When in Rio (7 page)

I almost couldn’t believe what I heard myself saying, however, when I finally did talk.

“I guess there isn’t much point in acting like I don’t know what you’re talking about. There would only be one reason to do that, which would be to indicate I wasn’t interested.” I took a minute to look out over the waves myself before going on. “Last night you asked what I’d do if you just ordered me out into the hall, and I told you I’d say ‘yes Sir’ and go out to the hall right away. And you said it was really up to me.” I risked a little look at him. He was watching me expressionlessly.

“The thing is, Jack, I’m starting to realize I actually made my choice quite some time ago. And now, apparently, the issue of mismatched preferences isn’t an issue, is it? It’s just back to the question of how willing we are to risk it. So I think now…it’s actually up to
you
.”

Before he could answer, I hopped up from the towel and almost sprinted to the water, not stopping at the tide line but diving straight in and swimming against the waves until my body had cooled in the soothing Atlantic water and my head felt slightly clearer. Flicking my hair out of my face and treading water, I looked back at the beach but saw only Kendra by the towels, not Jack.

Bodysurfing back in toward shore until I could just touch down, I bobbed a little on my toes and looked around in growing distress. Jack also wasn’t with the group of conference guys—Steve, Andre, Kevin and Other Kevin—who had stopped splashing each other and were now standing in waist-deep water and chatting with some blonde. It was Jane, I saw, after paddling a little closer. Perhaps none of them realized they had little hope of getting anywhere with her, and it was probable none of them realized the reason was that Kendra was already getting there with her regularly.

“I could have been a shark,” said a low voice too near my ear, making me jump. I splashed around to face Jack, who had approached me silently and spoken from directly behind me. His greater height enabled him to stand much more firmly on the shifting sand, more easily handling the tidal motion. “Or a jellyfish. Or even just some guy with bad intentions. You weren’t paying any attention at all, little Katie. Not very safe.”

“I’m…sorry, Sir?”
Please let this be what I think it is…

“We both would have been, if something had happened. Don’t go out that far again, please. Or you’ll hear about it from me later. And Katie?” He had started to swim back toward shore but turned back as if what he were about to say was just an afterthought, instead of being the whole point.

“Y-yes Sir?” He stroked back to me, close enough that his face was just inches away from mine, so close I could feel his motions transmitted through the water as he paddled his hands lightly to stay upright.

“I have no idea why Jane had that impression about us. I can only guess it’s an assumption she or Kendra made, not something you said.”

“It is, Sir, I would never have—”

“
Shhh
. Either way, I’m sure she’ll be very happy for you when you tell her you may well need your Tiger Balm back when she’s through with it, after all. Although if you don’t want to need it too badly tomorrow, you should be a good girl for me and skip the
undies
when you’re dressing for dinner tonight.”

And he swam away with a wicked grin, leaving me treading water that felt infinitely less dangerous, and a great deal less interesting, once he was gone.

Chapter Six

Dinner seemed to take place in some scientifically impossible stretch of time that could expand and contract at will. At some moments, the whole thing seemed to be lasting for hours as idle small talk between the ten of us there dragged on and on, failing to quite pull my interest away from wondering what Jack had planned for after we got back to the suite. We had known each other too long, and this trip was too short, for the night to culminate in anything other than sex, so that much was a given. But the details, particularly those related to what happened
before
the sex…there were too many variables, and my mind reeled a bit at the possibilities.

Another few conference attendees, not interested in the beach earlier, had latched on for dinner—Elizabeth, an environmental specialist with a very, very large oil company, and Georges, a somewhat dapper little French engineer who, it turned out, also spoke Portuguese. When Georges and Jack dropped into their second language to chat, about what I had no idea, time seemed to actually come to a halt.

