Her husband had stood her up, Cal realized, standing in the shadows on the terrace, taking a break from the busy ballroom. It was past eleven and she’d yet to find Quinn.
Okay, there were two hundred men at the ball, but it wasn’t like Quinn, masked or not, would be hard to find. Long hair, heavy beard, taller and broader than most. She hoped he made an appearance by midnight. People would be expecting him to stand at her side when she thanked her guests for attending, when she called for their masks to be removed. If he wasn’t, then there would be questions—questions neither of them needed, especially since the world seemed to be buying their fake marriage and the interest in their personal lives seemed to be waning.
From the shadows, Cal had an unrestricted view of the ballroom and she scanned the room, idly noticing that the dance floor was packed. Nope, couldn’t see him... Dammit, Rayne!
She did another slow scan of the room, ostensibly to look for Quinn but knowing that she wouldn’t mind taking another long look at the guy she’d been trading glances with all evening. She first noticed him early in the evening, soon after she arrived, and while she couldn’t really make out his features—damn these masks!—she instinctively knew that he was six foot something of coiled power, radiating testosterone, heat and... God, sex.
Hot, messy, slow, dirty, sexy sex.
The kind of sex she’d never experienced since all her lovers had been more of the this-is-about-me-not-you type. And Toby had been their king.
Jerk...
Anyway, she was just so grateful that she felt sexually attracted to someone besides Quinn. That proved to her that her long dormant libido had come out of hibernation and she was attracted to good-looking men in general and not Quinn in particular. Her lust wasn’t directed at Quinn specifically so that was a relief.
Such a relief.
Cal inhaled the gently fragranced night air. She’d escaped to the balcony partly because she needed a time-out but mostly because she’d felt Hot Guy’s eyes on her at various times during the evening. It started with a prickle between her shoulder blades and then heat traveled from her coccyx up her spine and she knew that HG was looking at her, that he was the reason for the sudden bump of her heart, the fact that the air had disappeared from the room. She’d turn and, yeah, as she suspected, he’d been looking at her. Yet he never made a move to approach her; he’d just kept his brooding, intense gaze on her.
Animal magnetism—she suddenly understood that concept. Totally, absolutely, innately. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t seen his face, heard him speak—those details were inconsequential. All she knew was that she wanted to get her hands on that body, to explore that wide chest, those big shoulders, the muscles of those long, long legs.
Her attraction to him and, she supposed, to Quinn made her feel happy. The throb between her legs and the flutter in her stomach made her feel normal again. For the first time in Vancouver, in nearly a decade, she felt strong and confident and in control. During her marriage, events like this had felt like minefields and she’d tiptoed her way through the evening, fumbling her way to the end. She constantly monitored her words, checked her responses, made sure that nothing she did or said could cause offense.
Amazing what a few years and being Toby-free could do, Cal thought. She was wearing a dress that Toby would never have allowed her to wear, had slapped on siren-red lipstick that he would’ve hated and she’d spent the evening gently flirting with every man who’d approached her. She’d had fun.
Cal heard the beat from the band and as the vocalist belted out the first line of a new song, she shimmied her hips, lifting her shoulders in a sensuous roll.
Dancing alone, in the moonlight, Callahan?
She heard Toby’s sneering voice in her head and smiled as she raised her arms over her head and did a slow, sexy, shimmery twirl.
Yep. It’s my ball and I can dance if I want to...
Big hands landed on her waist and spun her around. She sucked in an astounded breath but didn’t resist when Hot Guy walked backward, stopping when her back rested against the cool wall behind her.
Cal’s eyes widened as his long form pushed her into the stone and blocked out all the light in this already dark corner. She could taste his breath—whiskey and peppermint—and her heart threatened to climb out of her chest. She should be scared, she thought, but she wasn’t. She was just utterly, comprehensively turned on.
“You smell like wildflowers...ah, crap!”
God, she recognized that voice; she knew that voice as well as she knew her own. “Quinn?”
So Hot Guy was Quinn and her libido, dammit, was still only attracted to one guy, the wrong guy.
Quinn’s curse flew over her head, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to think about who he was, what he was. His hands on her hips made her heart race; his thigh between her legs made her hot. She’d never wanted anyone’s lips over hers as much as she wanted his, here on this terrace with four hundred people inside dancing and chatting.
The moment hung, heavy with expectation, vibrating with intensity. Caught up in passion and in the fantasy of the moment, she put her fingers on his lips and shook her head, not wanting the fantasy to evaporate.
They were both masked and they could pretend... God, she needed to pretend.
“Kiss me.”
