The Kiss Test (21 page)

Faces turned toward each other, shoulder to shoulder, bare leg to bare leg, Chris’s mouth, the one that administered the Kiss Test, was only inches away.

“It won’t work,” I croaked.

“Won’t it?”

My eyes drifted of their own accord to Chris’s mouth, cocked in a little smile, poised for attack.

“Scared?” he asked again.

This time I just shook my head, although I don’t think it really moved. “Go ahead. You’ll just prove me right. The Kiss Test is a sham.”

“Okay. If that’s what you want.”

Before I knew what was happening, he moved in for the kill.

Chris’s lips were soft, yet firm. Moist, but not overly so. He applied just the right amount of pressure.

My stomach jumped a little, and, without really meaning to, I kissed him back. Applying a little of my own pressure. A little of my own moisture. Just a touch of tongue.

With a moan, Chris took hold of the back of my neck, keeping our lips firmly in contact, as we passed phase one of the Kiss Test and advanced to the head of the class.

My God. He was an incredible kisser. It was like bait. Hook ’em on, reel ’em in. He fished, women bit and he took them home for dinner. Or dessert. I now knew why Katya was desperate for a second chance. Hell, I wanted a second chance, and I hadn’t even finished my first.

A few minutes—or maybe hours—later, we finally came up for air. Chris didn’t release me though, his hand tight on the back of my neck. We both panted as we searched each other’s eyes for, I don’t know, grades maybe. I wondered if he could tell I’d already given him a perfect score.

“Didn’t expect that to be the conclusion,” Chris finally ground out.

“What conclusion is that?” I whispered, acutely aware that my breasts were smashed up against some incredibly muscular pecs and that, at some point during the kiss, I’d turned in to it and draped my legs over Chris’s lap.

I couldn’t force myself to move them.

“I’m not sure. I think…I think I need more data.”

The next casting of the line proved fatal for this fish. Within seconds, I was on his lap, straddling him, conscious of every stroke of my body against his. Conscious of every lap of his tongue into my mouth. Conscious of the moment his hand found my breasts and freed them from the bra with the rasp of the front-closing zipper. Involuntarily, I moved against him, pushing into his hands, his groin, taking in the sensations, not new, and yet
so
new. I’d had sex a thousand times and it had never been like this. Had I just forgotten, or…had it really never been like this before?

Chris groaned against me, grasping my hips and dragging me even tighter to him. He was hard as stone when I rose on my knees, settling over him, completing the contact. Above us, the candle wavered and fell as we shook the dresser, casting the room into complete darkness. It was safer that way. I could forget how dangerous this was. How dangerous he was.

“You pass,” Chris whispered, and I laughed nervously.

“I figured.” The sound that escaped me was keening, as Chris’s fingers pushed aside my underwear to plunge inside me. “Oh, God.”

As his fingers moved, his lips sought and found first one nipple, then the other, drawing them into his mouth, suckling until I was nearly delirious with the sensations.

“I want…” Chris whispered, against a swollen, peaked nipple.

“Yes.” Without thinking, I reached between us, tugging down his Aladdin’s Lamp boxers and giving it the previously offered rub. He removed his fingers from me, and without pausing to even enjoy the feel of his length in my hand, I guided him to me, nudging aside the panties and impaling myself on him. My chest exploded at the feeling that pushed through me as he filled me. I was right.

It had never,
ever
been like this before.

With his hands on my bottom, Chris guided our movements. In and out. In and out. Slowly at first, the panties providing amazing friction and tightness. Then faster, as the sensations built, and we both became desperate for release.

Faster, as Chris’s mouth attacked my neck, plucked at my nipples, feasted on my lips.

Even faster still, as the tension built and the blood rushed from my head, Chris drove into me over and over again.

With a final thrust, we exploded simultaneously, pulsing as we clung together, our breath lodged in our lungs.

