Staring at the paper-covered columns did one thing-it allowed some sanity to return. Along with a good amount of humility.
Mitch let out a soft laugh and lifted her face. “So you use tampons. More than half the female population uses tampons.”
At the word coming out of his mouth, tampon, such a feminine word, she groaned.
And he just laughed. Then kissed her, kissed her until she managed to topple some of her makeup to join the tampons.
“And so you’re a slob,” he added, lifting his head and looking around at the havoc. “And yeah, okay, you do own a dorky shower cap. I just don’t care, Dimi.” He turned her to face him, cupping her jaw in his big, warm hands, waiting with barely restrained patience until she opened her eyes to look at him. “I don’t care about any of it except sinking into you, hearing you cry out my name, feeling your legs wrap around my hips and knowing I can’t tell where you end and I start.”
A tremor started at the region of her heart.
“I just want you,” he whispered. “All of you.” His hands skimmed down her body, renewing the flame as he eased her onto the counter, stepping between her legs so she had no choice but to wrap herself around him.
“Want me back,” he murmured, sinking his fingers into her hair, placing his mouth over her jaw, her lips, her throat, renewing the heat and need in less than two seconds flat. “Say it.”
Not a problem, since every inch of her shook with the need. “I want you back.” And because she did, because she wanted him with everything she had, she tugged at his black leather jacket, which he shrugged off to join her discarded things. “Why are you wearing so many clothes?” she demanded, going to work on the buttons of his shirt.
Grinning, he added his hands to the mix, and then he was as wonderfully, gloriously naked as she.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him. “Wow.” She ran her hands over his leanly muscled chest, his flat belly, his amazingly strong shoulders, anywhere and everywhere except the one place on his body that was currently nudging her in the belly because…well, quite frankly, that made her very nervous.
He wasn’t nearly as shy, and in less than a minute he had her hot and shaking and desperately whimpering, but when he brought out a condom from the pants he’d shucked to the floor, she once again came to her senses, because for all her man hunting, for all her whining, it had been awhile since the actual act, and even then it hadn’t been anything to write home about.
And here was Mitch, standing in all his very naked splendor, and…he was huge.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, tearing open the little packet.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he donned the condom. “I doubt it,” she said, thinking there was something inherently wicked about watching a man touch himself.
Lifting her chin with his finger, he kissed her, soft and sweet and somehow unbearably sexy. “I’m going to fit.”
She swallowed hard, nodded and prepared herself, but Mitch ran his hand down her body, over her breasts, her belly, to the throbbing flesh between her legs, teasing, stroking, until she couldn’t remember what she’d been hesitant about…until he removed his hand, wrapped her legs around his waist, grabbed her bottom in his big, warm hands and sank into her.
It was so utterly delicious, and she was so utterly close, she could do nothing but clutch him and squeeze her eyes shut, waiting for him to move, waiting to be dropped off the cliff into ecstasy.
But he didn’t do anything except hold himself really, really still.
“Dimi.”
Please, was her only coherent thought.
“Dimi?”
With some effort she opened her eyes.
“Okay?” he whispered.
Okay? Couldn’t he see she wouldn’t be okay until he gave her that orgasm? The one she needed above all else including air? Darn it, she didn’t want to talk, she wanted action!
“Baby, am I hurting you?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, the words bursting out, thrusting her hips up to meet his. “Don’t talk, just do me!”
Startled, he stared at her for one heartbeat, then let out a rough laugh. “Absolutely.” And bowing his back, he began a deep pumping with just the right rhythm, so that it was as natural as breathing to cry out his name, to toss her head back and explode right out of herself.
Registered blind, deaf and dumb as she was, she hardly heard his cry. She certainly couldn’t respond, couldn’t do anything, until finally her senses returned and she realized Mitch was leaning over her, muscles quaking, breathing every bit as harshly as she.
She was just giddy enough to open her mouth and let her first thought fly. “I’m definitely revoking my no-man rule for you.”
He jerked, then stared at her. “What?”
The horror in his gaze definitely brought her the rest of the way to earth. Crashing to earth.
Without an air bag, no less.
“Nothing,” she said stiffly. Because she wouldn’t repeat it, not even at the threat of death, not with him looking at her like that, as if she’d started speaking in tongues. “Nothing at all.”
She shoved him away, opened the bathroom door and kicked out their pile of clothes, perfectly aware half of them were hers, but she was having a moment here. “I’d like for you to go now.” Go fall off a cliff, damn you.
“Dimi-” He reached for her, but she backed up and grabbed the only weapon available to her, a tampon. Still, she wielded it with honor. “Out.”
He very wisely did not comment on the tampon in his face. “We’re going to have to discuss this.”
“Over my dead body.”
Then, unladylike as it was, she pushed the beautifully naked man over the threshold of the bathroom and slammed the door.
This time she locked it.
Her only regret was not having a freezer in the bathroom. She sank to the edge of the tub and thought about that. With a freezer, she’d at least be able to have ice cream at her own pity party.
11
“CAMI.” Dimi gripped her cell phone tightly. “I know it’s the crack of dawn, I’m sorry.”
“What’s the matter?” Cami croaked, obviously half asleep. “It must be bad. This is way too early for anything but very bad.”
“I terrified a man in my bathroom last night.”
“What did you do, threaten him with perfumed shampoo?”
“Funny.” Dimi blew out a breath, merged into traffic and headed toward the studio with what felt like bricks in her stomach. “I told Mitch I was revoking my no-man rule. You should have seen him. He turned green, like he needed to puke. Flattering, huh?”
“Dimi, did you do this before or after you knocked it out?”
“Who said anything about knocking it out?”
“In the bathroom…please. What else would you guys do in there together? So…did you? In the shower?”
“On the counter,” she muttered, swiping a hand down her face as her sister cackled with wicked delight. “Listen, you’re missing the point here.”
“No, I’m not. You revoked your no-man rule in a moment of passion. Understandable. There’s not a woman on the planet who wouldn’t get it. A man, however-they’re a different breed. They don’t want to hear such things while they’re still breathing like a racehorse. They need to process their emotions, and honey, it takes them awhile. They are men, after all.”
“Great. In the meantime I’m left feeling like an idiot.”
“Oh, no. You can still turn this around,” Cami promised. “All you have to do is stick to your plan to drive him crazy, remember? Don’t lose focus here, Sis. Sidetrack him with your body, and he’ll forget that you terrified him in the bathroom with all that after talk he’s not ready for.”