Unforgettable: Always 2 (4 page)

Another moan vibrated deep in her chest as my hand found her breast, contained by the lace of her bra. Her nipple rubbed at the center of my palm through the lace, a scraping friction both wonderful and frustrating. I wanted to feel her flesh, all her flesh, without anything – even something as flimsy as lace – getting in the road. I wasn’t exactly gentle as I yanked the edge of her bra aside and took her nipple in my mouth.

Once again, Amanda didn’t seem to mind. She never had before. When it came to sex, neither of us had been shy or self-conscious. She’d often laughed when we were together that I approached sex like I approached a workout session: go hard, or go home. Of course, she would also point out that the very fact I
was
hard kind of negated the “go home” bit. That and the fact we were going at it like rabbits
in
my home.

When it came to sex with Amanda, none of the rules I lived my life by mattered though.

The second I sucked her flesh into my mouth, she clawed at my scalp and begged me to do it again. “Oh God, Bren,” she panted, knotting her fingers in my wet hair and holding my head closer to her breast. “I’ve missed you doing this so much.”

For a cruel moment the thought of someone else doing what I was doing now smashed through me. Jealousy – hot and furious – flooded me and I growled around her nipple. She wasn’t
someone else
’s, she was mine.

At
that
thought, an emotion I couldn’t identify – far hotter and angrier than my jealousy – swept through me. Although swept is not really the correct word.
Pummeled
me, is better.
Consumed
me, also more accurate.

This half dressed, soaking wet woman in the shower with me was responsible for the most incredible and destructive moments of my life, and the very notion of someone else, anyone else, being in her heart, her thoughts …

It undid me. Crap. So much for not letting her get to me. So much for okay, good, gravy and chillaxed.

Lifting my head, I stared down into her face, ready to tell her we had to stop.

“Please don’t,” she whispered, cupping my jaw in a shaking hand. Beads of water clung to her eyelashes, turning them spiky. Her glorious hair hung around her face in dark, shining strands. Her lips glistened. “Let’s just give ourselves this, okay?”

I didn’t have the strength to deny her. When had I ever?

Without a word – for none formed in my head – I took her lips with mine once more and lost myself to the pleasure of being with her.

At some point, I stopped kissing her. I was on my knees, peeling her wet shorts from her hips and rolling them down her legs. The water trickled over her belly, little rivulets that ran over the soft flesh in multiple paths down past her pubic hair. The last time I’d seen Amanda she’d been waxed free of hair and her stomach had been firm and flat with the subtle lines of a strong core and abs. I’d reveled in the smooth, satiny-slick mound of her hairless pubic curve. I’d worshipped that stomach, admiring the physical strength and healthy lifestyle it spoke of. And yet, there was something utterly female about the belly, and the dark curls I now devoured with my eyes. Something beyond me.

I watched the water stream over her flesh, traced the path of more than one down to her wet pubic hair with my fingers. A choppy breath tore from her. She moaned my name, along with words I didn’t understand. My brain was too fogged with a raw pleasure I hadn’t experienced since she’d ended us. I’d had sex since then, but nothing had rocked me like this. Nothing had moved me.

Ah, fuck, I really was in trouble.

And still, I couldn’t stop. Nor did I want to. I licked the shower water from Amanda’s belly, and then stroked my tongue over her trimmed curls … and lower, until I found her warm flesh.

She snagged my hair in a tight fist, sending pain and incredible pleasure through me at once. “Oh Bren …”

With the water streaming over my head, my shoulders, and flowing down my back, and Amanda’s fingers tugging my hair, I lingered for long, delicious moments on her sex, giving myself over to the taste of her, the feel of her, the sound of her. The memory and the reality of her.

It was exquisite. Perfect.

And even more so when, her voice shaky and shallow, she panted my name, held my head hard and came. It had been too long since I’d had Amanda’s release on my tongue. Too long. The warm flow of her orgasm detonated a hunger in me I could only describe as primitive. It wasn’t enough that I’d made her come with my mouth. I wanted to own her, fill her in the most elemental, animalistic way possible.

Dragging my mouth from her receptive flesh, I pressed my face to the soft curve of her belly and curled my arm around the back of her thighs. “Mandy …” I groaned.

I’d only ever called her Mandy twice since knowing her – the first time we had sex, our mutual, mind-blowing orgasms shocking me as much as they rocked me; and then when she told me we were done, and I asked her to change her mind.

