The Rebound Girl (Getting Physical) (18 page)

There was something about Matt that made him a natural stripper. A big part of it was his lazy confidence, which didn’t balk at behaving a little ridiculously from time to time. But that wasn’t all. Maybe it was the rough forest of hair extending into his jeans, promising so much more. Perhaps it was that he knew how much she loved every second.

Most likely it was just that he knew what awaited at the bottom of that treasure trove of a body of his. How could he not? Thick and strong, his erection had such a powerful effect on her she could barely breathe at the sight of it. And she wasn’t attached to the damn thing. Walking around with that cock every day of the year must be some kind of torture.

“What now?” he asked, his voice hoarse. With his chest exposed and his jeans open at the fly, he wasn’t technically naked, but it
was
pretty cold in here. And his erection sprang from his nest of dark hair with so much glorious promise the rest of the room fell away.

“I want you to take your dick in hand and stroke it. Tell me how it feels.”

She half expected him to be shy about being so vocal, but Matt was a creature of contradictions. He didn’t swear in public, he didn’t like talking about sex in a casual setting and he had a delightfully small vocabulary when it came to her vagina. But as he wrapped his fist around his cock and began an agonizingly slow motion up and down the length of it, he showed no restraint.

“It feels incredible,” he said, his voice gravelly. “Hot. Hard. Heavy.”

Whitney felt herself squirming under his concentrated stare. “Yes. It’s definitely all those things.” It was the most beautiful cock she’d ever seen, all thick and veiny and strong. “Faster. I don’t want you to hold anything back.”

He groaned and pumped harder, never once losing eye contact with her. A lock of hair fell into his face as he concentrated on the task, and his body jerked with each movement.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Whitney commanded. “Tell me what you want.”

“I’m thinking of you. Naked. Sitting on my face.”

The unexpectedly blunt reply caught Whitney by surprise in the best possible way. She had to remind herself to breathe. “What else?” she asked, her voice almost a croak.

“I’m remembering how you taste, sweet and hot. Delicious.” His hand moved faster, driving against his erection with intense focus. “I’m thinking about how smooth your legs are when I force them open, how you get so wet I can barely stop myself from licking every inch of your thighs.”

“Don’t stop.”

“Your breasts. God...” he groaned. “The perfect weight in my hands—I dream of them sometimes, of the way they swell when you breathe heavily, like they can’t get free fast enough. And when you moan like that, I swear your nipples get darker and tighter, begging for my touch.”

Unable to prevent herself, mesmerized by his words, constricted with need, Whitney flew across the room.

He caught her, mid-flying-tackle, providing a cushion when they both fell. And even though the breath flew from their lungs, neither one of them cared enough to stop the crashing of their mouths in a passionate, searing kiss. Whitney couldn’t open her mouth wide enough, her tongue couldn’t get deep enough. She wanted to devour him.

Reaching down, she grabbed the brawny heft of him and finished the job he’d started. It didn’t take much—just a few pumps—and he was groaning into her mouth, spilling hot and sticky over her hand.

She waited just long enough for him to catch his breath before reaching for her jeans and practically ripping them off her body.

“I want what you said. All of it. Right now.”

He took her face in both hands, his eyes kindling fire at her. “Nothing on this earth would make me happier.”

She sighed and gave in to the heady rush of Matt’s hands forcing her legs apart. He moved both of them closer to the wall, allowing Whitney to brace herself with both hands as he lowered her to his mouth.

He kissed deeply, almost hungrily, as if drawing the blood from her whole body and forcing it down to meet his lips. Before Matt, she’d had no idea that a man could kiss a woman as passionately at her entrance as he could her mouth. But he did. His tongue delved in, sweeping along the inner folds of her labia, enjoying every taste. He nibbled and nipped at her clit, applying the perfect amount of pressure when she cried and ground harder against him.

And best of all, he never loosened his possessive grip on her thighs. He pulled her away and brought her closer on his own terms, refusing to let her simply take her pleasure. Instead, he gave it.

She cried out and slapped her hand on the wall as she came. The resounding sting in her forearm did nothing to still the crash of sensation that moved through her. In fact, she slapped the wall again and laid her head against the splintery wood, groaning as he continued providing pressure to the sensitive nub, her body jerking with a few more final twinges of pleasure.

When he pulled away, he left her cold and empty in the glorious space where his head had just been. But not for long.

