’ve played this over and over in your mind,” he said. “Haven’t you?”

“About a hundred times. And every time it ends the same way.”

He knew what she meant—he always left before entering her. He told himself it would be the same tonight, but he wasn’t so sure now.

Not while they watched her coming to a climax in the hot tub, crying out into his arm as she bit at him, clawed at him.

The film had taken up some time, but arousal had still come upon him quickly, with a hard-on so demanding that his sight was fragmenting again, making him think that he wasn’t going to survive if he didn’t feel her around him, embracing him, taking him into her velvet heat.

When she undid her negligee top, pulling it off so that he could feel her bared breast, his libido ticked as if it were a heater heading for an explosion.

Then she took his other hand—the one that had been lifting her blindfold—and brought it to her panties. Inside. Where she was slick for him.

She’d chosen not to see anymore, and even in his scattered mind, he knew the choice was bigger than it seemed.

She was still in the game.

As he slipped his fingers up and into her, making her arch, she twisted, pulling at her panties and somehow getting them off as she crawled all the way onto the mattress. Blood pumped him, driving him.

Tick, tick...
Up and up went the pressure inside of him, urging him.

Just once,
he thought.
Then it’ll be over. We’ll both be happy. We’ll both move on....

Tick, tick, tick...

At the sight of her fully naked body, the ticks turned into one long rattling inside of him, and he pulled her toward him, her chest to his, skin on skin as he kept churning his fingers into her, making her groan.

She clutched at him, bringing him down to the mattress with her as his body became one long prelude to a shudder. Then she groped under a pillow, coming out with a condom packet.

“I was hoping,” she said.

He took his fingers out of her, snagging the condom, tearing into the packet and sheathing himself in record time. All the while, she blindly ran her hands over him, as if she couldn’t get enough of feeling him.

And when he thrust into her, it was as if time suspended—him inside, her sucking in a breath at the sensation.

Tight, he thought. She was so tight that she surrounded him, and as he began to move inside her, she stayed with him, holding to him, her mouth parted in ecstasy.

Fascinated, he watched her face, even if he couldn’t see her eyes. He didn’t know he could still make someone feel like this. Hadn’t really realized...

That there would be such feeling involved.

But something warm was taking him over, and it wasn’t just sexual heat. It was in his chest, overcoming him, making him wish that he were normal like the Adam she’d met today in the stables.

Yet he wasn’t, and he let go of that fantasy, giving in to this one as the promise of a cataclysmic shudder built, piling up on itself, up, up, up—

When he climaxed, it didn’t take her long to do the same, and she still held on to him. He allowed himself to hold her, too, wondering, thinking...

No. He wasn’t that other Adam. He was a guy who didn’t do relationships, because they tore the soul out of you, never giving it back.

Leigh cuddled into his chest, her blindfold skimming his skin. “That time, the ending was a little different. It was a good ending, Callum.”

But it could never be a happy ending with him, he thought as she eased into sleep.

And when he thought he couldn’t stand the growing intimacy anymore, he drew away from her, looking at her face, which he could barely see in the near darkness. Just as he’d done earlier today, he touched it, feeling his chest constrict.

Then, pushing the emotion away, he left before he got to a point of no return.

* * *

A
DAM RETREATED TO
his guesthouse, sitting in a chair by the window, lonelier than he’d been in a long time, even if he’d just had mind-blowing sex with Leigh.

He had his phone out and had been staring at it for a while now, and he finally had the courage to bring up the one picture of his wife.

He’d banished the photos of her wearing scarves over her balding head after chemo, still smiling, being brave for the camera. He hadn’t recently looked at the albums packed away that she’d put together during their marriage, either—pictures of them at picnics, at the rodeo, laughing with each other, so in love that there’d never been a thought of death or destruction from the cancer that had eventually taken her.

But this one picture on his camera phone... He’d imported it to his cell’s memory because he was so afraid it would someday fade from his own. An image of Carla on a carousel horse, her dress spread around her as she leaned into the pole, her dark hair flying while the ride spun in circles and made her laugh. He’d proposed to her that day.

The screen robbed him of the picture when it shut off, conserving power, but he still sat there, unable to get to sleep but so tired anyway.

Leigh would improve his mood if she were here. With her humor, she seemed to be the only person who knew how to shine a light deep down inside, where he was so dark and confused.

But he’d hotfooted it out of her bedroom, as usual.

He took a long shower, then came out dressed in pajama bottoms to sit on his bed. Staring at the phone. Resisting. Finally, inevitably giving in.

Leigh picked up on the third ring, and she sounded groggy. Why not, when she’d fallen asleep in his arms?

“Callum?”

“Sorry for waking you up.”

“You didn’t. Not really.”

Was that some hurt he detected? Because he’d left her?

She added, “I slumbered off for a while with the...TV on. After I realized you’d gone, that is.”

He sidestepped the last part. “The TV, huh?” He heard some sounds in the background—moans?—and then it switched off. He’d bet that she’d been watching their film; he’d left the tablet for her, after all, thinking that she could keep it.

“So are you just checking up on me?” she asked. “Making sure I’m still breathing after what you put me through?”

God, she sounded so lighthearted, and it nudged at him.

Words banged at him, as if he couldn’t hold back the explanation he owed her. He wanted her to know that even though he’d left after what they’d shared, there was good reason.

He just didn’t know how to start everything off, so, of course, he did it the wrong way.

“I heard about your sister.”

“Oh. Gossip gets around the ranch fast, doesn’t it?”

“It does.” He didn’t want her to mention her time with Adam, and she didn’t.

What Leigh didn’t know, though, was that it’d been the real Adam who’d heard her story and seen her reaction up close. While she’d talked about her sister, there’d been a sorrowful sheen in her eyes that she’d valiantly chased away, and he’d admired that, because he couldn’t do it with Carla.

But it’d taken a lot for him to bring it up with Leigh right now, even though she was the only woman he’d dated that he could talk to about this.

“I had a wife,” he said bluntly, ungracefully, but it felt good to get it off his chest. He wanted her to know why he was the way he was, and it had nothing to do with her.

“You...
had
a wife?” she asked.

“A while ago.” What was he trying to tell her? Could he even say more?

“What was she like—?” Leigh started to ask.

But that was all he had in him. “I’m only telling you this because I understand how it feels to dedicate yourself to someone you miss, just as you do with your show and your sister.”

“You still dedicate yourself to your wife.”

He nodded, but he realized that she couldn’t see him. Not that it mattered, because she was a smart woman, and she would’ve already figured out his answer.

“That’s okay,” she said, her words rushed. Then she slowed down. “I mean, I figured there was someone.”

“Why?”

“Callum. Let’s be honest with each other. You didn’t invite me on these dates to have a deep connection. I knew that. You wanted to...forget about something. I don’t take it personally.”

Really? Was that why he’d sensed a hurt in her? She had a right to it, too, with this warped version of afterglow pillow talk.

If he had any guts, he would’ve been talking to her about this as Adam, not Callum. The
real
Adam, too, and not a horse groom who worked on this estate.

The least he could do was be halfway honest with her. “You’re right.”

“I guess that’s why you keep me around? Because I’m always right?”

There she went, lightening things up again. He found himself smiling. “You’re good at coping, aren’t you?”