No Perfect Princess (11 page)

Isolation I now related a little more to.

Maybe more than a little.

“Guilty as charged,” I finally murmured. The upsweep of her gaze nearly unraveled my resolve to blurt the rest. “I
was
…avoiding…things. But not because of—”

“Of what?”

Not because of you
.

The lie pounded at my lips, threatening to charge through the gates of my control. But what would that say about the “respect” I’d just admitted for her? And all the things I’d come to feel beyond that…which had, without a doubt, only strengthened over the last six months…

But the truth sure as hell wasn’t an option, either.

No. Fucking. Way.

“Dude?”

I couldn’t help but laugh when she actually waved a hand in front of my face. Though she stopped short of adding “Earth to Michael”, her single syllable handled the syntax pretty damn well.

“Sorry. I’m here.” I pressed one of my thumbs into the base of her spine, the other into the middle of her hand, cupped in mine. “I’m…
all
here.”

Fuck.
Guarding the truth like one of the hounds of Cerebus, eh, man? Because
that
won’t tip her off at all…

Her quirky little smile told me nothing—except that her quirky little smiles could still turn me into something close to a real dog. Dear fuck, I hoped I didn’t drool. “And I’m damn glad you are, mister.”

Translation:
let me fondle your crotch here and now
. It was exactly what her words did anyway, making me suck in tight air, clench my jaw, and force my body a few inches away from her—when all it yearned to do was the opposite.

“You’re not going back up there, are you?”

“What? Back up where?”

“To Julian.” Her forehead V’ed. “Pearson, are you all right?”

Besides trying to keep up the semblance of dancing with you—while not getting everything else “up” in the process
? “Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry, princess. I’m just—”

“
Princess
?”

I scowled. Shit, it wasn’t like I’d called her the
b
word, or some other girl’s name. “What’s wrong with princess?”

Her eyes bugged. “What’s
wrong
with princess?”

I shrugged. “Okay, scratch it. I’ll just graduate you to queen.” I prayed like hell
that
one would stick—and not like the crap pile I’d apparently stepped into. For insurance, I added a little tug, bringing her close again. Surely I could keep the monster in my crotch under control for a few lousy seconds. “No. Fuck that, too. You’re beautiful enough tonight to be the empress.” I hated that I’d miffed her, but the way her angry flush worked with the tint of that dress…
damn.
More than a few guys here were glaring daggers at me right now, I was certain of it. And then I smirked a little because of it.

Wrong. Move.

Margaux stopped again. Stepped back. Revision: jerked away. “Are you
trying
to dig yourself in deeper?”

I reached for her again—a second too late. She’d already begun her march off the dance floor. I followed her out to the grass, where the light was dimmer—which only enhanced every aspect of her beauty. Fuck. I wasn’t going to win the hypnosis-by-Margaux battle tonight.

“I’m not
trying
for anything, prin—”
Hell
. “Margaux. We haven’t seen each other in half a year—”

“And whose choice was that?”

My teeth jammed together. “You had a standing invitation to visit and never used it.”

Air rushed out of her in a mirthless laugh. “Me? In frontier land? You’ve been breathing thin air for too long, Davey Crockett.”

I dropped my hands. “So choices were made on both sides.”

Her head slid back as if on a horizontal rail. The new distance didn’t lessen the shock in her gaze. “Wait. You think I didn’t
want
to see you?” When I maintained deliberate neutrality, her head slid back—and she didn’t stop there. After revving the move into a gorgeous, gold-stilletoed stomp, she fired, “How the hell do you get off, arriving at that kind of a conclusion?”

Because believing alternate answers isn’t an option, princess.
That number one, somebody was keeping you too busy to make the trip to “frontier land”, or number two…you were just as scared to get together as I was.

That if we applied the right pressure to this gas pedal…we’d be going mach five inside thirty seconds…

And then what
?

Deep breath in. Equal effort on the exhale.
Pick. Words. Carefully
. “Probably the same way you got off making yours.”