“Well,” Matt said happily. “That makes one.”

Oh, God—had she really commanded three of those?

His fingers traced a slow and careful pattern up along her lower belly, reigniting the fire that hadn’t gone completely out. She groaned again and sank farther to the ground.

Yes. Yes, she believed she had.

* * *

There was a stitch that ran about two inches along the length of Matt’s side, and he was pretty sure he was going to need Whitney to check his toes for frostbite later, but he didn’t dare move. She’d fallen asleep, exhausted, in his arms, nestled up against him in an unprecedented moment of intimacy even though the blankets they’d spread out over the floor smelled of death, and a frightening rustling in the vicinity of his head signaled that a nest in the nature of the rodent family was located nearby.

Also, Whitney was a blanket hog.

Of course she was—he could have guessed that weeks ago. She was exactly the type of woman who would sleep horizontally and snore and otherwise make sleep inconvenient.

He didn’t care.

He ran a hand gently along the curve of her bottom, which was bare and pressed up against him, stirring his groin despite several hours’ worth of backwoods cavorting that left his whole body numb. He loved the sight of her naked, the feel of her naked. Soft, responsive, a seemingly endless bounty of curves and nooks to explore. Even now, as he ran a hand over the softness of her belly, she murmured and purred, shifting against him.

How easy it would be to get used to this. Or to slip even further into the incredible gift she offered him by moving their sexual relationship to the next level.

Naturally, he’d thought about it—all the time, he thought about it. Maybe he’d take it slow, kissing her entire body from head to toe, savoring all his favorite parts before finally entering her. Possibly he’d push harder. Probably he’d push faster. He’d be unable to control himself as he took his pleasure in the hard, frantic thrusts his body demanded. Over the table, on the bed, up against the shower wall. The seemingly endless loop in his head was nothing if not inventive.

He groaned. Either the noise or the fact that he’d grown rock hard against her signaled the end to her brief nap. As sleep ebbed away, her body stiffened against his.

Wisely, Matt kept quiet and didn’t move his hand. A man didn’t work in his profession without learning a little patience. Letting him talk about Laura had been an act of kindness, bringing him here for a change of scene even more so. Whitney might like to drive home the temporary nature of their relationship whenever she could, but she was warming to the idea of more. She had to be. He wasn’t sure he could bear it otherwise.

Whitney pretended to be asleep for a few more minutes, unnaturally still and tense. When she finally turned, it was with a forced stretch and a yawn, her smile tight.

He leaned in and kissed her nose. “My toes are freezing.”

It was the right thing to say because she laughed and relaxed a little, though she pulled away enough that his body felt the loss of her heat and softness. “Get one of those single moms to knit you some socks—I’m not contributing to anything that covers you. I like you much better in the nude.”

Whitney was nothing if not predictable—that was a classic Step One. Put him in his place. Matt was a sex toy, an object of lust and welcome to encourage the attentions of others as long as it didn’t interfere with their arrangement.

“By the way, we’re going to have to cool it a little this week.”

Step Two. Set more boundaries.

“That’s fine,” Matt said congenially, rolling over and stretching his limbs. His toes were cold but not discolored. Still, he pulled on his boxers and jeans, comfortably half-dressed while he searched for his socks and shirt. “Give me a call when you’re free.”

“I mean it, Matt. Don’t stop by or anything. My parents are visiting, and I don’t want to have to explain...” Her voice trailed off and she waved her hand between the two of them. The movement brought to mind just how cold it was, and she shivered, all of her body covered in a ripple of goose bumps, which didn’t fail to take hold of her nipples, pointed skyward and tempting.

He turned away. That was Step Three, and it was the one that hurt the most. Drive home her refusal to capitulate with whatever force was necessary. The more brutal, the better.

“Got it. The parents are in town. No clandestine meetings. No lovers hidden under the bed. I’ll cease to exist.” As soon as he said the words, he regretted them. They smacked of little-boy-irritation.

“Hey—if you don’t like the arrangement, we can stop right now.” She’d pulled on her shirt and underwear, but even in a state of half undress, she was formidable. She meant every word.

It would be the easy solution, that was for sure, to let her go and move on. He would miss the sex—good God, there wasn’t a hot-blooded man on earth who wouldn’t miss that sex—but more importantly, he would miss her.