The fingers in my hair turned to fists and, without a word, she tugged. Hard.

I rose to my feet. I want to say I was controlled and modulated, even romantic (I know, what guy ever uses that word?) but I wasn’t. I was hungry and impatient and undone by an urgency to be inside her, to bury myself to my balls in her tight heat.

“Bren …” Amanda rasped as my body slid against hers, as my erection nudged the curve of her sex. “Hurry the fuck up and get inside me. Please.”

“Condom?” I groaned against her neck, on fire.

“Pill,” she moaned back, rolling her hips.

At the single word, I crushed her lips with mine, grabbed the back of her right thigh, yanked her knee up to beside my hip and sank into her in one fluid thrust.

I spend most of my work hours and all of my study hours focusing on the way the human body moves, but there was nothing that could prepare me for how sublimely Amanda moved against me. With me. There was a synchronistic beauty to it. To how our breaths mingled and our tongues slid together. I bunched one hand in the wet hair at the back of her nape and held her raised thigh with the other, driving deeper and deeper into her. And then her nails scored across my back, my shoulders, and she threw her head back and cried my name as her inner muscles contracted around my thrusting dick.

The uninhibited passion and honesty in her orgasm plunged me into my own wild climax. I ground my teeth and rolled my hips and tried
not
to slam harder into her delicate sex, tried
not
to surrender to the concentrated pleasure of being one with her again, making love to her again.

Tried and failed. For all my self-deluded determination that I
would
walk away from Amanda Sinclair unscathed and untouched, I was utterly enslaved by her. Now. In the shower that was meant to be helping me decompress, I had become a creature of sensation and desire ruled by the one person with the power to render me defenseless.

And I willingly surrendered to it. I held her. Close. Drawing in breath after deep, slow breath as the pulse of my orgasm faded from my body.

“Oh, Bren …” she murmured against the side of my neck as I released her thigh and nuzzled her temple. “Oh, Bren … I … I …”

A shudder rippled through her. Another one. And then, with a soft, shy chuckle, she raised her face to mine and smiled. “I didn’t realize you were having a cold shower. Sorry about that.”

I laughed, the action causing my now flaccid cock to slip from her. The loss of connection with her body didn’t worry me. We may not have been joined physically, but we were together in a more profound way. “Is this your way of telling me you need me to warm you up, Ms. Sinclair?” I asked.

“This is my way,” she answered, trailing her fingers over my pecs, her gaze following their path as they displaced the tiny beads of cooling water resting there, “of saying it’s time for me to make you some Vegemite toast.”

“Not as much fun, but still very appealing.”

Reaching around me, Amanda killed the shower. We stood chest to chest, hip to hip, our skin wet and glistening. The small room hung heavy with the sounds of our rapid, shallow pants.

I consider myself a very fit guy, it takes a lot to push my breathing and heartbeat beyond their normal rate. But at that very second, I was more physically spent than any insane, high-intensity cardio workout had ever left me.

She closed her eyes, pressed her forehead to the base of my throat for a heartbeat, and then stepped away. “We should probably get dressed first.”

“That definitely doesn’t sound as much fun.” I caught her hand before it slipped free of my chest completely. “I’m sure there’s no rule against eating naked.” I smoothed my hand down her back to squeeze her butt. “Besides, I’ve got over two years of
not
seeing you naked to make up f—”

Amanda turned, slipped a blue towel from the top rack and left the shower. My throat wanted to get thick at her sudden absence. My chest wanted to get heavy and tight. I wouldn’t let either. Instead, I reached for the towel beneath the empty rack and scuffed myself dry. I wasn’t going to rush out there after her. What had just happened … I suspect it had shaken us both. Taken us both by surprise with its intensity.

Fishing a pair of loose gym shorts from my woefully packed bag, I pulled them on commando-style, blasted my armpits with deodorant, cleaned my teeth and raked my fingers through my wet hair. I didn’t look in the mirror. If I did, I’d know exactly what I would see staring back at me: a guy gone. I wasn’t worried that I’d let happen the exact opposite of what I’d promised myself
wouldn’t
happen. We’d work it out, Amanda and I. How hard could it be?

Physically drained to the point of exhaustion, I dragged in a slow breath, held it for the count of ten, and let it go. Time to address the situation once and for all, so we could move forward. Plan.

