LIAM FINISHED FILLING the glass from the spigot on the fridge door and turned. He nearly dropped the damn glass.
Aubrey was still sitting at the island, but instead of the caramel-colored sweater, she wore a green, lacy bra that cupped her breasts into the most inviting cleavage he’d ever seen.
Normally, he’d be completely on board with this plan. He’d sweep her into his arms, carry her upstairs, and take them both on a joyride. Except she was drunk. Or at least kind of drunk.
He was having a hard time discerning which. She didn’t seem as lit as she’d been last Labor Day, but she also wasn’t completely sober.
The gentleman his mother had raised said even a little drunk was too drunk, especially when Aubrey had told him that she didn’t want to hook up with him anymore. But what if she’d changed her mind? It wasn’t as if they didn’t have a past history of exactly this kind of behavior. Minus him picking her up from a girls’ night at which she’d clearly had a few drinks.
He took her the glass of water and tried to ignore her fabulous breasts. “How much have you had to drink?”
She shrugged. “A few shots.”
That wasn’t too much.
She drank half the water and set the glass back on the counter. “And two—no maybe three—margaritas.”
Yowza. He fought to keep his gaze from dipping to her half-dressed state. Did she have any idea how badly she was tempting him? “Finish the water, then it’s time for bed.”
“Goody.” She stared at him, her lids lowering so that her gaze went from warmly interested to provocatively seductive. Then she polished off the water and handed him the glass. “I’m ready for bed.”
He stifled a groan as he took the glass from her fingers. She slid her hand over his and stroked his wrist. He pulled away from her and put the glass in the sink. When he turned back, she was already walking out of the kitchen, her hips swaying in her perfectly fitted jeans. She paused near the front door and kicked off her ankle boots. Then she turned and stood with one foot on the first stair, her hand on the rail.
“You coming?” she asked.
Oh hell.
“I really shouldn’t.”
She didn’t appear to have heard him, because she made no response. She went up the stairs as if she expected him to follow.
Swallowing and trying to will his hard-on into nonexistence, he walked to the front door and picked up his coat from the floor. “I’m going to take off. You’ll be fine.”
“Actually, can I have some help? My hair is caught in my necklace.”
He looked at the ceiling and exhaled. He really ought to go. But her hair was caught . . .
In the end, he was just a guy, and the woman he desired most in the world was beckoning him to her bedroom.
He hung his coat on the newel post and jogged up the stairs. He remembered precisely where her room was located—at the back of the second story. They’d stripped each other the entire way up the stairs last summer. That had been an incredible night.
He looked down at his boot-clad feet and belatedly realized he should take them off before he tracked something on her carpet. The first floor and stairs were hardwood, but up here, his feet sank into the plush wall-to-wall. He quickly shucked his boots and set them on the top step before continuing to her room.
Her eyes found his as he stepped over the threshold. She’d turned on the lamp next to her bed, which only served to cast the entire room in a muted, sexy light that spilled shadows on her body in all the right places.
He licked his lips. “You need help?”
She presented her back to him and held her hair partially up. “My hair’s caught, see?”
He did, in fact, see her red hair snagged in the fastening of her necklace, a short, almost choker-length gold chain with an A dangling from the front.
For Aubrey.
Or Archer.
What the hell?
He shook his head and studied the tangle. It was hopeless. He was going to touch her bare skin. He could already smell her clove and orange scent. It would be a very short leap to taste her.
If she invited him to stay, he might not be able to say no.
“Can’t you just sleep in this necklace?” he asked, sounding a bit hoarse due to his pent-up sexual frustration.
She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Are you being a wuss?”
“Oh, fuck it,” he muttered. He gently tugged the hair from the chain, but a few strands were really wound in there. “Move toward the light.” He guided her to back up so the lamp could aid him. “Tilt your head.”
She did as he asked, and he got a fresh waft of her scent. Pure, unadulterated Aubrey. Delicious. He worked the remaining strands of hair free of the clasp and closed his eyes. He let his fingertips rest against her warm skin.
The silk of her hair fell against his hands, and he jerked his eyes open just as she turned.
“Your shirt is soaking wet.” She freed the top button, then the second one.
Liam dropped his hands to his sides and thought about telling her to stop. He really did. He thought the word so loudly he was certain she must’ve heard it. But she didn’t. Her fingers kept going until his shirt was open and she was pushing it off his shoulders.