Longing for a woman wasn’t new to Matt. A guy didn’t grow up an awkward, straight-A student without feeling the lack of female admiration in his life. That sort of thing—of him trying too hard to please, always falling short of the goal—had been a staple of almost all his relationships to date. Even with Laura, she’d fallen out of love with him before he’d fallen out of love with her. He’d always done more wanting, more waiting, more everything.

Whitney had sensed that at the outset—wasn’t that what she said? That he needed a rebound girl in order to learn how to differentiate sex and a relationship?

He obviously sucked at that.

“It’s not a problem, Whitney,” he said, forcing himself to continue looking bland and uninterested. She didn’t seem convinced, but there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it unless they dumped all their thoughts and emotions onto the floor and pulled them apart, examining for clues.

Like that was going to happen.

So they got dressed. They cleaned up the dirty cabin and piled into the car, the top thankfully up and secure as night settled around them.

As Whitney cranked up the radio and stepped on the gas, Matt could just make out the red kite in the distance, still flapping proudly in the wind, full of sexual promise.

He hoped it would be there when they came back.

Who was he kidding? He hoped they came back, period.

Chapter Fourteen

“You don’t have a serious boyfriend, you don’t cook and you obviously haven’t cleaned this place since you moved in.” Whitney’s mother clipped around her condo, her heels echoing off the hardwood with an ominous sound made possible by borrowing her daughter’s favorite shoes. She spun on one of the tall black heels. “What do you do with all your free time?”

Her dad, who had found the remote control and lodged a permanent place in the corner of her couch, looked up from under bushy gray eyebrows. His face was craggy and weathered in ways that worked like a balm on Whitney’s psyche. “She works, dear. Doctors are very busy and important.”

“Thank you, Daddy.” Whitney leaned over and kissed his cheek, which was scratchy and papery and just the way she remembered. “You see? I’m far too successful to bother with the mundane details of life.”

Her mother’s brow arched—well, as much as it could arch, anyway. Her mom loved free Botox as much as the next plastic surgeon’s mother. “Oh, sweetie. If you consider a man a mundane detail, you’re doing it wrong.”

Her dad guffawed. “Or she’s doing
him
wrong.”

Behind her, her parents high-fived.

Oh, dear Lord. She couldn’t take thirteen more days of this. Having sexually liberated parents wasn’t the awesome party it appeared on the outside. By day three, her dad would be comfortable enough in the new setting to default to his standard wander-around-the-house-near-nude form, and her mother would take to filling her fridge with strange French cheeses and her underwear drawer with strange French undergarments.

“It just so happens I
am
kind of seeing someone,” she said defensively, the words slipping out before she remembered the long-term ramifications of such a confession.

Her mother kissed her forehead. “John doesn’t count, dear. You’ve tried passing him off as a boyfriend, what is it, three times now? We might live in the suburbs, but we’re not stupid. We know all about the gays.”

“It’s not John—and I never tried passing him off as anything.” Really, there’d just been that one time, and John had deliberately sabotaged her by bringing a date. The nerve.

“Well then, Peanut.” Her dad patted the seat next to him. “Why don’t you tell us all about him? Is he coming over later? Do your mother and I need to find something to entertain ourselves for a while?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Whitney sat and sank into her father’s arms, which were open and waiting. For all her grumbling, there was something timeless about her parents being near, as if she was once again a little girl and all it took to put the world back on its axis was a hug and a comforting ear. Her eyes watered, and she let herself bask in the scent of him, cloves and antiseptic soap.

Funny. She hadn’t even known she was upset.

“I’ll make coffee,” her mother announced, taking the pair of them in at a glance. “You two look like you could use a little chat.”

Unfortunately, her mother was as adept in the kitchen as Whitney, and she rattled around for a few seconds before heaving a sigh. “I don’t understand why this thing has so many buttons. Whatever happened to hot water and a can? Why don’t I make a coffee run instead?”

“There’s a café called Java Rocket around the corner,” Whitney called from the comfort of her father’s chest. “I’d love a cappuccino.”

“Make it two,” her father said. “And a muffin.”

“Mmm. Good idea.” Whitney nestled further. “Or some scones.”

“Of course, my loves,” her mother returned, her voice dry. “Keep ordering. I’ll carry it all down the street on my head.”

The moment the clack of Whitney’s Louboutin heels—which she was pretty much guaranteed never to get back now—could be heard careening down the front steps, her dad pulled away and chucked her chin, forcing her eyes up. “Okay, Peanut. Spill. Who’s the jerk and how soon should I make a call to your cousin Vito?”

