Awakened (Intimate Relations) (3 page)

How could she possibly think something like that? He cupped her face in his hands and drew her close for a kiss. Of course, there was no reason to think otherwise. They’d lived two months in the same house and he hadn’t touched her, much less kissed her.

Their lips met and she tasted sweet, an alluring combination of the drink she’d had earlier and a flavor that had to be all about Mandy. Her lips were soft, parting just for him. The tip of her tongue touched his, and it was all the invitation he needed. Still holding her face, he explored the contours of her lips, the sharp edges of her teeth, swept into her mouth and tasted all of her. Her hands were in his hair, her fingers sliding from his neck to his crown and raising shivers along his spine. It was embarrassing, how quickly his good intentions shattered and fled.

As long as he left her satisfied and sleeping. That’s all that mattered. He couldn’t risk spending the night. It was too damned dangerous, but he knew there’d be no stopping now. Not tonight, no matter what he knew he should do.

Finally, when he was nowhere through with wanting the taste of her, Marc slowly ended the kiss. So caught up in the dazed look in Mandy’s beautiful brown eyes, in the soft sweep of her tongue as if she tested her lower lip and then the upper, searching for his taste, that it took him a moment to find his voice.

“I hope that takes care of any doubt about my being attracted to you. I swear, Mandy, you’re like a lodestone, drawing me to you no matter where you are, what you’re doing. From the first time I met you…”

She smiled, remembering. “That night Jake and Kaz got back, after Jake saved her from the kidnapper. You came over to go out to dinner with us. I’ll never forget the first time you walked in our front door.”

“Neither will I. When Kaz opened the door and invited me in, she introduced herself first and then Lola, but when you walked into the room…”

“You were the only one I saw.” Mandy’s eyes sparkled and he realized she was fighting tears. She reached for him, ran her fingers across his eyebrow, down the line of his jaw. “I already knew you.”

No, she didn’t. He would have remembered her. “How? I don’t remember. I would never have forgotten you.”

“I knew you, but you didn’t know me. This guy used to ride by the coffee shop when I was working, but it was years ago. I didn’t know who he was on an old beat-up Schwinn, but I’d watch him go by.” Laughing, she glanced sideways at him.

“I had an apartment out on Irving for a couple of years. Not far from the coffee shop. I was probably riding home from buying groceries. It was a while before I got around to buying a car.”

Mandy laughed. “Well, I thought this guy was so hot, and I wondered who he was. A couple of years later, I saw a picture of Marcus Reed in
People
magazine
,
an article naming him as one of the year’s ‘sexiest young multi-millionaires,’ and I thought he looked like the guy on the bike, but I figured Reed was really rich and wouldn’t ride an old Schwinn.”

She laughed self-consciously. “I cut it out, though.” Blushing, she lowered her head and covered her eyes. “It was on my bulletin board for a long time. I took it down when we met you so you wouldn’t see it and think I was some kind of crazy stalker, but I still wasn’t sure the guy on the bike was you. Then, when you moved in here, I saw you putting that old Schwinn in the garage. That’s when I knew for sure you were the one I’d had a crush on, and I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it.”

He laughed and pulled her into his arms. “I will keep that bike until I’m old and gray. I paid for it myself, with money I earned tutoring kids in my computer class in high school. My first job.”

She gave him a deadpan look. “You’ve done well, Mr. Reed.”

“I’ve done okay. So, you thought I was hot, eh?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah.”

“I never knew.” He held her face in his hands, kissed her quickly, ending it before he got carried away. “Mandy, I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you, but I can’t make any promises. There are things about me that you don’t know, that I’m not sure I’m ready to share with anyone, that…”

She covered his lips with her fingers. “It’s okay. We can do this and know that we’re friends, first. Nothing will hurt that, Marc. We won’t let it.”

“Do you think we can we do that?” He traced the line of her jaw with a single fingertip. “You’re special to me, Mandy.” He laughed, knew he sounded self-conscious, but didn’t try to cover it up. “More special than you can possibly know.”

She pressed her hand against his chest and her eyes twinkled. “Thank you. But I just had a thought that could screw up any plans we might be considering. I’m not using birth control, and I don’t have any condoms. Do you?”