As it fell to the floor, she braced her palms against his T-shirt-clad chest. And frowned.
“This shirt’s a bit damp, too.”
Again, he summoned the word stop to his brain, and again the word didn’t find its way past his lips.
She tugged it up his chest and pulled it over his head. “Now this—” she said, running her hands over his shoulders and down his pecs, “—is warm.”
Okay, he had to put a stop to this, because they were just about naked chest to naked chest, and that might be too near the point of no return. Who was he kidding? Liam could see that point as clearly as he could see the bed behind her, and both were far too close.
“Aubrey, I need to go. You’re drunk.”
She gave her head a single shake, sending her scent cascading over him once more. “Not that drunk.”
He put his finger under her chin and tipped her head up. “I can’t tell, but it sounds like you drank a lot from what you said downstairs.” He looked into her hazel eyes and had to admit it was still hard to tell. Her pupils were a bit dilated, but that could be from arousal. He knew he was aroused.
“Do you want me to walk in a straight line? Maybe recite the alphabet backward?”
He smiled at her playful flirting but felt a sense of annoyance that he didn’t know her a little bit better. He wanted to. And damn it, he should.
He traced his finger along her jaw. “Aubrey, you have me so confused.”
“You’ve seen me far more intoxicated. Or don’t you remember having sex at the amphitheater during the concert?”
He couldn’t unremember that if he lived to be a hundred. They’d snuck off toward the bed and breakfast where some of the band members stayed. Figuring out how to have sex amid desert shrubs and towering birch trees on the other side of a wire fence had proved difficult, but in the end, he’d laid his shirt down on the dirt and she’d gotten on her knees. He could still hear the thrum of the music, smell the fragrant late-summer air, and feel her slick heat gripping him as he drove into her from behind. Yeah, they’d both been drunk. Deliciously, fiendishly devoid of inhibitions.
But there had been something else, too—a level of trust they’d shared in that moment. And if she was less intoxicated now and he wasn’t the least bit drunk . . . What was happening? Maybe every time they’d been together, things between them had grown and built. Maybe something had developed, and he hadn’t been paying close-enough attention.
What did it matter now? She’d cut him loose and had reiterated that decision countless times. Tonight was an aberration, and he didn’t want her to regret it.
“I should still go,” he said, despite his feet staying rooted to the floor.
“Or not.” She tipped her head forward and drew his finger between her lips, sucking the tip.
Oh God. Her lips and mouth ought to have been illegal or at least have come with a warning. He closed his eyes for a moment and reveled in her tongue and the way it caressed his flesh. His cock, already hard as granite, lengthened and strained against his jeans, which had become far too tight for comfort.
She let go of his finger, and her hands splayed over his lower back, pulling him against her. The heat of her nearly bare chest scalded his feverish body. It was torture. He wanted more.
He opened his eyes and saw that hers were slitted. Sexy. Seductive. “How can I prove to you that I’m not too drunk to want you to stay?”
Holy hell, he was so screwed. “Just kiss me.”
He cupped the sides of her head and pulled her mouth to his. Her lips were soft and supple. She tasted of lime and tequila and fucking fabulous Aubrey, a treat he could never get enough of. He held her while he slid his tongue into her mouth. She met him, licking at him eagerly as her fingernails carved crescent-shaped grooves into his back. She rotated her hips against his. The contact set off fireworks behind his tightly closed eyes. He didn’t stop the moan that came from his throat, nor did he ease off the kiss.
Instead, he angled his head and speared deeply into her, immersing them both in the sensations of heat and wet and total abandon. Again her pelvis thrust into his. He slid a hand down her spine and splayed it across her ass, holding her hard against him in an attempt to ease the ache in his cock.
Still it wasn’t enough.
He brought his hand back up to her bra and flicked the fastener open. She pulled her chest from his and shimmied out of the lingerie, letting it fall between them. He grabbed at one of the straps and flung it away.
She pushed up against him again, this time wiggling so that her breasts teased his chest. She drew her head back and nipped at his lip before kissing him again.
He held her lower back and brought his other hand from her head down to her collarbone. His fingers grazed the necklace that had prompted this insanity, but he moved right on by until he found the upper curve of her breast. He opened an eye long enough to gauge the distance to the bed—not far.
