Tempting Her Best Friend (7 page)

But this was
Dillon
. The last thing she wanted was for things to be awkward or complicated. If they did this, Alyssa didn’t think she’d be able to act cavalier when he continued his trysts with other women. The idea of being part of a harem didn’t sit well with her.

On the other hand, she thought as his lips trailed kisses down her belly and over her mons, he never said she couldn’t use the red light
later
if she wanted. They’d already crossed a very big line. It’s not like stopping now would alleviate any potential embarrassment. So, along those lines, maybe she should let go just this once and enjoy the ride. Pun intended.

Dillon sat back on his heels, lowered his chest to the bed, and as his eyes burned into her, he held the scrap of silk aside and laved a wide path through her wet folds. She inhaled sharply and her hips bucked off the bed of their own volition from the bolt of lightning that shot straight through her and fried half her brain cells.

“How’s that for
nice
?” he asked with a wicked gleam in his eye.

Oh, shit.
Apparently she was about to become intimately acquainted with the Mr. Hyde version of sweet, easygoing Dillon Alexander.

Using one large hand to anchor her hips to the mattress, he used the fingers of his free hand to tease through her as his tongue worked her sensitive clit. Flicking, licking, sucking. Petting, stroking, tugging. She wanted to rock into him, clutch fists of his hair, and hold him against her. But all she could do was arch her back and turn her head back and forth between her upstretched arms.

Her brain and body got their signals crossed and she couldn’t make sense of anything. Even with all the pleasure she still felt empty, her channel clenching on nothing but air. It was too much and not enough. She wanted him to stop, to move on, to take things to the next level before
this
level killed her.

“Please,” she said, practically trembling. “I can’t take it anymore. I need…I need you inside of me.”

He let out a mix of a growl and groan that hummed vibrations through her swollen nub and caused her to make a similar sound. Finally, he gave her a reprieve and lifted up to untie the strip that held her bound hands to the bed.

As though drawn by an unseen force, her hands reached down and closed around his hot length. But he hissed in a breath and snatched them away before she had the chance to explore and revel in her discoveries.

Worried she’d somehow hurt him, she glanced up and offered a quick apology. “I just wanted to touch you.”

Smiling, he leaned over and kissed her. Every stroke of his tongue lessened her concern until she finally relaxed into the kiss and matched him need for need. It was some time later when he at last broke away, allowing them to drag much needed air into their lungs.

“Believe me, I want your hands on me more than anything,” he said with a sly grin. “But I won’t last more than five seconds if you so much as attempt to give me a handjob, much less anything else.”

“Oh…” If she’d been gifted with the instinct for flirting like most women, she would have come up with a sexy retort for that. As it was, she had to stop herself from rattling off statistics of premature ejaculation for a virile man of his age, which made his statement unlikely. She swallowed nervously.
Yep. Better to stick with “oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh,’” he said with a soft chuckle. He reached over and snagged a condom from the nightstand before rising up to sit back on his heels. She was vaguely aware of him using his teeth to tear the end off the foil wrapper, but the chiseled contours of his body had stolen her desire to focus on anything else.

Pulling herself into a sitting position, she raised her hands. His motions stilled. His broad chest heaved as he watched and waited. The well-defined muscles jumped at the first touch of her fingertips. She trailed them over his pecs, followed the light dusting of hair that tapered to a V at his sternum before disappearing. Her fingers undulated over the shallow blocks of his abs and she watched in fascination as they rippled under her attentions.

Unable to stop herself, she leaned forward and trailed open-mouth kisses over his stomach and the delicious lines of his obliques. One of his hands plunged into her mass of hair and clenched tight with a low groan. “
Fuck
. You’re torturing me, Aly, you know that?”

She had an inkling, but to hear him say the words gave her a surge of female empowerment she’d never felt before. None of her past partners had ever reacted like this. Like a base need for her was eating at them, and it was only a matter of seconds before they lost all control.