Cal couldn’t see his expression beneath his mask and it was too dark to see the emotion in his eyes. She felt his hesitation and worried that he would back off, that he’d yank them back to reality, to their lives. When his mouth softened and his thumb drifted over her ribs, she knew that he was as tempted as she was, that she wasn’t the only one wanting to visit Fantasy Land.
He finally ducked his head and his mouth hovered over hers, teasing, tempting. She waited, knowing he would get to it, in his own time. He wasn’t a man who could be rushed and she didn’t want him to. She wanted the anticipation, the headiness, the bubble, the fizz. She wanted it all.
Minutes, hours, eons later, he lowered his head and his mouth brushed hers. Her hands trembled as she pushed her fingers into his hair. His fingertips dug into the bare skin at her waist, and by their own volition her hands parted his jacket to touch the muscles at his waist, to echo his hold on her.
As he kissed her, as she lost herself in him, the world faded away, melting in the joy his mouth created. In this moment, as his mouth invaded hers, she wasn’t the good girl, Cauley’s daughter, the do-gooder with the sterling reputation. She wasn’t the heiress, the widow, the fake wife, the princess.
She was Cal. Quinn holding her was all that was important. When they kissed, her world, for the first time in far too long, made sense. Here in this moment, there was perfect clarity, absolute understanding...of everything.
Then the universe shifted as he pushed his hips into hers, rocking his long erection into her stomach. Now his kisses weren’t enough and she made a sound of desperation deep in her throat, groaning as his hand left her hip to cover her breast, his thumb finding her nipple and teasing it to a point that was almost painful. In response she dropped her hand and tried to encircle him, frustrated by the barrier of his pants.
Quinn murmured something, his words too low to make out, but she knew they were hot and encouraging so she fumbled for the zipper of his fly as he pushed away the clingy fabric covering her right breast to reveal her bare skin. Then his amazing lips sucked her bottom lip into his mouth and she stumbled on her heels, utterly off balance. A broad hand on her butt kept her upright and his other hand dipped into the slit high on her thigh, found the tiny triangle of her thong and pushed the silk aside. As he touched her intimately, knowingly, she found him, long and hot and jerking with need. She rubbed his tip and he stroked her clit and she started to free-fall...
“Please, please, please. Don’t stop,” she begged, arching her back as he pulled her nipple against the roof of his mouth. She needed him to push her over the edge, needed him to take her there...to that magical place that had always, always been just out of her reach. “That feels so damn amazing. God...”
It took Cal a little while to realize that he had, in fact, stopped, that he was statue-still, that his fingers had stopped creating magic and that his mouth had left her breast. It was a couple more seconds before it sank in that his fingers were leaving her body, that he’d—
That he’d stopped at a crucial point. He was going to leave her high and dry and throbbing with need.
What? Why? What had happened? Cal sucked in air, trying to get her bearings, trying to get her noodle-like knees to lock.
When she thought she could put words together, she looked up at him, adjusting her mask so she could see through the slit-like holes. “Why did you stop?”
“Because making love to my best friend up against a wall just outside a ballroom with her guests inside was never part of the freakin’ deal!”
* * *
Twenty seconds ago he’d had Cal’s nipple in his mouth, his fingers on her—oh, God, he couldn’t go there. He’d been a minute away from pushing her dress up to her hips and sliding home. He’d been lost, in the best way possible, in the heat of her—deaf, dumb, blind and crazy with lust...
For Cal!
For his best friend!
Quinn stepped away from Cal, zipped up his pants and pulled his stupid mask from his face, throwing it onto the floor at their feet. He heard Cal’s gasp and looked at her through narrowed eyes. She’d pushed her mask up into her wig and he saw desire blazing from her eyes.
He felt the jerk in his pants and closed his eyes. He still wanted her, still wanted to take the...the...situation to its natural conclusion. Judging by her rapid breathing and her squirming, so did she.
He was not about to take Callahan up against a wall. He wanted to, but he wouldn’t.
And the frustrations just kept rolling in, Quinn thought, pushing his fingers through his short hair. He walked away to grip the edge of the balcony, trying to get his labored breathing under control. He was only out here because he was annoyed at not finding Callahan in the ballroom, frustrated because he wanted to see her, talk to her, laugh with her.
Bothered because his thoughts kept wandering to his fake wife, and wondering where she was, he’d deliberately turned his attention to Swirls and, admittedly, that hadn’t been a hardship. He’d hoped that she’d distract him from his current obsession with his fake wife.