But then, as I sipped rather wearily at the
caipirinha
I had been nursing since before dinner, I felt Jack’s hand shift from the back of my chair, where it had been resting casually, to my shoulder. He traced lazy patterns with his fingertips while regaling Georges with what sounded like a tale of our hike up the
Pica de
Tijuca
, and suddenly my heart was pounding and I considered ordering dessert just to have something else to do with my hands before we left the restaurant and returned to the hotel. That event now seemed to loom up all too soon in my future. I was ready, almost painfully so, and had been for almost two years if I was being honest with myself. But I still wasn’t quite sure I was
ready
.

Kendra and Jane, glancing furtively around, seemed to be plotting a break for the restroom. I considered joining them, though I hesitated to accidentally horn in on anything. But then Kendra caught my eye as she rose and gave a little nod my way, jerking her head toward the restroom sign.

I murmured a barely audible excuse to Jack and slipped away after the pair, cringing slightly as Elizabeth saw us and tagged along as well in the age-old accepted custom of all the women in the party adjourning to the restroom in a pack.

Just before reaching the door I had a sudden twinge of fear, wondering if Kendra planned to take me to task about the Tiger Balm. She didn’t, as it turned out. Instead she just gave me an appraising look when I walked in and then returned to repairing her lipstick, her regal face close to the mirror.

“So. ‘No, no, we’re not, right lifestyle, wrong relationship…’ What was all that again,
sugarbuns
?”

“Oh,” I sighed, shrugging. “It was true at the time. Things have gotten, um, weirder. Since then.”

We both smiled sweetly at Elizabeth, who looked a little puzzled and borderline uncomfortable as she leaned toward the mirror too, making minute and unnecessary fixes to her hair while she waited for an empty stall.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Kate?” Kendra asked softly, obviously concerned. “Because you don’t really seem all that sure, and I don’t know you very well but I hate to see anyone just heading blindly for a crash.”

I gave it some thought. My first instinct, to lash out and contradict her, died quickly. I knew she was right in part. I
wasn’t
sure what I was doing, but I also wasn’t sure about whether there was a crash in store at the end of all this. That, of course, was always the dangerous part, the blind curve that might send you straight off a cliff if you were going too fast…

“So you know Jack? From before this week?” I asked, stalling for time, knowing she’d recognized him and they’d seemed familiar with one another at cocktails the night before.

“A little,” she said. “I used to be with—” She glanced toward Elizabeth, who was starting to look as though she wished she’d never entered the bathroom. “He’s a friend of a friend. And he’s a good guy, I think. Some issues. We all have issues, you know. But I guess I should be more concerned about
you
. Because I don’t know you. Except to know you’re wired like Jane—and just as sneaky.”

“Sneaky? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, ma’am.” I batted my eyes, not actually flirting but doing something like it that we both understood. Elizabeth, with evident relief, took her turn in a stall and a middle-aged Brazilian matron took her place at the sink, peering into the mirror with a frown.

“Look, I’ll just say this. Jack looks happy, I’ll give you that. I haven’t ever seen him look this good, in fact. He looks
sorta
relieved. I don’t know what that’s about, but I
will
tell you that he hasn’t been seeing anyone seriously in a long time, that I know of. Pretty much not since before he left for London, and sure as hell not since he’s been living back here again. And you’re…” She glanced at the local matriarch, who looked as though she didn’t understand a word, and almost whispered the next few things she had to say.

“You’re this very soft, juicy little sub girl who looks like she’s about due to get her butt and her heart broken, in that order. You look like you’ve already fallen,
hard
. Like, so hard I’m surprised you don’t need some kneepads about now. But Jack doesn’t look much better off, which is not the Jack I know. So whoever you are to him, just…I don’t know, just be careful. He’s nice, and you seem nice, but it also seems like you have huge potential to hurt each other if you’re just suddenly doing this on a business trip. Neither of you seems like the type to do that. I know
he’s
not. This conference ends in a week but when you go back home he’ll still be your boss, I’ll remind you. Unless I’m missing something big here, you’re fixing to go back to that hotel suite tonight and have all kinds of kinky sex
with your boss
.”