With her hands still resting on his lower abs, she lifted her head and peered up to meet his hot gaze. “Your body is amazing,” she said. “It’s a shame you keep it hidden all the time. You should show it off more often.”

He released the hold on her hair for a softer touch on the side of her face. “I could say the same to you.” She lowered her eyes and knew a flush probably had colored her from chest to cheeks, but he guided her face back up. “I mean it, Aly. I look at you and completely lose myself. You’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“Thank you.” And she meant it. She soaked up the compliment like a sponge. It spread through her, filling in the cracks that had formed from going too long without the attention of a man.

“Now,” he said, holding up the condom, “let’s get this taken care of so I can
show
you how beautiful you really are.”

“Allow me,” she said, plucking it from his fingers with a shy smile. Alyssa returned her focus to his unflagging erection and smoothed the condom down his length, inch by inch. She bit the insides of her cheeks to hide her amusement at the strained noises he made. If she took an exorbitant amount of time completing her task, it was purely coincidental.

As soon as she finished, he muttered a relieved, “’Bout damn time,” and ripped her panties from her body.

Before her next breath, Dillon used one hand to grab the strap between her wrists and haul her arms up as he pushed her back to the bed. With him over her again and settling his hips onto hers, she felt a new rush of warmth in her center.

Holding himself up with the arm keeping her hands above her head, he guided himself to the opening of her sex. A single thrust had him completely seated inside her. Eyes slammed shut, she threw her head back and arched into him. He filled and stretched her in a way that felt perfect and right, and for a split second, she worried how long the inevitable sense of loss would plague her in the aftermath. She knew the rules. He wanted her on a temporary basis, then back to being just friends. An ache was already forming a knot in her chest, pulling her from enjoying each delicious slide of his body against hers.

“Aly, look at me.”

The gravelly command pulled her back into the moment. Back to where their bodies pressed flush and their shallow breaths mingled. Back to
him
.

He stared down at her with the intensity of a man who knew what he wanted and knew he would have it. But underlying the male bravado was something else, something…less.

“I don’t want you closing your eyes and picturing some other guy. I want to watch you come apart in my arms and see the recognition on your face of who did it to you.”

“Believe me,” she said, giving his thick cock a squeeze with her inner muscles and eliciting a delicious groan from his lips. “You’re already leagues above anyone I could conjure from memory or imagination.”

“I like the sound of that.” Burying his face in her neck, he withdrew almost completely then pushed his way back in. A small gasp escaped her. “I like the sound of that, too. Every noise you make gets me that much hotter.”

Dillon started a torturous rhythm—slow and steady and enough to make her crazy. She tried rocking her hips to set her own pace, but he only pinned them down with his and continued to take his sweet damn time. It was the slowest build to an orgasm in the history of sex. For once, she wasn’t going on facts or statistics, but simply on how she felt. She couldn’t imagine anyone balancing on a knife’s edge for so long and living to tell the tale.

Sweat covered their bodies. Their breaths, labored and loud, filled the air around them. Every nerve in her body was alight with the electricity crackling between them, making her hypersensitive to every touch, every kiss. Her core was knotted with the promise of climax. Close enough to be hers, yet far enough to feel impossible to reach.

“Now I know why…the French call it…
la petite mort
,” she said between his thrusts.

“Why’s that?”

“’Cause you’re killing me. Slowly, I might add.”

“Killing you, huh?” She felt his lips turn up in a smile against the shell of her ear before he nipped at her lobe and whispered to her, “Then I promise you it’ll be the sweetest of deaths, Aly.”

His strained, raspy voice revealed what precious little hold he had on his control. If she didn’t do something to make him lose it soon, she wasn’t sure the whole “death” thing would be a metaphor anymore.

Alyssa pulled her hands down and pressed on his chest until he braced himself above her with straight arms. She almost lost her focus at the sight of his abs rippling with each rock of his hips, but her body’s need rode her hard, reminding her of her mission. There was just enough slack between her wrists that she was able to plump her breasts and pinch her nipples. The small bite of pain zinged straight to her clit. She arched into her own touch and repeated the light tweaks with moans of pleasure.

