Shane couldn’t remember the last time he woke up next to a woman. Whenever he slept with someone, he was usually gone well before the sun rose. Hell, he and Alyssa had still been at it when the sun rose.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he rolled over, and sure enough, she was still there. The room had been too warm to keep all the covers over them, especially with their bodies so close together, so they’d kicked everything off but the sheets. They’d separated during the night, Shane lying on his stomach with his arm draped over the bed, her on her side with her back to him.
She looked amazing like that, with the sheet draped over her perfectly curving waist and hip, exposing the circle of roses tattooed in the middle of her back. He didn’t touch her yet. Just gazed at her, drinking her in the way he’d been afraid to at the wedding.
She really was fucking gorgeous. Fit and curvy, just the way he loved. She might’ve had a baby before—he couldn’t tell for sure, but he guessed she’d gained and lost some weight in her life. On her side like this, the profile of her hips reminded him a lot of how his friend’s wife had looked after she’d had their baby. That observation was hardly a criticism, though. He’d been mesmerized by her from the second he’d seen her at the wedding, and she’d looked even better once her dress had come off. Alyssa wasn’t skin and bones. She had muscle, she had just the right amount of curves, and that ass… God, he loved her ass. He’d never found flat butts all that attractive. Alyssa’s was just gorgeous. Round. Firm. Perfectly proportioned to the rest of her body.
She was gorgeous, clothed or naked, and she was amazing in bed. Everything they’d done had driven him wild. And the way her eyes lit up when he’d taken off his belt?
Oh, Alyssa. What kinky dark side are you hiding, and how do I get to it?
And what the hell was he doing looking when she was right there where he could touch her?
He curved his hand over her sheet-covered hip. She murmured softly in her sleep, and when he slid up beside her, naked skin to naked skin, she pressed back against him.
“Morning,” she murmured.
He kissed her shoulder. “Morning.”
“What time is it?” She craned her neck toward the nightstand. “Damn. Checkout time is in an hour.”
“Already?” He lifted his head and looked at the alarm clock. “Fuck.”
She rolled over and cuddled closer. “I don’t want to leave yet.”
He nuzzled her neck. “I don’t want to leave either. But I guess you’ll need to catch a flight or hit the road, won’t you?”
“No. I don’t live far away.” She lifted her head, smiling sleepily. “I just knew I wouldn’t feel like driving home last night.”
“Is that right?”
“What about you?”
“I’m local. I live on the north end.”
“Do you? So do I.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “So would it be presumptuous of me to ask if we can—”
“See each other again?”
He blinked. “Yeah. That.”
Alyssa grinned. “Not presumptuous. And I definitely want to see you again.”
He returned the grin and brushed a few disheveled strands of hair out of her face. “There you go, pushing all my buttons again.”
“And you like it, don’t you?”
“I so, so do.”
“Thought so.” She ran a hand down his abs. “Are you in any hurry to leave?”
“In a—” He sucked in a breath as her nails teased his nipple. “Fuck…”
“We do still have an hour.”
“Mmhmm.” He met her eyes. “What do you think we should do with it?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Hmm.” He cupped her breast and drew light circles around her nipple with his fingertip, grinning when she gasped this time. Her nipple slowly hardened, and goose bumps appeared all over her smooth skin. “I could think of a few things.”
She bit her lip and shivered.
Even as he kept teasing her nipple, he murmured, “God, if I spend another hour with you, I won’t be able to walk for a week.”
“I won’t either. Don’t care.” She kissed him and rubbed her hips against his dick. “I don’t want to walk. I just want you to fuck me.”
“Jesus.” He pinched her nipple hard enough to make her whimper. “You’re insatiable, aren’t you?”
“When a man is as dirty and rough as I am? You’d better believe it.”
“Oh God…”
“This isn’t enough,” she whispered. “I want to see you again.”
Shane tensed.
She met his eyes. “What?” She cringed a little. “You don’t?”
“Oh, I do.” He ran his hand from her breast to her hip. “It’s just, uh, not quite that simple.”
Her expression hardened. “Please tell me there isn’t a wife in the picture.”