She hadn’t, so, needing a break from the perfume-scented air inside, he’d wandered onto the balcony. When he saw Swirls swaying in the moonlight, he’d stepped up to her, thinking he’d dance with her, needing distraction from the bubbling sexual tension and frustration living with Red caused.
Then all hell broke loose...
“You shaved your beard, cut your hair,” Cal whispered, her fingers against her mouth. “I didn’t recognize you.”
Quinn placed his hands behind his head and stomped down the terrace, staring into space. He didn’t like feeling so off balance so he took refuge in an emotion he did understand: angry frustration. He spun around and glared at her. “So you allowed a stranger to put his hands on you? Do you know how dangerous that is? God, I could’ve been anyone! A predator! A rapist!”
Cal’s mouth fell open. “Are you seriously lecturing me? Right now?”
Quinn was about to respond when he realized that her right breast—her perfect, perfect breast—was still on show, the fabric of her dress pulled to the side. He dropped his hands and waved his hand in the general direction of her torso. “Will you please cover up?”
Cal looked down and gasped. She hastily pulled the fabric back in place and he almost groaned in disappointment.
“You don’t need to be such a jerk,” Cal muttered.
“You don’t need to be so damn tempting,” Quinn retorted without thinking. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, praying for sanity. Or a lightning strike. Or a time machine to roll them back to an hour ago, to earlier in the evening, to birth.
Except that he couldn’t quite regret kissing Callahan. Kissing Cal had been...man, so wonderful. Even worse was the fact that he wanted to do it again, and so much more. God, he was in trouble.
“Let’s take a couple of breaths and calm down.” Quinn rolled his head in order to release the knots of tension in his neck and when he felt marginally calmer, he spoke again.
“Look, Red—” he deliberately used his childhood nickname for her “—the fact remains that you’re you and this was...wrong.”
Well, not wrong per se but wrong for them. They were best friends. He didn’t want to lose her. Lose that.
“Wrong?”
Quinn ran a finger around the edge of his collar and wondered where all the air had gone. Damn, if this was anyone else, he’d have managed to charm his way out of this situation, but she wasn’t a stranger and he was living with her, married to her. Fake married but still...
“Well, not wrong but...weird.”
“Weird?”
Why did she keep throwing his words back in his face?
Quinn shook his head and prayed for patience. He was trying to think, dammit! But his brain refused to work properly because it was still processing how Cal felt, tasted...
He took a step forward, wanting to kiss her again and abruptly stopped. Closing his eyes, Quinn told his libido that finishing what they’d started would be a very bad idea.
Very, very crazy-bad idea.
Sleeping with her would be the equivalent of dousing the friendship bridge with napalm before igniting it with a surface-to-missile rocket.
Best friend, living together, fake wife. The complications were crazy.
He needed to fix this, now, immediately. And to do that he’d have to stay calm—and keep his hands off her—because the situation was amped enough without any more drama.
He needed a joke. He and Cal had always been able to laugh together. It would be a way to lighten the mood.
Except that he couldn’t think of anything remotely funny to say. And God, this silence was becoming even more awkward. And tense. And...hot. Cal gnawed her bottom lip and placed her hand behind her back and inadvertently lifted her chest and he wished that she hadn’t covered up.
Okay, he had to get them back on track. “Look, I don’t want this to cause awkwardness between us.”
“I think we are way beyond awkward, Quinn.”
“I’m sorry.” It was all he could think of to say.
Cal drilled him with an intense look. “What, exactly, are you sorry for?”
Quinn covered his eyes with a hand and rubbed his eyes. “Why can’t you see that I’m just trying to not make the biggest mistake of my life, Cal?”
He dropped his hand, blinked and his heart felt like it was in free fall as he waited for her response. And when she spoke again, she sliced his heart in two. “Of all the mistakes you’ve made, and you’ve got to admit that there have been some zingers, I’m devastated that you think that almost making love to me was your biggest.”
Quinn watched Cal walk away and wished he could find the words to explain that his friendship with her was, possibly, the only thing he’d ever done right. That was the reason why making love to her would be such a mistake. He couldn’t risk losing the best, purest relationship he had in his life for a quick orgasm.
Orgasms were easy to find; somebody who understood him wasn’t.
* * *
Cal kept a healthy distance between her and Quinn as they walked down the dock toward his yacht. Cal looked to her left and saw that Quinn was staring straight ahead, his jaw tight.
They hadn’t exchanged a word since leaving the ballroom and the silence between them was heavy and saturated with tension. They’d had their fights before—all friends did—but this situation wasn’t that simple.
It wasn’t simple at all.