“Holy fuck,” he growled. The visual titillation arrested his gaze. Unblinking with full dark pupils, Dillon hooked one of her legs over his shoulder, opening her more than she ever thought possible. “Now who’s killing who?”

She didn’t have the breath to answer as he finally and blessedly picked up the pace and pushed her infinitesimally closer to orgasm with each exquisite assault. Her hands abandoned her breasts to loop behind his head and fist chunks of his short hair.

Faster and faster they moved together, him pumping inside her and she rocking up to meet him halfway. Her vision started to blur at the edges until all she could see was the ruggedly handsome face above her. So much like the friend she’d known her whole life, and yet so very different. As her brain struggled to reconcile the old and the new, her body shorted everything out that wasn’t necessary for surviving a tactile flood of epic proportions.

She vaguely heard herself repeatedly begging for “more” sprinkled with the occasional commands for “faster” and “harder.”

Alyssa had never been one to talk during sex. She’d always thought it was because she wasn’t one to lose her composure, even in the bedroom. Apparently she’d just never been given the proper inspiration.

“Tell me this doesn’t feel incredible, Aly. Tell me you don’t want to do this again with me.”

He was asking the impossible, and he knew it. She could no more tell him those things than she could tell him she hated him. Because none of it would be even remotely close to the truth. It
did
feel incredible, she
did
want to do it with him as often as possible, and she loved Dillon more than she had any other man in her life.

“Dillon,” she said with a needy whimper. “Please…”

“You have no idea what it does to me to hear you say my name and beg for release.” Slipping a hand between them, he used the rough pad of his thumb against her swollen clit and said, “Go ahead, sweetheart. Let me feel you come around me.”

After circling the edge of her orgasm for so long, the direct stimulation was like driving the final spike of pleasure through her center to sever the last vestige of her sanity and control.

Her body bowed off the bed, and she cried out as a fire spread from her center and consumed her in seconds, its heat pulsing in waves over her flesh.

With an animalistic growl, Dillon followed her into oblivion with one final deep thrust, then grunted as he spilled himself into the condom with shallow strokes.

Some time later, he gently lowered her leg to the bed and rolled them so that she lay on top. Completely sapped, Alyssa sprawled unashamedly across his chest as she waited for her heart rate to return to normal. She floated somewhere between reality and dreams, or maybe it was a place of limbo where the line that separated them began to blur. Either way, she was content to just
be
for a while, without her brain doing its usual hamster-wheel thing.

Dillon swept the hair away from her face and tilted her chin up to place a soft kiss on her lips. “Give me the weekend to show you how easy this can be between us. To convince you to come to me when you need this instead of going to someone who doesn’t even care about you. Then if you still want things to go back to the way they were, I won’t fight you on it. Deal?”

She’d already passed the point of no return with him. There was no going back to when she didn’t know what it felt like to be filled and consumed by him. And now he was offering her a whole weekend of indulging in the best sex she’s ever had with no strings and no worries.

Suddenly she felt like a novice gambler who won on her first pull of a slot machine. On the inside she screamed and clapped and jumped up and down in disbelief. But thanks to her depleted energy and what little remained of her pride, she merely offered him a lazy smile as she peered up from hooded eyes and said, “Deal.”

His full lips curved up and his dimples winked at her from under the scruff of his beard. “Jackpot.”

After what she’d just experienced, Alyssa couldn’t have said it better herself.

Chapter Six

Dillon woke with the sun streaming across his face. Squeezing his eyes shut, he rolled away from the sadistic ball of fire that had pierced through one of the best dreams he’d ever had. One where he’d finally made love to Alyssa for hours, worshipping her in every way he knew how, until utter exhaustion eventually claimed them both.

Settling on his side, his arm brushed something warm and soft, and all at once the memories of the day before—hopping a plane to Vegas, donning a Tarzan costume, and carrying Alyssa to her room—rushed through the morning fog like an early morning train.