Whitney sniffled and laughed, and a strange choking sound escaped from the base of her throat. “It’s not fair to invoke poor Vito every time you want to make an idle threat. He can’t help that Aunt Paulina gave him that awful name.”

The laugh and redirect didn’t work. Now that his wife was out of the way, her dad would do what it took to get to the bottom of this—and Whitney knew there was no escape.

“I mean it, Whitney. What’s up?”

Most of the time, it was wonderful being Daddy’s Little Girl. She and her father had always been close, always been pitted against her mother on every issue of importance. By virtue of the family democracy in which they carried the lead, the two of them had made the decision where to go on vacation each year—almost always somewhere tropical and expensive—whether or not her dad should take the job in another city, what to eat for dinner each night.

Her dad had also been the only one to defend her when she quit Make the World Smile, the one who picked her up from the airport when all of her belongings were shoved into a pair of dirty duffel bags and she was being detained by airport security because she’d forgotten her passport when she hightailed it out of Guatemala.

It wasn’t that her mom wouldn’t have done any of those things, of course. But Daddy was always there first, and he always made things better. And he was much easier to talk to when her mom’s overbearing concern wasn’t in the room with them. She had a tendency to overdramatize things a little.

Okay. A lot. It was a family trait.

“Nothing is up.” Whitney shifted out of his grasp. “It’s not a big deal.”

“How long have you been dating?”

“Well...we’ve been
seeing
each other about two months.” Technically, it was the truth. “And he’s nice—really nice. He teaches kindergarten.”

Her dad laughed out loud. “You’re funny, Peanut. Who is he really?”

“I can’t date a teacher?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“I’m serious. He’s a teacher and he wears sweater vests and he drives a really awful car. One that’s so out of date you can’t even buy parts for it anymore.”

“I had one of those once,” he said, nodding. “A Yugo. What a clunker, always breaking down in the strangest places. I’m pretty sure you were conceived in the back seat, now that I think of it. Your mother and I were on our way home from this party, and she had on these tight little shorts—”

“Omigod, Dad. Stop.” Whitney slapped her hands over her ears. “I do not want to hear this.”

“What? Your mother has always had such a nice round figure. We were more forgiving of that back then.”

“It works just fine now too,” Whitney said defensively. She and her mother were built the same way, though she happened to think she dressed herself better. Her mom liked capri pants and embroidered blouses. No amount of persuasion would get her to realize that high-waisted pencil skirts were much more flattering to their signature generous hips. “But that is so not the point. Daddy, can we please make a promise not to talk about boys while you guys are here? Let’s just have it be us for a few weeks. No boyfriends. No ghosts.”

“If that’s what you want,” he said, though the words were so drawn out it was clear he didn’t mean them. “But I don’t see what harm meeting the guy could do. We’ll be good. I promise.”

Her father’s definition of
good
could mean acting like the decorous lawyer and housewife they really were, or sneaking off in the middle of dinner to have a quickie in the bathroom stall. With her parents, it could go either way.

“I’m not ready.”

“Not ready for what?” Her mother blasted open the front door and directed a petite woman, who Whitney immediately recognized as one of the baristas at the café, to the kitchen. “Right in there, sweetie. That was so nice of you. You tell your boss to give you a raise, okay? Oh, and wait right there. Marshall? Marshall, surely you have something nice to give this young lady.”

Her dad reached into his pocket and extracted his wallet, fat and frayed at the edges. “Give this to your mother. And say nothing about the situation with your young man. You know how she gets.”

As he stressed the final sentence with awful clarity and deliberateness, her mother and the barista both caught every word.

“Oh, don’t say you broke up with Matt?” the barista asked, looking innocent despite her numerous tattoos and the long blue-black hair she wore cut in a killer Bettie Page style. “You guys are so cute together. And he’s such a sweetheart—he always buys an extra coffee for that old man who sits in the corner with his journals.”

“Does he now?” Her mother reached into the wallet and extracted a twenty, pressing it firmly into the woman’s hand. The barista looked at it, wide-eyed, and tried to give it back.

“No, no,” her mother urged. “You earned it. Tell me more about this Matt character.”