He tried not to. There was no stopping it. The laughter exploded out of him, and once it started there was no stopping. At least not right away. When he finally got it under control, he was lying on his back on Mandy’s bed, staring into an expression he wished he could capture.

“Are you okay?” She tilted her head and stared down at him, but from the way her lips were twitching, she was fighting a smile. “I had no idea there was anything remotely funny about not having condoms.”

He reached up, wrapped his hand around her neck and pulled her down for a kiss. When he turned her loose, she had a wonderfully glazed expression in her eyes. “Mandy, if I had any condoms they would be out of date. I haven’t had sex with anyone other than my right hand for so long it’s not even funny.”

Her frown was actually kind of cute, and he waited for the questions. When they didn’t come, he sat up and wrapped his arm around her. “I do, however, have an idea. I bet Ben has a stash in his bedroom.”

“Are you sure? Lola’s on the pill. At least she is now. Why would he need condoms?”

“When they first hooked up, I know he bought condoms. I was at the store with him.”

“Yeah, but…” Shrugging, she just watched him.

“Trust me. Ben bought a couple of economy packs. He can’t possibly have used all of them.” He stood and reached for Mandy’s hand. “I mean, I know he’s got it bad for your sister, but there have to be a few left. C’mon. It’s almost midnight. Their plane left at eleven. Even if he needed them, he won’t be coming back for any tonight.”

His giggling co-conspirator let him drag her down the hall to Ben and Lola’s room. They tiptoed in as if Ben might pop out of the shadows at any moment, and Marc went straight for the bedside table. With all the drama he was capable of—which wasn’t much—he held a finger to his lips and cautioned Mandy to be quiet. Then he slowly opened the drawer.

It was filled almost to the top with little foil packets. Dozens of them.

Deadpan, Marc glanced at Mandy and whispered, “I was right. He does have a few extras. I doubt he’ll miss any if we take a couple.”

Mandy slapped her hand over her mouth. When Marc grabbed three of the packets, Mandy reached inside the drawer and took three more. He turned to her and raised his eyebrows.

“One can hope,” she said. Then she grabbed a couple more.

So did Marc. “Just in case,” he said.

This time it was Mandy grabbing Marc’s hand, dragging him back to her room, and tossing the condoms on top of the bedside table. He added his handful to the pile.

For a moment, they merely stood there, staring at each other. Mandy made the first move. She slipped her hands beneath the hem of his long-sleeved T-shirt, ran her fingers over the sensitive skin above his waistband, and Marc knew there was no fighting the inevitable.

CHAPTER 2

The first time he saw Mandy, Marc thought she was adorable, a cute little blond-haired, brown-eyed pixie with a twinkle in her eyes and a perpetual smile on that sexy mouth. She wore her hair fairly short, and no matter what she did with it, it always had that tousled
just-out-of-bed
look. She was petite—slim and fit looking, yet rounded in all the right places—but still an adorable pixie.

His physical reaction to her had been a lot more down and dirty. He’d wanted her. It had been a visceral punch to the gut, so unexpected that he’d actually tried to avoid her the first few times they were all together.

Avoidance hadn’t worked when, less than a week later, a fire in his apartment building had coincided with the girls and Ben asking him to move in. Ben didn’t want Mandy and Lola left here alone when he reported for duty at Camp Parks across the bay.

They knew by then that someone had targeted them, but they’d had no idea who it was or what it was about. Since Marc’s apartment had been damaged by the fire and Ben worried about leaving the two women alone, Marc had agreed to make the move permanent.

The danger was over, the perpetrators in jail, but Marc was still here, an accepted member of this loosely knit family of old and new friends.

A win-win situation, right? He’d had no idea at the time how much Mandy was going to come to mean to him, not a clue what kind of effect she would have on his life.

He’d been here a little over two months now, and it hadn’t taken him long to figure out he was in big trouble. Lola had Ben, Kaz, the woman who had once been the girls’ roommate, had Marc’s oldest, closest buddy, Jake Lowell. Jake and Ben were brothers, once estranged, now rebuilding a relationship they’d lost almost twenty years ago, and they’d drawn Marc in, even closer, as part of their family. Jake and Ben had accepted him as if there was something even more binding than their life-long friendship. He was their brother—and by virtue of their relationships, Kaz and Lola’s as well.