She’d had her hand around his... Cal lifted her hands and rubbed them over her face, no longer concerned about dislodging her wig or smearing her makeup. She’d had her hand in his pants...
Cal shivered again and this time it wasn’t from humiliation; it was because she wanted to touch him again. That and more. She wanted to kiss him, needed to feel his mouth on her breasts, needed to feel that pulsing build between her legs. She wanted him to take her over the edge, to make her scream as he filled her, stretched her.
Cal groaned and stumbled. Quinn grabbed her bare elbow and his fingers dug into her skin and Cal just managed to keep her frustrated moan behind her teeth. She stopped walking and stared at the ground, not wanting him to see her face because if he did, he would know how much she still wanted him, how close she was to begging—begging!—him to finish what he started.
“Are you okay?” Quinn, asked, his voice low.
Cal nodded, conscious that his hand was still holding her arm and sending sparks through her. “Fine.”
“You’re cold.” Quinn placed his hands on her bare upper arms and rubbed her skin and Cal had to stop herself from purring. “Where is your coat?”
She had no idea. In his car? At the ball? Who knew? “Uh...”
Quinn shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and draped it around her shoulders. Cal pulled her wig off, handed it to Quinn and pushed her arms into the sleeves of his jacket, still warm from his body. His scent—sandalwood and citrus—mingled with the smell of the sea and she felt that buzz in her womb again, was conscious of the beat of butterfly wings in her stomach. God, she was definitely going off the deep end.
She heard Quinn’s heavy sigh. “Let’s get home, Red. It’s been a hell of an evening.”
It really had. Cal folded her arms across her chest, bunching the fabric of his beautifully tailored, designer jacket. They continued in silence, climbed the steps to the main deck and Cal waited while Quinn unlocked the sliding doors and flipped on some lights. She stepped inside and shrugged off her shoes. She slipped off his jacket and handed it to him, aware that his eyes seemed to be taking a long time to move off her chest. She looked down and was thankful to see that everything was properly covered up.
But Quinn still seemed fascinated by her dress.
“That dress. It’s a damned miracle I can string a sentence together,” Quinn drawled, his eyes hot but his expression rueful as he dropped his jacket on top of her mask and wig. “There were more than a few eyebrows raised when your guests realized that you were behind that getup.”
“I assumed there would be,” Cal told him, heading for the kitchen. Leaving the lights off, she opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water and lifted it up in a silent offer. Quinn nodded and she pulled out another one, handed it to him. Quinn, always a gentleman, cracked the lid, handed the bottle back to her before opening his own. Cal sipped and looked at the inky water outside, lights from skyscrapers behind them tossing golden ribbons across the water.
“Want to explain that?” Quinn asked, taking a seat across the island from her, his elbows on the granite.
In the light spilling from a lamp she took her first long look at Quinn, clean-shaven and sexy. His beard was no longer a distraction; she could see the line of his strong jaw, the smooth skin of his neck, the tiny dimple in his right cheek, the scar on his top lip. She’d given him that scar, she remembered. She’d smacked him with a metal photo frame for dismembering four of her favorite Barbie dolls.
It had taken three weeks for her to talk to him again. At seven, she’d been more stubborn than most.
“By the way, I like seeing your face.” She tipped her head. “But you’d look better with some stubble.”
That was the type of comment Cal-his-friend would make, the Cal she was trying to be.
Quinn ran his hand over his smooth jaw. “Thanks. It’s a change. And why do I suspect that you are trying to change the subject?”
Cal sighed. She’d forgotten that Quinn wasn’t that easily distracted. “Back to my dress, huh?”
“Would you prefer to talk about what happened on the terrace?” Quinn asked, his voice low but resolute.
Cal scrunched her nose. “No,” she admitted. She wanted to do it again, but she most certainly did not want to talk about it.
“Then back to the dress,” Quinn told her, looking determined. And remote and nothing like the crazy-with-need man who’d kissed her with such skill on the terrace. Where had he gone? She’d like him back.
“Though we will have to discuss what happened between us at some point.”
“Does never work for you?” Cal asked, feeling the heat rise up her neck.
Quinn just sent her a steady look and her shoulders slumped.
“You were never very good at being an ostrich,” Cal complained. “Sometimes you’ve just got to shove your head in the sand and wait for the storm to pass over.”
“Not the way I work, Red,” Quinn said. “So, your dress. I think you wore it to make a statement.”
“And what statement might that be?” Cal demanded.