His eyes snapped open to find her still asleep next to him, on her stomach with the side of her face smashed into her pillow that her arms had in a decent chokehold. Her long blond hair had apparently staged a coup while she slept, taking advantage of her unconscious state to rebel from her usual no-strand-out-of-place style. It lay in every direction, even trailing a thin web across her smushed face.

Grinning like a fool, Dillon carefully brushed the insubordinate hair back where it belonged. He loved that she wasn’t one of those women who slept like mannequins, unmoving and silent with their fake lashes still in place and hair pulled neatly over one shoulder. That she was messy, and oblivious, and snored on every third breath was refreshing and oddly sexy.

After propping his head in his hand, he slowly pulled the sheet down until he exposed every inch of her above her thighs. Creamy skin practically glowed under the sun’s rays as he drank in every curve of her body.

When looking became inadequate, he used his fingertips to trace down her spine and the shallow dip of her lower back, over the rounded globe of one cheek and back up the other side. Across the slight flare of her hip and into the slope of her waist on his way up her side. His mouth went dry and his cock stirred when his thumb lightly traced circles on the side swell of her breast as he remembered how sensitive they’d been beneath his tongue.

“Mmm…” Alyssa stretched on her belly, her arms reaching overhead and her back arching as she raised her hips off the bed briefly. Relaxing once again, she opened her eyes and gave him an impish grin. “Good morning.”

“Something tells me I’d enjoy watching you do your morning yoga routine.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, except I read that clothes actually inhibit your full range of motion. Turns out naked yoga is the best kind.”

She laughed, her morning voice sounding raspy and sexy as all get-out. “Considering the workouts you put me through for several hours last night, I think I’ll skip my usual yoga routine today.” Sitting up, she winced and hissed in a quick breath. “Whoa. I’ll be lucky if I can walk without difficulty.”

Dillon sat up and cupped her face with one hand. “You sore?” A pale pink flushed her cheeks. “Damn, I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“It’s okay,” she said, glancing up beneath dark lashes. “It’s the good kind of sore.”

A primal sense of pride, caveman though it might be, filled his chest and satisfied him more than getting hard-earned praise from his father on a job well done. It was then Dillon realized he could care less what the rest of the world thought of him as long as this woman continued to look at him like he hung the moon.

“I’m going to run you a bath with some bath salts I saw in there earlier. It’ll help with your soreness. Then when you’re done, how about we go grab some breakfast and see what there is to do in this crazy town?”

A twinkle sparkled in her eyes and her wide smile melted his insides. “That sounds fantastic.”

“I’ll be right back.”

With a yawn she said, “And I’ll be right here.”

He chuckled and forced himself to leave the warmth of the bed and head to the bathroom. It took about ten minutes to fill the large garden tub with warm water and sprinkle in the lavender bath salts. And all ten minutes Dillon grinned like a damn fool. He couldn’t remember a time when he felt so content and happy.

Leaning on the doorjamb, he crossed his arms over his chest and one foot over the other to stare at the amazing woman asleep again in the bed. Last night had been so much more than he ever thought possible. If he’d known how it could be between them, he’d have solved both their problems and tried getting her into bed a helluva long time ago.

This could work.
He didn’t see how it wouldn’t. Adding mind-blowing sex to their already awesome relationship gave them both what they wanted. All the benefits of a relationship without the weight of their fears ruining it. He wouldn’t have to worry about hurting her because she didn’t want more than he could give, and she wouldn’t have to worry about him breaking her heart because, as she pointed out last night, she didn’t feel that way about him.

A twinge in his chest caused Dillon to frown and rub at the area. That shouldn’t bother him. Whenever another woman even
mentioned
having feelings for him, he instantly started to pull away. Must be an ego thing. Because there was no way he actually wanted Alyssa to be in love with him. That would ruin everything they had together. He might even lose her for good over it.