As I was two steps from the bathroom, half naked and still thrumming from what we’d shared in the shower, my brain registered Amanda was not alone. Her sister was standing near the coffee table, her dredlocked hair a vivid blue, her piercing gray eyes framed with ink-black liner, and dancing with something beyond my ability to comprehend. It dawned on me Chase was seeing me obviously fresh from a shower, as she stood next to her sister – who was wrapped only in a towel with her hair as wet as mine. There was no way Chase couldn’t join the dots.

With one of those smiles that said she knew something about the world no one else did, Chase ran her gaze over me, from the top of my wet head to my crotch and back up to my face again, and then cocked one pierced eyebrow. “If it isn’t the Wonder from Down Under. So … tell me, what’s it like to find out you’re a father?”

“Chase!” Amanda gasped.

I wanted to look at her, to see if she was laughing at what her sister had just said. But I couldn’t. I stared at Chase, her question echoing in my head. Find out I was a
what
?

The thing with Chase is she has that distinct speech of one who’s grown up without hearing clearly. Sometimes, especially when she’s in a mood – either playful or surly – her words aren’t always clear. Amanda suspected Chase emphasized it at times, just to see how the person she was talking to would react.

Now had to be one of those times. Had to be. Otherwise …

“You know that’s why you’re here, right?” Chase looked at me with an unwavering gaze. “You didn’t think the golden child over there just invited you all this way to screw in the shower, did you? I mean, after what Dad told her, the very fact you
are
here means she’s decided to—”

“
Chase
,” Amanda repeated, horror in her voice.

I blinked. My gut churned and rolled. “I’m sorry?”

Chase snorted, her lips twisting in a smirk. “No need to apologize to me. I’m not the one you knocked—”

“That’s enough, Chase.”

Cold anger filled Amanda’s sharp snap. I turned to her, my eyes burning. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Oh my God, you
didn’t
tell him?”

I looked back at Chase. Dull pressure throbbed in my temples and behind my eyes. In the few times I’d been in Chase’s company, I’d never really known what she was thinking. She could be the most wonderful, warm person in the world when she wanted to be, or the most cutting.

Now, she regarded me with an expression I could only describe as contrite disbelief. “Oh God, I didn’t … Oh wow. Oh wow.”

Something cold and invisible punched me in the chest. I drew in a sharp breath, unable to move.

Chase seemed equally frozen, her eyes flicking from me to where Amanda stood, out of my peripheral vision. “Sis? You didn’t … he doesn’t know?”

“Know what?” I asked her. Her. Not Amanda. I couldn’t look at Amanda. If I did, I don’t know what I would do. Or say.

“Sis?” Chase repeated, looking like a tiny rabbit trapped in rapidly approaching headlights.

“Bren,” Amanda’s voice was little more than a husky rasp. “I should have … I mean … I didn’t mean to … I didn’t know how …”

“Know what, Chase?” I repeated, ignoring Amanda. My whole body felt like it was being ripped apart. An invisible, icy fist was slamming into me, over and over. My head roared, my eyes were on fire. “Tell me, because it seems like your sister hasn’t got the guts to do so.”

Chase winced. Amanda made a choked noise. “Oh God, Brendon, I didn’t … I’m sorry. I don’t … I wish …”

And still I couldn’t look at her. Still, all I could do was fix my stare on her sister and wait. Wait. Even as I knew what she was going to say.

Knew
.

“You’re a daddy, Brendon,” Chase finally said. “You have an eighteen-month-old son called—”

I turned on my heel and strode for the bathroom. I didn’t stop when Amanda called after me, didn’t look at her when she came bursting into the room.

“Brendon, I should have told you at the airport.” Tears filled her voice. I didn’t look at her as I snatched up my gym bag and backpack and flung them over my shoulder. “I should have told you …”

I swung around to face her. It took every effort in my being not to clench my fist. “When you found out you were pregnant.
That’s
when you should have told me.”

A sob tore from her. A tear slipped from her eye. I watched its path. Watched it travel over her cheek, down past the corner of her mouth. Watched it disappear beneath her jaw.

And then I sucked in a deep breath and left the bathroom, walked through her living room, and headed for the door.

“Good to see you again, Chase,” I threw over my shoulder as I passed her – still standing where I’d first seen her in a different life. “Take care.”

“Brendon, you should—”

I yanked open the apartment door, stepped through it and slammed it shut behind me before she could finish telling me what I should do.