“Well...” The barista shifted from foot to foot. She’d caught a glimpse of Whitney’s intense look of warning. The question was, where did her loyalties lie—with the woman pushing a twenty into her hand, or the woman who regularly left tips in her Free Tibet and My Credit Card Debt jar? “I don’t know much else, actually. But he’s nice. There just aren’t that many nice ones out there anymore, you know? The kind with no ulterior motive at all.”

The answer must have satisfied her mother, because she nodded and released her hand—and the money. She walked the woman to the door and waved happily, her fingers trilling a cheerful farewell.

“This is your fault, Dad,” Whitney muttered as her mother turned her eyes, glittering and determined, on her little family. Whitney grabbed one of the to-go coffee cups and buried her face in the little plastic lid, but it was a ridiculous attempt at a barrier. Her mother wouldn’t stop until Matt’s entire list of virtues was unfurled at her feet. Her father, she knew, wouldn’t stop until he had the same thing in the form of all his vices.

“You know, this puts me in mind of something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” her mother began, her tone not unlike that of a parent about to disclose the truth about Santa Claus. “Your father said you guys might be having some financial difficulties with the spa.”

Whitney was confused. “What does this have to do with Matt?”

“We talked about it, and there’s simply no way for us to lend you any more money, sweetie. Not even for partial ownership. We need to be liquid right now. We’ve taken up cruises.”

The disclosure didn’t come as a complete surprise. She and Kendra and John had begun filling out applications at a few larger banks, but it had seemed prudent to cover all the other possible bases first. “It’s okay, Mom. I understand. But I still don’t see where Matt comes in. He’s a divorced schoolteacher with about twenty dollars in his savings account. And I would never ask him anyway.”

“No one said you ought to, dear.” Whitney’s mother shook her head and began passing out the baked goods. “But I wanted to let you know that I’ve been talking to a few interested parties. I might be able to get a potential investor to head down to take a look at the facilities later this week.”

“Really?” Whitney wrapped her arms around her mom’s waist. “That would be so wonderful. You didn’t have to.”

“You can repay me by telling me all about this young man of yours.” She kissed Whitney gently on the forehead. “Tell me—does he golf?”

Golf.
Ugh
.

She’d almost rather they start talking about their sex life again.

* * *

“It’s not a big deal, Matt. Just lunch.”

Matt hid a smile, though he didn’t know why he bothered. He was, for the moment, alone in his apartment. When he’d answered the phone, the last thing he’d expected was Whitney’s voice, resigned and dry. It was only two days into her hiatus of shame. She was breaking already.

And
begging.

“Well, now,” Matt drawled, propping his legs up on his coffee table, littered with books on coping with ovarian cancer. The ladies at the library had almost burst into sobs when he’d lugged every book they had on the subject to the checkout counter. “How your tune has changed. I thought I was forbidden from participating in the time-honored parent parade?”

“Don’t be mean. It was wrong of me to shut you off like that, and I’m sorry. I realize now that there is simply no way to pretend you don’t exist. My parents know me too well, and you...” Her voice grew quiet.

“And I?” he prompted, his pulse leaping.
Say
it
,
Whitney
.
Say
I
matter
.
Say
I’m
more
than
a
temporary
fix
.

She paused. “It’s a small town, Matt. Word gets around.”

Disappointment hit him like a blow to the stomach, leaving him shaky and breathless. “So what happened?” he asked, resigned.

“Maybe I just want you to meet my parents.”

“Or?”

“Maybe I decided you were right and I was wrong.”

Sure
. He tried again. “Or?”

“Or maybe I let it slip that I was seeing someone and they won’t leave me alone.” She sighed into the phone, and Matt couldn’t tell if it was because she was being forced to ask for his help, or if she was afraid he might say something to her parents that he wasn’t supposed to. “They might even think we’re more serious than we really are.”

“Whitney...”

“I didn’t use the word
dating
, I swear. But there’s a teensy tiny possibility it got implied.”

Unbelievable. She refused to admit to herself they could be more than a rebound, refused to admit to Matt that she cared. But her parents? They got the full, idyllic bliss of nondisclosure.

“So I’m supposed to what, exactly?”

“Come to lunch. Smile. Be charming. That’s all.”

“What if they ask me about my intentions?”

“They won’t. They aren’t those kinds of parents.” She paused. “Please? I know it’s not fair of me to ask, but they’re driving me crazy. You’re my only hope. I need you.”

No joke—those words were almost guaranteed to make a man feel good. And this particular man? Hilly was right. Matt loved nothing more than being asked to come to the rescue.