Page 57 of The Perfect Deception

“Be­cause you were drunk. Which sur­prised me, be­cause I didn’t think al­co­hol en­abled a per­son to have sex. But you…” She blushed. “You did quite well.”

The woman who had “clod­pate” on the tip of her tongue said he per­formed “quite well.” He wasn’t sure how to take that.

He reached for her hand across the space be­tween the sofa and the re­cliner. Her skin was soft to the touch. Her fin­gers were thin and del­i­cate. He held tight to make sure she didn’t pull away. “We had sex be­cause I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind.”Be­cause I love you.

Her mouth opened.

“From the mo­ment I met you, I haven’t been able to think of an­other woman. Ev­ery time I’m with you, all I want to do is touch you, feel your skin against mine, taste your lips, play with your hair. Yes, I was drunk and that low­ered my re­solve, but we did not have sexbe­causeI was drunk.”

She re­mained silent, her eyes wide.

“Why didyouhave sex withme?” He swal­lowed, not sure if he wanted to hear the an­swer. For some rea­son, when he was with her, un­ex­pected words tum­bled from his mouth. Not vo­cab­u­lary words like “clod­pate,” but words from his heart that he kept hid­den away from ev­ery­one else.

“Be­cause you’re ir­re­sistible.”

Good lord, if he didn’t think he’d scare her with the fer­vor of his de­sire, he’d leap off the sofa, and take her again right there in the re­cliner. But the last time they’d had sex was on the sofa, and she was now sit­ting on the re­cliner. He needed to make sure she had some­where to sit in his apart­ment if he could some­how con­vince her to stay. Or re­turn.

He wanted their next time to be dif­fer­ent than their first—slower, more in­ten­tional, sober.

“We’re sup­posed to be just friends.” Her voice wa­vered be­tween ac­cu­sa­tion and dis­may.

“We still are friends, but I’ve wanted us to be more than friends for a while now.”

“What do we do about our ar­range­ment?”

He rose and ap­proached her with cau­tion. Lean­ing over, he rested each hand on an arm­rest, ef­fec­tively box­ing her in with his body. He low­ered his head un­til it was a hairs­breadth away from her face. Her lips glis­tened and a blush rose from her neck across her cheek.

“Screw the ar­range­ment.”

Chap­ter Fif­teen

The last time Adam’s face had been this close to hers, they’d been hav­ing sex. From the looks of him, most no­tably his flared nos­trils and his di­lated pupils, he wanted to have sex again.

She must have smiled, be­cause his lips widened ever so slightly be­fore part­ing. His eyes hooded, he low­ered his head even closer to hers. She could feel her pulse pound­ing, hear his rapid breath­ing and a part of her wanted to suc­cumb to de­sire and let their bod­ies take over.

But first she needed an­swers. And this wasn’t ex­actly a po­si­tion con­ducive to dis­cus­sion.

Press­ing on his chest, she said, “No.”

He reared back and the elec­tric charge in the air fiz­zled.

“No?”

She shook her head. “You can’t kiss me again un­til you an­swer my ques­tions.”

His shoul­ders drooped for a mo­ment. But when he met her gaze, she saw re­lief.

“I thought…” He clenched his jaw. “Well, never mind what I thought. I’ll an­swer your ques­tions. But first I owe you an apol­ogy.”

She curled up in the chair, now that she had room, and waited for him to sit on the sofa. In­stead, he paced.

“Why do you owe me an apol­ogy?”

“Be­cause you de­serve way bet­ter than drunk sex, and while it was amaz­ing, it’s not how I had planned our first time to be.” He ran his fin­gers through his hair, mak­ing it spiky and sexy.

“You planned our first time?” It wasn’t just her.

Adam raised his head. “Planned, imag­ined, fan­ta­sized. And none of those fan­tasies in­cluded my be­ing drunk. I haven’t al­ways acted in ways that might con­vince you, but Dina, you’re the one I want to be with, and for more than just sex, al­though I def­i­nitely want that with you as well. I want to go out with you on a real date. I want to go the movies with you and the diner. Hell, I even want to go to the gro­cery store with you, so we can buy in­gre­di­ents for a ro­man­tic din­ner that leads… well.” He smiled. “And that didn’t hap­pen, es­pe­cially last night. So I’m sorry.”