Bad in Bed (8 page)

“No good at what? Explanations? In which case,
I’d have to agree. I’m still lost here.”

“Okay.” She huffed, her beautiful breasts
rising and falling as she sucked air into her lungs.

Shit. He was growing hard again.

“Let’s try words of one syllable. No. Good. At.
Sex. There. Satisfied?”

“Perfectly. Climaxing inside a beautiful,
hot-blooded woman has that effect on me.”

She jerked her shoulder. “Don’t you dare be
crass with me.”

He wouldn’t even try, especially not when her
eyes clouded with the sheen of tears. He tightened his hold around her waist,
easing her back against him. He remembered her saying something earlier about
not being very good at sex, but he’d brushed it aside as a ploy that she might
be fishing for compliments. Looking at her now, he knew he’d been tactless and
insensitive. Shit. She really believed she was rubbish in the sack.

“If you want my opinion on your opinion, I’d
say you’re not very good, you’re fucking fantastic.”

She tensed, her shoulders stiff and her back
ramrod straight. “But you want me to leave anyway?”

Fucking hell. The woman was driving him insane.
“I don’t want you to leave.” He shifted, then pushed her back down until she
was flat on the bed and he lay over her. “I want you to tell me why you think
you’re no good at sex.”

Her hands were on his arms and she tried to push
him away. He wasn’t budging. “I’m just not. Seems I can’t even roll a condom on
a guy without him tapping my hand away because I’m so useless at it.”

Ethan laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “Green
eyes, I tapped your hand away because I was ready to lose it before I got the
damn thing on. One more brush of your fingers against my cock and it might have
been over.”

He took advantage of the little O her mouth
made as she gaped at him and kissed her long and deep. The woman was a goddess
and her vulnerability had humbled him. He needed to show her just how beautiful
and sensual she really was.

It wasn’t hard, but pretty soon he was. With
Herculean effort, he held back from easing her legs apart and sinking his
length deep inside her. She deserved more than another quick screw right then.
With what she’d confessed, Ethan knew he needed words to console before he
could again claim her body. More than that, he needed to know why a woman as
hot and desirable as Amber felt she was rubbish at sex.

He broke the kiss, then levered himself onto
his elbow beside her. “Tell me.” He had to laugh at the irony of the situation.
He was rain-checking a quick screw for the sake of a long talk. Shit. He was
turning into a fucking girl.

* * * *

Now that she’d calmed down a little, Amber felt
like kicking herself for pouring out her angst to him. Sex with Ethan had blown
her socks off and had highlighted her own anxieties about her shortcomings. She
didn’t want to be terrible at sex. She didn’t want Trevor’s hateful claims to
be true. Being with Ethan had opened a whole new world for her, at least where
sex was concerned, and she wanted to continue enjoying that world. With Ethan.

He’d said she was fantastic. Did he mean it?
He’d certainly seemed to enjoy himself. And he hadn’t let her go when she’d
tried to leave. That had to mean something.

He lay next to her, hoisted on one elbow as he
waited for her response. “Going to tell me, gorgeous?”

She could bluff, make excuses, but she didn’t
think she’d get away with it. Not with Ethan. Not after the fuss she’d made.

“I found my fiance in bed with my best friend.”

Ethan grimaced. “Ouch.”

“Yes. Cliché, or what? Came home unexpected
because I had this headache I couldn’t shake, and there they were. He proceeded
to make excuses for himself, trying to blame me.”

“Double ouch.”

“Said I’d driven him to it because I was
basically useless in bed.”

Now Ethan frowned. “I’d say triple ouch, but
the guy’s obviously a brain-dead moron who has pebbles for balls.”

She laughed. “That makes me feel better.” So
did the fact that Ethan looked visibly pissed on her behalf.

“It should.” His frowned deepened. “I hope to
hell you don’t think it was anything to do with you, because if you did you’d
be way off base.”

“Well, it didn’t exactly make me feel like
siren material. Driving a man into the arms of someone else is bad enough, but
my best friend?”

 
“Some
guys just don’t know when they’ve got it good.” Ethan let his fingers drift
over her stomach. “Seems to me if he felt the urge to sleep with another woman,
let alone your best friend, that shows a weakness on his part, not yours.”

It had been easier than she’d thought to tell
him about Trevor, but did she really need to tell him everything? To lay
herself open, put her fragile self-esteem under the microscope? What the hell.
Since she’d told him most of it, she might as well go for broke.

“There really is a triple ouch to all this.”

He raised his hand to her hair and tucked back
some tendrils.

The look in his eyes lessened the ache in her
chest as she endured the last remnants of hesitation to tell him everything.
She turned her head to nestle her cheek against the palm of his hand, then
fixed her gaze to his. “My best friend? The person Trevor slept with? It wasn’t
a woman.”

Chapter Five

Ethan stared at her. Then his eyebrows drew
together in a potent frown. “You’re kidding me.”

Amber shook her head, keeping her gaze fixed to
his because she wanted to see every nuance of his reaction. Would he now see
the flaw in her that had driven her fiance into not only someone else’s bed,
but that of a man? Would he consider her some sort of freak, a woman so lacking
in bedroom skills her fiance had been put off women for life?

“When you said it was your best friend, I just
assumed it was a woman.”

Amber shrugged. “We’d been friends for years,
ever since school. But from now on he’ll always be known to me as the Brighton
Bimbo. It’s stupid, I know, but the name-calling helps. It diminishes the
enormity of it in my head.”

A thunderous look came into his eyes as he
continued to stare at her.

