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Sam twitched, but he knew he had no choice. She was right—she was a grown woman. A fully grown, fully adult woman. With needs, she’d said.
Great.
“Delaney—you look sensational,” Jake said, bending to kiss her hello.
Sam felt the lip curl make a return appearance as Jake’s arms slid around her, his hands lingering way too long on her lower back. Sam knew exactly what the other guy was thinking: how much small talk do I have to fake before I can get my hands on that amazing caboose?
If he stayed any longer, Sam knew he was going to do something really, really dumb.
“Have a great night,” he said sourly.
Then he turned and walked away.
DELANEY TOOK A DRINK from her wineglass. Across the table, Jake’s lips were moving, but she had no idea what was coming out of them. She gave herself a mental shake. She had to focus on Jake instead of constantly slipping back to her earlier conversation with Sam. It was pointless to go over and over what had passed between them. As if she’d needed yet another reminder that her feelings for him were unrequited, Sam’s attitude could not have shouted indifference more clearly. Although perhaps she was being unfair. He hadn’t been indifferent. He’d been…brotherly. As he always was. A concerned friend. It was enough to make her want to scream.
“Should we get another bottle?” Jake asked, and Delaney realized that she’d drained her glass in one long gulp.
“Um, sure,” she said.
Jake signaled for the waiter, and Delaney forced herself to concentrate. It wasn’t as though Jake wasn’t attractive or fun to be with. Normally she really enjoyed exchanging banter with him when he came into the office. And there was no denying his masculine appeal—he was the epitome of tall, dark and handsome. So why wasn’t she sitting here hoping that he’d kiss her when he took her home tonight? Instead, she was wondering how she could head him off at the pass. Would it be unforgivably rude to get a taxi home on her own at the end of their meal? Or should she just go the whole hog and fake an appendicitis attack right now?
Damn Sam Kirk, and damn herself for letting him ruin her for any other man.
“You know, I’ve wanted to ask you out for a while,” Jake said as the waiter moved off.
Delaney blinked. “Really?”
“Yep. But I always kind of got the feeling you weren’t available,” Jake said.
It made her wonder if that was the way other men had seen her, too—unavailable. Was it possible that she subconsciously sent out “keep off” signals because her feelings for Sam were so strong?
“Well, I’m single, always have been,” Delaney shrugged, not quite sure what to say. If she flirted with Jake, she felt as though she’d be doing so under false pretences.
“When I saw you this afternoon I hoped maybe my luck had changed.”
“What do you mean?” Delaney asked.
“New hair, new clothes—the classic relationship break-up makeover,” Jake said.
Delaney stared at him for a beat. In a way, he was right. She was breaking up with Sam. He just didn’t know it.
“It was time for a change,” she said feebly.
“Speaking of which, I still can’t believe you’re leaving Mirk,” Jake said, shaking his head.
“Well, I have been there since the beginning. Nearly eight years now,” Delaney said.
“Why the big move, if you don’t mind me asking? Don’t tell me you got poached by one of the big guys? I know a ton of publishers who’d love to have you on their sales staff,” Jake said.
She tried to find a way to answer without lying. She was doing enough of that with Sam.
“I’m thirty,” she shrugged, opting for brutal honesty. “I realized that I could spend the rest of my life working like a dog…or I could start thinking about the other things in life.”
“Like…?” Jake asked, his dark eyes intent on her.
“You know. A husband, kids. It sounds kind of clichéd when you say it out loud,” Delaney said self-consciously.
“If it’s a cliché, it’s only because most single people in their thirties start looking around, wondering if there are any lifeboats left. No one wants to stay too long on the dance floor and get stuck when the Titanic goes down,” Jake said, smiling self-deprecatingly at his own analogy.
“Especially if you can’t swim,” Delaney added wryly.
“I don’t think you need to worry about not being able to swim,” Jake said warmly. “I bet there will always be some guy willing to share his life raft with you.”
It was a compliment, she knew. And she should probably feel flattered. But she didn’t. Instead, she felt mildly uncomfortable and completely transparent. Surely he could tell she wasn’t interested? A part of her was tempted to confess all to him, apologize for wasting his time and offer to pay for his meal.
She should have waited until she’d expunged Sam from her life before trying to date. She was just perpetuating the same problem she’d always had while Sam was on the scene: no man ever measured up.