Subconsciously, I knew that this would never happen again, that this was a one-time shot. And that I would never, ever be satisfied like this again.

With anyone.

God, he probably thought I’d been
asking
him to kiss me.

He was going to hate me in the morning.

Almost like…making love.

I don’t know who started it. But, I know who ended it.

As soon as I became fully conscious, and
came
to the realization Chris and I were…you know…again, I came unglued.

“Oh my God.” I tore my lips from his, pushed him away, grabbed the nearest articles of clothing I found and barricaded myself in the bathroom.

Oh, God. What had I done?

I’d screwed my best friend. Biblically.

Not once, but twice.

And
liked
it.

I felt sick.

We had to get past this.

“Yes, we’re awkward,” I replied. “I mean, we have a right to be. We did something best friends don’t do. It was like…it was like…just something not done. This morning we had an excuse. You yourself said that morning sex is, like, nearly an unconscious act. We just woke up in the middle of it. Geez, as many times as we’ve slept in the same bed in the last ten days, it’s amazing it hasn’t happened before. Us waking up, doing that, thinking we were with someone else. Right?”

“Right,” Chris agreed, his voice monotone—with embarrassment of course. “I am surprised we never did that before.”

“Right. And last night. Well, I should never have asked you about the Kiss Test. And I think we can blame the rest of it on exhaustion, the humidity…and a sugar high from all that vending-machine candy. Really, it was meaningless.”

“Meaningless.”

“Of course.” I ventured a sideways glance at Chris, who concentrated wholly on the road, a muscle flexing as he clenched his jaw. He’d never forgive me for starting that stupid Kiss Test conversation in the first place. I had to reassure him. “Of course, it was meaningless. After all, it was just sex. Two grown adults, a bit crazy with carbohydrate poisoning. It meant nothing.”

“Nothing.” Chris nodded, his mouth firm and strong.

God. Shit. Stop thinking about his mouth. Think straight. Think—patch this up before he never speaks to you again.
“Yes. Nothing. It was completely my fault and I truly meant nothing by it. So you don’t have to worry about it anymore. Put it out of your mind. Think nothing of it.”

“Right.”

“Right.” I held my breath, waiting for him to say something else. He didn’t. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

Chris turned to look at me, and I had the urge to rip off his sunglasses so I could see his eyes. So I could gauge if he was looking at me with complete and utter contempt or if, by some small chance, he’d forgiven me already—however improbable that was. “What more is there to say? I think you covered all the bases.”

Trying not to flinch thinking of all the bases we’d covered in the last twelve hours, I smiled as brightly as I could, considering I had no clue whether he was really okay with things. Rather than push it, I chose to pretend
I
was okay. “Alright then. We’re good.”

We dropped into silence for a while, the only sounds being the radio on low volume and the fluttering sound of the Jeep’s soft top. The only time we talked was when I gave directions for the detour Norman the motel clerk had given us to get around the flooded roads. Chris followed my instructions without comment.

We finally took a break at a rest stop near Kingman, Arizona. When I returned to the Jeep, Chris was already there. He cracked open a Coke and handed it to me.

“I think we should go straight through to L.A.”

I halted with the can halfway to my lips. “What?”

He shrugged and appeared markedly interested in an older gentleman walking his Schnauzer. “I think we should skip Vegas and go straight on to L.A. I’ve got business to attend to. You have a wedding to get ready for. I’m sure your mom would appreciate you being there earlier than planned.”

I don’t want to be in the same bed with you again.
He didn’t have to say the words aloud. I heard them clearly just the same.

If I argued that I really wanted to see Las Vegas, he’d probably give in, and either nothing would happen because neither of us would be able to sleep the entire time we were there, or something
would
happen and he’d really hate me forever and our friendship would be damaged beyond repair. I couldn’t risk that. “Okay,” I said, downing half the can of Coke. “L.A. it is.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “No arguments?”

I shrugged. “It’s probably safer that way. For both of us,” I muttered as I climbed into the passenger seat.