He guided her backward and broke the kiss as he pushed her to the mattress. He bent and cupped her breast, then put his mouth on the nipple, licking and sucking her flesh. She gasped and moaned and clasped his head, pulling at his hair. His cock raged as he feasted on her.
She curled her legs around the back of his knees and pulled him closer so that his groin pressed against hers. He moved to her other breast, licking and nipping her heated skin. He drew on the nipple with his teeth, gently tugging, then tongued her as he held her captive to his mouth.
She arched her hips off the bed and pressed up against his erection. Two pairs of jeans were far too thick to enjoy a moment like this.
He trailed his mouth down her ribcage, and his fingers found the waistband of her jeans.
She moaned as she twisted her fingers in his hair. “I think I like being friends.”
Friends? What the hell was she talking about?
Friends.
He’d come over the other night and proposed they be friends. This hadn’t been what he’d had in mind, not that he was complaining. But it had seemed the right thing to say, since he’d seen Stuart leaving.
Stuart.
Fuck. She was dating another guy! The hell she wasn’t drunk. He was such an ass.
He jumped back from her, panting lightly as he wiped his hand over his mouth and fought to gain control of his raging lust. “Uh, I have to go.”
She bolted up and instantly closed her eyes. “Uh-oh.”
Yep. She was a lot drunker than she realized. And he was a first-class prick for letting himself be fooled.
“Could you get the room to stop spinning please?” She kept her eyes closed and fisted the comforter with both hands.
He ought to leave right now. Or he could be a real gentleman and take care of her like he’d intended to do when he’d brought her inside and made her drink water. Then she’d taken off her sweater, and he’d completely lost his mind.
First things first: She needed a shirt of some kind. “Where are your pajamas?”
She pointed an unsteady finger at the dresser against the wall. “Middle drawer.” She still didn’t open her eyes.
He went and opened the drawer and grabbed the first thing he found—a Stanford T-shirt. By the time he got back to the bad, she was lying down against the pillows.
“Hold on.” He put his hand behind her back and held her up. “Can you sit for just a second so I can put a shirt on you?”
She nodded and then moaned, but not in the sexual way she’d done just a few minutes ago. This was the sound of a person whose alcohol consumption had just caught up with her.
He pulled the shirt over her head and somehow got her arms into the sleeves. Then he eased her back against the pillows.
He contemplated her jeans. Just take them off. Pretend she’s your sister. God no, don’t do that! Pretend she’s your friend and nothing more. Because she is.
Moving as quickly and smoothly as possible, he stripped her jeans away. He ought to have put her in a pair of pajama pants or something, but fuck it. She was practically asleep as it was. He tugged the bedding down and managed to tuck her between the sheets.
She exhaled as she snuggled onto her side and laid her cheek against the pillow. Her red hair cascaded over the white linen. He couldn’t resist stroking his fingertips against the silky softness.
He forced himself to turn from the bed, then bent to pick up his T-shirt, which he donned immediately. He plucked up his button-down, but she’d been right—it was pretty wet. Clutching it in his hand, he took one final look at Sleeping Beauty.
Then he turned out the lamp and tiptoed from the bedroom. Being friends, it turned out, was a lot harder than it looked.
AUBREY FINISHED HER third cup of coffee and massaged her forehead as she stared at her computer monitor. What the hell had she been thinking drinking like that when she was this busy at work? And especially when this zoning brief was so important.
The drinking and mild hangover were really the least of her worries, however, when compared to her behavior after the drinking. She’d almost slept with Liam. Would have, if not for him being a gentleman.
She groaned as she pushed her chair back from the desk and spun it around—slowly, so her head didn’t splinter—to look out the window. It was a gray, soggy day. Perfect for crawling under a rock in abject humiliation. Or regret.
She’d practically thrown herself at him last night. Nope, there was no practically about it. From the minute she’d tossed her sweater off, she’d made her objective crystal clear. And he’d tried to politely decline, damn him. It would be easy—and vindicating—to tell herself that she’d been too drunk to realize what she was doing. However, the fact that she remembered everything in such horrifying detail told her she hadn’t been nearly that drunk. Not until the tequila had finally caught up with her. She supposed she had to be thankful for that third and final margarita.
Her phone pinged on her desk. She picked it up and saw Chloe’s name. She was the last to chime in on the group text that Tori had started that morning to check in on how everyone was.
Chloe: OMG you guys, what a night! Pounding headache this morning but so fun! Next time we’ll drink water and pace ourselves a little better, LOL.