Pushing off with his shoulder, he stood rigid, his fists clenched at his sides. He imagined what life would be like without her living next door, without their weekly reality-TV nights, without getting to see her brilliant smile on a daily basis. A possessive pang reverberated in his bones and he knew right then he’d do whatever necessary to keep that from happening. Losing Alyssa was not an option. Ever.

He’d give them the rest of the weekend to explore this new facet of their friendship. Let it really sink in how great they are together. Then he’d propose the arrangement as something long-term when they got home.

As she stirred and opened her eyes, Dillon crossed the room to stand by the bed. “Your bath is ready, m’lady,” he said with a slight bow for fun.

“And just how am I supposed to focus on my bath when I have access to something as wonderful as
that
?”

He followed her pointed gaze to his semihard cock, which was now growing under her attention. She bit her lip and looked up at him through sleep-heavy eyes that told him she had anything but sleep in mind. He growled and cradled her in his arms to pick her up. “Look who woke up a wicked little minx,” he teased, walking back toward the bathroom. “Tell you what. I’ll let you wash mine if I can wash yours.”

“I agree to those terms.” Alyssa used her arms around his neck to pull herself up to whisper into his ear. “As long as ‘wash’ is code for ‘lick.’”

Dillon wanted to come back with a sexy retort, but he could only laugh. He was amazed at how she could still surprise him after eighteen years. Just another plus in the friends with benefits plan. Life was looking pretty damn perfect right about now.

…

“Thank God. I’m starving.” Dillon leaned back so their waitress, who looked like Katy Perry’s stunt double, could set their drinks and appetizer on the table. He and Alyssa had been walking the Strip and taking in the eclectic array of locals dressed as showgirls, fictional characters, and even cartoon characters they encountered along the way. But as soon as they passed the Sugar Factory in front of the Paris hotel, Dillon’s sweet tooth and grumbling stomach dragged Alyssa onto the patio for some lunch.

He squeezed the orange garnish into his tall glass of Blue Moon beer, then dropped it in and licked the sweet juice from his fingers. Looking up, he swore he’d caught Alyssa staring at him before she’d averted her eyes. Despite her sex-kitten persona in the bedroom, he noticed she reverted to straitlaced Aly as soon as they were out of it. He found it intriguing on a certain level. Was it because she wanted to keep their bedroom life separate from everyday life? If so, he could respect that. He could even understand it. But he didn’t like it. If he got the urge to kiss her senseless out in public, he wanted free rein to do so.

Which brought him to the other thing. The more she pretended nothing had changed, the more he wanted to prove to her they had. Her actions were like a red flag to his bull. A challenge he readily accepted.

She scoffed at him from across the small table. “You’re always starving. I swear your legs are hollow.”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a healthy appetite.” He turned to their waitress as she tucked the tray under her arm. “Am I right, Cherry?”

Dillon only meant to gain a friendly ally for his defense, but the girl raked her gaze over him like he had the words
Please objectify me
tattooed on his forehead. Flashing her dimples and giving him a suggestive wink with fake eyelashes, she replied, “Not if
that
body is the result.”

Coming from the Colorado winter to temps in the fifties and sixties, he’d chosen jeans and a blue, short-sleeve polo he hadn’t even bothered to tuck in. Not exactly something he’d expect to be ogled in. Now he needed to do damage control.

“There, you see? I’ll start worrying when I look down and can’t see my feet. Besides,” he said, pointing a finger at Alyssa, “you’re the one who cooks gourmet dinners for me every night, so that makes you my enabler,
sweetheart
.”

Whether it was the emphasized pet name or the insinuation that he and Alyssa lived together, Cherry dropped the flirtatious act as Dillon had hoped and resorted to proper server behavior, albeit with a look of disappointment. “I’ll be back with your meals as soon as they’re ready.”

Alyssa thanked her in way of dismissal, then watched as Cherry sashayed her way through the patio tables back to the main dining area. The darts Alyssa shot at their waitress’s back made a tiny grain of hope swell in his chest. Alyssa might
actually
be jealous of another woman’s attention.

