After Hours with Her Ex Read online

  Again and again, they moved frantically, the rhythm they set a punishing pace that left no margin for smooth, for slow, lazy loving. It was all passion and lust and a desperate craving for the release that rose within them, higher and higher as they chased it. Emotion, sensation poured through them both, and then were drowned in the immediate demands of bodies too long denied.

  He felt the cold of the wall on the palms of his hands as he braced her there, pinned like a butterfly to a board. He felt her fingers, digging into his shoulders as she urged him higher, faster, deeper. He heard their breaths coming fast and sharp.

  Sam reached between their laboring bodies and flicked his thumb across that tight, sensitive bud at the junction of her thighs. Instantly, she screamed out his name as she shuddered, splintering in his arms.

  Her body tightened around his; those internal shivers driving him over the edge. When the first explosion took him, Sam groaned aloud and emptied himself into her.

  Seconds, minutes...maybe days passed with neither of them willing to move. Frankly, Sam didn’t think he could move even if he had to. His knees were weak and the only thing holding them both up at the moment was sheer willpower.

  “Oh. Wow.” Her voice was a whisper that sounded like a shout to him. “Sam. I think I might be blind.”

  He looked at her. “Open your eyes.”

  She did. “Right. Good. Wow.”

  “You said that already,” he told her, hissing in a breath as she moved on him and sent his still-willing body into overdrive.

  Nodding, Lacy murmured, “It was two Wows worthy.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, slapping one hand to her butt to try to hold her still. “Gotta say it really was.”

  Breathing still strained, Lacy looked at him and said, “I should probably tell you to leave now.”

  “Probably,” he agreed, even as he felt his body hardening inside her again.

  She felt it, too, because she inhaled sharply and let that breath slide from her on a soft moan of pleasure. “But I’m not.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Sam tightened his grip on her, swung her away from the wall and walked, their bodies still linked, to the hall. “Bedroom?”

  “Yeah,” she said, dipping her head for another taste of his mouth. “Bedroom.”

  It was a small cabin and Sam took a moment to be grateful for that. He laid her down on the bed they used to share and reluctantly drew out of her heat just long enough to strip out of his clothes. Then he was back on the bed, looming over her, sheathing himself inside her on a sigh of appreciation. His hips moved as he reclaimed her body in the most elemental way. She met his pace and rocked with him in a dance they’d always been good at. Their rhythms meshed, their breaths mingled and the sighs crashing in the quiet seemed to roll on forever.

  Lifting her legs, she locked them at the small of his back and pulled him tighter, deeper. She groaned as he kissed first one hardened nipple then the other, sending a cascade of sensations pouring into her body. Again and again, he licked, tasted, nibbled, all the while his body rocked into her heat, taking her as she took him.

  There was no hesitation. No question. There was only the moment and the moment was now. They’d been heading toward this night since Sam had arrived back on the mountain.

  Her hands swept up and down his back, her short, neat nails scraping at his skin as she touched him, everywhere. Her scent rose up and enveloped him. Surrounded by her, in her, Sam pushed them both to the brink of oblivion, and when she cried out his name, she held him tight and took him over the edge with her.

  Six

  Lacy stared up at the ceiling and, just for a second or two, enjoyed the lovely, floaty feeling that filled her. It had been so long since she’d felt anything like this. For the past two years, she’d forced herself to forget just how good it had always been between her and Sam. She’d had to, to survive his absence. Had to put it out of her mind so that she could try to rebuild her life without him.

  Now he was back.

  And in her bed.

  God, how could she be such an idiot? Those lovely sensations of completion and satisfaction emptied away like water going down a tub drain.

  “We should talk.”

  A short, sharp laugh shot from her throat. “Oh, I so don’t want to talk about this.” She wanted to forget again. Fast.

  He went up on one elbow, looked down at her, and Lacy steeled herself against the gleam in his grass-green eyes. If she wasn’t careful, her oh-so-foolish heart would slide gleefully right into danger. Why did he have to come back?

  Why did he ever leave?

  His jaw tight, he stared into her eyes and asked, “You’re still taking the Pill, right?”

  She blinked at him. Not what she’d been expecting. Yet, now that he’d said it, a single, slender thread of panic began to unwind inside her. His words echoed over and over again in her mind, because now her stupidity had reached epic proportions. Sam Wyatt walked in her door and every brain cell she possessed just whipped away. Which explained why she hadn’t thought of protection. Hadn’t paid any attention. She really was an idiot.

  “Since you just went white,” he said wryly, “I’m guessing the answer is no.”

  “Well, now’s a great time to ask,” she muttered, wishing she could blame this situation on him, as well. But she was a grown-up, modern woman who took responsibility for her own body, thanks very much. So it was as much her fault as his that she was suddenly thinking she might be in really big trouble here.

  “We didn’t do much talking before.”

  “True.” She sighed and stared at the ceiling again. Easier than meeting his eyes. Easier than looking at him while she was wondering if she might have just gotten pregnant by her ex-husband. At that thought, she slapped one hand over her eyes.