Her lips pursed. “Except that mine was right.” She jutted her chin. “
You
left, Michael. I don’t give a damn that you were only sixty miles away. You told me you’d be gone for a few weeks—not
six
months
.” She pushed out another breath. Not a note of surface mirth this time. The dark green sheen in her eyes confirmed it—despite how flippant she tried to be with her next rasp. “Did you…meet someone…up there?”

“What?” I stopped to unglue my eyebrows from their crash landings over my eyes. “Holy fuck.
No
.”

Was I dreaming this? Was this woman, the hottest reboot of Aphrodite that ever lived, actually standing here with pooled eyes and shaking breaths because of imagining me with “someone” up on the mountain? I almost laughed. Christ, if she knew. Five days out of each week I’d been in Julian, the only females I’d seen were Mom, the knitting club ladies, and a camel named Bertha.

I went ahead and laughed. Not loud, not hard, but enough to land my foot into the ca-ca mound again. Dammit. Did Bertha decide to send some of her more fragrant “byproducts” down the hill with me?

“Okay, then.” Margaux tossed her head up, even turning the pissed filly thing into something entirely new and sexy. “Glad to know I could amuse you tonight, Mr. Pearson.”

Yep. Bertha
had
clung to the soles somehow. And wasn’t about to be ignored.

Neither was her friend, the white elephant now taking a huge squat—and defining every damn thing I said and did. “Fuck,” I growled. “That didn’t come out right.”

“You think?”

“Margaux.
Shit
. Work with me here.”

“I work with people who work with
me
, Pearson.” No more tears now, either, hardening her eyes to emerald crystals. “And right now, I don’t feel ‘worked with’. I only feel…worked.”

My teeth tangoed again. My lungs lurched, pulling in heavy air. Her accusation screamed for a fire and brimstone comeback—but would that budge the elephant? And if it did, was I prepared? The elephant made it convenient to hide a lot. Like my truth.

I stayed on the mountain because I was trying to get over
you
, princess.

Amazing, antagonizing, gorgeous, gutsy, smart-assed, sexy…you.

And I kept on trying—and trying. And failing. So I just stayed longer. Time. Distance. I prayed they’d be my keys out of the straitjacket of you—but they only locked me in tighter. Thinking of you. Craving you. Touching myself because of those cravings…

And the more time I spent inside that prison…the more I liked it.

And after those words were out? Then what?

I’d imagined how the moment would play out, more than just a few times. Run all the possible scenarios of what she’d look like, what she’d say, what she’d do. Odds were on it ending pretty damn great, at least for a few hours. The sexual spark between us had never been an issue or a secret. From the moment I’d first kissed her—and fuck, I’d never forget it—in front of the lions at the San Diego Zoo, we’d known about the combustion of our mouths and the chemistry of our bodies. We’d been holding ice cream bars. By the time we finished that kiss, we were both covered in smeared lipstick and melted ice cream.

So yeah, I’d likely get lucky—if I kept the confession restrained. If all I told her about were the hot fantasies and the trips to the orchard to whack off because of them. If I could hold back on all the other parts, like how I missed the room lighting up from her smile, or my chest bursting from her laugh, or my face splitting when that laugh turned into snorts. How I wanted her to recite this year’s hat trends
and
last year’s NFL stats in the same conversation, just because she could. Then how I yearned to lend her my jacket because she’d forgotten—
again
—to bring her own. How I longed to see her huddled in that same jacket as I kissed her goodnight beneath a streetlight, mist from the bay turning her eyelashes into stars…wishing I could give her every jacket I owned, for the rest of my life…

Yeah.

Only all the shit like
that
.

Because I’d mentally run the scenario of that little reveal, too.
Not
such a pretty picture. Telling Margaux Asher that you dreamed of playing house with her…the carnage from there wasn’t tough to envision. Expecting different was stupidity. The woman had been raised by the love child of Alexis Carrington and Betty Draper, turning the concepts of home, family, and traditions into a joke, if not a horror show, for her. Earlier, when I’d forced myself to make nicey-nice with Andrea and assure her I’d really be returning to the office Monday, I’d wondered what Colin Montgomery got out of his marriage to the woman. For all I could see, the man was nothing more than her purse holder and her drink fetcher. Maybe their roles got reversed when they were behind closed doors…

Wasn’t going there for all the sand in the Sahara.