Her cheeks started to burn under his scrutiny
and the discomfort of recounting her humiliation at the hands of a fiance who
had shattered her perception of her own sexuality and confidence. Faced with
that discomfort, she had no choice but to move, so she wiggled out from beneath
him and swung her legs over the bed.

He didn’t stop her this time, which sent panic
shuddering through her, tightening her chest. Did he view her differently now? Was
he listing all the imperfections his sex-hazed brain hadn’t wanted to consider,
cataloguing what she’d been rubbish at, what she’d done wrong? Well, screw him.
She’d been humiliated enough at the hands of a man. She wasn’t sticking around
to endure any more.

Back in the sitting room, Amber grabbed her
dress. She looked around for her panties, but remembered they were still in
Ethan’s trouser pocket. Well, he could keep them. A little memento.

She was busy trying to fasten the zip of her
dress when Ethan stepped up behind her. Her breath caught and tiny shivers ran
along her spine as his fingertips brushed against her back.

“I was hoping you’d stay the night.”

His deep voice intensified the shivers that now
racked her body, but she busied herself tidying the straps of her dress. “I
can’t.”

He grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face
him. While he’d pulled on his trousers, his chest remained bare, and Amber
tried not to remember how it felt to touch those glorious muscles, to taste his
hot flesh. She was wound so tight, she jumped as his thumb and forefinger
settled on her chin.

Slowly, he tilted her head until their gazes
met. “You tell me about your moron fiance, then you run from my bed as if I’m
personally responsible for it. Seems I’m due an explanation, seeing as I’ve
still got a hard-on the size of
Sussex
.”

His voice was very low, very husky, and she
felt her feminine muscles clench with desire as she stared into slumberous blue
eyes. “I’m not that desperate that I need another mercy fuck.”

Those blue eyes heated. “Me either. Although
maybe a mercy fuck is exactly what I need right now to help me retrieve the
brain cells I’m currently missing, seeing as you’re speaking that foreign
language again.”

“Come on. Are you really that clueless?” She
searched around for her shoes, frantic to get away from him, to find a small,
dark corner where she could work through her feelings, her sense of loss and impotence.
Strangely, the idea that Ethan thought badly of her after the night they’d
shared was on a par with walking in on Trevor. She felt just as desolate,
rejected. For more than a few heady moments with Ethan, she’d dared to believe
that her sexual skills were up to scratch, that there wasn’t something lacking
in her.

Oh hell, she was so sick of this. She was sick
of feeling as if she had to justify her very existence by her prowess, or the
lack of, in the sack. Even if there was a problem with her sexual expertise,
she was damned if it was going to define her any longer, make her feel less
than a woman, less than a valuable and deserving human being.

Relieved to find her shoes, she went to pick them
up but Ethan snatched them up before she could reach them. He held them away
from her, the thin straps dangling from his fingers. “Define clueless.”

Ethan’s glare could have melted steel, but
Amber faced him head on. She folded her arms across her chest and faced him.
“Once again let me spell it out for you. I’m not that good in bed. I’m lacking
between the sheets. I know it and now you know it. It’s just the way it is. You
might have voiced it to yourself on some level, but pushed it aside for the
sake of appeasing your raging hormones. Most men can put up with pretty much
anything when there’s a woman happy to put out. But when I told you about
Trevor, you realized that what you’d guessed early on was right.”

Frowning, he folded his arms across his chest,
mirroring her. “Go on. This might get clearer in a couple of years.”

She wanted to grab her shoes, but knew he’d refuse
to release them to her. Instead, she angled her chin at him. “Nothing much more
to say, except it’s been nice and goodnight.” She waited, but he didn’t move or
say anything. She tried for her shoes and as expected he sidestepped, holding
them out of reach.

He glared at her for long moments, then turned and
strode to the kitchen.

Amber stood rooted to the spot as she watched
his long legs eat up the large expanse of sitting room floor. Was he
deliberately being obtuse, or simply feeling guilty because she’d called it
right on the button?

Her eyes scanned the room as she planned her
next move. She could drive without her shoes, but her bag was still in the
kitchen. She couldn’t leave without that, seeing as it contained both her car
and door keys. Yet no way could she stay after everything that had been said.

Eventually, she gave up deliberating and
followed him to the kitchen.

He’d taken a bottle of white wine from the
refrigerator and as the door closed she noticed her bag on top of the unit, out
of her reach. “Look, hand me my bag and I’ll be on my way. No hard feelings.”

Saying nothing, he retrieved two glasses from a
cupboard then proceeded to pour wine.

Her temper hiked. “You’re starting to piss me
off.”

With his back still to her, he straightened,
and she heard him let out a long breath. “You know what? I’m all the way pissed
with you, have been for about fifteen minutes now.” He turned slowly, and his
expression matched the words he’d spoken. “So at the root of all this is you
think you’re bad in bed, basically because a couple of jerks were working out
their sexual preferences and you happened to get caught in the crossfire.” He
stepped toward her, backing her up against the kitchen door.

Her stomach did a flip.

“You want my opinion? Yeah. You’re bad in bed.
So damn bad you blew the top of my head off. And you know something? I want to
fuck you, again and again. But there’ll be no mercy involved.”

His bare chest pushed against her, and if his
words hadn’t cut off her breathing, the feel of his hard strength anchoring her
to the door would have done the trick.

Before she could respond, his mouth crushed
down on hers. He angled his head so she had no choice but to respond to his
demanding lips and his marauding tongue as it clashed with hers.

Not that she wanted a choice, for the first
touch of his mouth against hers blew away any residual doubts as to the sincerity
of his claims that he still wanted her.

He’d said she’d blown his head off. That he
wanted to fuck her again and again. No mercy. Hell, she didn’t want any mercy.
Not with Ethan.