Chris set his hands on my shoulders and stood there until I finally looked up him. I really, really didn’t want him touching me. The possibility existed of my being unable to control myself around him.

Our awkwardness had slowly slipped away as the day went on. Mine because I decided to try the “fake it ’til you make it” method of getting over my acute embarrassment and humiliation. I don’t know how Chris got over his awkwardness but, after a few hours on the road, he started humming along to the ’80s CDs we played when the radio signal was too weak to pick up. At that point, I figured he was cool.

We pulled into L.A., or rather the outskirts of Santa Monica where Quinn lived, in late afternoon. Chris had called ahead to his hotel see if his room was available, and we stopped there to change into dry clothes—purchased at the local Macy’s. Chris sent the rest of his wet clothes to the hotel laundry, and I planned on dumping mine on my mother. If she wanted to be motherly, she could start with my laundry.

At Chris’s hotel, I completely ignored anything that remotely looked like something we could have sex on. This included the bed, the little round table in the corner, the bathtub and probably the most dangerous surface of all, the floor, where the dirty deed had been committed in the first place. Basically, I refused to allow my eyes to light on anything in the entire hotel room, because, God knew, even the vertical wall surface would suffice should the need become overwhelming.

In fact, while Chris changed clothes, I took up sentry duty in the hallway. It seemed the safest place. Sex in the hall was out of the question. I decided motel arrangements on the way home to Manhattan would require double rooms—or tag-team driving. No more tempting fate by sleeping in the same bed ever again. It was the only way I’d get any rest whatsoever.

“Hello. Earth to Margo.”

“What?” I asked, when Chris’s scrutiny of me in front of Quinn’s house carried on too long. I shrugged off his hands, which he dropped off my shoulders with a frown.

“Why are you so afraid of your mother?” he asked, all serious and adult-looking, while I felt like a child being punished.

“I’m not afraid of her,” I protested. When had Chris’s eyes become the color of dark honey? I obviously hadn’t been able to see them in the dim light of the motel room last night, because I would have noticed something like that.

He raised an eyebrow over one of the said honey-colored eyes.

“I’m afraid of
being
like her,” I finally confessed. “Fickle. Cheap. Easy.”

Chris frowned. “You think your mother is cheap and easy?
Really?
”

“Okay, she’s probably really expensive.”

“Margo.”

I huffed out a breath and turned back toward the Door of Doom. “You’re such a poop.”

“Ah, but I’m
your
poop.”

Chris’s smile was back—I could hear it—and it cheered me up. So much that he only had to push me twice more to get me all the way to the front stoop. Oh, and he had to ring the doorbell because I think my arms broke somewhere on the way up the long sidewalk.

“Margo!” My mother had the door open before the elegant—and lengthy—chimes finished ringing within the house.

At least I think it was my mother. She looked so…young. The last time I’d seen her, her hair had been a cotton candy cloud of teased albino fluff. Styled now in a sleek chestnut bob, she looked like she had during my childhood—only happy.

Chris broke the ice first, giving me yet another shove from behind. I landed in my mother’s arms and reluctantly returned her hug.

“And Christopher!” Mom released me and replaced me with Chris, who accepted her embrace much more willingly than I, the traitor.

“You look wonderful, Miss June.”

I barely covered my snort with a cough. Chris had taken to calling her Miss June when she remarried after my father left. After all, she wasn’t Mrs. Gentry anymore. She’d finally told him to call her the impossibly Southern and old-fashioned Miss June to avoid confusion. Maybe she’d had a premonition about how many last name changes she’d go through.

“Come on, you two,” my mother prompted, slipping a hand through each of our arms.

“Let’s go meet the family.”

With the exception of my brother, Rob, I didn’t recognize anyone in the living room as “family,” but a sharp glare from Chris prevented me from pointing that out.

“Everyone! This is our family friend, Christopher Treem. And, of course, my Margo.”