Calm down? Stay? Sit down and have coffee and cookies while we “talked this out”?

No.

I’ve never run away from anything in my life. I’ve faced down any challenge thrown at me. Rolled with the outcome. Learned from it. Used what I’d learned to live a better life, to move forward. I wasn’t running now, but I couldn’t be there. Not at that moment. I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t …

Fuck, I couldn’t …

I was a father. I’d been a father for eighteen months, and Amanda hadn’t told me.

I’d been in the country with her for over three hours. I’d sat in a car with her for almost ninety minutes and she hadn’t told me. I’d fucked her in the shower, and she hadn’t told me.

I’d been inside her, and she hadn’t told me.

She. Hadn’t. Told. Me.

The hot San Diego sun blasted at me as I exited the apartment building and hurried down the path to the sidewalk. Behind me, I heard Chase calling me. Chase. Not Amanda.

The rational side of my brain – the one that still operated no matter how fucked up the situation was, the
chillaxed
side of my brain – pointed out Amanda would no doubt be getting dressed. She’d only been wrapped in a towel when I’d left, after all. In a messed-up situation like this a girl like Amanda wouldn’t come running after the guy she’d lied to, deceived, kept a secret from, wearing only a towel. No, she’d deck herself out in hey-I’m-going-to-change-your-life-forever appropriate attire, perfect for kicking a guy’s soul clear out of his—

“Brendon,” Amanda’s cry scraped at my sanity. “Stop!”

I didn’t. Not even to see if she was dressed or not.

“Please stop. I need to explain. I didn’t want you to find out this way.”

One of the things that always blows my mind when I visit the States is how easy it is to get a taxi. They seem to be everywhere. So at that point, when I saw the taxi heading along the street from the opposite direction, I didn’t hesitate. Without slowing my pace, I gripped the straps of my gym bag and backpack tighter and strode out onto the street, arm raised in that universal signal for “get me the fuck out of here now”.

The taxi stopped. I climbed into the back and slammed the door behind me, with barely a glance at Amanda and Chase running toward us. The fact Amanda
was
still only wearing a towel unsettled me more than I wanted to admit. “Airport, please,” I growled at the poor driver. I’d apologize to him later. It wasn’t his fault I’d just had my heart, my life, torn apart.

If he was curious about the fact I was only half dressed, he didn’t comment. If he wondered about the woman running down the street wrapped in a towel, with another woman with brilliant blue dreadlocks running behind her, he didn’t say anything. Neither did I. Nor did I look out the window at Amanda as the taxi sped away from her. Instead, I stared out the front window and cursed myself for being the biggest fucking idiot wanker on the planet.

Ten minutes later, after numerous corners turned and streets sped along, I told him to stop.

Once again, he didn’t bat an eye. Just directed the taxi into a space on the side of the road and waited. If I wasn’t so messed up, I’d have been impressed.

“Thanks, mate,” I said, handing him a collection of notes before climbing from the back seat. I had no idea what kind of tip I’d given him, but whatever it was, it finally elicited a response. He smirked at me through the driver’s window and then took off, leaving me on the sidewalk. Dumping my bags at my feet, I unzipped my gym bag, pulled out the first shirt I saw inside and yanked it over my head. I had no idea where I was, let alone what emotional state I was in, but being fully dressed was a start to getting back on track.

The heat bore down on me, oppressive and suffocating. I closed my eyes and lifted my face to its blazing intensity. Stood there motionless.

I was a father.

Christ, I was a father.

I didn’t for a second suspect it was a lie. What purpose would Amanda have for lying? I was a guy on the other side of the world with a student loan that included more zeroes than the new letters behind my name, and a looming business loan about to be added to my debt. Who would try to pin a paternity claim on a guy in that situation?

And given how Chase reacted, how Amanda reacted, I knew it was the truth. I was a father, I had a son, and Amanda had kept it from me for eighteen months. Eighteen months without a word. Eighteen months without telling me.

Christ, I was a father.

My knees buckled. I staggered sideways, catching myself before I could bump into any of the unsuspecting people walking past me on the sidewalk. Dull rage knotted in my gut. Straightening, I dragged my hands through my hair, watching the cars move along the road. I had no real idea where I was. It didn’t matter. I just wasn’t where Amanda was.

Christ, she’d kept the fact I was a father, that I had a son, from me for eighteen months. How did a person do that? How was I supposed to
deal
with that?