Sure, Jake was good-looking. But his brown eyes weren’t half as engaging as Sam’s bright blue ones, and his smile not nearly as sincere and fun-loving. And while Jake was witty and clever—he’d read all the latest books and seen all the coolest movies—he didn’t make her laugh nearly as much as Sam. He also didn’t make her blood fizz in her veins, or her heart shimmy in her chest, and she wasn’t sitting on the edge of her seat, hoping for an accidental brush of his fingers against hers, or the feel of his knee nudging hers beneath the table.
He just…wasn’t Sam. It was as small and as sad as that.
Reaching for her wineglass, Delaney took another big gulp.
Surely taking a taxi home wouldn’t be that bad form…?
SAM FELT LIKE A CAGED TIGER with a bad case of hives. It was ten o’clock. Delaney had been out with Jake for two whole hours. In all likelihood, they were still at dinner, trying to decide whether or not to have dessert, talking about politics over coffee, hoping the weather would be a little cooler next week….
Or old smoothie Jake had already finagled Delaney back to his pad and was even now peeling her clothes off. Sam ground his teeth together at the thought of Jake sleazing his way beneath Delaney’s defenses.
Sam ground his teeth even harder when it occurred to him that maybe Delaney didn’t have any defenses to sleaze beneath. Maybe she was the one grabbing Jake by the crotch and throwing him onto the bed. If Delaney tackled sex the way she tackled everything else in her life, she’d be a force to be reckoned with in the bedroom.
She was fit and tanned from all their surfing. She’d be limber, lithe. And she had needs. Jake would probably think all his Christmases had come at once.
Sam paced some more and worked on reducing his molars to dust.
What exactly did having needs mean, while he was on the subject? That Delaney needed to have sex? That she craved an orgasm? And if that were the case, why couldn’t she just take care of the matter on her own in the privacy of her home without putting him through all this torture? Anything was preferable to the thought of her being with Jake.
Instantly an image of Delaney pleasuring herself popped into his mind’s eye. Her head was thrown back, and one hand cupped a pert, high breast. Her other hand was busy between her widespread thighs, stroking her own wet heat with gentle fingers—
Sam swore explosively. When had he turned into such a Grade-A creep? This was Delaney he was thinking about, imagining naked. Getting the world’s largest, most persistent boner over.
Delaney. The girl next door. His old street-cricket buddy. His business partner. His best friend in all the world. Delaney was not about sex and desire and urges. Delaney was about loyalty, and intimacy and knowing someone would always be there for him, no matter what.
There was no way he was going to screw all that up by suddenly turning into Mr. Horndog around her. Hell, it wasn’t as though he was deprived in the female companionship area. Coco’s hideous perfume was still fading from his apartment. He wasn’t exactly hard up.
By midnight, he’d given up on the pacing and gone to bed. With one ear cocked for the sound of Delaney’s apartment door closing, he pretended to read the latest surf mag from the U.S. until he finally admitted to himself that he’d been staring at the same page for ten minutes.
Switching the light off, he told himself he was going to sleep. What Delaney did with Jake was none of his business. Sam knew he should be far more concerned about this bee she had in her bonnet about selling him her half of the magazine. Why wasn’t he lying there, unable to sleep, worrying about that instead of obsessing over her love life?
Plus, she’d slept with other guys before, he knew she had. It wasn’t as though she was a virgin or anything. Although that would solve a lot of his current problems, he decided as forty minutes went by and there were still no telltale noises from downstairs or any indication that he would be getting some shut-eye anytime soon.
Turning onto his stomach, he pushed his prickly dreadlocks out of the way, irritated by the feel of his ropey hair against his face. The sheets felt itchy and scratchy, too, even though he’d just changed them yesterday. Restless, he rolled over again, this time trying his side.
Maybe he should just wait out this thing that was going on with Delaney and the business. She was freaking over her biological clock, that much was obvious. Perhaps if he let her settle a little, she’d ease back on the idea of bailing on the magazine.
Because try as he might, he just couldn’t get his head around the idea of doing it all without her. She was so fundamentally essential to the way the magazine worked, to the way he worked.
Sighing heavily, he changed sides, making an impatient noise as his hair scratched his face and neck again. His feet got tangled in the bedsheets, too, and he kicked at them viciously until they came loose.
Why couldn’t he get to sleep? All he wanted was to stop thinking about all this crap and have a little bit of peace and quiet. Was that too much to ask?