Everyone had reported a similar hangover-ish morning, minus Sara, who’d only said that she’d had a great time and was glad they’d all gotten home safely.
Aubrey couldn’t help but fixate on what she’d said last night just before the guys had arrived. A dull, queasy feeling spread in her stomach—the kind of sensation that came when you had to have a difficult conversation or had been caught in a lie or, in her case, had been caught in a damning truth.
Why had she drunk after that stupid question? It’s not like any of them would’ve known she’d been lying if she’d hadn’t taken a drink. No one knew about her and Liam, for crying out loud.
She only hoped they’d all been too drunk to remember. She didn’t think she’d be that lucky, however.
She had to believe in what they’d said at the outset—that whatever happened at the pub stayed at the pub last night. She didn’t want to think about the alternative. She also didn’t want to think about how awkward it would be next time she saw all of them, regardless of a dumb rule.
Her phone rang in her hand, startling her. She looked down and saw that it was Sara. Apparently there was no time like the present for awkward.
She could ignore the call, but why? She had to face them eventually. She was their attorney.
She slid her finger across the screen and forced a smile into her voice. “Hi, Sara!”
“Hi, Aubrey, how are you this morning?”
“Pretty good. Remind me to schedule future girls’ nights on a Friday or a Saturday or at least when I’m not working the next day.”
Sara laughed. “Good call. I’m so sorry. I hope we didn’t mess up your day.”
“It’s fine. I’m a big girl, anyway, so it’s definitely not your fault.”
There was a pause in the conversation, just a slight beat, but it was enough to raise Aubrey’s guard.
“So, I wanted to talk to you about what happened at the end there last night and let you know that no one’s going to ask who you slept with.”
Leave it to Sara to be as blunt as possible. With her sensory-processing disorder, she didn’t always have the best filter. It was actually one of the things Aubrey liked most about her. She was incredibly real and as a result, delightful. She was also apparently the designated spokesperson for everyone else.
“Um, okay. Thanks.” I think.
“I mean, it’s clearly Hayden or Liam,” she said. “It can’t be Evan, obviously, or Kyle, and like Chloe said, Derek’s not an Archer. I’m not even sure you’d met Derek before he got together with Chloe, right?”
Sara was talking pretty fast, and Aubrey wasn’t sure she wanted to keep up. “Uh, no.”
“Anyway, it seems like it’s maybe Liam, since he walked you home last night, although it could’ve been Hayden before he left. Except Hayden isn’t generally the hook-up type, and Liam definitely is. Oh geez, listen to me. I’m doing exactly what Tori said not to do.”
Definitely spokesperson.
Aubrey dredged up another fake smile so she wouldn’t sound as annoyed as she felt—not at Sara, but at herself for being such an idiot. “It’s okay.”
“Well, I just want to say that it would be cool if it was Liam, because he could use a girlfriend like you. We’d love that actually.” She said the last part with such a soft sweetness that Aubrey almost wished she could tell her she’d love it, too.
But they were talking about Liam, and Liam didn’t have girlfriends. He had rotating arm candy.
“Uh, that’s really nice of you to say,” Aubrey said. She massaged her forehead and decided it was time for another dose of extra-strength Tylenol. “I should get back to work. This zoning brief isn’t going to write itself.”
“Oh! I’m sorry. I’ll stop rambling. You sure you’re good?”
“Yep, I’m good.”
“I’m glad. I had such a great time. I’m glad we’re friends. Even when the zoning and The Alex is done, we’ll still be friends—just so you know.”
Aubrey smiled, and this time it was genuine and heartfelt. “Thanks, Sara. Bye.”
She disconnected the call and set the phone on her desk. She picked up her coffee mug and realized it was empty. That meant hauling her sorry ass out of this chair for a refill.
Ugh, girlfriend? She could barely be Liam’s friend. In fact, she’d pretty much failed at that entirely. The very next time she’d seen him, she’d tried to jump his bones.
But they’d stopped themselves. Correction: He’d stopped them.
It seemed like he was maybe better at this friend thing than she was. And wasn’t that surprising as hell?
She stood from the chair and resolved to stop thinking about last night, about what she’d admitted by drinking in that asinine game, about Liam. She needed to focus on work and get through this zoning business. Then Liam would leave, and she could work on flushing him from her system for good.