“Hell, if I’d known that I wouldn’t have worked so hard.”
She let out her own laugh then, swatting harmlessly at his chest. “You know what kind of expectations I’m talking about. The long-term kind.” It would be impossible to go to bed with Nate without some kind of expectation. His name was practically scrawled on the ladies’ lounge wall next to the words “for a good time”. “It’s never been so much…fun. So…free. My other experience wasn’t like this.”
This time it was Nate’s turn to pull back. “Your ‘other experience’? As in singular? I mean, I knew your experience was limited, but that idiot was your first?”
“Nate! Can’t you at least pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about? And he isn’t an idiot.” Clint wasn’t perfect. Far from it. What she’d had with him was polite. It was pleasant. But it hadn’t been deep and it hadn’t been passionate. It hadn’t been real. How could it have been when one of the people in the relationship hadn’t actually existed? Not that Clint ever noticed or cared. But even so, it hardly seemed fair to discuss his lack of creativity and vigor with a man so completely out of his league.
“I can’t believe you gave it up to Clint.”
Payton bristled. Some long-ago disappointment—frustrated and immature—reared its head, lashing out. “Well, you didn’t take it,” she snapped. “I had to give it to someone.”
Nate coughed, his brows crashing down. “Thankfully you never offered.”
Yes, probably a good thing since he’d vanished from her life a few days after she’d decided she wanted him to be the one. She’d finally been ready to screw up the courage and tell him how she felt. Only it was too late. The friendship between them had become a casualty of the fallout with Brandt.
Nate’s finger caught under her chin, urging her focus back to his face. “I think it might have killed me to say no. But I would have had to. You were sixteen.”
“You were only eighteen.”
“Yeah, but there’s a big difference between those ages, Payton. Besides, I was leaving for school and I didn’t ever want to come back.”
Because of people like her brother and his friends. Nate knew plenty about being on the wrong side of the talk, just as she did. And right now, she didn’t want either of them to have to think about it.
“Well, I suppose you might have been worth waiting for.”
Propping an arm behind his head, he cocked a wry smile at her. “So glad you enjoyed yourself.”
“The way my life has been going, well, I needed this—you.” She blinked up at him, those soft brown eyes tugging at his heart just as they always had. “You really are quite a lot of fun.”
Leaning in, he caught her lips with his own. His arm tightened across her back, holding her close through this soft, lingering last kiss. Slowly they parted and Payton let out a sigh that feathered over his jaw and neck as she drew away. It was a sweet, quietly satisfied sound that, coupled with the soft press of her breast against his abdomen, the smooth skin of her thigh crossed over his, and the bare heat of her against him, had him fighting the urge to pull her back.
She felt good and he wanted her again. Wanted more fun. More intensity. He wanted to give her more of what she’d never had before. Except he didn’t want to give her any kind of false promise or misconception about the potential for a relationship. And something in those big brown eyes staring up at him said he needed to tread carefully. Payton’s heart was a responsibility he didn’t want to bear.
“I get what you’re saying. And I had a good time, too.” “Had” being the operative word.
“Thanks, Nate.” Her grin spread wide and she closed her eyes indulging in one long, languorous stretch that moved her in a slow slide of flesh as she rolled away from him. His gut tensed as she arched back, rotating her hips in a decadent extension of feminine musculature and pretty pink skin. He should look away. Turn his head. Get the hell out of the bed before he did something stupid, but already his heart was turning over, getting ready to rev with thoughts of consequence quickly dissipating.
Maybe just one more—
And then she was climbing out of bed—dragging the sheet he’d barely had a corner of with her as she cast an impish wink back and darted for the bathroom.
His fingers tingled where he’d almost gotten hold of her. Damn, it was a good thing they were taking this off a physical level. He liked control. After the past six months, he needed it. And Payton, all naked and soft, had an unnerving ability to threaten his.
He glared at the closed bathroom door. He wasn’t following her in there.
The shower sounded, then the quiet thud of the sliding glass door as it closed.
He wasn’t going to take her against the tile wall. Bury himself inside her again. No. Because if he gave in, one more time wouldn’t be enough. It would be again and again. Finding new and creative ways to get Payton’s petite form wrapped tight around him. In his arms. In his bed. But that was all he’d have to offer her. Sex. And right now, the friendship they both needed was more important than that.
So, no. Definitely not. He wouldn’t follow.
6
Payton stood beneath the hot spray, her body tender from sensual satisfaction, her mind whirling a mile a minute as she began to compartmentalize everything that had happened with Nate. Everything that would happen. She needed to be cool, to make sure he understood she didn’t have expectations about a future together. Or at least a romantic future. Because while last night had been incredible—exciting in a way she hadn’t believed possible and would never regret—it was the going forward that mattered.
Going forward as friends.
Tipping her face beneath the water, she pushed back the sodden curls, wringing the heavy mass clean.
These past hours with Nate had been a taste of what she’d missed so much over the years. Someone who could see her as she truly was. Accept her without recrimination. He hadn’t balked at her attraction—her interest in a single night of insanity. He’d helped her embrace it.
She needed that kind of freedom and acceptance as she edged out of the mold of perfect daughter to a man no longer there to maintain it for. She needed to be real.
Brandt wouldn’t approve of this business with Nate, and her mother—well, she was already worried out of her mind about the changes Payton had made with her career, her apartment, Clint. Most of all Clint. Nate would be just one more thing. But it was time she stopped living her life to someone else’s expectations.
Turning the brass tap fixtures to “off”, she stepped from the shower and knotted a thick terry bath sheet between her breasts. Stared into the mirror seeing the foggy image of a woman no one knew.
She’d been alone for too long. Surrounded by so many people—all the right people with their picture-perfect smiles and placid conversation—yet none of them knew her. What she really thought. Who she was.
And at the first sign she might be more than they believed, the talk had started. Concerned talk. Catty talk. The kind of talk she’d never been interested in and didn’t care to listen to now. She’d rather be alone. Only eventually loneliness wore on a person and they started to search for someone—a friend—to take them as they were.