But everything was annoying all of a sudden—his hair felt like pipe cleaners on his head, his sheets might as well have been made from sandpaper and his whole body felt too hot. After another few minutes of tossing and turning, he bounded from the bed and strode purposefully into the bathroom. Flicking on the light, he found the scissors in the bathroom drawer and grabbed a handful of dreadlocks. Impatient, he hacked away until they came loose in his hand and he could dump them in the bin. Within minutes he’d cut the whole lot off, plugged his hair clippers in and set the blade to number two. It didn’t take long to trim his remaining hair to a short, sharp buzz cut. Before he’d grown the dreads, he’d kept his hair like this for years. Satisfied that he’d done a decent job, he rinsed off briefly in the shower, then returned to the bedroom.
Throwing himself onto the bed, he ran a hand over his newly clippered hair. Better. Much better. His brain even felt cooler, less frenzied, if that were possible. Maybe now he could get some sleep.
Curling onto his side, he closed his eyes—just as the dull thunk of Delaney’s door shutting sounded below. His whole body was instantly on the alert. He held his breath, ears pricked.
Was Jake with her?
Sam couldn’t hear anything. Scrambling to the side of the bed, he craned his head toward the floor, knowing that Delaney’s bedroom was directly under his own. Surely if they were in there, doing…it, he’d hear them, right?
He felt faintly nauseous. And still he couldn’t hear anything. Sliding out of bed completely, he knelt on all fours and pressed his ear to the floorboards.
He was self-aware enough to be ashamed of his own actions—but not enough to stop them. Straining to hear, he held his breath until black spots floated in front of his eyes.
Still nothing. It wasn’t as though either Jake or Delaney were trained ninjas—he should be able to hear something.
Swearing repeatedly under his breath, he padded naked out into his living area and crossed to the sliding doors that opened onto his balcony. Creeping outside, he got down on his hands and knees again and peered through the cracks in the decking that made up the floor of his balcony.
He couldn’t see anything. And his bollocks were shrinking to the size of marbles in the cold night air.
Realizing at last how ridiculous and pathetic he must look, he went back inside.
Delaney was home. He suspected without Jake, but he wasn’t sure. It didn’t really mean anything if she were alone, anyway, since it was nearly one-thirty and she could have had several bouts of energetic, need-fulfilling sex at Jake’s place before coming home to her own bed.
Furious for no good reason, Sam punched his pillow into submission and threw himself back onto his bed.
Sleep seemed like a far-off oasis, never to be attained.
At around three, he groaned into his pillow. It wasn’t enough that his brain was feeling well and truly fried from all the back-and-forth bullshit he’d been indulging in all night, but he had a persistent, throbbing erection that would not quit. He was practically drilling a hole to China, the thing was so hard.
Rolling over, he got a grip on the situation. With a bit of luck, a quick bout of hand relief would also do the trick for his insomnia—in his book, an orgasm was nature’s most effective sleeping pill.
Closing his eyes, he gave himself up to the slow build of sensation as his hand stroked up and down. Images flashed in front of his mind’s eye as he trawled his own personal X-Files for inspiration: a pair of lean, hungry thighs, spread wide. A peachy backside arched high in the air. Small, pert breasts pouting for his tongue and his touch.
Sam grunted, building his tempo as the images began to coalesce into one sexy, hot woman. She was beneath him, her long legs wrapped around his torso as he hammered into her. Her back arched, her nipples demanding his mouth and her head tossed from side to side as she panted her pleasure.
“Oh, yeah, baby,” he encouraged in the privacy of his fantasy.
Then the woman opened her eyes, and he realized he was staring into Delaney’s pleasure-clouded face, and that he was riding her body, his erection buried deep inside her.
He swore angrily and jerked his hand away from his penis as though he’d just been electrocuted.
Wrong. So wrong, on so many levels.
But he’d been so close. So damned, temptingly close.
Lying in the dark, panting, Sam made a decision and slid his hand back onto his hard shaft. He could control his own fantasies, couldn’t he? For the sake of a bit of fulfillment? Squeezing his eyes shut tight, he concentrated on calling another woman to mind. Coco. Or that cheeky brunette…Sandra, that was her name. Or Mandy, with her sexy little laugh.
But it was no good. The only woman his subconscious wanted to have sex with was Delaney, and she kept snaking her long legs around him and panting in his ear.