“Well!” sniffed the matronly woman, snapping her lipstick case closed with a furious little snort. “I never!” Her accent, what little we heard of it, was clearly English. The door swung shut behind her in a wave of silence that descended on the powder room.

Kendra and I heard Jane from the stall asking, “What? Ken, what just happened?” We tried not to meet each other’s eyes but when we did, we nearly hurt ourselves laughing.

“Some poor little tourist just got an earful of the kinky sex talk, is all. Nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about, sweet
thang
. Although I’m sure it will be worrying
her
pretty little head for quite a while.”

I had to put my own head against the cool tile wall of the bathroom until my renewed laughing fit passed, though Kendra regained control much more easily. It didn’t surprise me—she was obviously a “control” sort of gal.

“Kendra, who was it you went out with anyway?” I asked, not bothering to whisper. I had forgotten about poor Elizabeth for the moment, who must have been even more confused than Jane.

Kendra gave me an appraising look before murmuring, too low for Jane or Elizabeth to hear, “I was with Jack’s sister for five years. And if you tell Jane that he’s Anne’s brother, you’re not getting that Tiger Balm back anytime this trip,
li’l
subby
girl. I don’t want her obsessing about my ex for the rest of the week, which is exactly what will happen if she finds out who Jack is. So please.”

“Jack has a sister who’s a lesbian?”

“No, Jack has a bisexual sister, who is now a blissfully married woman with two precious little kids and a husband who worships her. We’re still very good friends and I wish her all the happiness in the world, but I also don’t want to screw with my current happiness. So please, Kate.”

I nodded, a little stunned but not wanting her to feel anxious that any of this would get back to Jane. Or Jack. Although presumably, he already knew.

It really was such a small world.

Chapter Seven

The elevator ride back up to the suite was torture. We stood at the rear, smiling politely and nodding at the other guests getting on and off the lift, and all I could feel was Jack’s hand on my back, sliding under the straps of the blue cotton dress I’d worn to dinner, trying to get just that fraction closer. Sneaking around my ribs so that I had to suppress a giggle. And then stroking so, so softly at the side of my breast through the lightweight fabric, under my arm where nobody else in the elevator could possibly see.

He didn’t even ask when we got to the door of my suite, just kept moving to his own door, opened it up and pulled me in after him. A split second later he pinned me to the foyer wall and
finally
kissed me, and I was glad he was holding me up or my knees might have buckled at the bolt of sheer need that shot through me.

We didn’t pause for first-date kisses, went straight for the heavy stuff. He was licking and sucking, exploring my mouth with his tongue in a way that made me ache to have him repeat the action between my legs. It seemed as though I had been waiting years for his kiss. Well, possibly I had. He acted as though
he
had been waiting for years too, which raised some interesting possibilities. But at the moment, all that seemed important was that he was kissing me, and it was making me want him more keenly than in my most explicit fantasy.

“I wish you’d worn that new dress again,” Jack said at last, pulling just far enough away that I couldn’t recapture his mouth with mine. “You looked so good in the store, do you know what I wanted to do right then? All I could think about, actually?”

“N-no?” My higher brain functions were clearly taking a dive in direct proportion to the proximity of Jack’s mouth to my ear as he whispered naughty, delicious things.

“I wanted to follow you back into the dressing room, put you up against the wall just like this and hold both your hands with one of mine…” He shifted his grip as he spoke, pulling my arms up over my head and restraining my wrists one-handedly with surprising ease. “Then put my other hand right up your skirt to play with you. Would you have liked that, little Katie?” His hand had dipped under my hem and stroked up along the bare skin of my leg but paused just at the top of my thigh, and I whimpered and squirmed, trying to get closer but unable to.

“Oh God, yes,” I whispered, already trembling with desire. I could hardly imagine what it would feel like when Jack actually touched me. I didn’t have to imagine for long.

“You had panties on then. I would have had to push them over to the side so I could touch you, slide my fingers inside you. What about now, little one? Did you leave them off like I told you to, or did you think it was just talk? If I move my hand, what will my fingers touch?”