If that was the case, then maybe she was starting to feel just as possessive of him as he was of her. Relief flowed through him. He wasn’t the only one experiencing strong emotions. A fact that would be to his benefit when he proposed that this last much longer than a single weekend.

“I still can’t believe you beat that Texan,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. “The way he talked, you’d think he invented Texas Hold’em, and yet you took him for everything he had in under an hour.”

“Correction: everything he had at the
table
.” She dragged a chip through the warm spinach-and-artichoke dip while trying to hold back her smile. “As a real estate mogul, I’m sure the fifteen-hundred-dollar loss didn’t put much of a dent in his coffers.”

“Still, the look on his face when you beat him was priceless. I’ve never seen anyone so tan go so completely white before.”

At last the smile broke free. “He did look rather peckish when I pulled the stacks of chips to me, didn’t he?”

She popped the corn chip into her mouth and let out an appreciative moan for her favorite appetizer. It was perfectly innocent. It shouldn’t remind him of the sounds he’d brought out in her less than six hours before with his hands, his mouth, and his cock in the bathtub. Sounds that had made him totally crazy and hard as hell. Sounds that were starting to make his jeans damn uncomfortable as he sat in public to enjoy a meal with her, but wanted nothing more than to make
her
his meal, public or not.

Giving himself a mental shake, he raised his beer and took several long draws. With any luck the alcohol would take the edge off until he could get her back to their room. Then all bets would be off.

Speaking of bets…
Dillon chuckled, remembering how they spent their morning. After breakfast at the hotel’s buffet, they’d walked around the casino for a while. When they found a room running Texas Hold’em games that started on the hour, he suggested they play. She balked at first, but he eventually convinced her. One-hundred-dollars ante each and they’d only play until they were out. No pressure, just fun.

Except a few hands in, Dillon realized that Alyssa was a fucking card shark. He’d never seen a woman with a poker face like hers. The way she acted, she could have been at a high-class dinner party or interview with the president. Nothing but polite civility utterly lacking any hints of emotion. No one at the table—including him—could read her.

She
, on the other hand, read everyone else like their skulls were transparent, allowing her to know their every thought and every move. She was so dead-on, it was almost creepy.

“So when’d you become such a ruthless opponent in poker anyway?” he asked. “Last I checked, you’d never played cards. You always just sat next to me and watched or did your own thing whenever I played at parties.”

“I don’t. That was my first time actually playing. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know
how
to play.”

“Yet another advantage of having a brilliant mind?”

She shrugged, took a sip of her iced tea, then kept her focus on the napkin she was tearing into strips. “Or having a professional gambler as a father.”

“What?” The chip in his fingers froze halfway to his mouth. “I thought your dad was a traveling salesman.”

“Admitting to people your dad makes his money as a criminal gambler isn’t the sort of thing you tell people.” Finally she peered up at him, her eyes imploring him to understand. “Not even your best friend.”

Damn. Alyssa had always been sensitive about the topic of her parents and in her position, he probably would have kept everyone on a need-to-know basis, too. But it stung a little to realize she hadn’t viewed him as separate from “everyone.”

He dropped the chip onto the small plate, his appetite all but forgotten. “So all those times he was gone for months at a time?”

“Traveling with his partner to different casinos or underground tournaments. Sometimes hiding from people he owed money to until he could win enough to pay them off. Then he’d show up at our door whenever his luck ran out, and he’d stay just long enough to make promises he’d never keep and convince my mom to give him more money from her trust fund my grandma left her.” She swirled her straw around in her iced tea and stared at the ice cubes as they clinked against the glass.

“Whenever he came home, Mom and I almost fooled ourselves into believing we were a normal family. My parents were happy to see each other; my dad always brought Mom and me presents. He spent time with me, teaching me how to read people or count cards and stack the deck. We’d go to dinner, and I’d watch them laugh and smile and I’d think…maybe this time it’ll last. Maybe
this
time things will be different.”