  Unprotected sex. She had never once—even at seventeen when she’d given Sam her virginity at the top of the mountain under a full, summer moon—been that reckless. Lacy was the careful one. The cautious one. The one who looked at every step along a path before she ever started down it. Now she couldn’t even see the path. Oh, this was a mistake on so many levels she couldn’t even count them all.

  He pulled her hand aside and she looked at him.

  “Now we have even more to talk about.”

  “No thanks.” She didn’t want to have a conversation with him at all. And certainly not about the possibility of an unplanned baby. Oh, God.

  No way would fate do that to her, right? Hadn’t it screwed with her life enough?

  “No thanks?” He repeated her words with a snort of derision. “That’s not gonna cover it. We just had sex. Twice. With zero protection.”

  “Yeah, I was there.”

  “Damn it, Lacy—”

  “Look,” she cut him off neatly and tried to get him off the subject, away from the thoughts that were already making her a little crazy. “It’s the wrong time for me. The odds are astronomical.” Please let her be right about this. “So don’t worry about it, all right?”

  He didn’t like that. She could see the light in his eyes and recognized it. Sam Wyatt never had been a man to be told what to do and take it well.

  “Yeah,” he said flatly. “That’s not gonna happen. I want to know when you know.”

  “And I want a brand-new camera with a fifteen-zoom lens. Looks like we’re both going to be disappointed.”

  “Damn it, Lacy,” he repeated. “You can’t cut me out of this. I’m here. I’m involved in this.”

  “For now.” A part of her couldn’t believe that she was lying in bed with Sam, both of them naked and having an argument about a possible pregnancy. That was the sane part, she thought reasonably. The panicked portion of her was trying not to think about any of this.

  Once he left the cabin she wouldn’t be bringing up tonigh
t with him at all. And she was going to use every part of her legendary focus to forget everything that had just happened—mainly out of self-protection. She couldn’t think about being with him and not be with him. That was a recipe for even more craziness and more late-night crying sessions, so thanks, she’d pass.

  When she didn’t speak, he seemed to accept her silence as acquiescence, which worked for her—until he started talking again.

  “I came over here tonight to talk to you,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said on a sigh, “that went well.”

  “Okay,” he admitted, “maybe talking wasn’t the only thing on my mind.” He dropped one hand to her hip and slowly slid his palm up until he was cupping her breast, sending tingles of expectation and licks of heat sinking down into her bones.

  Just not fair, she told herself sternly even as she felt that heat he engendered begin to spread. Not fair that the man who broke her heart could still have such an effect on her. Even when she knew it was a mistake to allow his hands on her, she couldn’t bring herself to make him stop. And if she kept lying there, letting him touch her, it would start over again and where would that get her? Deeper into the hole she could already feel herself falling into.

  Quickly, before she could talk herself out of doing the smart thing, she rolled out from under his hand and off the bed in one fluid motion. Just getting a little distance between them cleared her mind and soothed all those buzzing nerve endings.

  He stared at her as she snatched up the robe she had tossed over a chair only that morning. Slipping into the soft terry fabric she tied it at the waist and only briefly considered making a knot, just to make it harder to slip off again. Once she was covered up, Lacy felt a bit more in control. Tossing her hair back from her face, she said, “I think you should go.”

  “I came to talk, remember? We haven’t done that yet.”

  “And we’re not going to,” she told him. “I don’t feel like talking and you don’t live here anymore, so I want you to go.”

  “As soon as we have this out.” He settled on the bed, carelessly naked, clearly in no hurry to get up and get moving. “I’ve got a few things to say to you.”

  “Now you have things to say? Now you want to share?” She laughed shortly and the sound of it was as harsh as the scrape of it against her throat. Through the miasma of emotions coursing through her, rage rose up and buried everything else. “Two years ago, you left without a word of explanation. Just came home from the funeral, threw some clothes in your bag and went.”

  In a blink, she was back there. In this very cabin two years ago when her world had come crashing down around her.

  * * *

  The funeral had been hideous. Losing Jack to a senseless accident after he’d survived cancer had cut deeper than she would have thought possible. The Wyatt family had closed ranks, of course, pulling into a tight circle where pain shared had become pain more easily borne.

  All of them but Sam. Even within that circle, he had stood apart, forcing himself to be stoic. To be solitary. He hadn’t turned to Lacy once for comfort, for solace. Instead, he’d handled all of the funeral arrangements himself, taken care of details to keep his parents from having to multiply their grief by dealing with the minutia of death. He’d given the eulogy and brought everyone to tears and laughter with memories of his twin.

  But after everyone had gone home, after the ceremony had faded into stillness, she’d hoped he would finally turn to her.

  He hadn’t.

  Instead he walked straight into their bedroom and pulled his travel bag out of the closet.

  Stunned, shaken, Lacy could only watch as he grabbed shirts, rolled them up and stuffed them into the bag. Jeans were next, then underwear, socks and still she didn’t speak. But as he zipped it closed and stood staring down at the bag, she asked, “Sam, what are you doing? Are we going somewhere?”

  He looked at her then and his green eyes were drenched with a sorrow so deep it tore at her to see it. “Not we, Lacy. Me. I’m going. I have to—”

  She swallowed hard against the knot in her throat. “You’re leaving?”