He was perceptive and so damn smart. Oh, she knew he didn’t think so; he’d been compared to his brilliant brothers all his life and that made him think that he was less than. Unlike them, he wasn’t a genius, but he had something his brothers didn’t: the ability to read people, to look below the surface and work out what made people tick. Quinn was intelligent, but, more than that, he was street-smart.
“Your dress was a declaration of independence, a way to tell the world that you are your own person, fully adult and fully responsible. That you are, finally, making your own choices.”
Yeah, that. Her dress had also been a silent way for her to send a message to Toby’s world that she wasn’t the polite, meek pushover she once was. It was her act of rebellion, years overdue, and she didn’t regret her choice.
Dancing in the dark, allowing a stranger to put his hands on her, had been another little rebellion, her way to walk on the wild side. Except that the stranger wasn’t a stranger...
Cal placed her elbows on the cool granite of the island and massaged her temples with the tips of her fingers. Why couldn’t she stop thinking about his lips on hers, the way he tasted—sexy, dark, sinful?
“God, Cal, don’t look at me like that,” Quinn begged, his fists clenched at his sides. “This is hard enough as it is.”
“I’ve never been attracted to you in my life. Why now?” Cal moaned.
“I’m choosing to believe that it was because it was a masked ball and because everyone is encouraged to misbehave,” Quinn replied, his voice sounding strangled.
Cal lifted her head and met his eyes. “So if I walk around the island and kiss you, you’re going to push me away and tell me that the attraction only lasted as long as we were masked and in the dark?”
Quinn stared at her and she saw the thin line of his lips, watched his eyes narrow. She knew that he was considering whether to lie to her, to tell her exactly that. He opened his mouth and the lie hovered between them, silent but powerful. Then his shoulders slumped and he rubbed his big hand over his face.
“I want to say that,” he admitted, his voice rough. “But I’ve never lied to you and I won’t start now.”
“And?”
Quinn stared up at the ceiling. “I want you, but I don’t want to want you. So what are we going to do about this, Callahan?”
Well, frankly, she’d like to get naked and hit the nearest horizontal surface and let him rocket her to an orgasm. She’d been so close on the terrace and she still felt unsettled, grumpy... She sighed. Unfulfilled. Horny.
Cal wanted to suggest one night—one crazy, hot, steamy, uninhibited night of passion. They had a few hours until the sun came up, before life intruded and they could spend that time exploring their attraction, giving and taking pleasure. They could step out of their friendship and pretend the past and the future didn’t exist, live entirely for the moment. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do? Carpe diem and all that? The past was gone and the future was still on its way...
They could start off with her sitting on this island and then they could move onto that blocky couch. After that they could shower together; she’d seen his massive shower—all sorts of things could happen in that oversize space. Then they could nap before he woke her up for round three, or four...
“I think we should go to bed, separately, and get our heads on straight. Forget this ever happened.”
Cal’s eyebrows slowly pulled together as she made sense of his words. That sounded suspiciously like she wasn’t going to get lucky. Not tonight or anytime soon. There would be no couch or shower or nakedness and definitely no orgasms.
Forget this happened? How was she supposed to do that? He’d had his hand between her legs, for God’s sake!
“Sex is easy, Cal. Friendship is not. I’m not tossing a lifetime of memories away because we want to scratch an itch. This stops here, tonight. We are friends and we are not going to color outside the lines.”
Cal blinked. She definitely wasn’t getting lucky tonight, dammit.
“Uh...okay?” It definitely wasn’t okay! There was nothing remotely okay about this stupid situation!
“We’re going to forget this ever happened. We’re going to wake up tomorrow morning and we’re going back to being friends, easy with each other, the way we’ve been for the last twenty years. Clear?”
Cal glared at him. “Stop being bossy. I heard you the first time. You don’t want me and we’re going back to being friends.”
“I never said I didn’t want you!” Quinn threw up his hands and climbed off his stool, slapping his hands on his waist before dropping his head to stare at the floor. He always did that when he thought that his temper was slipping away, when he felt like he was losing control of the situation. Good, she wanted him to lose control. She wanted his reassurance that she wasn’t the only one whose world had been rocked by their kiss, by the passion that had flared—unexpectedly but white-hot—between them.
“Go to bed, Cal,” Quinn said. “Please. I don’t want us to do something we’ll regret. Sex has a way of changing everything, of complicating lives. My life is complicated enough and I’m trying to do the right thing here. Please, I’m begging you, go to bed.”
Her libido, long neglected, whimpered in protest, but her brain, slowly regaining control, insisted that he was right, that she had to be sensible. Cal pursed her lips, hitched up her skirt and walked away. Being sensible, she decided, was no fun at all.