I didn’t know. I couldn’t fall back onto my default
roll-with-it
response. Nothing in my twenty-five years had prepared me for this. I’d set out a game plan, goals. I had a bank manager and a personal training business ready to go as soon as I finished my Master’s. I didn’t own a SUV. I had no clue how to change a nappy.

And while we were at it, Amanda Sinclair had
fucking kept the fact I was a father a secret from me
.

My knees crumpled again, but this time, I caught myself before I could stumble. Stumbling was weak. I wasn’t weak. I was angry. Furious. I could hardly draw breath. My fists were clenched into painful balls. My head roared.

And yet, even with the incensed rage boiling inside me, I was … I was …

An image of a baby – softly squishy and bald – filled my head. Wrapped in a blue blanket, the same blue of the bath towel I’d last seen Amanda wearing. Eyes closed. Healthy lungs letting me know in no uncertain terms he was not that impressed with the situation. Tiny hands balled in fists, chubby legs kicking with enthusiasm …

What would it be like to hold that baby?
My
baby? My son?

An invisible band clamped around my chest and I pulled in a sharp breath. What the hell was I doing? What the hell was I feeling?

I couldn’t decipher it. I had no hope. I was on the other side of the world, away from everyone I knew – friends, family 
–
 and I’d just discovered I was a father.

And then I’d run.

The vice around my chest squeezed tighter. I’d run. Jesus, I’d run. And I didn’t even know my son’s name.

Fingers balling in my hair, I watched the cars stream by. I needed to talk to someone. Not to get an answer; I didn’t seek out answers to my problems from other people. Other people didn’t know the solution to my problems because those problems were mine, not theirs. I just needed to talk this through now.

Flicking my watch a glance, I bit back a curse. I had no idea what time it was in Sydney. I could ring Heather, but I’d already woken her at a ridiculous time once today. I couldn’t do it again.

Which left me …

Pulling my iPhone from my hip pocket, I scrolled through the numbers in my contact list. There. Hitting dial, I waited, my heart beating fast. It had been a few weeks since I’d spoken to Maci Rowling. A Skype conversation had been our last interaction, during which she’d flashed her engagement ring at me and made gooey eyes at Raphael whenever he wandered through the room. I rolled mine every time she got sappy, even as joy flowed through me for my two friends. When a guy is happily entrenched on the
friend
bench, he’s allowed to roll his eyes at the soppiness of any engagement announcement.

Who would have thought I’d be standing in the same country as Maci and Raph such a short time later, wishing to hell they’d answer their phone so they could listen to me … listen to me …

What the hell was I going to say?
G’day, guys. So I’m in the States because that girl I followed here over two years ago, the one who never followed me back, called out of the blue, we had sex in her shower, and now she tells me I’m the father of her eighteen-month-old baby?

No. I wasn’t going to say that. I wasn’t going to say anything. Not to Maci. She wasn’t who I needed to talk to right now. I needed to talk to Amanda.

I needed an explanation. For why she’d kept our son a secret from me, for why she’d contacted me after so long. For why she’d joined me in the shower. Before I could explode with rage, or wallow in self-pity – emotions that I was neither familiar nor comfortable with – I needed an explanation.

And I needed to meet my son.

I’d work out what happened after that and make sure
whatever
it was, it was okay. Good. Gravy.

It wasn’t until I went to cancel the call I realized my phone hadn’t even dialed. I’d been standing on the sidewalk, pondering my future as I waited for a connection on a phone that didn’t work in the US.

The realization knocked the breath from me. I couldn’t continue the delusion I was handling this whole thing. So much for being chillaxed. It was time to admit I was blindsided. But I
wasn’t
a chicken. I
wasn’t
running.

Hitching my bag up onto my shoulder, I turned and began walking back the way my indifferent taxi driver had come. I had no idea where I was – Old Town San Diego, I think – but I had to get back to Amanda’s. Flagging down a taxi was easy. Telling the driver where to take me, not so much. I had no idea of her address, nor even the suburb her apartment was located.

“Just drive back this way a bit,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t think me some kind of weird nut job. “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’ll know it when I see it and tell you when to stop.”

I got a skeptical snort from the man behind the wheel but, much to my surprise and gratitude, he pulled from the curb. Maybe he’d had in his cab before more than one Australian who’d just been blindsided by the fact he was a dad?