Bachelor Unleashed - Brenda Jackson [37]
And that wasn’t good.
He could argue with her on that point all day long, and she would not change her mind and relent. As far as she was concerned, they either agreed to indulge in a New York affair or nothing.
Then why, she thought a short while later when she slipped between the sheets of her lonely bed, was she thinking of him and all they’d done that night? What they’d shared for eleven months, and more importantly, what she’d gone without the past six months and what she would continue to go without?
If tonight had been a calculated move on his part to stir up memories, then she would be the first to say he’d succeeded. As she lay staring up at the ceiling, she couldn’t get out of her mind just how he’d felt inside of her, killing her softly with every sensual stroke.
So many memories began swirling around in her head, making sleep impossible. At least for now. Instead, she couldn’t help but recall the first time he’d shown up on her doorstep and how quickly and easily she’d tumbled with him into her bed. She’d opened the door, and he’d stood there, wearing a pair of jeans and a white shirt and looking as sexy as any man had a right to look. There had been something about him that had wowed her from the first time she’d seen him that night at the Racetrack Café. She’d heard about him and the bachelor club he was affiliated with, but until she’d seen him for herself, she hadn’t known how any man could have that effect on a woman.
She’d known she had wanted him from the start, passionately so, and hadn’t intended to let something like protocol stand in her way. She’d seen him as a way to have fun and forget about all the hurt Dustin had caused her. She’d wanted to know how it felt to have a no-strings-attached affair and not care one iota if she saw the man again. She’d wanted an affair that was as casual as it could get.
And that’s what she’d gotten in the beginning. But then she’d noticed things beginning to change, even if he hadn’t. Probably because those changes had been onesided. There was no reason to assume that he’d begun thinking about her in the wee hours of the night and anticipating the next time they would hook up. Or find himself smiling in the middle of the day after thinking of something that happened between them the night before. And she was pretty confident that when she did open the door for him, he didn’t feel that funny feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Those had been the warning signs, and she’d had no reason not to heed them and put in place any and every preventive measure that she could. Nothing seemed to work. The situation seemed to get worse. And she’d known the best thing to do was to break things off with him completely.
And now he wanted to jump-start things again and had done a pretty good job giving her a reason to do so. But she couldn’t. Bottom line was that she was dealing with something he couldn’t understand. It was only about sex for him, but for her she was taking every memory as seriously as it could get.
She moved to another position, not that she thought that would help. It would be a sleepless night. Even after the workout Xavier had given her tonight, her feminine core was achy, in need of some intimate attention, Xavier Kane style.
Give in to him, a voice inside her head whispered. You’re a big girl. You can handle another affair with Xavier. It would be up to you to make sure it’s an affair that leads nowhere. And if it did, what’s another little broken heart? What’s the big deal?
The big deal was there in his eyes each and every time he looked at her. It was there on his tongue every time he kissed her. It was embedded in the fingers that touched her.
After a few tosses and turns, she discovered she still couldn’t get to sleep and decided she needed to talk to someone, and there was no other person she could share her woes with than her best friend.
She glanced over at the clock and cringed when she saw it was almost one o’clock. She didn’t know what kind of hours Natalie was keeping now, but before she was married, Dr. Natalie Ford Steele,