I pasted on a smile and refrained from rolling my eyes at the fake tone of pride in my mother’s voice.

Apparently no one else noticed, because they all descended on me at once. First, my mother’s fiancé, Quinn McFarland. He was a giant of a man, red-haired and freckled, with a bear of a grip that nearly crushed my ribs.

“My new daughter,” he declared, in a rolling Scottish brogue that had my eyes popping—not at his presumptuous words, but at how extremely sexy they sounded when he said them.

Obviously one hot night of steamy sex had recharged my hormones if I was lusting after my mother’s fiancé, who’d said exactly three words to me. Geez.

Next came Paul and Red, Quinn’s sons. Paul, the oldest, was dark and had a persona to match his dad’s. I got a hug from him, as well as a declaration of siblinghood. “Surely you’ll be better than the two sisters I’ve already got,” he said with a wink.

I barely had time to register the protests from the back of the line of people waiting to invade my personal space, before the next son of Quinn had his arms around me. Red was a carbon copy of his father—right down to the kilt. Both men wore tartan kilts straight out of
Braveheart,
very possibly bare-assed authentic beneath them. I wondered what they’d do if I tried to check. It might make this meeting less gruesome.

With barely a moment to catch my breath after the last bone-cracking hug, Red disappeared from view, shoved aside by a mini version of the two red-headed, kilt-wearing men—minus the kilt. And with breasts.

“I’m Sam, the youngest, and I’ll spare you the wrestling hold.” She stuck out her hand, which I accepted gratefully while choking back a laugh. “You want any dirt on these toads, I’m your girl. And watch out for the blonde. She’s lactating.”

“Hey!” Said blonde shoved her way into the picture and promptly thrust a crying baby into my arms. “Hold Jamie so I can hug you properly,” she said, her eyes actually misting over as she looked at me. “I’m Denise, and I always wanted a
nice
sister. Please say you’re a nice sister, Margo.”

I’d have laughed at her desperately emotional plea, if only I hadn’t had to concentrate on keeping a death grip on the thing in my arms. I’d held exactly one baby in my entire life…and this was it. I stared at it in horror as what I hoped would be the last sister—Denise—babbled on about how unsympathetic her family was about her hormonal state, and how they didn’t understand how difficult it really is to produce X amount of breast milk every day, while fighting cracked and bleeding nipples and something about latching problems. I lost her at that point.

Unfortunately, I did not also lose the baby in my arms, who continued to squirm as if I held it wrong. I cast desperate glances around the room for help. None was available. My mother was as misty-eyed as the hormonal Denise, as she watched me holding the infant (with obviously no clue as to my discomfort) and clutched her hands to her breasts, probably in supplication that I produce a grandchild in the near future. Like that would happen. Thank God I was on the Pill and didn’t have the added worry that mine and Chris’s entanglement last night—or this morning—would produce any little Treems nine months from now, since we’d been stupidly neglectful of protection.

Finally another man appeared behind the now nearly hysterical new mother, and steered her away from me. “Adam,” he said, by way of introduction. “Whose fault all of this display is. I should have kept it in my pants.”

I flashed a wide-eyed glance at Chris, who barely controlled his laughter behind a strategically placed hand.

“Now that everyone’s met,” my mother said, clapping her hands together like a child at a birthday party, “let’s eat!”

Everyone headed out of the room, leaving me standing there, afraid to move lest I drop the unwanted baby onto the hardwood floor.

Rob came up beside me on one side and Chris on the other.

“Having fun yet?” Chris asked with a laugh.

“I’ll give you a million dollars to ditch this baby and take me home to Manhattan. Two million if you can accomplish it in the next five minutes.”

“You’re stuck with him now.” Rob indicated the kid, as he and Chris pushed me to follow the others. “I had to hold him for eight hours straight when I first got here, except during diaper changes and breast feedings. I think it’s like an initiation.”