The bottom dropped out of my stomach, and it was a moment before I realized that wasn’t a very offhand proposal. The pain medication must be kicking in, if I was getting that punchy. “Sure, I want to get married again,” I said sleepily. “And have a munchkin. I have the perfect setup. I could take a baby with me to work, because it’s my business and it’s an informal, relaxed setting. There’s music, no television, and lots of adult supervision. What could be better?”
“You have it all planned out, huh?”
“Well, no. I’m neither married nor pregnant, so everything is still hypothetical. And I’m flexible. If circumstances change, I’ll adjust.”
He said something else, but I was in the middle of another yawn and missed it. “What?” I asked when I could talk.
“Never mind.” He kissed my temple. “You’re fading fast. I thought it would take the pill half an hour or so to work.”
“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” I mumbled. “Accumulative effect.” He was the reason I hadn’t had much sleep the night before, because he kept waking me every couple of hours to have sex. My toes curled at the memory, and for a moment I flashed to how it felt when his big body settled on mine. Wow. I definitely wasn’t cold now.
I wanted to climb on top of him and take care of matters, but I’d told him no sex, so I couldn’t violate my own edict. Probably I should have put on underwear before getting in bed with him, though, because of course the shirt had ridden up to my waist. That’s what shirts do when you sleep in them. He’d been very gentlemanly, not feeling me up or anything, but that was only because I was hurt. I expected that would change, because being a gentleman was probably a strain for him. Not that he didn’t have great manners, because he did, but his instincts were aggressive and competitive. That was what had made him such a good athlete. Besides the physical ability, he had that ruthless drive to come out on top. I wondered how long he would be considerate because of my arm.
I went to sleep on that thought, and found out the answer around six in the morning when he gently turned me on my back and settled between my legs. I was barely awake when he started, but wide awake when he finished. He was careful with my arm, but ruthless in his attack on my neck.
When he finally let me up, I stormed into the bathroom. “That was so not fair!” Delicious, but not fair. “That was a sneak attack!”
He was laughing when I slammed the door. Just to be on the safe side, I also locked it. He could use one of the other bathrooms.
I definitely felt better this morning, not as shaky, and the pain in my arm was more of a dull throb now. Checking myself in the mirror, I saw that I didn’t even look pale. How could I, when Wyatt had just done me? My cheeks were flushed and it wasn’t from fever.
I cleaned up, then rummaged one-handed through my duffel, which was still parked in the middle of the bathroom floor. I found my clean underwear and managed to pull it on, then brushed my teeth and hair. That was the limit of what I could do by myself, though. My clean clothes were wrinkled and needed to be run through the clothes dryer, but even if they had been newly pressed, I couldn’t have coped. I couldn’t put on a bra. I could move my arm a little more this morning, but not enough to extend to dressing.
I unlocked the door and stomped out. He was nowhere to be seen. Just how did he expect me to harangue him if he didn’t stay where he could hear me?
Fuming, I gathered my clean clothes in my right arm and went downstairs. The stairs led me to a great room with ten-foot ceilings, leather furniture, and the required big-screen television. There wasn’t a plant in sight.
The smell of coffee made me turn to the left, which led through the breakfast room and into the kitchen. Wyatt, barefoot and shirtless, was busy at the cooktop. I looked at that muscled back and brawny arms, the deep furrow of his spine and the slight indentations on each side, just above the waistband of his jeans, and my heart turned over again. I was in deep trouble here, and not just because some idiot murderer was after me.
“Where’s the laundry room?” I asked.
He pointed to a door that opened off the short hall leading to the garage. “Need any help?”
“I can manage. I just need to get the wrinkles out of my clothes.” I went into the laundry room and put my clothes in the dryer, then turned it on. Then I went back to the kitchen and took up the battle. Well, first I poured myself a cup of coffee, using the cup he had set out for me. A woman needs to be alert when she’s dealing with a man as underhanded and sneaky as Wyatt Bloodsworth.
“You have to stop doing that.”
“Doing what?” he asked as he flipped a buckwheat pancake.
“The sneak attacks. I told you no.”
“You didn’t tell me no while I was doing it. You said some interesting things, but no wasn’t among them.”
My cheeks got hot, but I brushed that aside with a wave of my hand. “What I say during doesn’t count. It’s that chemistry thing, and you shouldn’t take advantage of it.”
“Why not?” He turned aside and lifted his own coffee cup. He was smiling.
“It’s almost date rape.”
He spewed coffee all over the floor. Thank goodness he’d turned away from the pancakes. Outraged, he glared at me. “Don’t you even start down that road, because it isn’t funny. Date rape, my ass. We have a deal, and you know it. All you have to do is say no and I’ll stop. So far, you haven’t said it.”
“I said a blanket no beforehand.”
“Those aren’t our rules of engagement. You can’t stop me before I get started. You have to say it after I’ve made a move on you, to prove you really don’t want me.” He was still scowling, but he turned to rescue the pancakes before they burned. He buttered them, then got a paper towel and mopped up the coffee. Then he very calmly went back to the skillet he was using and poured more batter into it.
“That’s the point! You keep short-circuiting my brain, and it isn’t fair. It’s not as if I can short-circuit your brain, too.”
“Want to bet?”
“Then why are you winning and I’m losing?” I wailed.
“Because you want me, and you’re just being stubborn.”
“Hah. Hah! Using that logic, your brain should be just as fried as mine if we were on the same footing, in which case you wouldn’t be winning all the time. But you are, so that means you don’t want me.” Okay, I knew there were holes in the argument, but it was all I could think of to sidetrack him.
He cocked his head. “Wait a minute. Are you saying I’m fucking you because I don’t want you?”
Trust him to immediately see the holes, and drive a verbal truck through the argument. I didn’t see anywhere to go with that, so I backtracked. “The thing is, whatever the reasoning, I don’t want to have sex anymore. You should respect that.”
“I will. When you say no.”
“I’m saying no now.”
“Now doesn’t count. You have to wait until I touch you.”