After an unequal struggle, he gave up all resistance. He was so close, and too greedy for release. It’s just a fantasy, he told himself as he imagined burying his face in Delaney’s breasts. It doesn’t mean anything. And, more importantly, she never needs to know.
In seconds he was shuddering out his orgasm, Delaney’s name on his lips, her image in his mind. Afterward, he wallowed in unaccustomed guilt. He hadn’t felt this bad about a bit of harmless self-gratification since early puberty.
What a sterling day, he thought as he at last drifted off to sleep. Absolutely sterling.
DOWNSTAIRS, DELANEY TOSSED and turned for hours after Jake dropped her off and she’d crawled into bed. Jake had wanted to come in, but she hadn’t felt up to the pretense. It had been exhausting enough making it through dinner.
She felt bad about letting him kiss her, though. She hadn’t really wanted to, and she’d had no intention of following through. He must have thought he was in with a good chance when she let him press her up against her door and thrust his body against hers. But she’d only done it out of a sort of morbid curiosity, just to confirm how big a hopeless case she was.
Pretty big, was the answer. Not a single zing from Jake’s very practised kiss. Nothing but a realization that mouth-to-mouth contact was really kind of disgusting if you didn’t want to jump someone’s bones.
At six in the morning, she got sick of pretending she was ever going to sleep. Throwing off the covers, she strode into the bathroom and ran herself a bath. When it was foamy and full, she dimmed the lights and sank into the steaming water. If she couldn’t sleep, she could at least try to unwind a little. Yesterday had been a trying day, between breaking her big news to Sam, getting a makeover, and going out on her first date in over six months.
Easing her head back against the rim of the bath, Delaney closed her eyes. The water was warm and soothing, sweetly scented with her favorite mango bath gel. Slowly she felt the tension ease from her limbs.
She’d spent the night agonizing over whether she was doing the right thing or not and mourning the loss of her friendship with Sam. Because that was inevitable. Once he learned the next stage in her plan—that she was going to sell her apartment—he would understand what she was doing: cutting him out of her life. And then things would really get ugly.
No one liked to be rejected, least of all by the person they trusted more than anyone else in all the world—and she knew she was that person for Sam, just as he was for her. She was going to hurt him so much. But she felt as though she was fighting the battle of her life—and if she lost, she would have to give up on having a full and complete existence and resign herself to remaining Sam’s faithful, reliable sidekick for the rest of her days.
She really didn’t know if she had the strength to go through with it all, though. That was the troubling part. As soon as she’d seen Sam yesterday, her thighs had gone weak. How could she get so turned on just by being in the same room with him, yet he was completely indifferent to her?
Even though she knew it was a refined form of torture, Delaney let herself remember how he’d looked when she first saw him yesterday. Strong and tanned, his eyes sparkling with energy, his hard body relaxed. She shifted minutely in the bath as she remembered the flash of belly she’d seen when he’d scratched his chest. He had a great stomach, ribbed with muscle and sprinkled with exactly the right amount of hair. She’d seen it so many times when they were out surfing that it should have been about as sexy as a foot or an ear or an elbow to her. But it never failed to excite her.
She realized her thighs had spread apart in the water, and that her hand had found its way to the nest of curls at the juncture of her thighs. Biting her lip, she slid a finger between her own folds. Her clitoris was swollen, already aroused by her thoughts, and she slid her finger over and over it gently, imagining it was Sam’s hand between her legs, Sam about to bring her to climax.
Panting, Delaney let her head drop back and gave herself up to the building tension between her thighs. Her free hand slid onto her breasts, sliding from one soap-slicked mound to the other, plucking at her nipples with increasing firmness.
“Oh, Sam,” she sighed, completely lost in her fantasy.
Only to have the mood abruptly shattered by the sound of someone pounding on her front door. She shot bolt upright in the tub, water sloshing around her as she wondered who on earth would be on her doorstep so early in the morning.
She guessed who it was at the same time that Sam called out for her to let him in.
“Come on, Delaney—we need to talk,” he bellowed from behind the door.
Climbing from the tub, Delaney hastily towelled herself dry and dragged on her silk robe. It was ridiculous to feel caught out, but she did. She’d been indulging her sexual fantasies about Sam for years, and it had always been hard to look him in the eye the next time she saw him. Now she felt as though she’d been busted in the act.