A laugh burst out of him, and he shook his head. “No, no. Never been married.” Humor fading, he met her eyes. “But before we agree to do this again, there are…” He hesitated, his stomach fluttering as it always did when he broached this subject. “Look, I have a past. I—”
“Don’t.” She put a hand on his chest. “Please. I don’t want to know.”
Shane blinked. “What?”
Alyssa licked her lips and met his eyes. “I don’t want to know.”
“But…”
She sighed. “Listen, I have a past too. And I…to be blunt, I don’t want to talk about it.” She ran the sole of her foot along his calf. “I’m tired of my past dictating everything about my future, so just this once, I want to forget about it.”
He stared at her. “But if we’re going to keep seeing each other, then who we are, what we’ve done—it’s kind of relevant here, isn’t it?”
“Does it have to be?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“I just want things to be simple,” she said. “I want you. That’s it. Not a relationship. Nothing long term. For once in my life, I just want to enjoy sex with someone who enjoys sex with me, and not give a damn about anything else. Past or present.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. If he’d been right about her being a mother, she was probably tired of men who turned tail and ran the minute they realized she had a kid. And if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t usually one for dating single moms. But a child at home wasn’t quite on par with the past he didn’t want to—but felt obligated to—divulge.
Alyssa held his gaze. “Maybe it’s stupid, but I don’t want to know, and I don’t want you to know.” Her eyebrows pulled together. “We have great sex.” A cautious grin played at her lips. “Does it really have to be more than that?”
“We do have great sex,” he whispered as a shiver went through him. He rolled the idea around in his mind as he traced the swell of her hip with his palm. Maybe he’d regret it when he was clothed and alone and thinking straight, but lying here now with her, he liked the idea. Just sex. Hot, rough, no-holds-barred sex with someone who didn’t know and didn’t care who he’d been in a past life. Though he was getting more and more curious about her past, the fact that she was willing to pretend his didn’t exist was both refreshing and tempting.
And dangerous.
He swallowed.
Alyssa trailed her nails down the center of his chest. “We can make our own rules. Everything we’ve done since we walked into this room has been perfect. I don’t want any more or any less than that.”
He cocked his head. “Just a bit kinkier, right?”
She grinned. “Of course.” Her expression shifted to something more serious. “I mean it. We just meet, fool around, enjoy some crazy things together, and then go back to our separate lives.”
He mulled it over for a moment. If there were cons to counter the pros, he couldn’t think of them. Not with this gorgeous, feisty women lying right here beside him.
“All right.” He slid his hand from her waist to the small of her back and drew their bodies closer together. “No pasts. Just sex.”
Alyssa grinned. “I had a feeling you’d see things my way.”
“Well.” He kissed her lightly. “When you’re naked in bed with me after you’ve left claw marks all over my back, you’re at a bit of an advantage when it comes to being persuasive.”
She batted her eyes. “Am I?”
“Yes. You are.” He raised his eyebrows. “So how does this work? We’re just fuck buddies?”
She nodded. “Works for me. We seem to have”—she licked her lips—“similar tastes.”
“We do.” He reached up and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Are you suggesting you want to…explore some of those similar tastes?”
“Is that a gentlemanly way of asking if I want you to tie me up and flog me?”
There was no masking the shiver her words sent straight down to his toes. “Do I look like I do anything ‘gentlemanly’?”
Her grin broadened. “Do I look like I’d want you to?”
“Not even a little,” he growled.
“So are you in?” She hooked her leg over his hip, drawing him closer to her. As his cock brushed the hair of her pussy, he groaned, and she murmured, “Fun, kinky sex with no strings attached?”
“You’d better believe it.” He pressed his lips to hers and rolled her onto her back. She wrapped her legs around his waist and dragged her nails up his sides, and there wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t have done for her—or to her—right then.
He wanted to ask what happened if this went too far. If things went deeper than sex, and suddenly the past mattered as much as the present and the future.
But then she was reaching for a condom. And he was putting it on. And she was begging him to hurry.
And he was inside her.
And nothing else mattered.