Riding the Storm - Brenda Jackson [42]
She had enjoyed laughing with him, talking to him, dancing with him, sharing food with him and going sightseeing with him. He had been full of surprises in more ways than one. She couldn’t help but compare him to the last guy she had dated, Erik Turner. Erik had turned out to be an A-number-one bore and had expected they’d go straight to her bedroom when he’d brought her home from their first date. He had actually gotten pissed off when she’d turned him down.
Frowning, she headed for her bedroom as she remembered how angry she had gotten, too, that night. Angry for having such high expectations that most men would treat a woman like a lady, decently respectable and not assume anything—especially on the first date. Erik had been included in a long line of disappointments for her, but he had definitely been the last straw and had been an eye-opener. That night Jayla realized that she didn’t want to be one of those women who were in such a frenzy to be involved in a relationship that they failed to look at the signs that said, “This may not be the best person for me.”
Another pitfall she had avoided, which was the main reason she had remained a virgin for so long, was the mistake some women made of equating sex with love. She’d learned from listening to the women she worked with, that some women still believed that if a man slept with her, it meant he loved her. She definitely hadn’t assumed such a thing with her and Storm. It had been her hormones and not her heart that had been raging out of control. Storm didn’t love her and she didn’t love him. She hadn’t expected anything from him and he hadn’t expected anything from her. They had communicated well both in and out of bed, and the one thing they understood and agreed upon was that their affair would be one that led nowhere.
Sighing, she began removing her clothes for her shower. But as much as she didn’t want to think about it, she couldn’t get the memory of Storm and the way he had looked at her today out of her mind.
Drawing in a deep breath, Storm raised his hand to knock, then pulled back as he asked himself, for the umpteenth time, why he was standing in front of Jayla’s front door. And no matter how many times he asked the question, the answer always came up the same.
He still wanted her.
Seeing her today had done more harm than good and what Chase had said hadn’t helped matters. The notion that Jayla had hooked him was preposterous. Okay, he would admit she was still in his system. He had discovered that a man didn’t have sex with a woman at the magnitude that he’d had with Jayla and not have some lingering effects. Lingering effects he could handle; the notion of some woman reeling him in, he could not.
Tonight, and only tonight, he would break his rule of not performing repeats after an affair ended. But he had to make sure that the only thing that was pulling him back to her was the incredible sex they’d shared. Physical he could handle, but anything that bordered on emotional he could not.
Taking another deep breath, he finally raised his hand and knocked on the door. As he waited for her to answer it, he hoped to God that he wasn’t making a huge mistake.
He was about to knock again when he heard the sound of her voice on the other side. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Jayla. Storm.”
She slowly opened the door and the anticipation of the removal of the solid piece of wood that stood between them sent a shiver of desire up his spine and down to his midsection. When she opened the door enough for him to see her, the sight of her nearly knocked him to his knees like a gale-force wind. It was obvious that she had just gotten out of the shower. Her hair was loose, flowing around her shoulders, and there were certain parts of her, not covered by her short bathrobe, that were still wet. He itched to take the robe off her to see what, if anything, she was wearing