Then there was Mandy. They were the only two of their group who weren’t attached to anyone, and while no one had actively tried to throw them together, the couples dynamic had paired them up whenever they did stuff as a group—which was quite often. It hadn’t taken long for Marc’s physical craving to develop into something so much deeper, a longing for so much more. While it was natural to think of Kaz and Lola as the little sisters he’d never had, there was absolutely no way he could ever see Mandy in that role.

Beautiful, adorable, funny, sexy Mandy. She was everything he could have asked for in a woman, a wife, a partner.

Exactly what he couldn’t risk having, because keeping her safe was more important than anything else. So far, and he fully intended to keep it that way, none of the others had any idea that he was the greatest danger among them. If only he knew for sure, but the memories were merely fragments of dreams, his fear of the horrible thing he might have done so many years ago literally the stuff of nightmares.

Except he knew in his gut that the nightmares were based on truth. If only he could remember, maybe then he might understand. Might learn why he’d done what he thought he had.

For now, though?

He had to live one day at a time. Keep a close watch on his thoughts, his behavior.

And hope like hell he was wrong, that he hadn’t killed a woman on a night he couldn’t remember anywhere but in the terrors that struck while he slept.

Maybe, if he and Mandy just took things slowly it would be okay, but as her fingers traced ribbons of fire along his ribs, he knew his resolve was crumbling. He fisted his hands in her hair and bit back a groan.

Obviously, Mandy wasn’t on the same page—she’d missed that part about going slow. Instead, she slipped his shirt up over his back and he almost laughed at how easy it was to switch gears and help her get it over his head. She took the shirt from him and tossed it on a chair in the corner of the room.

Then she just stood there, staring at his chest. He wondered if she’d expected some guy who waxed, because he sure didn’t. Not that he had a lot of hair, but there was certainly enough for her to run her hands through, should she choose.

She chose. He sucked in a breath as her fingers parted the springy mat across his pecs and circled his nipples. Damn. He’d had no idea those things were erogenous zones on a guy, but if his cock got any harder, he was going to bust through the zipper on his jeans.

Mandy’s eyes had a glazed look about them. He wondered if she focused as much on the crisp hair on his chest as he’d suddenly focused on the paths her fingers made spearing through it. Standing there, rock hard and still as stone, he fought every base male impulse he had to grab her up and tear her clothes off her and just take her. Now.

“Mandy. Babe.” He sucked in a breath, but it wasn’t enough. She ignored his soft plea, leaned close to his chest and ran her tongue over that damned nipple. “Holy shit.”

His balls sucked up even tighter and he was so close to coming. He felt as if the last two months of behaving himself around her had never happened, but he’d been lusting after her since that first night when he’d been shocked into an awareness he’d never felt for another woman.

Now, body trembling with need, he reached down and grabbed the soft fabric of her dress in his hands, tugged it up over her hips and finally over her head. He missed her fingers, missed her touch as she raised her arms so he could whisk the dress away to join his shirt on the chair.

His reward was Mandy, wearing nothing but a tiny pair of silky pink bikini panties.

Mandy, with her perfect breasts bare to his avid gaze, her dark nipples already puckered into tight little buds. She started to cross her arms over her chest, but first she raised her head and looked at him. She must have seen what was in his eyes because she dropped her hands to her sides and stood there, so perfect, so open that the potential to screw this night up had him breaking out in a cold sweat. More than two months now since that first day, since she’d totally blown him away merely by walking into the room. He’d wanted her. Dreamed about her.

Hidden his feelings, his desire under a flimsy façade of mild disinterest. As if any of his feelings for her could ever be classified as mild. She was here, now, almost entirely naked and waiting, a tiny smile teasing her lips, her eyes focused solely on his. He wanted to be so much more for her, more than the guy who didn’t know what a woman really wanted. He’d had so little normal experience with girls. He’d missed out on dating entirely in high school and even during his short months of college, first because he had never really gotten over his self-image as an incompetent nerd, and then after the blackouts happened, after the nightmares took hold, there’d been too much fear. He was afraid of what he might have done. What he might do.