Talk about an instant yank back to reality—though Margaux’s glower spoke enough about my tardiness to the party, and the “sulk” she clearly thought I was indulging.

Ohhh princess, if you only knew what was really going on
.

But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

My silence had put a few pounds on the elephant—and that was just fine by me. Maybe it was time to haul his ass out of here, salvaging whatever relationship she and I could have now.

I had hope, a lot of it. We’d started with less than this in the beginning. We
could
be good friends, I believed it—once I got my shit together and controlled my rampaging dick.

But tonight wasn’t the time to start. She was right. I’d stayed away too long. And she looked so damn good. Smelled so perfect and sweet. Even glared at me with such perfect fire. If we kept talking…I’d nuke the elephant. My truth would be out. And our relationship would be toast.

Ice Road Truckers
was the way better choice.

How the hell I’d muttered that aloud, I had no idea. But I sure as hell had.

“Ice road
what
?” Margaux charged. “Pearson, are you even here right now?”

Cloud, meet your silver lining
. She made my next move damn easy. All I had to do was mutter something sounding stranger than
that
, then shove on out of here and call her tomorrow, blaming my bullshit on a bad shrimp reaction or something equally lame. My ticket out of the party was also my way to push the restart button on things with her. So simple, it was beautiful—

And went unused.

Because I was an idiot.

An idiot who was nuts about her. Especially now, folding her arms as she shot one foot out from under that dress, seductress gone to sassy, pissy, and hurt—ensuring my senses were blasted equally by arousal and guilt.

The former told me to
really
get the fuck out of here now. But the latter tied me to her, unwilling to let things be like this, even for one night. It forced me forward to once more flatten the space between us to nothing, one hand snaring her waist, the other slipping up to her neck. Her little gasp was surely just an involuntary burst of surprise, but it was so goddamn sexy, I pretended it was more—at least for one moment.

One moment that made the world go away.

One moment where everything was just me…and her…and the way we’d been in front of the lions at the zoo.

I tightened my fingers along her scalp. Tugged her head back, as if preparing to inspect her. Let our breaths tangle, our heartbeats blend…our lusts crash.

It’s not too late to cash in the carnality card, man. To drag her off to one of Kil and Claire’s twelve bedrooms, bend her over the bed, and show her exactly what kind of damage she wreaks on your cock. Make her bite the bedspread so everyone won’t hear her scream as you stroke her to a climax

then another,

and another,

before you detonate deep inside her—

And shattered the remaining foundations of our friendship.

“Okay…you
are
here.” It stumbled out of her on another one of those raspy little breaths—which might as well have been a caress that covered everything south of my waist.
Fuck, princess.
Please
stop doing that…

Please don’t ever stop doing that…

After juicing the fortitude from every muscle in my body, I answered, “Not…for much longer.”

Her face darkened. “So…you
are
going back?”

The longing to kiss away the stress from her lips…
Excruciating
received a world of new meaning. “Just to my place in town,” I said, instead.

Her shadows remained. Even deepened a little. “Now?”

I teeter-tottered my head a little. “As they say, ma’am, my job here is done.” I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t rise to that one. I wouldn’t have, either. “You know how this shit goes, blondie. It just gets messy and drunk from here. Pretty soon, people will be making out in the bushes, skinny-dipping in the pool…”

“I like choice A
or
B.”

Damn, damn, damn. “I’m going to go.”

Dear God, I needed to go.

Her shadows gave way to full darkness. With her lips slanted tight, she jerked free from my hold. “Fine. Then go.”

I stepped back, too. Probably the hardest step I’d taken since my first. Mom had kept the video of that moment, so I knew. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Maybe we can grab some coffee.”