  “Yeah.” He stripped out of his black suit, and quickly dressed in boots, jeans and a thermal shirt, then shrugged into his leather jacket

  The whole time, she could only watch him. Her mind had gone entirely blank. It couldn’t be happening. He had promised her long ago that he would never leave. That she would always be able to count on him. To trust him. So none of this made sense. She couldn’t understand. Didn’t believe he would do this.

  “You’re leaving me?”

  He snapped her a look that said everything and nothing. “I have to go.”

  She couldn’t breathe. Iron bands tightened around her chest, cutting off her air. It had to be a dream. A nightmare, because Sam wouldn’t leave. He walked across the room then, his duffel swung over one shoulder, and she stepped back, allowing him to pass because she was too stunned to try to stop him.

  He stopped at the front door for one last look at her. “Take care of yourself, Lacy.” He left without another word and closed the door behind him quietly.

  Alone in her cabin, Lacy sank to the floor, since her knees were suddenly water. She watched the door for a long time, waiting for it to open again, for him to come back, tell her he’d made a mistake. But he never did.

  * * *

  Now, thinking about that night, Lacy wanted to kick her former self for letting him stroll out of her life. For crying for him. For missing him. For hoping to God he’d just come home.

  “I had to.”

  “Yeah,” she said tightly, amazed that as angry as she was, there was still more anger bubbling inside her. “You said that then, too. You had to leave your wife, your family.” Sarcasm came thick. “Wow, must have been rough on you. All on your own, free of your pesky wife and those irritating parents and sister. Wandering across Europe, dating royalty. Poor little you, how you must have suffered.”

  “Wasn’t why I left,” he ground out, and Lacy was pleased to see a matching anger begin to glint in his eyes. A good old-fashioned argument was at least honest.

  “Just a great side benefit, then?”

  “Lacy I couldn’t explain then why I had to leave—”

  “Couldn’t?” she asked. “Or wouldn’t?”

  “I could hardly breathe, Lacy,” he muttered, sitting up to shove both hands through his hair in irritation. “I needed space. It had nothing to do with you or the family.”

  Lacy jerked back as if he’d slapped her. “Really? That’s how you see it? It had everything to do with us. You couldn’t breathe because your family needed you? Poor baby. That’s called life, Sam. Bad stuff happens. It’s how we deal with it that decides who we are.”

  “And I didn’t deal.”

  “No,” she said flatly. “You didn’t. You ran. We were the ones left behind to sweep up the pieces of our lives. Not you, Sam. You were gone.”

  His mouth worked as if he were trying to hold back words just itching to pour out. “I didn’t run.”

  “That’s what it looked like from the cheap seats.”

  Nodding, he could have been agreeing or trying to rein in his own temper. “You didn’t say any of this at the time.”

  “How could I? You wouldn’t talk to me,” she countered. “You were in such a rush to get out of the cabin, you hardly saw me, Sam. So you can understand that the fact you want me to be all cooperative because now you want to talk, is just a little too much for me.”

  Scowling at her, he wondered aloud, “What happened to quiet, shy Lacy who never lost her temper?”

  She flushed and hoped the room was dark enough to disguise it. “Her husband walked out on her and she grew a spine.”

  “However it happened, I like it.”

  “Hah!” Startled by the ou
t-of-the-blue compliment when she was in no way interested in flattery from him, Lacy muttered, “I don’t care.”

  He blew out a breath and said, “You think I wanted to go.”

  “I know you did.” She could still feel his sense of eagerness to be gone. Out of the cabin. Away from her.

  “Damn it, Lacy, Jack died.”

  “And we all lost him, Sam,” she pointed out hotly. “You weren’t the only one in pain.”

  He jumped off the bed and stood across from it, facing her. “He was my twin. My identical twin. Losing him was like losing a part of me.”

  Torn between empathy for the pain he so clearly still felt and fury that he would think she didn’t understand, she blurted out, “Did you think I didn’t know that? That your parents, your sister, were clueless as to what Jack’s death cost you?” Her voice climbed on every word until she heard herself shouting and deliberately dialed it back. “We were here for you, Sam. You didn’t see us.”

  “I couldn’t.” He shook his head, glanced around for his clothes, then reached down and snatched up his jeans. Tugging them on, he left them unbuttoned as he faced her again. “Hell, I was half out of my mind with grief and rage. I couldn’t be around you.”

  “Ah,” she said, nodding sagely as she silently congratulated herself for not throwing something at him. “So you left for my sake. How heroic.”

  “Damn it, you’re not listening to me.”

  “No, I’m not. Not much fun being ignored, is it?” She gathered up her hair with trembling fingers and in a series of familiar moves, tamed the mass into a thick braid that frayed at the edges. “Why should I listen to you anyway?”

  “Because I’m back now.”

  “For how long?”

  He frowned again and shook his head. “I don’t know the answer to that yet.”

  “So, just passing through.” Wow, it was amazing how much that one statement hurt. And Lacy knew that if she allowed herself to get even more involved with him, when he left this time, the pain would be more than she could take. So she drew a cloak of disinterest around her and belted it as tightly as her robe. “Well, have a nice trip to...wherever.”